“He stole my car!” Darcy yelled, pointing at the bar.
“I heard. I know he stole your car—”
Darcy snarled at Teagan for talking to her likeshewas the irrational one.
“Get out of my way.Get. I need to deal with this,” she gritted through closed teeth.
Teagan took a step to put himself between Darcy and the bar.
“Okay, two things though. First, that guy is bigger than me anddefinitelybigger than you. Please do not get me beaten to a pulp tonight? It’s been a good day.”
“Then stay outside,” Darcy snapped, trying to sidestep Teagan. She had no time for misplaced chivalry, and she could take care of herself.
“I really can’t,” Teagan said. “It’s a guy thing. If you go back in there, I have to go back in there, and he’s going to kick my ass. I can’t even make a fist. See?”
He held up one hand with the thumb tucked under his fingers.
Darcy halted, the absurdity making her snort-laugh despite herself.
“I’ll protect you,” she said, even though a little of her anger had already trickled out. “I’ll get our bear spray from the truck.”
“Good plan, good plan, good thinking,” Teagan said, still soothing. He opened his big golden eyes wider. “But listen to my second point.”
Darcy scuffed one boot in the pavement, thinking about how much she wanted to rub beer into Travis’s eyes. “Yeah?”
“Are these the car keys you needed?” Teagan asked, shaking a set out of his sleeve.
He held a Jesus-fish-shaped bottle opener attached to a Subaru key. He pressed the lock button to make the headlights of the car flash. It worked. They had the keys.
Darcy gasped. “Oh my God. Oh myGod. How did you get these?”
Teagan shrugged, a small smile twisting the corners of his mouth. “Taking car keys from drunk people is a breakout skill of mine.”
The cascade of emotions over such a short time period had made Darcy’s knees almost wobbly. Anger was totally gone. Embarrassment was beginning to creep in. Gratitude and relief were warring for top position. She compensated for it by jumping to lock her arms around Teagan’s neck. He staggered back in surprise but got a leg planted and an arm around her waist to hold her up. She buried her face in the side of his neck. “Thank you,” she whispered.“Thank you!”
Even after a day in the woods, he still smelled so nice, like shaving cream and expensive cologne. While Darcy was wearing half a pitcher of beer. But he didn’t try to wiggle away, so she held on and swayed back and forth. After a full month of feeling like a mark because Travis had duped her, after three months of feeling like a sucker because the Goederts had duped her, after years of dead-end jobs, after, after, after, any triumph was a heady shot of victory.
She found one more emotion in the stack and grabbed on to it. She went up on her toes, slid one hand down to Teagan’s cheek to turn his head, and pressed her lips to his.
She meant the kiss to be brief. She thought it would be, anyway.
It wasn’t brief.
Darcy sometimes wondered whether she had a lower back tattoo, obtained during some forgotten, inebriated shore leave, that instructed anyone in a position to see it to slap her ass and call her names. That’s how men typically proceeded when she gave them the opportunity, or even if she really hadn’t.
She didn’t mind rough stuff too much, and God knew she was Built Ford Tough and all that, but it had given her certain expectations. She expected Teagan to slip her some tongue and haul her against the side of the nearest pickup truck. Which would have been fine. She would have given him a couple of seconds to enjoy the standard kissing-Darcy-in-a-parking-lot experience, then punched him in the shoulder and called him her hero to bring things to a close.
Instead Teagan went very still, too long to be from mere shock. And his lips were soft on hers, not stiff from surprise. He’d realized he was kissing her, but he was being wonderfully, unexpectedly careful about it. He brought his arms around her but let his hands just barely frame her back, one fisted and resting against the curve and the other sweeping up to gently tangle in her hair. Darcy half wanted to break away and laugh about Teagan kissing her like a Disney prince while she was damp with stale beer, but she couldn’t, because it wasworkingon her.
She sighed and parted her lips, and Teagan pulled her closer and closer until she was balanced against his chest, fingertips caught in the downy hair at the back of his neck, tongue inhismouth. He kissed her the way she wanted kissing to be: its own destination, not a trail marker on the way to some place he’d rather end up. Only when she started to feel dizzy from not breathing properly did she pull back, still tingly and aware of the long line of his body.
Teagan immediately released her, and she braced for himto say something to ruin it, because beautiful, delicate moments like this never lasted. But he only beamed at her under half-lidded eyes.
“Wow,” he said, voice barely audible through his long exhale.
Darcy’s cheeks hurt from grinning at him. For once, everything had broken in her favor. For once, the bread had fallen margarine-up.
She wobbled there against him, struck with amazement that Teagan knew how to kiss like that; Teagan no doubt stuck in place with amazement that she’d let him.
