24. Daisy
Chapter 24
Daisy
"What is it you're fixing around your house?" Duke asks, taking his time on the way out of the neighborhood. Probably to make sure everybody gets an eye full of us in his car, looking happy and in love like two people who are close to their wedding would look.
"Um, well..." My hands, folded in my lap, squeeze together. It's not that it's a secret per se, but I wasn't planning on telling people I sort of went batshit and pulled out my cabinets. And peeled the tile off my wall. Telling Duke the truth will lead to questions, questions I don't want to answer. Questions I don't want to ask myself, because I don't want to give light to my response.
"Just some stuff that needs to be fixed around my house." It's the truth, but not totally.
Duke isn't buying it. We've made it to the stop sign that will empty us out onto a main road, so Duke looks over and says, "I've never known you to be a liar, Daze. Current situation notwithstanding."
"There were some things in my house I wanted to change, and I got a little too…froggy," I finish, borrowing a term from Peter's vocabulary.
Duke's eyebrows raise. "Froggy?"
I nod. He takes a right, and I watch as his hand turns the wheel. No turning with the heel of his palm, fingers suspended in the air. Just a typical grip, and a typical turn.
"I'm guessing that's a term you learned from the SEAL?" He thumbs behind himself toward Peter/Hugo's house.
"I do believe that's where I heard it."
Duke grows quiet. We've been friends for such a long time now that I can read his silences, and this one is saying that he is mulling something over, working a problem in his mind.
"Daze," he starts, "why didn't you ask me to help you fix what's broken in your house?"
He's on to something, and he knows it. He's a bloodhound who has picked up a scent, and there will be no relenting.
"I assumed you would send over a handyman if I told you."
"Fair. I would have. If you wanted to do it yourself, why didn't you consult the Internet? You would've had it figured out in no time."
I resist the urge to slink down in my seat. I sit tall, shoulders back, and ask, "Is there any chance you'll drop this?"
"None," he answers. "We've been close for a very long time. Tell me the truth."
"I ripped out my cabinets in the kitchen and in my master bathroom. And I pried the bathroom tile off the wall."
Duke winds through town toward my car, quiet. Instead of pulling into a nearby open parking space, he pulls into an empty parking lot behind Rowdy Mermaid. All the hairdressers have gone home for the day, leaving a dimly lit space with sparkling clean stations.
Duke cuts the engine and turns to me. "You're planning a wedding that is less than a month away and remodeling your house by yourself at the same time?"
"You sound like Peter," I grumble.
Duke nods slowly, scratching his chin thoughtfully. "Peter knows about your remodel? Has he seen it?"
"He hauled off the old cabinets for me. Obviously I don't have a car the right size to do it myself, and it saved me from having to hire a truck or a company."
"Daisy, I see two issues here." Duke holds up one finger. "The first is that you've done something impulsive like ripping out your own cabinets, and that's very unlike the Daisy I have known my whole life. The second is that you confided in a near stranger, instead of me." He points back at himself. "The guy you're preparing to marry."
I open my mouth to object, but he keeps talking. "I understand we're not in love. This marriage is something we're doing quid pro quo. But I'm still your friend, and you didn't tell me about the damage you did inside your house. You didn't want me to know, because...?" His voice trails off, and now I know it's my turn to speak.
"I didn't want you to know, because I didn't want you to ask me why I did it."
"Did Peter ask you?"
It's not the follow-up question I expected, and it unsettles me. "I told him to mind his own business. But not in those exact words."
Duke nods. "You don't seem to mind being feisty Daisy around Peter. Interesting, considering you keep it so concealed for everyone else."
"I feel comfortable around him."
"Is there anything else you feel when you're around him, Daisy?"
Well then. Just get right to it.
"I'm attracted to him," I admit, worry rising. It's the first time I've said the words aloud, so close to the first time I allowed myself to see the truth. It's a development Duke nor I saw coming, though it was shortsighted not to consider the eventualities of our agreement.
Duke's fingers drum the steering wheel. "I thought so."
A portion of my worry recedes. "What gave you the idea?"
"Your body language when you were standing beside him at the bar at King's Ransom. You looked…" Duke drags a hand through his hair while he ponders. "You looked like softening butter."
"I cannot begin to picture what you mean by that."
One side of his mouth turns up in a smile. "Sort of like…" He relaxes his body against the black leather seat. "All your muscles were loose. Languid. I don't know the right word."
"And Peter's posture? What did that look like? Compare it to a food."
He huffs a laugh. "Hmm. I'd say it was one of those fine dining dishes that a famous chef would call restrained ."
"What a cop-out."
Duke chuckles, a real laugh this time. "I don't know how to compare it to a food, but he looked like he was holding himself back."
"What does a person look like when they're holding themselves back?"
"It's hard to explain, because there's not really a physical tell. It's more"—he motions to his eyes—"emotional. Something in the eyes."
"How would you know this?"
Duke's gaze lands on me, something fluttering in eyes as brown as mine. As quickly as it appears, it is gone. But I saw it. I recognized it. Duke is keeping a secret, too.
"Is there somebody you hold yourself back from?"
Duke looks out the window to the lit neon sign with the mermaid balanced on her tail, arms thrown in the air. "Maybe."
Something suddenly occurs to me, and I can't believe we've never broached the subject before. "Duke, have you thought about how we're going to satisfy our, uh, baser desires once we're married?"
This gets his attention back on me. "No. Somehow that managed to slip my mind. I was mostly focused on getting my dad off my back."
"I haven't thought about it either, not until recently."
"Until the pirate, you mean?"
"Pirate?"
"Peter, sailing the high seas?"
"I don't believe he pillaged and plundered." Though I'll admit to having imagined him doing both to me.
"Are you asking for a…" His eyes roam the interior of the vehicle as he searches for a word. "Dalliance?"
"A... dalliance ?" I try on a word I don't think I've used before. The offer takes shape in my mind, the logistics lining up for consideration. Would it be one and done? Would once be enough? I doubt that, if the way I felt in Peter's arms today is any indication.
How would Peter feel about it? He thinks my engagement is for real. He doesn't seem like the kind of person who would be ok being the other man. I'd have to tell him the truth about me and Duke, or at least partially. But... it could work. I mean, maybe. Could it?
I close my eyes and shake my head back and forth in a tiny motion. What am I really considering? This is ludicrous. A hall pass from my fiancé I'm not in love with? What world am I living in?
"It doesn't have to be with Peter," Duke adds. "I mean, in general. It's ok."
I'm still reeling from our conversation, but I'm trying to keep up. "And you? Can you have a dalliance with whoever you're holding yourself back from?"
Duke is shaking his head no before I've finished the sentence. "It's not like that with her. She lives here."
I gasp. "It's Vivi!"
Duke makes a putrid face. "Absolutely not."
"Hey," I say, affronted. "What's wrong with my best friend? She's a babe."
"For starters, I'm not attracted to her. But also, she's in love with Ambrose and doesn't know it."
"I know everything there is to know about Vivi," I inform him, proud and sassy. It's a best friend thing. "She is not in love with Ambrose. She would have told me."
Duke gives me a playful, exasperated look. "Hence why I said she doesn't know it yet."
"Duke Cartwright Hampton, are you really Cupid under those perfectly tailored clothes and obnoxiously swoopy hair?"
I reach out to flick one of his locks, but he bats my hand away. "Swoopy is not a word."
"It is when it comes to you."
Duke rolls his eyes, and when he lowers them, he notices a group of people nearby. They're just about to walk in front of his car, so he reaches over, cupping the back of my head and moving me in closer to him. My hair falls forward, providing us coverage. We've done this so many times that at this point we've shed the awkwardness of that first time.
"You can have an affair with someone who doesn't live in town," Duke says against my cheek.
"You can find somebody on your next work trip," I say against his.
"My interest lies elsewhere." His voice is strained. Dare I say agonized .
"If you tell me who it is, I'll print out her picture and stick it to the sexiest blowup doll I can find."
Air from his terse laugh streams warm against my face. "You're ridiculous."
"Just fulfilling my wifely duty of making sure my husband is satisfied."
Catcalls sound from outside the car.
We look out the windshield and find Margaret from Sammich, and two of her friends. They shimmy their shoulders, shuffling side to side, and three sets of gravity-afflicted breasts undulate.
"Well, that's a sight I won't soon forget," Duke says, nodding and ducking his head like he's bashful.
I smile sweetly, and wave at the old women. They giggle with hearts in their eyes, because everyone loves love, and one of them pushes the other along until they're all three shuffling away.
When the women have gone, Duke drives me back around the building, dropping me off at my car. Before I climb out, he says, "You might want to think about taking a cold shower when you get home."
I laugh. "Send me some links for blowup dolls who tickle your fancy. It'll be my wedding gift to you." And then, because we're in the middle of town, I place a kiss on his cheek.