Darcy laughed. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll only kiss me again, then remember what a mistake it is to get involved with an employee and will insult me again.”
“What if I promise not to kiss you again?” he asked, a crooked smile on his face.
Darcy eyed him with suspicion. “Can I hold you to it?” she asked, hoping he’d say no, wanting desperately to be held in his strong arms, to feel his muscular body against hers and wonder what it would be like to make love with him.
“Yes,” he laughed. “Come on,” he said and put an arm around her shoulders. He held her coat while she put it on, then led her out to his car, tucking her into the passenger seat. As he tucked her into his car, he felt a huge amount of relief flow over him now that he was with her for the evening. He’d somehow find a way to keep his hands off her.
He took her out to a small, Italian restaurant and he told her stories about different jumps he’d been on. She shuddered at some of his close calls. It was late when he drove her home. He walked her to her door and stood several feet away while she unlocked the door.
“Good night,” she called back to him, wishing he would renege on his promise. But he simply waived to her from her walkway with a smile as she closed the door. Darcy watched him walk to his car and drive away, the thought that he was too much of a gentleman crossed her mind.
The next month passed in a blur. Darcy was determined to get Michael off her mind. She worked long hours and signed up for more classes. On the weekends, she was either in her office plowing through the administrative forms and reports she was now required to submit, or she left the city, pushing herself harder to find something to take the place of Michael’s kisses and the feelings they generated. But nothing seemed to work. She went on a mountain climbing weekend with a beginner’s class and found that she didn’t like having her knees, elbows and even her face scraped up by the hard rock and, even worse, her body hanging precariously from a cliff for hours at a time.
Michael had his weekly status meeting on Friday and, thankfully, most of the cuts had healed by that time. There was only a red mark across her right cheek to indicate something might be wrong. She sat by the door and escaped quickly once the meeting was over. She didn’t want to talk to him until she had figured out how to get him out of her system.
She went on a hiking trip one weekend with a group of novelist hikers. It was fine except for the evenings when she was laying in her tent wondering what kinds of bugs and snakes might be around at this time of the year. She hoped that they were mostly in hibernation or dead by now. She shivered through the whole night and was never so grateful to be in her own bed by Sunday evening. She loved having a soft pillow under her head instead of a rock and blankets keeping her warm instead of the awful “mummy” sleeping bag she’d bought for the camping trip.
Another weekend, she took a motor cycle driving class. Originally, she had crossed off the idea of motorcycle driving but she’d run across an advertisement that seemed interesting, so she tried it. The large parking lot was filled with ten other students renting one of the motor cycles the school offered as they turned corners, sped up, slowed down and went through the various mechanics of driving a motor cycle. Darcy wasn’t thrilled with the experience but in the last hour, she was tired and irritated at having to control such a large piece of equipment with only her legs and arms. So she wasn’t paying enough attention and, as she took a sharp corner, fell down hard, scraping her arm from her shoulder all the way down to her wrist.
“Are you okay?” the instructor asked, rushing over to her side, several other students not far behind him. The big, burly man with no hair on his head and lots of hair covering his face picked up the motorcycle she’d been assigned for the day and examined her arm. “That’s a pretty nasty scrape,” he announced.
Darcy looked down at her arm that was now bleeding from her shoulder down to her elbow and then again from her wrist over her hand and had to agree with him. She would have used the word horrifying instead of “nasty” but she wasn’t going to argue with him. Her arm hurt too much and she was too tired. “Yes, I guess you’re right,” she agreed.
“Come on over to my truck and we’ll get that cleaned up. I’ll put a bandage on it as well.”
“Thanks,” she said. The instructor asked one of the other students to bring her motorcycle over to the truck and he helped Darcy.
The instructor cleaned and bandaged her arm, covering it with white gauze all the way up to her shoulder. She felt, and looked, like she was wearing a cast.
By Monday morning, she felt better and tried to go without the gauze but by mid afternoon, her shirt had rubbed the newly formed scabs away and she started bleeding again. She was in her office examining the damage, her sleeve rolled all the way up to her shoulder.
“Darcy, I wanted to discuss the status of…What the hell happened to you?” Michael said, walking into her office and looking up from the papers he was reviewing.
Darcy jumped and knocked her aching arm against her computer monitor, then grimaced in pain. “Ouch!”
Michael dropped his papers onto her desk and firmly grabbed her arm. “What did you do?”
“I fell!”
“Onto what?” he demanded, pushing her sleeve up higher so he could see how bad the damage was. “A gravel pit?”
“The street. Please don’t do that!” she said, trying to pull her arm away. But he held her firmly and continued to look at her arm.
“From what? A motorcycle?”
The look in her eyes answered his question for her. “Why were you driving a motor cycle?” he yelled, furious.
“Why not?” she yelled back, not willing to defend her actions to the man she was desperately trying to work out of her system.
“Because it’s dangerous as hell!”
“So is jumping out of planes but you do it all the time,” she replied.
“That’s different. I know what I’m doing.”
“Well, I was trying to learn. I was in a class.” The heat went out of her argument when she continued. She just didn’t have the energy to remain angry with him. “But it was a long class, I was tired and I made a mistake,” she said defensively. “Are you going to tell me you never got hurt when you were doing all the dangerous stuff you mentioned? I won’t believe you if you do.”