Just Fooling Around: Darcy's Dark Day/Reg's Rescue\Cam's Catastrophe/Devon's Dilemma by Julie Kenner, Kathleen O'Reilly Read Free Book Online
Authors: Julie Kenner, Kathleen O'Reilly
the dress, and they spent the next few hours making new memories. Definitely better memories.
It was a long time later before Cam found the exact right instant, when the morning sun was warm on the bed sheets, when the city was humming outside, sounding so very far away, and when Jenna was curled against him, her hand resting over his heart.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“For what?”
Cam stayed silent for a minute because he wasn’t good at this. Wasn’t good at talking about things that were inside him. Fears. Emotions. But he felt too good, too much at peace.
“I always handled the First so badly, my heart always got so fried, pumping like mad, and there wasn’t any room for anyone or anything. But I don’t want to do anything next year. I just want to be here. With you. I thought my heart had to stay the other way forever. But it’s different today. It feels good, strong, not so anxious. You fixed that.”
She raised her head, resting her chin on his chest. “You’re the one who fixed it.”
No, he thought, and he noticed that her hand still rested on his heart, soothing it, calming it, fixing it. She had done that, but he knew better that to argue with the doc. So he kissed her instead, showing her how much he cared. Someday she’d figure it out. She was smart that way. She was the doc. His doc.
She’d figure that one out, too, someday, because she was smart that way. Very, very smart.
DARCY’S DARK DAY
Julie Kenner
1
April Fools’ Day, three years ago
Train arrives Union Station 8:15.
Will bring bagels.
D ARCY’S FINGERS HOVERED over the send button, knowing she was being an absolute chickenshit. If she had any sort of backbone whatsoever, she’d dial the phone instead and tell her big brother Cam that she was in town, and she was going to walk boldly through subway stations—even getting close to the edge. She was going to jaywalk in front of speeding taxis, and walk by herself through Central Park. She was going to eat from street vendors without carrying antacids, and she was going to go all the way up to the top of the Empire State Building and look waaaaay down to the ground below.
She was going to do all of that, and she was going to be fine, dammit, because the whole idea of a family curse was just silly. Life had order and reason and mathematical certainties. Nature was about symmetry and patterns, not about random happenstance and curses, and none of her doom-and-gloom siblings were going to change that.
So why aren’t you dialing the phone? Why are you sending a text?
She scowled at the little voice in her head—a voice that sounded remarkably like herself. And she answered herself firmly. Because it’s early. He’s probably still asleep.
It’s tricky lying to oneself, the problem being that she knew, even as she was saying it, that it was a lie. Cam was Mr. Early-Riser. Mr. Meet-and-Greet-the-Day. Especially this day, one he met in grave defiance annually. And, she had to reluctantly admit, one he usually met with injury.
It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, she told herself firmly, reaching down to hook her purse strap over her arm as the garbled voice over the loudspeaker announced the imminent arrival of the train at the station. Cam’s history of nasty April first E.R. visits was the direct result of her brother being a complete and total idiot about that particular day. If you go out and put yourself in harm’s way, harm would find you. Cam’s spate of bad luck wasn’t the product of a curse so much as the product of poor planning and carelessness. Considering how he always went out of his way to defy fate, it was a statistical certainty that his defiance would terminate with injury. He never saw it that way, though. She’d argued, diagrammed and even scrawled long, complex mathematical formulas, knowing her older brother couldn’t make heads nor tails of the symbols, but still hoping to impress him with the seriousness of her conclusions. Trust me, I’m a
It was a long time later before Cam found the exact right instant, when the morning sun was warm on the bed sheets, when the city was humming outside, sounding so very far away, and when Jenna was curled against him, her hand resting over his heart.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“For what?”
Cam stayed silent for a minute because he wasn’t good at this. Wasn’t good at talking about things that were inside him. Fears. Emotions. But he felt too good, too much at peace.
“I always handled the First so badly, my heart always got so fried, pumping like mad, and there wasn’t any room for anyone or anything. But I don’t want to do anything next year. I just want to be here. With you. I thought my heart had to stay the other way forever. But it’s different today. It feels good, strong, not so anxious. You fixed that.”
She raised her head, resting her chin on his chest. “You’re the one who fixed it.”
No, he thought, and he noticed that her hand still rested on his heart, soothing it, calming it, fixing it. She had done that, but he knew better that to argue with the doc. So he kissed her instead, showing her how much he cared. Someday she’d figure it out. She was smart that way. She was the doc. His doc.
She’d figure that one out, too, someday, because she was smart that way. Very, very smart.
DARCY’S DARK DAY
Julie Kenner
1
April Fools’ Day, three years ago
Train arrives Union Station 8:15.
Will bring bagels.
D ARCY’S FINGERS HOVERED over the send button, knowing she was being an absolute chickenshit. If she had any sort of backbone whatsoever, she’d dial the phone instead and tell her big brother Cam that she was in town, and she was going to walk boldly through subway stations—even getting close to the edge. She was going to jaywalk in front of speeding taxis, and walk by herself through Central Park. She was going to eat from street vendors without carrying antacids, and she was going to go all the way up to the top of the Empire State Building and look waaaaay down to the ground below.
She was going to do all of that, and she was going to be fine, dammit, because the whole idea of a family curse was just silly. Life had order and reason and mathematical certainties. Nature was about symmetry and patterns, not about random happenstance and curses, and none of her doom-and-gloom siblings were going to change that.
So why aren’t you dialing the phone? Why are you sending a text?
She scowled at the little voice in her head—a voice that sounded remarkably like herself. And she answered herself firmly. Because it’s early. He’s probably still asleep.
It’s tricky lying to oneself, the problem being that she knew, even as she was saying it, that it was a lie. Cam was Mr. Early-Riser. Mr. Meet-and-Greet-the-Day. Especially this day, one he met in grave defiance annually. And, she had to reluctantly admit, one he usually met with injury.
It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, she told herself firmly, reaching down to hook her purse strap over her arm as the garbled voice over the loudspeaker announced the imminent arrival of the train at the station. Cam’s history of nasty April first E.R. visits was the direct result of her brother being a complete and total idiot about that particular day. If you go out and put yourself in harm’s way, harm would find you. Cam’s spate of bad luck wasn’t the product of a curse so much as the product of poor planning and carelessness. Considering how he always went out of his way to defy fate, it was a statistical certainty that his defiance would terminate with injury. He never saw it that way, though. She’d argued, diagrammed and even scrawled long, complex mathematical formulas, knowing her older brother couldn’t make heads nor tails of the symbols, but still hoping to impress him with the seriousness of her conclusions. Trust me, I’m a
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