Joanne Rock - Indulge Me

“Seducing him.”

“Sed—are you out of your mind?”

Darcy recoiled from Molly’s uncharacteristic near-shriek. “I’m calling you, so not quite yet, no. Tell me. Why is it a bad idea?”

“You can’t think of any reason?”

“Mmm, no.” She sighed over his ankles, shins and thighs.

“Not one.”

“Honestly. For starters, he could be a psychopath, sociopath serial killer—”

“True.” Though odds heavily favored otherwise.

“—or have horrible diseases—”

“Ew. True.” Her glorious swelling fantasy deflated a bit.

“—or he could turn out to be one of those stalkers who can’t let a girl alone after he’s had her once, like what happened to Jody—”

“Oooh, true.” She cringed, remembering the hell their friend Jody had gone through after one date with a guy she’d met on MySpace. Police had been involved. ’Nuff said.

See? Calling Molly had been a good idea.

“—or he could be one of those vain, cocky guys who’ll get vainer and more cocky after you land him, and brag to his friends that he got laid on the job by some lonely single chick—”

“Blech. Ptooey.” Darcy made a face like a child given nasty medicine. Fantasy leaking serious air now.

“Or he could be a nice guy who would like you as you really are—a smart, sweet, nice girl—and would be turned off by you initiating sex when you don’t even know him. You could ruin a really good thing that was otherwise meant to be.”

Darcy’s nasty-medicine face smoothed. Now Molly was sounding like her father. And as much as Darcy had adored her father, nothing made her immediately want to be a teenage rebel again more than someone sounding like him.

She’d spent her life as a good girl because Dad refused to have it any other way. The one time she’d tried to express a little of the devil in her with a low-cut, ooh-la-la outfit she’d bought on the sly and sneaked on in the girls’ room before school’s opening bell, her father had found out. Hunky Evan Jacobus had practically drooled on the floor that day at school and the next, when she’d worn another very-unlike-her ensemble she’d borrowed from Tiffany Blatz. Darcy had gulped the male attention like a famine victim’s first meal. See? She wasn’t invisible to the opposite gender, after all.

Evan had even come over that night unexpectedly “to study” and had seen her in her regular appease-daddy clothes, and right in front of her father a question had risen from the murky depths of his teenage brain and emerged from his thin chapped lips. How come she’d been dressing so differently at school?

Daddy had not been amused. Evan didn’t stay long. The clothes were given away to those more fortunate than Darcy.

And then there was Greg whom she’d met at a Summerfest concert before senior year at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, jealous streak a mile wide, threatened by his fifteen-year head start on life. He’d wanted Darcy to look sexy only in the privacy of his or her bedroom, which hadn’t been often enough for her taste. But from his perspective, guys her age were everywhere and Greg didn’t want them looking and he didn’t want her to see them looking and, and, and…

Darcy’s fantasy started to reinflate. “I don’t know. I still—”

“Look, Darce, I know how much you need to feel you’re breaking out of the mode you’ve been in. You’ve had some really tough years and made a lot of sacrifices that took a lot of strength. But selling the house and spending the next eight years moving around the country is plenty adventurous, though I think you don’t realize how much you’re leaving here.”

Darcy rolled her eyes. “Can we save that lecture for another time? I don’t need that one today.”

“Yes. Okay. Hang on—Annabel, I told you to get ready for gymnastics ten minutes ago and you haven’t even started changing. Go. I’m back, Darce. Man, that girl is going to turn my hair white and she’s only four. What was I saying, now?”

“About me cutting loose.”

“Right. Let’s face it, Greg was about as exciting as a PTA meeting, and you—”

“Hey,” Darcy protested automatically, then frowned. Molly wasn’t usually this cutting. Or this impatient with her children.

“Why else did you break up with him? I’m right. You know I am.”

“Yes, but only I’m allowed to slam him.”

“Okay. How about, ‘Mr. Gregory Hinshaw did not encourage you to explore your own life.’ Better?”

“Much.” Greg had been gentle, wonderful, but yeah, set in his ways was an understatement. Cemented in his ways, maybe.

“That works.”

“So the point is, don’t go overboard now that you’re free. Remember, the kids in college who partied their brains out and ended up puking in the street every weekend were the ones whose parents absolutely forbade them to touch alcohol. Ever.”

Darcy tapped her fingers on the rim of the sink. “I get it, Molly.”

“I’m just saying. I don’t want you to do something so out of character that you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“But it can’t be completely out of character or why would I want to do it?”

“Because you’ve been bent too far in one direction, and now that pressure is released, you’re whipping too far over to the other side. Trust me. You want danger? Throw out a recyclable, or park in a handicapped space—something more in your risk league. Leave seducing strangers to women who can handle the fallout.”

Darcy growled loudly. Now Molly sounded like Dad and Greg. In stereo. Full volume. And unfortunately, even though she might be making perfect sense, out of sheer contrariness Darcy’s desire to make use of Garrett’s mighty spear tripled.

“Hey, you wanted me to talk you out of it.”

“Yeah, I did. I did want you to talk me out of it.” The legs in her kitchen window moved down a step. Darcy leaned over the sink to better admire their straight muscled length, raising her eyes slowly to where he kept the weaponry she was “soooo uncharacteristically” in the mood to test out. “But I’m pretty sure I just changed my mind.”

TYLER HOUSTON finished sanding the upper sill of a second-story window, climbed down and moved the ladder to the last one on that floor. For the third day in a row he’d lingered here after the other guys had gone. Partly because rather than being a professional painter like his coworkers, he was a soon-to-be college professor—and yes, he did like the sound of that—earning extra cash over the summer before he started teaching economics at UWM in the fall. The guys kidded him about his snail-speed painting, but after so many years of book study it was a refreshing break to work with his body again instead of just his mind.

As he’d said, that was partly why he stayed late. To catch up. But only partly.

The other “partly” had to do with the woman this house belonged to. He’d been attracted to plenty of women in his life. Some based purely on appearance, seen at a distance or seen up close. Some whose personality appealed and whose looks seemed to morph into loveliness the more he got to know them. But rarely the kind of punch-to-the-gut sizzle he experienced with this woman. Even his attraction to Annie Phillips, his supposed-to-be fiancée who’d busted his heart wide open a year ago, had taken hold of him slowly.

Hardly Mr. Smooth, he still could generally hold his end up in a conversation. He liked people, enjoyed finding out about them, listening to their stories, figuring out what made them tick. Around this woman, he’d been able only to comment moronically about paint. Compliment her color choice. Admire her house. Wax philosophical about wood stain and window glazing. Never even asked her name. Worse, he’d kept laughing nervously—he would not use the term giggle. Bad enough when she had on her sunglasses, but when she took them off and looked at him with those blue-gray eyes…