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“I didn’t say it was rational. The decision’s made. We find another way.”
Pete bristled but he knew he was beaten. They’d both learned to trust Will’s gut, his instinct, even when it made no obvious sense, and time and time again it’d proven prudent. It’d been the making of Parker Corporation.
But Will hated it when Pete was down on him. He tried to lighten things up. “Want the details on the scuffle?”
Pete waved a hand. He was looking down at the carpet. “I’m over it. Who did you leave with last night? I looked for you and you were gone. Did you even stay for the presentation?” Will could almost see the wheels in Pete’s brain whirring. “Heard you were dancing with a stunning blonde.” Wheel lock achieved. Pete’s head shot up. “Oh fuck, tell me it wasn’t her.”
Will brought his legs down off the desk and centred his chair. He didn’t look at Pete.
Pete stood to go, a hand over his forehead. “Shit, don’t tell me. I can’t know about this. I might have to do something. I have a horrible feeling Darcy has something to do with the scuffle.” He massaged his temples. “Please tell me it’s not related.”
“She was after payback. Worked out it was our function. Brought a photographer. She had a legitimate story. It was a public place, on the record, not subject to your little agreement. I looked after it.”
Pete slumped back in the chair. “She crashed a private function and took unauthorised photos of you.”
“I’ve got the memory card.”
“And Darcy?”
“She’s a journalist. I should’ve been ready for it. We fucked her over.”
“You should have thought of that before you fucked her every which way.”
Will sighed. Pete was right. He’d brought all this on them. And he’d hurt Darcy. A hit to her career and another, he suspected, to her heart. “I hate what I did to her.”
“What choice did we have? She had information we’d never want out there. This is what I don’t understand. You don’t want your picture taken, but you tell this mid-ranking journalist about Tara and about God knows what else. It’s so unlike you. What possessed you?”
“She’s beautiful, Pete. She’s real and she didn’t know who I was. From the minute I saw her I knew we were going to can the interview. She’s too smart, and she needed it too much. Interviewing me was her big break. If she’d been lazy and self-important then it might have been okay. I could’ve handled that. That’s what I wanted to find out. That’s why I staged the detention. I was prepared for Ives, but it was deliberate on the paper’s part to send Darcy instead, and I needed to know why.”
“But after your control freak act, when you had what you needed, you pursued her.”
Will nodded. He couldn’t find the words to explain to Pete about the freedom of being with Darcy. What it was like to be with a woman who had no expectations of him. A woman who was strong and independent and made him laugh. He’d loved the game of it, the chase, the risk of discovery, the mind-blowing sex and the woman herself.
“This wouldn’t have happened if you’d replaced Jiao.”
And they were back to that. “Back off, Pete.”
Pete got up to leave. “Darcy is an exciting, intelligent woman, but don’t get hung up on her. She’s trouble. She’d have made life hard for us. You know it.”
He did. Which was why, when Pete left his office, he pulled the memory card from Robert Yee’s camera out of the drive attached to his PC. Looking at pictures of Darcy, brilliant, beautiful Darcy, the woman he was seriously hung up on, with her arms around his neck, with her check against his, was an incredibly stupid idea.
He opened a report on world crude steel capacity. What he needed to do was work. Lose himself in it. That’s what he excelled at. He read the opening summary twice. It wasn’t that complicated, and he wasn’t that tired, but the meaning kept sliding around. He picked up the memory card. It was the distraction. He should destroy it. He put it back in the slot in the drive, and brought up the photos from last night. He scrolled through them. Darcy in that glittery dress with the flower in her hair looked like a Hollywood starlet from the ‘40s. He could hardly believe he’d ripped the dress from her body. Looking at her image he felt the shock of it again.
He’d been so angry with her and wanted her so badly he’d had trouble stopping his hands from shaking. Only touching her satin skin calmed him. He’d been too scared to let her touch him too much, or even talk to her in case he’d blurted out something wildly inappropriate that had nothing to do with fear of being exposed by her and everything to do with how he felt about her.
She’d felt essential.
He scrolled to his favourite image. It must have been taken at the beginning of the night. Darcy standing by herself, looking past the camera. There was an air of nervousness about the way she held her body, as though she might run at any moment. There was a look of exhilaration in her eyes. She might have been looking for her lover, hoping to see desire in his welcome. Instead she’d been watching out for him so she could enact her revenge.
He saved it to his desktop. It would remind him how much risk he’d taken by opening up to her. He threw the memory card in his top drawer and went back to the report, and this time the words stuck.
It was hours later when his intercom buzzed. Wendy Chen said, “Will, are you here for Jiao Chang?”
“Did she sound cranky, Wen?”
“She always sounds cranky to me.”
“I’m not here.”
