"I was being friendly."
"I told you no," Elizabeth said. Clearly. The same word, the same tone she had used in the car. "Daniel. You need to leave this house right now."
He ignored her, his eyes roaming around the living room.
"This is a big house," he said. "For a freelance writer. Hicks Street, Brooklyn Heights." He looked at her. "How do you afford this exactly? Because your writing gig doesn't cover this kind of address. So what is it? Someone paying for all this?"
"That is none of your —"
"Some kind of arrangement, is it? Sugar daddy situation?" He took a step toward her. "Because if that's the game you're playing, you could have just said. All that playing hard to get when really —"
"Do not," Elizabeth said.
He kept moving.
"Get your hands off me."
She was already stepping back, his hand just beginning to reach for her, when a voice came from behind him—
from the front door, which neither of them had noticed opening.
"Who the hell are you?"
It was not a question.
Darcy was in the doorway, still in the jacket he had worn to drop Mia at school.
His gaze moved from Daniel to her, measuring, taking in more than was being said.
A moment later, his expression settled into something that suggested he had drawn his own conclusion.
When it did, he looked back at Daniel, his gaze sharpening in a way Elizabeth had never seen before.
No, it was not anger.
It was something colder. More deliberate.
Daniel turned. “Who are you?”
"I asked first," Darcy said. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him and the living room got very small. "And I suggest you answer me before I decide the answer does not matter."
"This is a private conversation —"
"There is nothing private about a man who has let himself into someone's house uninvited and is advancing on her in her own living room." Darcy's voice was completely level. That was the part that was most frightening, Elizabeth thought, distantly — not that he raised it, but that he did not. "So I will ask one more time. Who are you and what are you doing in this house."
"I'm a friend of hers —"
"You are not," Elizabeth said.
Daniel looked between them. Something shifted in his face, a recalculation, and then he did the thing that made everything that followed inevitable — he stepped toward Darcy instead of toward the door, the specific move of someone who had decided that aggression was still an option.
It was not an option.
Darcy hit him once. Clean, controlled, the kind of punch that came from someone who knew precisely how much force the situation required and used exactly that amount. Daniel'shead snapped back. He staggered. His shoulder hit the wall and he slid down it slightly and then found his footing and stood there with his hand over his face and his eyes very wide.
Darcy stepped back. He straightened his jacket.
"Get out of this house," he said. "If I see you near Elizabeth again, near this address, near anyone in this household, I will have you arrested. I have her account of your disgrace, I am sure the door cam has a recording of you on the doorstep, and I have the resources to make your life considerably more complicated than it currently is." He opened the front door. "Do you understand me?"
