Bad Heiress Day. Allie Pleiter

held out the paper. “‘So it is written.’ Massage, partner dear?”

      Perhaps it would have been wiser to wait until she had it worked out better before telling Jack. Dinner had been great fun. Jack’s ogling of the “new and improved Darcy” was a terrific high. Jack took in her hair and nails and generally saucier new demeanor with manly fascination. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d surprised Jack, much less with the kind of surprise that made him look like he’d give anything to have the kids somewhere else for a few hours.

      All of which went out the window when she mentioned she’d had the beginnings of an idea of what to do about the money. Darcy hadn’t realized, until just that moment, that Jack had never even considered going along with her dad’s instructions. Granted, she still felt a long way from sure about her father’s request, but she hadn’t moved it completely from the realm of possibility—the way Jack obviously had.

      What started out as a whopping pile of money was quickly turning itself into a whopping load of conflict. Oh, great. Just what we need. When she told him about The Restoration Project, Jack stared at her as though she’d mentioned it might be a nice idea to sell the children into slavery. He was still holding the glass of Cherry Coke halfway to his mouth, frozen in astonishment.

      “You’re serious,” he said, almost under his breath.

      “Well, I don’t know yet. It’s just an idea.”

      Jack ran his hand through his hair the way he always did when baffled. “I never thought…”

      “Yes, well, that’s pretty clear.” Darcy amazed herself at how her dander got up so quickly defending an idea she’d not even settled on yet.

      Or perhaps she had. Her mind raced back to the sensation, the energy bolt that shot through her when the idea first came. As though someone had opened up the top of her head and poured something warm and sparkly into it. No, Darcy Nightengale wasn’t ready to say no to this, even though she wasn’t completely ready to say yes. She sure wasn’t ready to have it totally knocked out of consideration. Darcy turned, pacing the living room, groping for the words. “Jack, I don’t know what I’m going to do…what we’re going to do,” she corrected herself, “about this. But I have to tell you, this idea just does something to me. I’m not sure I can explain it yet. But there’s something there. Something I really want to think about.”

      Ugh. She wasn’t making sense. Ah, but one look at Jack told her he was already putting things into neat order. Usually, she loved him for his ability to take control of things. To make sense of chaos. To put life in order. He’d been the anchor that kept her from going completely over the edge during the craziness of Dad’s illness. He was Jack.

      But this whole thing had defied perfect sense from the moment she opened that envelope. One of the tiny sparkles left in her chest from this afternoon kept insisting that it would never be about logic. It was a leap of faith of an altogether different kind.

      Leap of faith? Darcy had never used those words before. Those were Dad’s words. What was going on here?

      “Are you telling me you want to give the money away, Dar?” His tone was an unnerving mix of question and statement.

      “No, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying I don’t know what to do yet. I don’t even know what to want to do yet. I’m not ready to say yes to Dad’s request, but I’m not ready to say no, either. I mean, we don’t have to decide now, do we? We don’t have to decide a year from now.” She turned and looked at him. “But I really like this idea. Couldn’t I at least try it? See what happens?”

      Jack was trying. Darcy could practically see his brain stretching to get around the idea of giving away some of the money. It was like watching Paula try to hug the big oak tree in the backyard—she would try mightily to get her arms around the thick trunk, but her fingers would always be just out of reach of each other. Dad’s view of the world was always just out of Jack’s reach.

      Mostly out of hers, too. Until this morning.

      They stood there, thinking hard, staring at each other, until Paula barreled up the stairs from the den. “Daaad! Mike keeps telling me to go away!”

      Mike’s rebuttal came howling up the stairway. “I’m trying to do my homework and she’s bugging me. She wants to play with my calculator and she won’t quit it.”

      Darcy glanced at her watch—eight-fifteen. Consideration of the Nightengale brand of philanthropy would have to wait. Baths and bed were a more pressing concern. Not to mention the small mountain of dishes still gracing the kitchen counters.

      Little Orphan Heiress may have a new killer hairstyle, but she was still sadly lacking in maids and butlers.

      Jack cracked her a smile. Something in his eyes told her he’d had the same thought. “Which do you want? Kids or dishes?”

      Both might ruin the new manicure, but at least she could put on rubber gloves to do the dishes. “I’m opting for the sink and gloves, honey.” She wiggled her fingers for effect.

      “Gloves, huh? Well, all right, Paula-bear, let’s get your shower started. We gotta give mom’s manicure a fighting chance at survival.”

      Chapter 5

      The Paul Hartwell Memorial Parking Lot

      Darcy drew her finger around the curved edge of her coffee table. “How do I feel? I don’t know. I don’t imagine I feel anything different than any other person in this boat.”

      Doug Whitman said, “I see,” in that I’m-not-going-to-comment-one-way-or-another-so-you-say-more kind of tone she knew psychiatrists were prone to use. Darcy didn’t suppose she could blame Pastor Doug; they were only passing acquaintances. Whitman liked her Dad; it was clear from both his eulogy and the string of stories he told her today. Darcy wished, though, that the guy had been less comfortable with the gaps of silence in their conversation. He hadn’t even bothered with the customary “How are you?” usually accompanied by a firm clasp of her arm and a polite show of concern. The kind of question that implied anything too deep in response would be unwelcome.

      The kind she’d heard a dozen times a day in the week since Paul Hartwell slipped his mortal shell and upgraded to Heaven. No, Pastor Doug went straight to the real questions, the ones that required real answers.

      “How do your days feel?”

      Like hours. Like nanoseconds. Like endless blank journal pages. Darcy wasn’t sure which answer would get Pastor Doug off her back, and off her couch, and out the door fastest.

      “Feel?”

      “Yes. What is it like for you to get through the day this week? Hard? Easy? All of the above?” Doug kept trying to poke his straw through the lemon floating in his ice tea. The effort he put into the pursuit was almost amusing.

      “I don’t know. They feel…plain.” She took a drink while she searched for the right answer to satisfy him but not open up a deeper conversation. Doug clearly wasn’t going anywhere until he’d either speared his lemon or “connected” with her somehow. She made a mental estimation that it would be eleven sentences before the word Jesus came up in conversation. “Empty, I suppose. I’ve spent so much time in crisis mode that it feels…well…odd to be doing normal stuff. Good, but odd. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, then I stop myself and realize it already has.”

      Doug shuffled a bit in his seat. “Was there anything about Paul’s death that surprised you?”

      Now, there was a loaded question. How much to reveal? If Darcy spoke of the inheritance, would Pastor Doug kick right into Building Campaign oh-but-we-need-that-new-nursery-wing mode?

      “No.” The minute the word left her mouth, Darcy knew it had too much bite. Now there was no way the good pastor was going to back off his ministries. She took out her regrets on a Mint Milano, biting the crispy cookie rather than indulge the urge to bite off