Darcy nodded, throat still against his mouth, and indicated her apparent concurrence by reaching for the buttons at the neck of her shirt. Teagan’s eyes widened.
This surely couldn’t go much further tonight, he told himself, both in reassurance and warning.But perhaps just a little further. He caught another glimpse of blue satin and slid further down in the passenger seat.
He was about to pull the door closed to save both the battery powering the interior cab light and Darcy’s modesty when they froze at the sound of a window sliding open.
“Darcy!” someone hissed. “What are youdoing?”
Teagan lifted his hands off Darcy.
“Shit,” Darcy said, sliding off his lap and through the cracked passenger door. Her boots landed on the gravel of the drive a moment later.
Teagan looked back at the building, thankfully recognizing the appalled face of the camp’s cook in the upstairs window, not that of Darcy’s boss.
He took a brief moment to mourn the loss of Darcy’s warm weight from his lap, assessed that there was no awkward lumber situation going on there (small blessings from the SSRIs), and followed Darcy out of the pickup truck.
He glanced around the front yard. Kristin was gone from the window. Darcy was already circling around the back of the residence toward the kitchen. She shook her head at him when he moved to pursue her, inclining it instead at the front door. He halted.
“Good night,” he said, as loudly as he dared.
Darcy looked back and smiled but didn’t respond, and in another moment, she was gone.
Teagan took a little sidestep on the gravel drive and linked his fingers over the top of his head. He let out all his breath in a long whistling sigh. The day had ended as abruptly as it had begun. Falling out of bed to nearly falling out of a truck.
At no point since nearly passing out on the subway platform almost a month previous had he known what would happen to him next. Even today was supposed to have been an ordeal in the sauna and then stuffed peppers, and instead he’d been swept away on a small adventure involving gray wolves, a bar fight, and getting to first base in front of a bingo hall. Then second in a pickup truck.
What would happen tomorrow? There had been an implication in her backward glance that Darcy would have lingered if she could, and that made him excited to see what the next day would bring. He had absolutely no idea what that would be, and the thought was energizing.
Good things rarely made it to his calendar. His calendar usually held the things that he would rather have avoided, like silent auctions and awards luncheons. Tiny electronic markers of misery. His calendar didn’t hold anything he looked forward to.
Well, he could do his best to clear that calendar so that Darcy was free to make additional plans, regardless of whether they involved wildness or wildlife. Teagan would spend tonight resolving the mystery conference call scheduled for Monday morning, and he’d tell Nora and Rose he’d be out here for at least another couple of weeks. Anything else was up to Darcy.
He decided to sneak into Rachel’s office to see if the CIO had responded to his messages. Sneaking in to use the computer was a mild offense, but he wouldn’t order hookersand blow. He’d listen to his messages, and then he would finish Darcy’s applications. He smiled, imagining her face tomorrow morning when he reported that it was all taken care of.
He climbed the stairs, alert to avoid detection by any of the staff, but from the other side of the building he could hear Rachel loudly informing Darcy of the presence of an angry raccoon in the yoga shed, so he supposed that the raccoon situation had everyone else occupied. He quietly let himself into Rachel’s office.
To his surprise, Sloane was seated at the desk there, most of her hair swept up into a topknot and secured in place with a pair of mechanical pencils. Her harassed look at the opening door was replaced with a familiar guilty grimace when she saw it was him. This was the look Sloane wore when he caught her doing something she wasn’t supposed to do, like forging his signature on her report card or sneaking out of the house in their mother’s vintage Gucci boots.
Before he could speak, she preempted him.
“Oh hey! How was your day?”
“Good,” Teagan said, undistracted. “What are you—”
“Did you see beavers?”
“They weren’t out,” Teagan said, noticing how she minimized her email account on the computer. “But we saw some wolves.”
“Wolves! That’s awesome. I’ve always wanted to pet one. Do you think they feel more like corgis or like shelties?”
“Sloane. What are you doing in here?”
His sister screwed up her face defensively. “Emails.”
Sloane, like most others of her generation, had the communication habits of a crime lord under FBI scrutiny—no phone calls or email.
“What about,” he said casually, leaning into the door frame.
“Some work stuff.”
