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need you to help me persuade Darcy that I really do love her father, that I
intend making him happy. Will you help me?'
Would he? Wasn't his mother, a woman he had kept at an emotional
distance for more years than he cared to think about, asking him to take on
the role Darcy had already cast him in at lunch-time—that of championing
his mother?
Did he really want to champion his mother? Could he believe the things she
was saying to him?
More to the point, didn't Darcy already hate him enough...?
'Call for you, Darcy,' her grandmother called up the stairs.
A call for her...?
Who from? Apart from her father, no one else knew she had been staying
with her maternal grandmother the last couple of days; and her father only
knew because her grandmother had thought she ought to tell him.
Again, it was only a temporary arrangement, Darcy having found an
apartment to rent that very afternoon. Unfortunately the current tenant
wasn't moving out until next week.
She ran down the stairs to pick up the receiver in the hallway. 'Yes?' she
prompted warily.
'Darcy,' Logan McKenzie greeted with satisfaction. 'You're a very difficult
young lady to track down.'
Darcy had stiffened as soon as she'd recognised his voice, her hand tightly
gripping the receiver. 'Why did you bother?' she returned coldly.
'I thought you might be interested to know that I'm in hospital with a broken
shin-bone,' he came back mildly.
'You're what?' she gasped, remembering all too vividly the way she had
kicked him on the leg at the restaurant two days ago.
'That got your attention anyway.' He chuckled. 'Actually...' he sobered '...I
exaggerated slightly.'
'How slightly?' Darcy ventured warily.
'I'm not in hospital. And my shin-bone isn't broken.'
'In other words, it was a total lie!' Darcy came back disgustedly.
'Fabrication,' he corrected smoothly. 'It isn't nice to call someone a liar,
Darcy.'
'Logan,' she sighed wearily, 'what do you want?'
'To have dinner with you this evening,' he returned lightly.
She was taken aback at the unexpected invitation. 'Why?'
'You really are the most suspicious young lady!' he opined dryly. 'Why not?'
The reasons for that were too numerous to go into. And some of them were
reasons she couldn't possibly tell Logan! As in, she found him too
disturbingly attractive. As in, she dared not run the risk of having him kiss
her again. As in—
'Oh, come on, Darcy,' he cajoled at her continued silence. 'It's only dinner.'
Only dinner...
But what were the implications behind the invitation? What was it supposed
to achieve? Because she had no doubts that under ordinary
circumstances—such as his mother not being about to marry her
father!—Logan would never have thought of asking her out to dinner! He
must already be aware, she had no influence with her father whatsoever!
'Logan, my father is a grown man, an adult, perfectly capable of making his
own choices and decisions without any help from me,' she told him
decisively.
'Yes?'
'Yes!'
Was he being deliberately difficult? Didn't he realise how much it hurt her to
be at odds with her father like this?
Apart from picking up her things from the house, telling her father
where she was staying for the moment, the two of them hadn't spoken
to each other for two days. And this man's mother was responsible for
the estrangement between the two of them.
'I don't see what your problem is, Darcy,' Logan told her. 'You've got
what you wanted, by fair means or foul, so why—?'
'What do you mean?' she cut in.
'My mother has broken off her engagement to your father,' Logan
revealed.
'She's done what?' she gasped, suddenly feeling lightheaded, so much
so that she sat down abruptly on the chair beside the telephone.
'Yes, it's all off,' Logan told her happily. 'My mother broke the
engagement last night.'
'Why?' Darcy breathed dazedly.
'Does it matter?' Logan replied. 'It's what you wanted, isn't it?'
She hadn't wanted her father to marry Margaret Fraser, no, but until she
knew the reasons for the broken engagement she could feel no
satisfaction in its ending. If the couple had simply decided they had
made a mistake after all, that -was okay, but if it were for any other
reason- such as her own objections to it!—then it wasn't okay at all. If
Margaret Fraser had been the one to break the engagement, how must
her father feel now?
'I must say,' Logan continued at her silence, 'I expected you to be
happier about it than this.'
But how could she be—when she knew her father must be totally miserable?
This was awful. A mess. It was a mess she had helped create...!
'Then you thought wrong, Logan,' she responded. 'And if you think I'm
going out with you this evening to celebrate—'
'I think celebration is far too strong a description of my invitation,' he
