“Should you ice it?” she asked.
“Not for a couple more hours.” He took the comforter from her. “Darcy, you don’t have to do this. I can take care of myself.”
“Sure.” She avoided his gaze. “Have you eaten?”
“I’ll be fine.”
She forced herself to look at him. The bruise on his face looked really painful. “That wasn’t the question.”
“No. I haven’t.”
She turned on her heel and headed for the kitchen. It was a dreadful shade of green. There weren’t any dishes in sight. On a hunch, she opened a cupboard. Inside were stacks of paper plates and cups. A tug on a drawer below yielded a view of plastic utensils.
“Only the best,” she muttered under her breath, then braced herself for the contents of the refrigerator.
Surprisingly, there weren’t any packages of decaying meat or moldy takeout. There was, in fact, almost nothing. A few bottles of soda, a bottle of beer, an apple and a small take-out container of coffee creamer.
“So like a man,” she said aloud, returning to the living room. “Is this some new kind of diet?”
“I’ve been busy.”
Her anger turned to pain. “Why?” she asked softly. “What did I do that was so horrible that you’re not even comfortable coming to the Hip Hop for your meals? Do you think I’m going to punish you for not wanting to be friends anymore? Do you think I’m going to make a scene or talk about you behind your back?”
He lightly touched the bruise on his face. “It’s not any of that, Darcy. I’ve been busy with work.”
She glared at him. “Don’t lie to me, Mark. I’m not stupid. This isn’t about work. So what is it? What is going on between us? If you’re tired of me, just say so. I can handle it.”
He straightened. “Itisabout work and believe me, you don’t want to know anything else.”
“No! I want to know the truth. What’s going on here?” She wanted to ask if this had something to do with their sexual encounters, but she didn’t have the courage. She didn’t want to know that Mark had changed his mind about wanting her in his bed.
He studied her for a long time. Pain filled his green eyes, but she had a bad feeling it wasn’t about his twisted ankle.
“You’re wrong about me,” he said after a couple of minutes of silence. “This is completely work related. Our personal relationship complicates things for me.”
“What on earth could I have to do with your work?”
“We’re involved, Darcy. I sure can’t define our relationship, but we have one. The thing is I don’t know if I can trust you. I know you’re keeping secrets—you’re hiding something about your past and you won’t say why you moved to Whitehorn. There’s a wad of cash in your living room and the sheriff has had an anonymous tip that someone is using the Hip Hop to launder money.”
CHAPTER TEN
Darcy stared at Mark for so long, he wondered if she’d heard him. Nothing about her expression changed. Then she turned and hurried toward the front door.
“Darcy?” he called.
She didn’t bother looking back.
Mark leaned against the sofa and closed his eyes. No doubt he would get an award for jerk of the week, if there was such an honor. Could he have handled that worse than he did? He knew better than to simply blurt out that sort of information. Plus, something in his gut, something that had been there all along, told him she was innocent.
He should go after her, he thought, then realized he couldn’t. Not only did his ankle ache, his crutches were on the far side of the room—well out of reach.
There was always crawling. Didn’t women like that?
A cold draft blew across his cheek. He opened his eyes and saw that Darcy had left his front door open. The good news was, she was likely to return shortly. Or maybe not. Maybe her real plan was for him to freeze to death.
Apparently not, he thought less than two minutes later when she returned, slamming the door behind her. Fire blazed in her eyes as she thrust a bowl of leftover spaghetti at him. She fished the bottle of pain-killers he’d been given at the hospital out of her jeans front pocket and tossed the container onto his lap. Then she disappeared into the kitchen only to return with a glass of water.
“This is so much more than you deserve,” she told him, shaking with emotion. “I can’t believe what you’ve thought of me.”
