Indulge Me. Joanne Rock

other direction—away from death and back to health—with slightly less selflessness. After all that had gone into her agonized decision to leave him…

      But she couldn’t beat herself up over that anymore. Greg was functioning on his own, nearly back to normal, and a couple of weeks ago she got up her nerve and repeated the ghastly breakup scene, feeling like dirt to cause the poor man even more pain. However, this time she did it at his house in Madison, where she’d lived for the past year while she’d taken care of him, so that she’d be the one driving right after.

      And now…

      Summer waited around the corner with hot, humid breath and long lazy limbs, but spring had come, and like the new shoots pushing determinedly out of the still-chilly earth, Darcy Wolf was going to bloom. Not here in Wauwatosa, an immediate suburb of Milwaukee, where she’d lived a quarter century plus one year, a city she knew inside out, but off and away, new horizons, new adventures, new life, new Darcy.

      She took a sip of the tea, ice cubes rattling appealingly in the bright orange plastic cup she’d bought last summer to brighten her and her father’s outdoor living while he could still be up and around. She could afford to buy cups made of gold now if she wanted, though she couldn’t imagine why she ever would. Her father’s death hadn’t been a surprise, but his final gift had been. Money. Money he never so much as hinted he had, from his family and from Mom’s family, from a lifetime of success as a wholesale jewelry salesman and from careful living. Her new independence had only just started to sink in. But already she had plans. Who wouldn’t? She’d quit her dull job in Madison as office manager for a psychology practice, and as soon as the house was in presentable condition and then sold, she’d take off for distant lands. Or rather, distant states, living as she’d wanted to since she was a girl obsessed with maps and dreaming about travel. Two years in Seattle. Two years in Los Angeles. Two years in Miami. Two years in Boston—the four corners of the country. She’d write about her experiences, volunteer, take ballet lessons, tap-dancing lessons, fencing lessons, learn to paint, to fix cars, to build furniture…

      And then? Eventually she wanted to go back to school and build on her education degree with a master’s in school counseling. She’d be thirty-four and probably want to settle down somewhere permanently. Maybe she’d even come back here, though secretly she imagined herself becoming so chic and sophisticated that Milwaukee and Wauwatosa would seem like so much beer, cheese and sausage in comparison.

      For now, in her backyard with iced tea and a whole life ahead of her tied down to no one, she had another important consideration: her hot painter needed a fantasy name so she wouldn’t have to keep referring to him as Her Hot Painter. When she and her friend Molly Johnston were teenagers, poring over a name book to see what they’d choose for their eventual children, they’d discovered—and giggled endlessly over it—that “Garrett” meant “with a mighty spear.”

      That would do.

      The newly christened Garrett scraped back and forth at a spot suffering from too many years of wind, rain, extreme temperatures and not enough extra energy from Darcy to deal with homeowner responsibilities. His biceps showed domed and hard below his sleeve, while triceps ridged the opposite side. The raised arm pulled up the hem of his white T-shirt and allowed an occasional glimpse of toned abdominal muscle.

      The day before, and the day before that, he’d stayed later than the others. She’d spoken to him both times, casual worker-boss conversations. She’d complimented his work, he’d thanked her, they’d talked painting and nothing more. But he’d looked at her as if…

      As if, as if, ohhhhh, yes, as if. She loved that as if. She could definitely come up with a few delightful fantasy activities involving the two of them.

      In the hospitals while her dad or Greg slept, or were otherwise unresponsive, she’d knitted, read, done crossword puzzles—in short, become an expert at passing time. And when she could no longer bear to read or to play word games, well then, sometimes she’d daydream in embarrassingly vivid and erotic detail. Weird, maybe, but give anyone as many hours in a medical facility as she’d had to spend, and he or she would get as sick of grief and pain and frustration—hers and the patient’s—and need escape as much as she had. One handsome, brainy doctor and one buff, talented physical therapist had provided, er, stimulation. Her imagination did the rest.

      Now that she was out in the real world breathing fresh air instead of eau de maladie, no longer trapped by four walls and tough emotions, she could devote even more time—guilt-free—to one of her favorite pastimes. In fact, she could imagine right now that—

      Garrett turned his head as if some receptor in his brain had picked up her thoughts.

      Darcy didn’t even try to pretend she hadn’t been facing him, but she was glad for her sunglasses because it was possible he’d think she was asleep. Asleep holding her glass of iced tea. Sure. Why not. Uh-huh.

      He nodded and touched the brim of his baseball cap—Brewers, of course, good Wisconsin man—and then he went back to scraping.

      Oh, my my. How busted could she get? But she was single, straight and certainly within her rights to look.

      Except now that she’d looked, she kept wanting to look and then look some more, up the strong column of his back to his broad shoulders, imagining them flexing and contracting under the cotton of his T-shirt as he worked. Then back again to his nicely rounded butt and strong legs, which she could imagine in all sorts of quite pleasant positions, as well.

      Yum.

      Maybe he was the ranch owner and Darcy-Anne, the feisty, abundantly cleavaged city girl who’d just bought the property next door…

      Or maybe he’d be the suited sophisticate at the bar, balancing a dry martini, who nearly swallowed his tongue when he saw La Darce strut in, several-times-pierced and poured into black leather…

      Or maybe the funky, long-haired student at the art museum who came upon her in a quiet out-of-the-way place, pleasuring herself, and kindly stopped to help…

      Garrett turned again, this time tipping his sunglasses down and shooting her a look over them.

      Busted again. But she didn’t turn away this time, either. She tipped her own sunglasses down and shot him a look over, too. Because why not? Who could sue?

      A grin this time, a scraper raised in her honor. She wiggled her fingers in a little hello, took another sip of her tea to introduce the concept of moisture back into her throat and hummed a musical number.

      Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my fan-ta-sy…

      She thought maybe he’d make a good corporate executive and she the CEO of a company threatened by his hostile takeover…

      Except, wait, hang on, hold it, stop right there.

      She was twenty-six, she was female, she was straight, she was single, she had money in the bank, and now that the dark days were behind her, for once not a care in the world.

      And not a single, solitary reason to keep herself from making this fantasy come true.

      She gulped more tea. Even the thought had shaken her. And then it stopped shaking her and started stirring her instead.

      No way. She couldn’t. Because…well, obviously, because…

      She didn’t know why not. She just knew there was a “why not” and it was undoubtedly a good one. A sensible one. One any girl in her right mind should be able to come up with on the spot. Darcy’s mind was too clouded by hormones and the giddy excitement of being launched out of grief and drudgery and servitude and out of a stale, stagnant relationship into the world of new male possibilities.

      Molly. She needed to call Molly, her best friend from the day they’d met at Longfellow Middle School in sixth grade. Molly was sensible, practical, down-to-earth and had been a Rock of Gibraltar and a pillar and an Atlas in Darcy’s world for years while it persisted in falling apart. A few sane words from Molly and the “why not” would be perfectly obvious to the point where Darcy would be embarrassed to have had the idea in