“Can you make me two more smoothies?” Darcy asked.
“I could, but why would I?”
“Because you love me,” Darcy said winningly.
“I do,” Kristin acknowledged, but she still didn’t look up from her phone.
“And I’ll clean this all up tonight?”
Darcy would end up doing that anyway, but the chance that Kristin might clean up was a polite fiction that she and Kristin maintained. Kristin popped her head from side to side, considering. “Yeah, okay. What do you want in it?”
“That one you make with bananas, peanut butter, spinach, and two scoops of protein powder.”
“Ah, yes, the Chunky Monkey Hiding in the Shrubbery.” Kristin’s face softened in a proud smile. It was one of her favorite creations. A couple thousand calories in a jar.
“Yeah. Put extra immune stuff in it. Vitamins, whatever.”
“Sure. Who’s it for?”
“Teagan.”
Kristin put her phone down, round blue eyes narrowing on Darcy. “Who?”
“Teagan. Van Zijl. You know who he is. He’s been here for weeks.”
“What’s he look like, again?” Kristin asked.
Darcy considered it, summoning the man in her mind. The messy blonde hair and big sad golden eyes.He looked like a grown-up version of the little boy prince who lived on an asteroid with a fox and a flower, she thought.
She couldn’t say that.
“I don’t know. Tall, I guess?”
“Oh yeah, I know the one. Pretty good-looking, isn’t he?” asked Kristin, who was as sapphic as the trees were tall.
Darcy elaborately shrugged, feeling judged. Probably there were some women who liked their men tall, blonde, and rich, but she wasn’t shallow like that. It was hurtful that Kristin would imply anything to the contrary. Darcy’s motives were very pure.
“I haven’t noticed,” she lied.
“But you noticed he needed a smoothie.”
“He had a rough time before he got out here. And he’s been working hard,” Darcy said, still studiedly casual. For all the yard work and forestry he’d been doing with Darcy, he needed more calories in his diet than the spa food Rachel ordered from the vegan caterer in Bozeman.
Darcy caught herself studying the sharp edges of his cheekbones sometimes, worrying that she was working him too hard, trying to picture what he might look like after he recovered.
“Darcy.”
“What?” she replied innocently.
“You knowwhat. No horny mistakes with the guests. It’s wrong.”
“How would it bewrong? I’m basically the maintenance guy! That’s an entire category of porn,” Darcy protested, even though she had in fact parsed this fine ethical dilemma herself, without coming to a definitive answer. Not that it mattered. She hadn’t been doing anything with Teagan but forestry, and she wasn’t going to.
Kristin gave her an arched eyebrow. “Of course. Porn would never steer you wrong, morally. Hey, you’ll never guess what I’m giving my hot stepsister for Christmas.”
“Not gross porn,” Darcy objected. “I’m talking aboutporn that’s like—” Darcy put on her best leer and wiggled her shoulders. She dropped her voice an octave. “Hey. I’m here to have a look at your pipe. Oh no, I see what the problem is. I’m gonna need alotmore caulk. Bam, bam, bam.”
Kristin snickered but relented, opening the blender to toss in the pea protein. “1975 called. It wants its erotic energy back.”
