Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Darcy read his e-mails and replied to the pressing ones.
He managed to skim a few stories in the Wall Street Journal.
He stared at his shoes and wondered how old he’d been when he started wearing wing tips.
More often than was proper in a public corridor, he stared at the pictures on his phone, nearly all of them taken over the past few weeks and nearly all of them featuring Elizabeth: smiling, pensive, silly, unaware, undressed…
While she claimed not to be a fan of the camera, she asked that he share all of his photos with her.
He could refuse her nothing even if it did mean she now had the photos he’d snapped of her in May as further evidence of his then unrequited affection.
It occurred to him that he should ask whether she had any similar surreptitious photos.
But he’d been sitting outside the D.A.’s office for more than an hour now, and he couldn’t hear a sound through the thick oak door.
It was possible, he thought, that his head might explode.
Elizabeth had been nervous that morning about giving her statement while he had been all calm assurances.
Now it was quite the opposite. He sat, tapping his foot and jiggling his knee, and wondered exactly when he’d lost his vaunted power of concentration.
The woman behind the door was responsible for that, and he certainly didn’t begrudge her beguiling ability to distract him.
She’d done a bloody good job of it last night.
Certain activities had been off limits, and he’d had his first confirmed look at how a hormonally charged Elizabeth Bennet behaved.
Although he wasn’t terribly well versed in the ups and downs of a woman’s monthly mood swings, he’d rather enjoyed her need for back rubs, craving for dark chocolate, and most especially, her desire for him.
He’d never seen that mentioned on the covers of all those magazines boasting about “Best Sex Ever!” and “Fab Summer Hairstyles!” and “Inside Secrets of Casseroles and Hot Bachelors.” Not that he’d actually looked at those magazines, of course, but he did spend enough time in airports to have noticed them.
Yesterday, when Elizabeth discovered Darcy had never seen An Affair to Remember, the movie that inspired Charles and so many other couples to get engaged or married atop the Empire State Building, she’d insisted they watch it.
It was a lot longer than she’d recalled—and more maudlin than he would have preferred—but it had taken her mind off weighty legal matters, and something about Cary Grant had put her mind on him.
A certain part of him, anyway. She curled up in her UM sweats and played with the buttons of his shirt while they watched the film.
Soon enough, he felt her fingers on his skin, touching the fine hair that covered his stomach.
Within minutes, her lips followed, the movie paused, and she was kneeling between his thighs, tugging his jeans down past his hips, her mouth hot and her lips and tongue insistent upon him.
Darcy had briefly wondered where she learned that brilliant trick with her bottom lip.
“Lizzy,” he moaned, lost to her powers of oral persuasion.
That had been his last intelligible word before she took him on a long, highly personalized journey to his favorite destination.
He groaned and grabbed the newspaper next to him to set atop his misbehaving lap.
Within seconds, the door across from him opened.
He sat up guiltily and crossed his legs; fortunately, the danger was nearly past by the time Elizabeth emerged, and he could stand without fear of embarrassment.
She took his hand, he kissed her cheek, and they headed off for lunch.
She was free of her worries, she said. Wickham and the specter of athletes imitating Lance Armstrong no longer weighed heavily on her mind.
She’d provided the authorities the little information she had, and she was of no help to Wickham’s defense, so it was over and done.
They had that happy thing to celebrate, and both hoped it would overshadow a much-dreaded separation.
Darcy’s twice-postponed trip to London and Berlin finally had to be undertaken.
It was so frustrating. All he’d done for five years was work, and now all he wanted was a bit of vacation, a holiday away with his girlfriend.
But money couldn’t buy him love, happiness, time, or even a clone to sign letters and read contracts; he had to meet with his operations chiefs and executives overseas.
So Darcy did what he always had and buckled down to work.
For two consecutive nights before he left, Elizabeth found him in the wee hours at his desk or at her kitchen table, tapping away at his laptop.
It worried her, but he promised it was temporary, just a way to shorten his trip away from her.
It was who he was, she knew: a man holding up the family legacy.
Besides, she was working too—on her book, on Jane’s wedding, and on a birthday surprise for her man.
More than once when mulling over this trip, he’d blurted out the words he kept thinking: “Come with me?” But every time, Elizabeth had reminded him of her own responsibilities as an employee and as a maid of honor.
His suggestion that she stay at his apartment had also fallen to her reasoning: “My office is here.” Thus, he flew off after a long, passion-filled and misty-eyed goodbye.
Two days sped by when she took her long-planned, whirlwind trip to Chicago to promote the book.
With her trip to the Midwest over, and with Darcy gone for another unimaginable six days, Elizabeth buckled down and focused.
An editor at Kelleton Press had expressed interest in her novel and asked to see another two chapters and the full outline before a decision could be made.
When she wasn’t at Philips/Hill, she was writing or working on Darcy’s birthday gift or focused on wedding details, specifically listening to Jane’s worries and planning the bachelorette party with Charlotte and, unfortunately, Caroline.
After much back and forth e-mailing, they had settled on a Saturday morning meeting at Caroline’s apartment.
On the bright side, Darcy would be home on Tuesday after their first weekend apart.
The following weekend had him heading to New Orleans for Charles’s bachelor party.
Maybe she should have gone to London and Berlin with him.
Each had proven highly successful at hiding—and finding—the notes and cards they’d tucked into drawers and suitcase pockets for the other.
But Darcy had sounded subdued and tired on the phone, and he admitted he was fighting a head cold.
He never failed, however, to give her a wakeup call and gently talk her into embracing the light of a new day without him.
And late every afternoon, she called and did her best to lull him to sleep.
Although she’d stayed in New Jersey every night since he’d left, Elizabeth stopped by Darcy’s apartment on Saturday to retrieve a blouse and visit the cats before heading to Caroline’s place.
Unsure of Mrs. Reynolds’s schedule, she knocked before tapping in the key code.
Sure enough, the housekeeper opened the door.
Expressing delight with the visit, she ushered Elizabeth inside.
It was the first time they’d seen each other since the trip to Pemberley, and Elizabeth sensed that Darcy had discussed the hours they were keeping and requested a bit of privacy.
Or perhaps Mrs. Reynolds had offered it.
No matter. She knew the family history and cared deeply about Darcy.
Whatever intimate secrets she knew, she kept them to herself.
None of that saved Elizabeth from feeling slightly bashful around the woman, but Mrs. Reynolds appeared pleased to see the girl who’d spilled raspberry jam on 800-thread count sheets, popped the buttons on at least one dress shirt, and left lingerie drying in the bathroom.
The two women made small talk in the kitchen for a few minutes before Mrs. Reynolds poured them each a cup of tea. It was the Irish breakfast blend Elizabeth usually brewed. She looked up to remark on it, but Mrs. Reynolds caught her hand and patted it.
“I was so pleased to discover someone besides me was enjoying the tins in the pantry.” She winked at Elizabeth and gestured at the kitchen table. “Shall we?”
Briefly, she considered how many family interviews she’d had with Darcy’s relatives, and now his housekeeper.
For a man who’d lost his immediate family, he did have a lot of people who cared about him and knew about their relationship.
She squashed the guilty feeling about not telling her own family.
She was having dinner at the Gardiners’ tomorrow, and she’d tell her aunt and uncle then and get some advice on what Darcy had wryly called her LSD: Looming Sylvia Dilemma.
“Elizabeth, I hope you know how nice it is to see this apartment actually lived in.”
“Excuse me?”
“Fitzwilliam has always been so fastidious: everything put away, leaving no trace behind. You wouldn’t know he’d had someone to clean up after him his entire life.
” She smiled at Elizabeth, who was cringing inside, thinking about the foundation powder she’d spilled on the bathroom vanity and the panties tangled up in the sheets.
“It’s lovely to find flower blooms in every room, books left open, and doggie bags from exotic restaurants in neighborhoods Fitzwilliam would never have ventured into before you.”
“He’s so funny. I told him to stop buying so many flowers, so he broke up a bouquet and raided all the juice glasses and put a flower in a glass in every room.”