Chapter Nine #2
The rest of the guys showed up and the game began. Mark found it difficult to keep his concentration on the ball and his teammates. Conversation flowed around him. He tried to participate, but a large part of his brain was too busy reminding him how long it had been since he’d last seen Darcy.
Nearly a week, he thought as Josh passed him the basketball. Mark headed for the far end of the court and tipped the ball into the net. He barely heard the calls of congratulations from his side and the boos from their opponents.
What was she thinking, he wondered. Had she noticed he hadn’t been around?
He shook his head as he realized that wasn’t a fair question.
Of course, she would have noticed. She wasn’t Sylvia.
Darcy didn’t have an agenda. Although if she was laundering money, then the last thing she would want was to get involved with a detective.
Unless she thought she could fool him. Which brought back too many uncomfortable memories.
A week. He hated that he missed her. Nearly as bad, he didn’t feel comfortable going to the Hip Hop, so he’d been forced to actually cook a couple of meals. That had been a disaster.
“Heads up, Kincaid,” someone called. A second later, the basketball slammed into his back.
Mark turned. Josh glared at him. “Are you playing or what?”
“Sorry.” He took the ball out of bounds, then tossed it back into play.
He kept his concentration on the game for a few minutes. Then his thoughts once against drifted to Darcy. Had she realized that he hadn’t been to the café? Did she wonder what had happened to their supposed friendship?
“I know what the problem is with Kincaid,” one of the guys said. “Chick trouble. Darcy’s not here. So you guys had a fight, right? What’d you do wrong?”
Josh grabbed the basketball. “What makes you think it’s his fault?”
Nearly everyone laughed. “It’s always the guy’s fault.”
Mark raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “It was me and I don’t want to talk about it.”
He was joking but also telling the truth.
Walking out on her without saying anything had been the coward’s way out.
He should have confronted her about the money.
The thing was, he didn’t want to know that she was involved.
He’d spent most of the week investigating her, and he still couldn’t link her to anything illegal. Which didn’t mean a thing.
He stopped in the middle of the court and swore under his breath. He knew the next step. He would have to take his suspicions to Rafe and together they would get a search warrant for her place. As he couldn’t explain the cash, there wasn’t any other choice.
“Mark!”
Mark turned toward the sound of his name.
As he moved, he felt his foot slip on a damp spot in the court.
He scrambled to regain his balance, but it was too late.
His ankle twisted painfully. His still-healing leg couldn’t support his weight and he felt himself crashing to the ground.
His last thought before his head connected with the wooden floor was that this was gonna hurt like hell.
* * *
Darcy carefully placed the template on the baked sheet of gingerbread.
She’d already cut out the walls of the house.
Once the roof was done, the pieces would need to cool a little more, then she would start assembling the two houses.
She had all the candies she would need, but she was going to be a little short on the icing.
After this was done, she would make a quick trip to the store to—
The phone rang.
She glanced up at the instrument, hating the sudden fluttering in her chest. There was no way Mark was phoning her.
She hadn’t seen the man in nearly a week.
He’d disappeared from her life with no explanation and no warning.
She was working through the stages of mourning just fine, thank you very much, although today she seemed to be stuck in anger.
The phone rang again. Reluctantly she put down her knife and picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Darcy.”
All the blood rushed from her head, forcing her to sink into a kitchen chair. She briefly closed her eyes and wished she didn’t care that he had finally called her. How was she supposed to act? Happy? Angry? Hurt?
She settled on casual. “Mark. Nice to hear from you. How’s it going?”
“Things have just gotten real interesting.” He hesitated. “Are you mad that I haven’t called?”
She sucked in a breath as annoyance filled her. “Not at all,” she said through slightly clenched teeth. “I’ve been so busy getting ready for the holidays that I barely noticed. How’s work?”
“I’ve been busy, too.” There was a pause, then something that sounded oddly like a moan. “Darcy, the reason I’m calling is that I need a ride home.”
Annoyance turned to fury. How dare he expect her to be at his beck and call after first running out on her with no explanation and then ignoring her?
“Mark, I’m in the middle of making a gingerbread house. This is a very delicate time in the process. I’m not sure I can get away.”
“Okay. I understand. Josh is driving my car back to the duplex. I guess I’ll page him to come get me here when he’s done. I didn’t mean to bother you.”
She sighed, hating that she was wavering. “It’s not a bother. Not exactly. Where are you?”
“The hospital. I wrenched my ankle. I slipped while I was playing basketball. The thing is, I can’t drive for two days. Not until the swelling goes down.”
He’d hurt himself. Nurturing instinct battled with righteous indignation. It wasn’t much of a contest. “I’ll be right there,” she said, and hung up the phone.
Twenty minutes later she walked into the emergency room of Whitehorn Memorial Hospital.
The woman at the reception desk directed her to treatment room number three.
Darcy stepped inside and saw Mark sitting on a hospital bed.
His ankle was taped and elevated. There was also a huge bruise on the side of his face.
Her heart did a little fox-trot, her temper flared. It was an interesting combination, but then she’d always been torn where he was concerned.
Mark looked up and saw her. “Hi,” he said, sounding sheepish. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
“We’re neighbors. I didn’t mind helping.” She moved closer to the bed and pointed at the swelling on his face. “You hit your head?”
“On the way down. I didn’t lose consciousness and I don’t have a concussion. It looks a lot worse than it is.”
Darcy had the sudden desire to make it worse. Just as a payback. But she’d never been the violent type and wouldn’t have a clue as to where to start.
He waved a piece of paper. “I have my instructions. Rest for twenty-four hours. Keep the ankle elevated, use ice. So I’m ready to go.”
“All right. I’ll go pull my car up to the entrance.”
He pushed the call button for a nurse. “We’ll meet you there.”
Maneuvering Mark into her small car wasn’t easy.
His injured ankle banged against the door once and she was almost sorry for him.
As they drove back to the duplex, she had a silent but heated conversation with herself during which she told him exactly what she thought of him.
She was acerbic, pithy and completely cool.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t likely to be any of those things if she started talking out loud.
When they reached his place, he opened the door but waited before getting out.
“Thanks for taking the time to come get me,” he said.
She nodded.
“I know you’re busy with your holiday baking.”
She nodded again.
He glared at her. “Aren’t you going to talk to me?”
She turned to face him. “What do you want me to say? I came to get you because we’re supposed to be friends and that’s what friends do for each other. Although some people seem to define friendship by acting weird and then disappearing off the face of the planet.”
He gave her a tentative smile. “Would you feel any better if I had actually been off the planet?”
She didn’t respond to the twinkle of amusement in his gaze. “Were you off the planet? Did you involve yourself with space travel this week?”
His smile faded. “No.”
“I thought not.”
She got out of the car and came around to the passenger side. He swung himself around until he was facing the open car door, then pulled himself to his feet without putting any weight on the injured ankle. She had to reach around him to grab the crutches he’d been given.
As she did so, her arm brushed against his side. Heat jumped between them, making her nervous as well as crabby. She hated that he could get to her without doing anything but standing in the snow, looking pathetic.
She pulled out the crutches. “I’ll need your key to open the door.”
He dug it out of his sweatpants and handed it to her. She was careful to make sure they didn’t touch again.
His progress to his front door was slow, hampered by five or six inches of fresh snow on the ground.
More was promised midweek. Darcy tried to admire the beauty of the white world around them, the way the snow clung to the trees and decorated the duplex like so much icing, rather than feeling badly for Mark as he made slow and awkward progress.
Finally they were inside. Darcy got him settled on the sofa, which apart from a television sitting on a nightstand, was the only piece of furniture in the room. She set the crutches on the floor, then asked him where he kept his spare blankets.
“I don’t have any. There’s one on the bed.”
“Figures.”
She headed for the small hallway. His apartment was the mirror image of hers.
At least the layout was. Nothing about the interior was the same.
The walls looked as if they hadn’t been painted in years.
There weren’t any pictures on the walls, and when she reached the bedroom, she saw he filled the room with a king-size bed, one nightstand and a tall dresser. Nothing else. Nothing personal.
Some of her anger began to fade in the face of his empty life.
Why did Mark choose to live like this? Her apartment had been old when she’d moved in, but she’d painted the walls and dressed things up with inexpensive prints and knickknacks she’d brought from Arizona.
She’d wanted to make a home for herself.
Mark’s place had all the charm of a prison. Did he expect to be moving on soon?
She collected the down comforter from the unmade bed, along with two pillows. Back in the living room, she slipped the pillows under his injured leg.
“Should you ice it?” she asked.
“Not for a couple more hours.” He took the comforter from her. “Darcy, you don’t have to do this. I can take care of myself.”
“Sure.” She avoided his gaze. “Have you eaten?”
“I’ll be fine.”
She forced herself to look at him. The bruise on his face looked really painful. “That wasn’t the question.”
“No. I haven’t.”
She turned on her heel and headed for the kitchen. It was a dreadful shade of green. There weren’t any dishes in sight. On a hunch, she opened a cupboard. Inside were stacks of paper plates and cups. A tug on a drawer below yielded a view of plastic utensils.
“Only the best,” she muttered under her breath, then braced herself for the contents of the refrigerator.
Surprisingly, there weren’t any packages of decaying meat or moldy takeout. There was, in fact, almost nothing. A few bottles of soda, a bottle of beer, an apple and a small take-out container of coffee creamer.
“So like a man,” she said aloud, returning to the living room. “Is this some new kind of diet?”
“I’ve been busy.”
Her anger turned to pain. “Why?” she asked softly.
“What did I do that was so horrible that you’re not even comfortable coming to the Hip Hop for your meals?
Do you think I’m going to punish you for not wanting to be friends anymore?
Do you think I’m going to make a scene or talk about you behind your back? ”
He lightly touched the bruise on his face. “It’s not any of that, Darcy. I’ve been busy with work.”
She glared at him. “Don’t lie to me, Mark. I’m not stupid. This isn’t about work. So what is it? What is going on between us? If you’re tired of me, just say so. I can handle it.”
He straightened. “It is about work and believe me, you don’t want to know anything else.”
“No! I want to know the truth. What’s going on here?” She wanted to ask if this had something to do with their sexual encounters, but she didn’t have the courage. She didn’t want to know that Mark had changed his mind about wanting her in his bed.
He studied her for a long time. Pain filled his green eyes, but she had a bad feeling it wasn’t about his twisted ankle.
“You’re wrong about me,” he said after a couple of minutes of silence. “This is completely work related. Our personal relationship complicates things for me.”
“What on earth could I have to do with your work?”
“We’re involved, Darcy. I sure can’t define our relationship, but we have one.
The thing is I don’t know if I can trust you.
I know you’re keeping secrets—you’re hiding something about your past and you won’t say why you moved to Whitehorn.
There’s a wad of cash in your living room and the sheriff has had an anonymous tip that someone is using the Hip Hop to launder money. ”