Maybe This Time

chapter ELEVEN



DARCY STEPPED OUT of the pub onto the sidewalk, and the cool night air bathed his heated cheeks. Emma was probably right. Yelling at Wayne like some hothead wasn’t smart or mature. Then again, he wasn’t trying to win friends and influence people, just save his pub.

He flung open the door to the wine bar and looked around. Yep, there was the couple who’d left his pub not twenty minutes ago, now toasting each other with their half-price drinks.

Wayne was pouring wine into elegant glasses, the ever-present toothpick rolling between his teeth. A waitress came through a door from the back bearing a tray loaded with small plates of hot snacks giving off delicious savory aromas. His stomach rumbled, reminding him that the chicken soup he’d had with Emma was hours ago and he hadn’t eaten since.

Wayne passed the wine to the waiter and looked up. A big smile wreathed his face. “Darcy. Glad you stopped by. What can I get you?”

Darcy flung the stack of discount flyers across the bar. “For a start, you can keep these out of my pub.”

The toothpick rolled to the other side of Wayne’s grin. “Hey, buddy, can’t you take a joke?”

“I can take a joke. What I won’t stand for is you poaching my customers right out from under my nose. Don’t you have any kind of business ethics?”

“Ethics?” Wayne snorted. “Mate, get your head out of the sand. It’s a big bad world out there. All’s fair.”

Darcy heard a snicker and turned to see a pair of women listening in on the conversation. The red fog descended and he spun back to Wayne. “All bets are off...mate.”

Wayne’s mouth turned down, letting the toothpick droop. “Are you threatening me?”

“You can take it however you want.” Darcy was past caring how his words were interpreted. His father hadn’t worked his butt off to build a pub only for some upstart from the city to sweep in and steal his customers. “My establishment has been in this town for sixty years. It will be here sixty more, long after your wine bar has turned into a juice bar. I will outlast you.”

Not waiting to hear another word from Wayne he strode across the street to the pub. Behind the bar, he stacked glasses and cleaned up, his movements angry and agitated.

“So, will you be meeting the wine bar dude at sunrise in the parking lot?” Tony asked.

“Ha, that’s right,” Darcy said. “Dueling cocktail shakers at twenty paces. Care to be my second?” Having it out with Wayne made him feel a tiny bit better, but the aggravation was eating away at him. He couldn’t wait until renovations were complete and the pub once again reigned supreme.

“Or how about a little graffiti, or a well-placed rock through that big plate-glass window...”

“Mate, you know better than that—” He caught sight of Tony’s smirk. “You had me going there for a moment.”

Revenge against the wine bar would be sweet, but it would also be hollow. Rather than tear the other business down it made more sense to build his business up. To put something of himself into the pub so that he could point to that and say, it’s mine. And someday he could hand it to Billy and say, Here, son, this is yours. Cherish it.

The thought caught him by surprise. When had he started thinking about Billy in terms of the future?

His phone rang. “Hello?”

“Darcy,” his mother said. “I’m sorry to call when you’re working.”

“That’s okay. I’ve been meaning to come over but I’ve had my hands full with Emma and Billy. How’s Dad doing?”

“He’s being readmitted to the hospital.” A tremor came into his mother’s voice. “The surgical wound is infected.”

Darcy swore under his breath. “Isn’t he on antibiotics?”

“Yes, but the medication isn’t working. Some sort of superbug has taken hold.”

He glanced at his watch. It was almost eleven. “When is he going into the hospital?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. They’re waiting for an open bed.”

His father was elderly and in the grip of a virulent strain of bacteria. People died from that. “I’ll come over right away.”

“No, don’t. He’s asleep.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow then, around lunchtime.” He remembered that his mother and father still hadn’t met his son. “I’ll bring Emma and Billy.”

* * *

SHE WAS MAKING LOVE to Darcy. They were lying on a blanket in a meadow, the remains of their picnic scattered. His musky scent mingled with the fragrance of grasses and wildflowers. Her hands roamed over his bare back and buttocks, warmed by the sun. Her body tightened and their rhythm moved faster as tension grew. The sweet sensation was about to reach a peak—

A siren wailed in the distance.

The dream began to fade. Caught between sleep and waking, Emma moaned. The soft tissues between her legs throbbed and she pressed her hands there, desperately trying to stay in the dream long enough to climax. But the sensory image of Darcy had already vanished.

The siren sounded louder. The ambulance was coming closer.

She slipped into her recurring nightmare about Holly. Only this time it was Billy who was running toward the driveway and the reversing truck.

“Billy,” she screamed. And woke up.

Where was she? The bed was familiar, the quality of the darkness wasn’t. Terror still gripped her, all the more disorienting because her body was sexually aroused. Where was Billy?

The bedroom door opened and Darcy came in.

“Shh, Emma, it’s okay. Everything’s okay.” His arms went around her in the dark, warm and strong. “Billy’s asleep in his cot in the other room. He’s fine.”

She clung to Darcy as if she never wanted to let go. “Bad dream,” she mumbled.

She sagged against Darcy’s chest, breathing in his scent, recapturing strands of her first dream and weaving them about her as armor against the second dream. Her hands ran over his shoulders. This was real. He was real. Solid. Strong. Here for her.

The siren stopped abruptly.

“I heard you call out. You said Billy’s name.” Darcy lay down next to her and held her in his arms, stroking her hair back from her face. His upper body was bare but he wore boxers and his muscular legs stretched out pale in the dim light.

“Don’t want to think about it.” She shuddered and turned to face him, pressing her body full-length against his through the covers. Desire resurged, a spark that instantly fanned into a flame. She raised her mouth and found his, kissing him urgently.

“Emma?” Darcy murmured against her lips. His hands gripped her, holding her back. “Are you awake? Do you know what you’re doing?”

“I’m awake enough. I want—”

“What?” he said huskily. “What do you want?”

She hesitated. What did she want? Sex? Love? She was all mixed-up and frustrated. “I just want.”

“I know that feeling.” With his mouth on hers, he lifted his hips and pushed back the covers to get closer. He was already hard and seemingly full of the same urgency as she was.

Emma wasted no time on foreplay. She was aroused and needy and desperate to push away the last shreds of the nightmare. Reaching down, she slipped off her panties and climbed on top of Darcy. Her eyes closed at the heavy hot pulse of his erection against her belly.

“Wait.” Darcy reached into the bedside table for a condom.

“Quickly,” she urged. Even before he’d covered himself completely she was sliding down his shaft with a long satisfied moan. “Oh, you feel so good.”

He groaned and clasped her hips to pull her in close. His mouth found her nipple and he strained up to suckle, molding her other breast with his hand.

They found their rhythm right away, rocking hard together. Emma planted her hands on the headboard and pushed her hips into Darcy’s, her need an engine that drove and drove and drove—

It was all over in minutes. Short, sharp and intense.

She sagged over him, panting and damp with perspiration. And ground her hips into his again to capture the aftershocks. “Did you come?”

He gave a low dry chuckle. “Yes. Nice of you to ask.”

“I wasn’t just using you. Honest.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you were.”

She pulled free and lay beside him, draping an arm over his chest and twining her leg with his. In spite of all the reasons making love to him was wrong, it somehow felt right. “Before the nightmare I was dreaming about making love to you. Then it all went wrong.”

“What happened?” He blew softly on her chest, cooling her heated skin and causing her wet nipples to pucker. Her milk was leaking a little and he bent to lick it up, laving her like a cat.

She shivered with sensual delight, unwilling to leave this warm place with Darcy to go back into the nightmare. But he was waiting for an explanation. “In the middle of that dream I heard a siren, maybe out on the highway, and suddenly we were no longer in a sunlit meadow. Instead it was the Saturday of the football final. It was getting cloudy and I was ready to go in. I called to Holly. Only it wasn’t Holly. It was Billy.” She shivered, remembering Kyle leering at her. She should have gone inside and gotten Darcy. If only...

Darcy pulled her into a warm embrace. He felt so good, so strong and loving. The very real sensation of his body against hers—the prickliness of the hair on his shins, the heat of his skin, the musk of their lovemaking—held her in the here and now, safe from loneliness and sorrow, safe from her memories.

“What happened to the ambulance? The siren?” she added when he looked puzzled.

“It wasn’t an ambulance. It was a fire truck. It stopped in the village, right on our street, it sounded like. I was getting up to investigate when you cried out.”

Suddenly wide-awake, she sat up. “This building isn’t on fire, is it?”

“No. The alarm would have gone off if it was. It must be a nearby shop.”

Emma gave him a slap on the shoulder. “You made love to me knowing fire trucks were outside? I don’t believe you.”

“It could have been a false alarm. Besides...” He kissed her on the lips. “You were pretty insistent. I’ll go check it out now. Are you all right?”

She twined a finger through his hair, making it curl in front. “I’m feeling pretty damn good.”

“You’ve been sick. I wasn’t too rough, was I?”

“A smoking orgasm was exactly what the doctor ordered.” Her voice turned husky. “A girl could get used to this.” Oh, God. Had she revealed too much? “I mean the sex.”

“Sure, what else?” He searched her face.

The loving, the caring, being held and comforted when she woke from a nightmare into the waking nightmare that was life without her daughter. She needed to remember this was only an interlude. Before long she would go back to her own apartment and be on her own again. It wasn’t as if Darcy had asked her to move in for good. “Nothing else.”

Darcy eased away a little. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you before. My dad’s being admitted to the hospital. He’s got a golden staph infection.”

“Oh, Darcy.” She felt so self-absorbed, worrying about her dreams when he was experiencing something more scary and very real. “I’m sorry.”

“I want us to go over to the house tomorrow morning, with Billy. I want Dad and Mum to see him.”

“Of course. Whenever you say.”

“I’m going to go check what’s happening out front,” he said gruffly. But before he rolled away from her, he leaned in to kiss her once more, slowly and very tenderly. Then he got up and went out.

Emma lay back on the pillow simultaneously confused and elated, worried and hopeful. Tears leaked from her eyes, and she didn’t know if they were happy tears or sad. Damn hormones.

The news about his father was worrying. Was that why Darcy had been eager to have sex, because his father’s mortality was breathing down his neck?

Whatever the reason, she didn’t regret making love. How could she when it brought them closer together? Even if they had no future as a family, a better relationship between them could only be a good thing for Billy.

A smile tilted her lips. Happy tears, they must be.

* * *

DARCY PULLED ON the jeans and shirt he’d left lying over the back of a chair. The digital clock next to the couch read 3:00 a.m. He could hear voices shouting, doors slamming, hoses being reeled out.

And the unmistakable crackling of flames.

He ran down the stairs and onto the street. The Indian restaurant two doors down from the wine bar was on fire. Too bad it wasn’t— He stopped himself before the thought could form in his mind.

Firefighters had three hoses out, one trained on the restaurant, the other two wetting down neighboring shops.

A police car pulled up. Constable Delinsky and Senior Constable Jackson set up a police cordon, shooing a handful of curious townsfolk behind the rope.

Darcy watched for a while to make sure it wasn’t going to spread. The firefighters had caught it in time, but the restaurant would likely be gutted. Shame.

An unmarked car pulled up, and Riley got out wearing plain clothes. After being briefed by his officers, he came over to where Darcy was standing in front of the pub.

“Hey, Darcy.” Riley glanced at the apartment. “Did you see anything from where you were?”

Only Emma, on top of him, her naked body filling his field of vision. “No, I was...asleep. Then I, uh, heard the sirens.”

He felt no need to tell Riley any more than that. If he wanted to make love to his ex-wife, that was no one’s business but theirs. Sex had been short and sweet. And hot. Hot as the flames licking through the caved-in windows of the restaurant, heating his face even from across the street. His groin tightened thinking about Emma riding him, her beautiful breasts swaying above him. He wished he’d had longer to stay in bed with her. He would have liked to make love again, slower, taking his time to pleasure her, to banish all her bad dreams so that when she closed her eyes all she saw was him.

He’d crossed a line tonight. He could no longer pretend that what happened on the cruise was a one-off. He and Emma had been intimate under possibly the least seductive circumstances and it had been awesome.

Maybe he wasn’t as over her as he’d thought.

He needed to get his head screwed on straight. Nothing had changed. They were still divorced and, while he was happy to take her and Billy in temporarily, they formed no part of his future. She didn’t want it and neither did he. Although clearly it wasn’t a big enough deterrent to keep their hands off each other.

Darcy pushed those thoughts away and turned to Riley. “Kitchen fire, probably, eh?”

“It’s hard to say at this stage. It’s up to the fire chief if he wants an investigation.”

“Do you think it could be arson?”

“Possibly. Or it could be purely accidental.” He glanced up at the clear, starry sky. “But I think we can rule out a lightning strike or a bushfire out of control.”

A couple of firefighters wearing breathing apparatus emerged from the doorway through billowing smoke. “Looks like they didn’t find anyone inside,” Riley said. “That’s a blessing, anyway.” He clapped a hand on Darcy’s shoulder. “Catch you later.”

The fire was under control now, the flames doused, the air acrid with smoke. Yellow tape blocked off the area. The bystanders were starting to walk away. One of the trucks started its engine and slowly drove off.

Instead of going straight upstairs, he walked through the pub with a flashlight making sure that all was well in case it was arson and some nutty firebug had decided to target more than one local business. Nothing appeared to be out of place or out of the ordinary.

He put away the flashlight and went upstairs, tiptoeing past Billy’s room to open Emma’s bedroom door. She was asleep. He hesitated, torn between wanting to crawl into bed and spoon her the way they used to and knowing that waking up with her would only complicate matters. It would be easier to write off their midnight passion as an aberration if he wasn’t gazing into those big blue eyes gazing at him from the pillow next to his first thing in the morning.

Then he heard a cry. Damn. He froze like a statue, hoping the baby would go back to sleep. The next cry was louder and piercing and seemed to penetrate his brain.

“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” he muttered.

He went into Billy’s bedroom and picked the baby out of the bassinet. Billy rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. He was a small bundle of solid warmth. Darcy was getting familiar with the routine instead of panicking and wondering what to do. He knew what to do. “Hey, buddy, what’s up?”

Billy’s response was to cry louder.

Darcy didn’t recall Holly being so demanding. But maybe when she woke in the night he’d simply rolled over and gone back to sleep, leaving Emma to get up. Back then he’d rationalized that because he worked till 2:00 a.m. most nights he needed his sleep. Emma had never complained, never nudged him out of bed. She’d always wanted to get Holly.

Hadn’t she? It occurred to him that he’d never asked.

Should he take Billy to Emma for her to nurse? No, she was still recovering and needed her sleep. He would feed Billy himself. If he was tired tomorrow, so be it.

Jiggling Billy in his arms in an attempt to keep him quiet, he shut Emma’s door and padded out to the kitchen. He didn’t know any lullabies so he crooned a Spanish love song while he made up a bottle of formula. At least this part he had down pat. Through trial and error he’d determined the exact number of seconds in the microwave to heat the bottle to perfection.

When he was ready he sank into an armchair in the living room. It was dark except for the glow of the streetlight outside. There were still voices on the street and the sound of vehicle doors slamming. The whirring noise must be the fire hose recoiling onto the truck.

Darcy shut them all out and focused on the baby in his arms. Little beggar sucked greedily. Darcy dabbed at a drool of milk leaking from the corner of Billy’s mouth. When Emma was fully recovered she would leave and take Billy with her. That idea should have been welcome—taking care of the baby had been tough. Instead, he felt oddly at a loss at the thought of not having Billy around.

His mind drifted. What if he and Emma were to get back together? The scenario unfurled before him—a second wedding, maybe even an exotic honeymoon in Argentina, where they could dance the tango. Then back home to settle down, in a house, of course. Billy would need a yard to play in when he got older.

Here, the images started to darken. At first everything would be wonderful and they would be happy. Gradually old habits would return. Emma would take over Billy’s care again, shutting Darcy out. He would retreat to the bar. She would get pissed at him over being away so much. He would spend even more time with his mates and his pub. And the whole thing would spiral out of control, worse than before Holly died because they were carrying that baggage around and for God’s sake, they should have known better.

Making love to Emma had been a fabulous mistake. They were being driven by hormones instead of using their heads and working out their problems. If that was even possible. The one with the most to lose if he and Emma came together only to break apart again was Billy.

Darcy stroked his baby’s cheek. “Mate, I’m not going to do anything that could end up hurting you.”