Oh Jesus. This was it. AJ held his breath because Darcy didn’t talk about her accident, ever. It was a taboo subject and he got that. He really did.
It wasn’t an easy subject for her.
Hell, it wasn’t an easy subject for him. He’d been with Wyatt when the call had come in. He’d held a sobbing Zoe at the hospital while they’d waited for news from the trauma team that had worked on Darcy for twelve straight hours.
He’d watched Wyatt completely lose it in the ER parking lot, and AJ had done his best to pick up the pieces and hold on to them all until both Wyatt and Zoe could get it together.
Which hadn’t happened until the surgeon had come out and told them she’d survived and that if she woke up in the next twelve hours, her chances were twenty-five percent.
Darcy had woken up eleven hours and fifty-five minutes later.
Stubborn as always.
But shockingly, Darcy didn’t freeze up at Trent’s question. She did however dodge it and skipped right to her physical therapy. She told Trent in great detail how she believed AJ had single-handedly gotten her walking again. How the insurance money had cut off after four months but that she’d still been in a wheelchair at that point. How AJ had continued to work with her on his own dime, and that if he hadn’t, she’d still be in the chair.
Trent soaked up every single word, clearly fascinated, clearly impressed with her. “Remarkable,” he said, unknowingly using the same word Darcy had flung at AJ earlier.
For the first time all night, Darcy looked right at AJ.
And, oh shit, there was a storm of trouble brewing in her eyes.
“You clearly have a deep bond,” Trent said, clueless to the weather change.
Darcy nodded and reached for AJ. It was only years of soldiering that kept him from flinching, as he was pretty sure she meant to kill him.
Instead she squeezed his hand and … leaned in to kiss him gently on the mouth. “You’re right,” she said to Trent. “AJ is remarkable.” Her gaze still locked on AJ, her eyes filled with trouble. “Utterly remarkable.”
AJ held his breath. Surely Trent could see right through this ridiculous display of made-up affection.
But Trent seemed surprisingly touched. “Love it,” he said. “You remind me of myself and my wife, the two of you are so obviously connected in spite of all the challenges you’ve faced. Amazing, really.”
Darcy leaned back with a demure agreement. “Amazing,” she said.
As if she had a single demure bone in her body.
The elevator ride back up to Darcy’s room was entirely different than the one on the way down. For one thing, she was in it alone.
For another, she was exhausted.
She’d done her best, and yeah, she’d gone over the top, but there’d been a method to her madness. Trent loved only one thing more than himself and his money, and that was his wife. Darcy had gotten the idea to appeal to that softer side of him by using her relationship with AJ.
Her fantasy relationship with AJ, that is.
The two men had gone on to talk in great detail about some of AJ’s other patients. By the time the waitress had cleared their plates and offered dessert, Darcy couldn’t keep her eyes open.
AJ had noticed immediately and had started to excuse them to Trent, but she’d insisted she could go up to the room alone and get herself to bed.
She figured they were all safest that way. And by all, she meant herself.
Before the elevator opened she had her heels off and dangling from her fingers as she limped to her room. The second she shut her hotel room door, she dropped the heels to the floor. Halfway to the bathroom, she let the black dress fall as well.
With a whimper of relief, she picked up the hotel room phone. She hadn’t eaten much at dinner and was still hungry. She ordered her standard comfort food—mac and cheese.
Then she practically crawled into the shower. She stood there beneath the hot spray until her locked muscles loosened slightly. Then, too tired to stand any longer, she turned off the water, barely managed to dry herself off, and staggered naked out of the bathroom, her only plan to drop into bed and pass out.
She took one step into the room and stopped short at the sight of AJ sprawled out on her bed, still fully dressed, his arms up behind his head, his feet casually crossed. His tie was gone, his collar open. He’d taken his sexy Mr. CEO look from day to night and her heart took the same leap.
Swearing, she whirled back to the bathroom, slamming the door, which she barely heard over the thundering of her heart in her own ears.
Eleven
AJ had broken into Darcy’s room for a most excellent reason, but hell if he could remember it now as she came out of the bathroom bare-ass naked.
And Darcy naked was the distraction of a lifetime. Steam from her shower swirled around her willowy, toned body, a body that could make a grown man sink to his knees and beg.
Had he thought her dress heart-attack inducing? Because her dress had nothing on the sight of her without it.
“Get out,” she yelled through the bathroom door.
Ah yes, now he remembered why he was here. She’d lied to Trent, made him think things that weren’t true, things that couldn’t possibly ever be true. “So you don’t want to sleep with the man you find remarkable?”
“Okay, so maybe I took that a little further than I meant to,” she said through the door.
“You mean you lied.”
Silence, and then a rustling, and then the bathroom door opened and she reemerged wearing a towel wrapped around her body, tucked in between her breasts. “Look,” she said, “it worked, right? He wanted us to have the kind of relationship he and his wife have, and I gave him that.”