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  Someone entered the room then, but Patrick had grown so used to Darcy that he could feel her presence. This wasn’t her. Olivia stood in the doorway with a bowl of food in her hands.

  “Darcy?” he asked.

  “In the kitchen.”

  Of course. “Would you ask her to come here, please.”

  Olivia gave a nod, and in moments Darcy was in the doorway.

  She was dressed in pale blue with a silver clip in her hair and a snowy-white apron around her pretty, slim form. He wanted to simply stare at her, but that would have called attention to her and made her uncomfortable. “Thank you,” he said. “Come sit with us.”

  Darcy’s eyes opened wide. She twisted at the ties on her apron. “Oh. No. Me? Here? No.”

  “Yes. You did this,” he said, moving toward her.

  She shrugged. “It’s just a simple meal. You were rushed. I thought you’d probably say private goodbyes, but I wanted everyone here for your last day. And anyway, I’d been planning it before that so it wasn’t much work. Mrs. D. helped me find the pictures last week. I got help with the banners, of course.” She seemed to run out of steam then. He could tell that she was ready to turn and run back into her safe little kitchen.

  “Darcy,” he said.

  “Please. Stay here with us this time.” That was Lane.

  “Yes. Please. We mean it,” Amy said.

  “Really,” Cara agreed. “You—everything is so nice. And you know that we’re all on the verge of tears. None of us would have had the presence of mind to do this nearly as well as you have. You even made a special place for the boys and I know—well, thank you. Please, don’t go.”

  “Mommy?” Davey’s wavering little voice broke in. Patrick’s younger nephew looked around as if he had just noticed that Amy wasn’t at his side. Tears hung on his lashes. He looked so terribly sad and tiny.

  Patrick heard a gasp. He turned to see Darcy looking at Davey as though her heart might break. She moved forward toward Davey half an inch, such a small amount that no one else probably saw, but Patrick did. Then, her hand flew to her throat and she slid backward, again just a touch. He couldn’t help wondering and worrying if she was thinking of her baby. Her child would have been younger than Davey, but not by much.

  “Come here, sweetie,” Amy said, holding out her arms as Davey ran to her and she gave him a kiss. Darcy’s expression was unreadable.

  “Darcy?” Lane was asking. “Please. We meant it. Join us. It would make the evening complete.”

  Everyone seemed to be waiting for a response, and Darcy hesitated for a second. Then she gave a small, swift nod. “Thank you. I just have to do a few things. We can’t—there’s food to be finished. We can’t eat our fingers.”

  The mood lightened. Lewis laughed and slung an arm around Cara, who managed a smile. Amy looked more at ease and so did Lane.

  “Davey, boy,” Richard said. “Mommy’s going to sit here, not far from you. You be good and go keep Charlie company and he’ll keep you company, too.”

  Davey hesitated. He chewed on one fat little finger, but finally nodded. “Char,” he said, pointing to Charlie and wandering to the smaller table. The two little boys hugged and went back to their game.

  Everyone laughed, and only Patrick saw that, though Darcy smiled, too, her expression was still tinged with sadness. She turned, moved off and was just entering the kitchen when the doorbell rang.

  “Who could that be?” Lane wondered.

  Darcy halted. “I invited Angelise,” she said. “But I didn’t think she was going to make it. I thought—you said she was an old friend.”

  For several seconds there was silence.

  Patrick stared straight into Darcy’s eyes, but she looked away and he couldn’t read her expression. What was this about?

  Then, Cara nodded. “Thank you for thinking of her.”

  Mrs. D. came in, escorting Angelise. Angelise greeted everyone. Then she turned to Patrick. “I hate you,” she said in a teasing tone, which had everyone turning their heads to see Patrick’s reaction. “You’re going to go away and take all the fun with you.”

  She came and sat beside him, pressing close. Patrick greeted her, but what he really wanted to do was march into the kitchen and ask Darcy a few questions. He wanted her beside him at the table. Now.

  “You know, I’ve been thinking. I might take a trip to France soon, too,” Angelise said. Which evolved into a discussion about foreign travel. In the meantime, Olivia and Darcy moved in and out with food. Olivia carried in special treats for the boys, but Patrick knew that it was Darcy who had thought of them.

  The conversation swirled around him. He tried to pay attention to what his sisters and Angelise were saying. What he was noticing most, though, was Darcy.

  When she came through the door the next time, she was carrying a wand lighter. Olivia had a dish. “Darcy’s extra special peach flambé,” Olivia said as she lit the concoction.

  The glow from the flaming dish was reflected in the eyes of those sitting closest and a chorus of satisfied “ahs” added to the ambiance. The scent from the warm dish and the rum was spectacular.

  Patrick looked up to voice his appreciation to Darcy, but she wasn’t looking his way. She had turned toward the table in the other room. Suddenly a small cry left her lips.

  “Davey, no, honey!” she cried, quickly maneuvering toward the child, who, Patrick realized, had found the cigarette lighter inside Angelise’s purse.

  Patrick stood, throwing off his napkin and interrupting Angelise midsentence as he shouted and charged toward Davey.

  But Darcy had lifted the lighter from the little boy’s hand already. “No, sweetie, I’m sorry, but it will hurt you,” she was saying, rolling backward from the frightened face of the child.

  “Charlie, stop!” Patrick yelled, but it was too late. Charlie had been rushing to see what the commotion was all about and had come up behind Darcy just as she was trying to back off and give Davey some space. The wheelchair bumped him. Charlie fell, and Darcy’s wheel caught the edge of his foot.

  He screamed in the high-pitched way only a terrified child can scream.

  The world turned to slow motion. Every adult at the table rose and moved toward the area where Darcy and the children and Patrick were gathered. Tears started streaming down Davey’s frightened face. Charlie crawled over to his mother, his arms reaching up to be held as she cried out.

  And Darcy—the look in her eyes was the saddest thing Patrick had ever seen. She had raised her hands to cover her face, but those eyes…those stricken eyes that condemned herself completely…

  Patrick could already see that Charlie was okay. He was cuddled against his mother and still whimpering and snuffling loudly, but beginning to move on to the next smile the way kids do.

  “Darcy…” Patrick said.

  She shook her head, hard. She closed her eyes. She broke his heart as two tears trickled from beneath her lashes. “I hurt him,” she said with such anguish. “I hurt a—a baby. It was all my fault. I hurt a baby.”

  And Patrick realized in that moment that Darcy’s fear of children, her unwillingness to cut herself a break went much deeper than that day with the little girl and the staircase. She was punishing herself for the loss of her own baby. She blamed herself for the miscarriage.

  “Don’t,” he said. He realized that everyone at the table was starting to look at the two of them. He didn’t care, not for himself, but for Darcy—

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know I promised not to do this again, but…”

  He reached down and plucked her from her chair, pulling her into his arms. She was air, she was light, she was in pain.

  “I’ll call all of you before I leave,” he told his sisters, and he strode out of the room, not even knowing where he was going.

  As if Darcy suddenly realized what was going on, she tensed. “You can’t leave. It’s your farewell dinner.”

  “Watch me,” he said. “It was a beautiful dinner, by t
he way, but I have something else I need to do now.” He dropped a kiss on the crown of her head.

  She looked up at him. “Patrick, please, you have to go back.” But the anguish was still in her eyes.

  He slowly shook his head. He climbed the stairs. As if his feet knew what his mind didn’t, he found himself in the doorway to his bedroom.

  Patrick stopped. He shifted Darcy in his arms. “Look at me, Darcy. He’ll be fine. Children are very resilient.”

  “Not always, Patrick. No, they’re not, and—I didn’t even see him. He’s so small. If he had been just a few inches closer and the tire had rolled over him, he would have been…I would have hurt him so much more…I…Patrick…”

  Another tear slipped from beneath her lashes, and Patrick swore. He toed open the door and carried her in, sitting down on the bed with her on his lap. Slowly he rocked with her, shushing her and kissing her temples.

  “I don’t want to leave you,” he said.

  She froze. “You have to. Angelise is here. Everyone is here.”

  He hadn’t meant that. “I don’t care about Angelise.”

  Darcy looked up at him, a solemn expression on her face. “All right, maybe I made a mistake about her but someone else will come along. Someone like her.”

  “Darcy…”

  “I want you to have someone like her,” she said. “You have to do it, Patrick. You’re used to family. You’re going to miss all of that now that Lane is leaving home, and it’s going to be difficult for you. I don’t want you to be in this big house all alone when you come back. Do you understand?”

  He understood. She wanted him to marry someone else, because she wasn’t available.

  “We’ll see,” he told her.

  “You should get back,” she told him again. “Would you mind—could I stay here just for a while? I can’t go back down there.”

  “I’ll stay with you.”

  She started to shake her head. “No, you have to…”

  That did it. He turned with her, depositing her on the bed and sliding both of them down so that he was leaning over her, braced on his elbows while she was beneath him. “I have to kiss you,” he said, finishing her sentence. “I’ll never get the chance again. All right?”

  Her response was a whimper as she reached up and pulled him down to her.

  He slid his hands into her hair, loosening that fine wheat-colored silk from its bonds and fanning it out around her. When his lips met hers, he tasted salt from her tears followed by sweetness that was just…woman, all Darcy.

  Heat rushed over him as he claimed her and she claimed him right back.

  His gut instinct was to tell her that he didn’t want to hurt her, but he’d heard Cerise complaining that she hated it when men treated her like a china doll, so he didn’t say the words. Instead he told her what he was feeling.

  “I want all of you,” he said.

  “Yes, I want that, too. Touch me,” she told him.

  He kissed her lips, her eyelids, her chin. He sipped at her throat, found a spot behind her ear that made her breath catch which made his pulse pound. When he reached the neckline of her apron, he reached behind her to untie the sash, pulled it from her and released the buttons that ran down the front of her dress. When he was done, he parted the lapels and kissed his way down her body. He stroked his palms down her sides.

  She gasped, and he stopped. “Darcy?”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that the line where the break was tends to be very sensitive in people with spinal cord injuries. It’s the line between feeling and, in my case, less feeling and it…when you touch me there…”

  He touched her there. She arched against him. He stroked her again, put his lips on her there.

  She tore at his shirt, so he removed it.

  She tugged on the waistband of his pants, so he disposed of them. Somewhere along the way, he tossed aside her dress, but his attention was on her, not on the clothes, not on the actions, just on her, on the expressions on her face, the sighs that escaped her lips.

  He was on fire for her. And then, he was touching her in the places he had already learned made her burn. Her throat, her breasts, that wonderful, sensitive line she’d mentioned.

  “You can love me,” she said. “I want you to.”

  Her words nearly drove him right over the edge, and he had to close his eyes and concentrate not to leave her behind. That wasn’t going to happen. He would be patient. He would wait forever, hold off forever.

  “Patrick, touch me again,” she whispered. “Touch me more.”

  He groaned. “Oh, yes, I intend to do that, but we are not rushing this. If this is the only night we make love, we’re going to make it last.”

  Patrick slid his hand down her torso.

  She gasped and mimicked his movements. Heat ripped through him.

  He stroked. She caressed. He kissed. She nuzzled.

  Then slowly, carefully—so carefully that he could barely stand it—he entered her and they began again. In aching slow motion he loved her. And the fire began to build.

  Darcy’s fingertips on his flesh were driving him insane. He moved in her. She welcomed him against her satiny skin. Touches. Caresses. He was losing control, trying to hang on.

  “Patrick? I’m—I’m—” Her voice was breathless, strained.

  “Yes,” was all he could manage to say.

  He brought her close, kissing the side of her neck and sliding his fingers over the exquisitely sensitive line of skin he’d discovered earlier as he joined their bodies again.

  She cried out and wrapped her arms around him as his world teetered on the edge of bliss. Then everything turned to heat and stars and sun, and he fell apart.

  When he returned to earth, and his breathing returned to normal, Patrick was disoriented. He looked down and realized that he held Darcy firmly at his side. He’d never had that happen before, that total loss of self. Thank goodness he hadn’t crushed her.

  She was gazing up at him and she brushed his lips with her fingertips. “Thank you.”

  “I think that’s my line.”

  That brought a blush to her pretty body and she looked away. “I want you to promise me that you’ll have a good time. Don’t worry that I’ll be remembering this night like some sort of pathetic novice who doesn’t know anything about reality.”

  Patrick frowned. “What’s the reality?”

  She rested her arms on him and leaned in close. “That I want you to find an Angelise substitute and go shushing down mountains with her. Don’t make me worry about you, and…”

  “And?”

  “And I meant what I said. I’m going to be really angry if you worry about me.”

  “Then I won’t,” he lied, “because you’re a successful businesswoman with lots of friends.” Which was the truth.

  “You’re darn right.” She smiled at him, and then a wistful look came over her face. He tilted her chin up and gently kissed her lips.

  “What?”

  “I meant what I said,” she repeated. “Thank you. You didn’t make me feel awkward or self-conscious. You made me feel wonderful. You were my first.”

  Later, when he’d taken her home and he was alone staring into the darkness, Patrick thought about that statement. He knew she hadn’t meant that he was her first lover ever. She had been pregnant once before. She’d meant that he’d been her first since the accident, but…something was bothering him.

  She wanted him to find another Angelise and date, maybe marry, and—and he had been her first.

  That meant he wouldn’t be her last.

  A sharp pain whipped through Patrick. “Hell,” he said to himself. “Don’t go there.” But he did, and he forced himself to accept it, because he wanted her to be happy, and it was clear that she wouldn’t find happiness with him.

  Maybe she would find it with Jared, or with someone else. Surely there would be someone else. But he had been her first.

  And that wasn’t a damn bit of consolation to him. H
e missed her already.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  TWO weeks later, Darcy sat in the kitchen. She held a bowl on her lap, stirring the contents.

  “Are you going to beat that to death that, or will we eventually do something food-related with it?” Olivia asked.

  Darcy looked up at Olivia, then down at the bowl. She shifted it in her lap and kept stirring. “It’s going to be a cake. This is for Lane’s “week of goodbyes.”

  “Oh, yeah, she’s having different friends over every day. What cake is it tonight?”

  Again Darcy looked down at the batter and tried to concentrate. “Chocolate. I think. Yes, it’s brown. Chocolate.”

  The look in Olivia’s eyes called her back to attention. “What?”

  “You never just say chocolate. It’s always chocolate surprise, or hot fudge delight or too-good-to-be-true caramel. You are in bad shape. We need to do something. Fast.”

  That got Darcy’s attention. “I’m fine. What are you talking about, Liv?”

  “I’m talking about Mr. Judson.”

  Immediately Darcy flashed hot, then cold, then hot again. An ache so deep she could barely stand it took hold and she wanted to moan. Patrick was gone. He had kissed her and loved her, and it had been wonderful beyond anything she could have imagined, but now he was gone.

  “You need to call him.”

  “What?” Darcy froze in midstir.

  “I said, call him.”

  “What for?”

  “Because you love him, you idiot. And you miss him.”

  “I do not!” But she did. Not that that could matter. He needed to be free, to fly, and she wasn’t built for flying. More than that, though, was the other. He’d spent his life helping women, and just when he’d been on the verge of being free of that duty, she’d come along and he’d had to leap in and help her. Well, enough of that. She refused to be another duty holding him back.

  And when he finally settled down, she wanted it to be with the right kind of woman: socially elite, accomplished, poised, beautiful and fully capable of giving him and caring for a houseful of precious babies.

  “Not calling,” she told Olivia stubbornly. “I’ve got things to do.”