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Ricky stared fixedly at the salt shaker. “I don’t know if I can help you.”
“I can’t be that hopeless!” Darcy hadn’t taken a bite of salad, but he wasn’t hungry. “I’ll agree to a long-term relationship if necessary. There’s got to be something I can do.”
There was a long silence. Finally, Ricky leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. “Have you considered apologizing?”
“Apologizing?” The word felt foreign in his mouth.
“Telling her you’re sorry for the insulting things you said.”
“I can’t do that.” Darcy could hear his father’s voice in his head: Never admit you were wrong, never accept blame, and never apologize. People will think you’re weak.
He’d lived by that motto, but really, where had that approach gotten his father? Yes, his parents were still technically married. But when they were at home, Darcy’s mother occupied one wing of the house while his father had another. When they were abroad, one of his parents would visit Eastern Europe, and the other would get Western Europe.
“It’s your call. Do you think that ‘stubborn’ is on the list of things she’s seeking in a boyfriend?”
Darcy bristled. “I’m not stubborn, I’m just…” He sought the right word.
“Stiff? Unyielding? Proud? Set in your ways?” Ricky suggested with a grin. “Do you really want to add those to the list of adjectives she already has in her head?”
Oh God, that’s how a refusal to apologize would appear in her eyes, isn’t it?
Ricky regarded him closely. “Are you sorry for some of the things you said?”
“Yeah. I…yeah. I was stupid and insensitive.”
“Then you owe her an apology,” Ricky said simply. “Regardless of any other question, you owe her an apology.”
“If I apologize, do you think she will—?”
“No,” Ricky interrupted. “You owe her an apology because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’ll get you something in exchange.”
Okay, fair enough. “But how do I get her to like me?”
Ricky gave him a long, hard look. “Why do you want that?”
What kind of a stupid question was that? Because he was attracted to her. Because he liked her.
Ricky took a sip of wine. “Let me put it a different way. Can you be good for her? Can your presence be a positive thing in her life?”
Boy, his cousin really had a way of getting to the heart of a matter, didn’t he? “I-I don’t know.”
“Then do you really have any business crashing your way back into her life? I like Elizabeth; I don’t want her to get hurt.”
Yeah, wasn’t that Elizabeth’s reason for rejecting Darcy, too? Damn. Darcy ran both hands through his hair. Was it possible for him to convince her that he was a better person than she thought he was? Was it possible that he could be that better person?
Right now that seemed about as simple as climbing Mount Everest.
But he did know how he needed to start: with an apology.
Chapter Twelve
One of the good things to come out of In the Shadows was Elizabeth and Jane’s friendship with Ricky. He made dinner for the kids at the True Colors shelter once a month and the women had volunteered to join him this month. Jane had made salad, and Elizabeth had cooked spaghetti and meatballs, which was about the limit of her culinary skills. Ricky had contributed bread and green beans.
They had piled everything into Jane’s Prius, which she pulled to a stop in front the shelter, a simple, rather shabby, red-brick two-story building. From the outside it resembled the school it had been in a former life.
Elizabeth and Ricky unloaded the food while Jane drove off in search of parking. Not having seen Ricky since the wrap party, Elizabeth was happy for a chance to catch up. “What’s happened since you revealed your identity to your family? Did your parents rush over to beg your forgiveness?” She hoisted a tub of spaghetti and lugged it toward the shelter door.
Ricky grimaced. “I had dinner with Darcy’s family, but I don’t even know if they told my parents. It’s fine, though. I don’t need them.”
