âIâm not about to sleep with you!â
âYou know you want to,â Reece replied.
Darcy gasped. âThat,â she snapped, âis an incredibly arrogant thing to say.â
âMaybe, but itâs true,â he returned imperturbably. âI find you quite incredibly exciting.â
Eyes a little wild, Darcy tilted her head to maintain eye contact as Reece came closerâ¦and closer. âI think you must be thinking of someone else.â
Reece took her small face between his big hands. âI donât say things I donât mean, so shut up and kiss me, womanâ¦.â
DARCY slid her pink feetâthe bath had been very hotâinto a pair of slippers and padded through the quiet flat to the phone. It was nice to have the flat to herself for once. Jennifer was a great flatmate, but she thought silence was something you filled with noiseâpreferably the loud, throbbing variety! Music-wise the two were not compatible.
Propping the phone against her ear, Darcy hitched the towel wrapped sarong-style, around her slender body a little tighter and waited for someone to pick up. She was just about to hang up when Jack Alexander answered the phone.
âHi, Dad,â she called cheerfully down the line. âIs Mum around?â She eased her bottom onto the table-top, anticipating a nice long natter.
âIâm afraid you canât speak to your mother, Darcyâ¦sheâ¦she isnât hereâ¦â
It wasnât the news that her hyperactive mother wasnât at home that struck Darcy as strangeâher community-minded parent was on more village committees than she had fingers to count them onâit was the peculiar note that bordered on panic in her phlegmatic stepfatherâs voice.
Her post-warm-bath, pre-glass-of-wine, mellow holiday mood evaporated. Darcy wasnât psychic, but she did know Jack, and she had the nasty suspicion that the icy fingers tap-dancing up her spine knew what they were about.
Her heart was thudding as she lightly asked, âWhat is it tonight? Practice for the carol concert or the church roof committeeâ¦?â
Jack would tell her what was up in his own good timeâhe wasnât the sort of man who could be hurried. An affectionate smile briefly curved her lips as her thoughts rested on the man who had married her motherâDarcy loved him to bits.
Darcy had been five and her elder brother, Nick, seven when Jack entered their lives. After a couple of years Clare had come along and then, much to everyoneâs surprise, the unplanned but much loved twins. The Alexanders were a tight-knit family.
âNeither,â came back the strangled response.
The line between Darcyâs straight, well-defined, darkish eyebrows deepened; Jack sounded perilously close to tears. This, she reminded herself, is the man who delivered his own grandchild in the back of a Land Rover without breaking sweat. She immediately ditched tactful reticence in favour of the upfront approach.
âWhatâs up, Dad?â she asked bluntly.
âItâs your motherâ¦â
Anxiety grabbed Darcyâs quivering tummy muscles in an icy fist; eyes wide in alarm, she shot upright from her perch on the console table. All sorts of awful scenarios ran through her head and with some trepidation she put the most alarming of these into words.
âIs Mum illâ¦?â
âNoâ¦no, nothing like that; sheâsâ¦sheâsâ¦â
A noisy sigh of relief expelled, Darcy slid to the floor.
âSheâs gone away.â
âAway as inâ¦?â
âSheâs spending Christmas in aâ¦a retreat in Cornwall.â
âBut thatâs the other end of the country!â Darcy heard herself exclaim stupidlyâas if the where mattered! It was the how and why that were infinitely more important. Her spinning head struggled to make sense of what she was hearing and failed miserably. No matter what else was wrong in her life, there had always been a solid, reliable, constantâ¦Mum⦠No, this just didnât make senseâno sense at all!
âIt wouldnât matter if it was down the road; they donât even have a phone,â her stepfather came back in a heavy, doom-laden tone. âI donât know what Iâm going to do! Everyoneâs asking after her. Sheâs making the costumes for the school Nativity play, the WI want two-hundred mince pies by Thursday⦠How do you make mince pies, Darcyâ¦?â he asked pathetically.
âWeâve got more important things than mince pies to worry about.â As if he needed reminding of that! âHave you any idea at all why has she done this, Dad? Did you have a row or something?â
âNo, nothing like that; sheâd been a bit quiet latelyâ¦but youâre right; it must be my fault.â