Joanne Rock - Indulge Me

Darcy slipped from between the sheets and stuck out her hand, which Tyler looked at incredulously, so she put it down.

“Technically this was our second,” he said with a wry grin.

“True, but if I said two-night stand, it would mean two nights in a row.” She wrinkled her nose. “Okay, that sounds ridiculous.”

“Two one-night stands doesn’t sound like enough.” He pulled her back down on the bed.

She sighed. “It was really fun.” Accepting his long, lingering kiss, she smiled into his beautiful but somewhat bewildered blue-green eyes and got to her feet.

Then realized she was wearing his underwear.

“I…um…” She felt a hot flush travel up her spine at the botched exit, and swept her hand down to indicate his shirt and boxers. “I’ll, uh, wash these and get them back to you.”

“No problem,” he said lazily. “Why not come by tonight…?”

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Dear Reader,

Remember the romantic comedy line Harlequin Duets? I got my start writing for that series and wrote six of them before switching to Blaze. When my editor suggested last spring that I write a book for the Forbidden Fantasies miniseries, my mind immediately started working. Who would most need her life to resemble a fantasy? How about someone who has been caring for sick loved ones for years and is finally free to explore her own needs? Does that sound like a comedy? No, I didn’t think so either.

But somehow it turned out to be one. Darcy and Tyler kept me laughing as the most enjoyable couple I’ve written about in a long while. And their friends Molly and Bruce are people I wish I knew in my own life. I kept feeling as if I was back writing for Duets—except Darcy and Tyler’s racy adventures could only be at home in a Blaze.

I hope wherever you live that spring is springing and your love life is blooming.

Cheers,

Isabel Sharpe

P.S. Visit me at www.IsabelSharpe.com

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

Isabel Sharpe was not born pen in hand like so many of her fellow writers. After she quit work in 1994 to stay home with her first-born son and nearly went out of her mind, she started writing. After more than twenty novels for Harlequin—along with another son—Isabel is more than happy with her choice these days. She loves hearing from readers. Write to her at www.IsabelSharpe.com.

HARLEQUIN BLAZE

11—THE WILD SIDE

76—A TASTE OF FANTASY *

126—TAKE ME TWICE *

162—BEFORE I MELT AWAY

186—THRILL ME **

221—ALL I WANT… †

244—WHAT HAVE I DONE FOR ME LATELY? ‡

292—SECRET SANTA “The Nights Before Christmas”

376—MY WILDEST RIDE ††

393—INDULGE ME ‡‡

To my patient and wonderful sons,

who tolerated lack of quality mom-time for

far too long so I could finish this book.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

DARCY WOLF COULDN’T decide whether the view of that one painter hard at work on the ladder scraping the old paint off a second-floor window—the one that was so, um, soooo, well, you know—was better with her sunglasses on or off. So she gave herself permission to experiment thoroughly.

On. Off. On. Off.

Still no decision. But lying here in her backyard on a chaise longue with a cold iced tea made just the way she liked it—strong, no sugar, brewed with mint that sprouted reliably in a bed by the house—feeling the sun, light and warm, not yet the blistering full strength of a Milwaukee summer, with virile young men clambering around her childhood five-bedroom Lannon stone home, well, she’d say life was good. And not to sound selfish, but she deserved a little “good life” after so many years bearing witness to pain and suffering and despair.

Once the painters were done, she would put the house up for sale and, at age twenty-six, finally get her life under way. Four years spent nursing her beloved father to a heartbreaking end when his cancer returned a second time to claim him. Another year after that nursing Greg, her boyfriend of four years, back to health from a head injury he sustained the day she finally broke up with him. A devil inside her still wondered if he’d subconsciously engineered the car accident to punish her or keep her with him, which turned out to be nearly the same thing.

She’d cared for her father devotedly, given him what joy she could, just as he’d given her his life and time and nurturing after her mother died, and she’d grieved over the inevitable slow end that had begun when she was a teenager with his first bout, was put on hold for too few precious years of remission, and had begun again in college. She’d nursed Greg in the other direction—away from death and back to health—with slightly less selflessness. After all that had gone into her agonized decision to leave him…

But she couldn’t beat herself up over that anymore. Greg was functioning on his own, nearly back to normal, and a couple of weeks ago she got up her nerve and repeated the ghastly breakup scene, feeling like dirt to cause the poor man even more pain. However, this time she did it at his house in Madison, where she’d lived for the past year while she’d taken care of him, so that she’d be the one driving right after.

And now…

Summer waited around the corner with hot, humid breath and long lazy limbs, but spring had come, and like the new shoots pushing determinedly out of the still-chilly earth, Darcy Wolf was going to bloom. Not here in Wauwatosa, an immediate suburb of Milwaukee, where she’d lived a quarter century plus one year, a city she knew inside out, but off and away, new horizons, new adventures, new life, new Darcy.

She took a sip of the tea, ice cubes rattling appealingly in the bright orange plastic cup she’d bought last summer to brighten her and her father’s outdoor living while he could still be up and around. She could afford to buy cups made of gold now if she wanted, though she couldn’t imagine why she ever would. Her father’s death hadn’t been a surprise, but his final gift had been. Money. Money he never so much as hinted he had, from his family and from Mom’s family, from a lifetime of success as a wholesale jewelry salesman and from careful living. Her new independence had only just started to sink in. But already she had plans. Who wouldn’t? She’d quit her dull job in Madison as office manager for a psychology practice, and as soon as the house was in presentable condition and then sold, she’d take off for distant lands. Or rather, distant states, living as she’d wanted to since she was a girl obsessed with maps and dreaming about travel. Two years in Seattle. Two years in Los Angeles. Two years in Miami. Two years in Boston—the four corners of the country. She’d write about her experiences, volunteer, take ballet lessons, tap-dancing lessons, fencing lessons, learn to paint, to fix cars, to build furniture…