so long. “This is a conversation best had with wine and lots of it.”
Darcy signaled for the waitress, and after their wine was set before them, she took a long sip before she started.
“When I was fourteen, my mom dropped me off at an orphanage.”
Ember caught on immediately. “St. Agnes.”
“Yeah, that’s how I know of Trace. We were there together for a short time. Anyway, Lucien and I hit it off immediately. For two years we were inseparable and we planned on running away together.”
There was sympathy in Ember’s eyes when Darcy looked at her; clearly their plans had never come to fruition. “But as you can guess, it didn’t work out and part of the reason was that woman.”
“I don’t understand.”
Darcy had given it a lot of thought over the years and concluded that someone had to have been watching Lucien and her at St. Agnes and passing on what they were seeing. That would explain the visit from the stranger and how he’d known so much. There had been one person who’d made it her job to know everyone’s business and that was the woman currently standing across the street.
Darcy said, “She was instrumental in breaking Lucien and me up.”
“How?”
“The day I was supposed to leave with Lucien, a man came to see me. He knew things he couldn’t possibly have known. He played on all of my sixteen-year-old insecurities and convinced me that it was in Lucien’s best interest to not have me in his life. I listened.”
“Oh my God. Who was he?”
“I don’t know. I never saw him again, but all the promises he made were lies. I broke Lucien’s heart and my own for nothing.”
“Have you told Lucien? I mean, now that you’re older.”
Darcy fiddled with her glass. “I don’t know how to have that conversation. How to tell him that I turned my back on everything we’d planned based on the words of a complete stranger.” She looked up at Ember. “I hurt him, Ember, really hurt him, and he repaid me by giving me a job. He is better off without me, but while I can say that a thousand times, I just can’t seem to let him go.”
Ember was silent for a moment, as if in hesitation, so Darcy asked, “What?”
“It seems to me that whether you are good for him or not should be Lucien’s call to make. Enough time has passed that maybe you should just talk to him. At the very least you’ll be able to put it to rest, but maybe he’ll surprise you.”
“To what end?”
“Being a woman madly in love with her husband, I recognize the signs in others. You’re crazy about him. You owe it to yourself and to him to put the past in the past.”
Darcy chuckled and reached for her wine. “Are you always so free with advice?”
“Sorry, it’s a problem; I get it from my dad.”
“I think I’d like your dad.”
After lunch Darcy walked back to the office, but her mind flitted back to the day that had changed everything.
Fourteen years earlier . . .
Darcy was packing, but her hands were shaking from excitement, which was making the job take that much longer. She had a surprise for Lucien and she couldn’t think of a better time to tell him than today, the day they were going to start their lives together. She looked over at her clock—she was running late.
Hearing a knock, she called for the person to enter as she checked under her bed to make sure she hadn’t left anything.
A man she had never seen before walked in, and with her only experience of men being her mom’s friends, fear shot down her spine. He wasn’t dressed like her mom’s friends, though. He looked fancy—the kind of fancy reserved for holidays and church.
“Darcy?”
“Um, yeah.”
“Are you going somewhere?”
Running off with Lucien was still a secret, so Darcy lied. “No.”
“No point in lying. I can see for myself that you are packing. You’re running away with Lucien, aren’t you?”
Even through her fear, Darcy was suspicious of how he knew of them and their plans. Who had told him? And who was he? How did he get in to the building? Who helped him?
The man walked into her room as if he owned it and sat down on her roommate’s bed.
“Have you told him about the baby?”
Her body went numb, even as anger burned through her. “How do you know about that?” And then she remembered the day she’d found out she was