Strapless. Leigh Riker

off and leave a man in need, would you?”

      Darcie didn’t plan them. The words popped out.

      “Claire thinks you’re married.”

      Merrick sat up. “Claire should mind her own business.”

      “Are you?” Darcie persisted.

      “If I was, I wouldn’t tell her.”

      “Or me?” she couldn’t help saying.

      His gaze flickered. “What is this, Darce? We went to dinner. Fell into bed. Had a good time. Just like usual. Didn’t we?”

      “Did we?” She wasn’t sure at the moment.

      “Christ’s sake.” He rolled out of bed, raising the scent of stale sheets. “If you’re going to get funky on me with the relationship thing, I’m gone.”

      “The relationship thing?”

      “You know. ‘It’s time for us to talk about commitment.’ Wedding rings. Honeymoons on Maui or St. Kitt’s.” He grimaced. “Babies.”

      “What’s wrong with children? You always tell me you love kids.”

      “Sure, somebody else’s.” He leaned over to plant a kiss on her mouth while an image of his sweet-faced nephew, then Claire’s newborn daughter flashed through Darcie’s mind. “Why would you want to get fat and gassy carrying some guy’s brat?”

      “I don’t. Yet. But someday…” With someone, she thought.

      He brushed another kiss along her collarbone. “You sure can’t see me walking the floor with a squalling infant, can you?”

      Hmm. With that image, another flash of memory caught her. Merrick in a dimly lit bar the night they met. Merrick, with his smooth blond hair, his dark-blue eyes, his upper-class smile, talking her into bed that first time. Then a newer fantasy came to mind: Merrick, pushing a baby carriage. Obviously, a far-off vision he didn’t share.

      “No, I suppose not.” She didn’t know why but disappointment surged inside her. “I suppose your nephew’s birthday party is enough for a man of your stature….”

      “What, are you being sarcastic?”

      Darcie slid from bed to face him, toes digging in the carpet. “No. Are you?”

      “What nephew?” he said.

      She frowned. “The little boy you told me about. Remember? The one who learned to ride a tricycle before he was two. The favorite nephew who could throw a baseball at five and knew how to swim when he turned six. You bragged about him.”

      “Oh. That nephew.”

      Darcie blinked. “Merrick, how could you forget?”

      “I didn’t. Jesus, I’m only half-awake.” He turned toward the bathroom. “Since we’re both up—” he gestured at her wild hair, at his jutting boxer shorts “—and there’s nothing happening here, between us that is, I guess I’ll get moving. The earlier I get to work, the more money I’ll make today—if the market’s up, too.”

      Darcie stared after him. Claire’s words, then Gran’s, kept running through her brain. You can do better. Never marry (or sleep with?) a man who can’t make you roar with laughter.

      She should have stayed in Ohio. She should never have met Merrick.

      No, it was only that she didn’t expect things to work out with men just because they never had. But some day they would… Until then, logically it didn’t make sense to give up regular sex with Merrick, even if he could be a pain otherwise.

      Right now, she didn’t like him, not in a dim bar, in a hotel bed, or anywhere else—especially a little kid’s birthday party he claimed not to remember.

      Australia looked better and better.

      The next day Darcie popped an analgesic tablet in her mouth and washed it down, praying it would at least kill her cramps. Still in a mood after Merrick yesterday—not all owing to PMS—across the small table in a crowded coffee shop just off Broadway, she watched her mother ease a manicured finger around the inner lining of her black pump. Thank heaven Darcie had been busy packing until now. She sure wasn’t in the mood for this.

      “I must have stood in line at that ticket kiosk in Times Square for over an hour,” Janet Baxter said, one reason they were meeting here. “This is still a filthy neighborhood. I hope I don’t regret even the half price. Most of these shows have no substance.”

      “The audience, either. That’s what you get on Wednesday and Saturday matinees.”

      Only tourists and suburbanites from Connecticut and New Jersey filled the seats then. In town from Cincinnati, Janet Baxter belonged to the former group, and had come with friends from Ohio, but of course she must have another purpose, too—something even beyond this visit with her older daughter, Darcie had decided. Her mother’s clear brow furrowed before she seemed to remember that a frown could cause lines. Permanent ones at fifty-five. Her expression smoothed out like a banana peel.

      “I’m deeply concerned about your grandmother,” she said, apparently the real reason for their chat over tea (for Janet) and black coffee (for Darcie). Cheap tobacco, sweat and bad perfume roiled in the heavy air around them. So did conversation from the other tables, and Darcie had to raise her voice.

      “About Gran? Why?”

      Naturally, Darcie thought she knew. But in her current frame of mind she’d enjoy hearing her mother talk about a subject Janet found distasteful and uncomfortable.

      “Your father and I sent you to live with Eden for two reasons.”

      “Cheap rent. Free utilities.”

      “And…” She obviously wanted Darcie to recite this part of the old litany, and one of Darcie’s hot buttons. It was all about security, a safe place for their firstborn daughter to live. Darcie felt she could take care of herself.

      “There’s a third? You go ahead, Mom.”

      Janet squirmed in her chair. She pursed her lips, then just as quickly stretched her mouth to erase the tension. Toying with her cup of Darjeeling, she avoided Darcie’s all-knowing gaze. Darcie let the moment—and her own chance to escape her bad mood—build. Until her mother surprised her.

      “We wanted you—” Janet cleared her throat “—to keep an eye on her.”

      “There’s a new slant. I’m supposed to baby-sit my eighty-two-year-old grandmother?” Darcie paused for effect. “Mom, she’s had more dates in a month than you and I combined, in our entire lives. You should see the guys she comes up with.”

      Janet turned pale. “You’re joking. Aren’t you?”

      Sure, but why let her off that easy? “I tell you, those men are already wearing a path in the brand-new carpet she had installed in December—a trail from her front door to her bedroom.” Let her tell you what’s in Julio’s pocket.

      Janet plucked lint from her navy Talbot’s suit, straight from the Kenwood Mall store in Cincinnati. “You’re trying to upset me.”

      “Go see for yourself.”

      Janet looked around the narrow shop, at the various array of Saturday-in-Times Square characters, as if only just aware of them, and wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t cross the river to stay with her. I’m not welcome. Eden has always hated me.”

      “Hate’s a strong word.” Darcie couldn’t even use it on Merrick yesterday.

      “I’m sorry we ever suggested you share her apartment for a few months.”

      With the seemingly casual statement, Darcie’s instincts went on full alert. Uh-oh. Checking up on her wasn’t the issue, but neither was Eden’s sex life. Darcie had lived in Fort Lee for her four years