23. Darcy

CHAPTER 23

DARCY

Closed for a private event , the sign on the restaurant in Gastown reads when we arrive for the cast party for The Northern Sword .

"Name?" the guy at the door asks us, holding a clipboard.

"Hayden Owens and Darcy Andersen," Hayden says with smooth confidence, like he does this all the time, and I take a mental note. Hayden nails rule number one: act confident and chill.

The guy takes our coats and gestures us inside, and I give Hayden a funny smile. "You put my name on the list already?"

"I had a feeling you'd say yes, and I wasn't going to go without you."

Inside, I spot three cast members immediately, along with a handful of other actors who don't work on the show. And three musicians.

"There are a lot of famous people here," I murmur to Hayden, my self-consciousness rising.

He puts his hand on my lower back like he can sense my trepidation. "Don't worry," he murmurs back in my ear, his breath tickling my neck. "I'm just a regular guy. "

A laugh slips out of me, and my self-consciousness eases. He dips down farther to catch my eye.

"I won't leave your side, okay?"

Gratitude expands through me. "Okay."

"Come on." He nudges me toward the bar. "Let's get a drink."

Sometime later, after we've met a handful of the cast, Hayden and I sit near the downstairs bar, watching the partygoers.

"There's Aurora." I subtly point to the star of the series, who's laughing with someone. She's my favorite character, the practical, hardworking maid everyone underestimated. When she unlocks her secret powers, she's unstoppable.

Nearby, the actor who plays Cadius, the Golden Prince, is surrounded by women and laughing loudly. Cadius is another of my favorite characters, but not until later in the series. That's when he really starts to remind me of Hayden. At first, Cadius is the overconfident, spoiled prince who's had everything handed to him. He has no clue how the real world works, no empathy, and no idea how privileged he is. He gets a rough wake-up call when he and Aurora go on the quest to find his kidnapped fiancée at the beginning of the first book.

He learns, though. He tries and he listens to Aurora, and he comes to care for commoners more than his ego or image. He makes sacrifices for people in his life, and he finds ways to be a better leader. He's kind and compassionate, and he'd do anything for the people he loves. When Aurora is close to breaking, he makes jokes to cheer her up and tells her she can do anything. When her power surfaced and she unleashed it, he knew she could do it all along.

The actor who plays Cadius isn't as handsome as Hayden, though, and when I read the books, it's Hayden I picture on those fantastical adventures.

At the other bar, the actress who plays Queen Amethyst glances over at us, and an unhappy feeling twists in my stomach.

"Queen Amethyst is giving you the eyes." I try to keep my tone casual as I sip my drink.

"Is she?" Hayden glances at my lips around the straw.

"Yes." After we walked in, she asked to take a photo with him, but he dragged me into it, too. "She mentioned she hadn't seen much of Vancouver, like, four times."

He shrugs. "It's not like she's going to have time for sightseeing. They were telling me about their shooting schedules. They have zero free time."

I can't tell whether he's being deliberately obtuse or not. "Hayden, the only sightseeing she wanted to do was in your pants."

He shoots me a roguish grin. "My dick?"

"Mhm." I nod, stifling a laugh. "She wants to get to know little Hayden."

His expression turns knowing and cocky. "It's not little ."

God, I remember. Heat races through me. "It's none of my business." I put on a disinterested expression, even though I'm very, very interested in hearing more. "And I'm not judging."

"Hey." He leans forward, getting in my face, making hard eye contact, and I start shaking with laughter. He stares at me dead-on with a mock-serious expression while his eyes sparkle. "It's not little, okay? It's huge, like a baseball bat. It's a monster. Women call it Godzilla."

I act revolted. "No one calls it that."

"They would if I asked them to," he adds, grinning. "Lots of women can vouch for it not being little."

"I'm sure." A bad taste fills my mouth. I shove my straw between my lips and take a long sip to wash it away. "I'm sure Queen Amethyst would love to fact-check that."

He makes an unhappy noise of acknowledgment.

"She's exactly your type," I say for some reason, because I just can't shut up about this.

"What are you talking about?"

"You know. Super tall, long dark hair, big boobs." I make an hourglass shape with my hand. "Great butt. Tiny waist."

Queen Amethyst could probably crush my ribcage with her thighs while I cried for mercy.

Hayden frowns at me.

"All the women you date fit that description."

He looks away, jaw ticking like he wants to say something. "Darcy?"

I swallow. "What?"

"Shut up," he says gently, smiling, and I snort at myself.

"Right. We're on a date do-over," I say. "No trying to hook you up with other women."

"Look at you." He reaches over and puts his arm around my shoulder. "You're a quick study."

He's being touchy-feely tonight for a change, and pleasure loops through me.

"Taught by the best."

His smile dims and he takes his arm back. "How was work this week?"

"Fine." I shrug. He makes a hand gesture for me to continue, and I give him a flat look. "My job isn't conversation material for a date."

He watches me for a moment, and I can't read his expression. "You used to talk my ear off about the stuff you were working on." His eyes narrow as he looks away, thinking. "Your school project in fourth-year university. The scholarship thing? "

"The Women in STEM prediction model." I used government data to determine which girls entering university had the lowest chance of finishing based on financial hardships. "They still use it today, actually, to allocate scholarships and funding. With updated data every year, of course."

His mouth hooks into a proud smile, his warm gaze moving over me, and I grin into my drink.

"That's really fucking cool, Darce."

"It was." Using statistics to help people made that project so fun; it didn't even feel like work. "They have a Vancouver branch of the organization and a few events coming up. I might go to one."

"And you should find a job that makes you smile like that."

I snort. "Most jobs don't make people happy, and I have nothing to complain about. My job is fine. It pays the bills and I get vacation time and great benefits. They pay for my phone, which is nice. And they paid for me to ship my stuff here when I moved to the Vancouver office." I force a bright, optimistic smile. "It's not so bad."

He tilts his head, one eyebrow going up like he doesn't believe me.

"And yeah, maybe a huge part of my job is to save money for the insurance company by predicting how much patients will cost long term, and they use our data to determine premiums, ultimately making the owners richer, but that's a huge chunk of the actuarial field. And that's business." I shrug. "A lot of jobs are about money when it comes down to it."

I had a job I loved once, right out of university. And then I fucked it all up. It's better this way, with a boring job. No one gets hurt and no one gets fired.

He rubs his jaw. "I know I'm not as smart as you?—"

"You are, Hayden. Don't say that." I hate when he makes comments like that, like he's some dumb jock. "There are lots of ways to be intelligent that have nothing to do with school or math. Social skills, kindness, and compassion count just as much." My expression turns wry. "And you always had good grades in school."

It's dim in here, but it almost seems like he's blushing. "I was trying to say that you deserve to have a job you get excited about, not just one you put up with. Something that doesn't feel like work."

We lock eyes for a long moment, just smiling at each other, and even in the low restaurant lighting, his eyes glitter. My gaze follows the sharp line of his jaw, his stubble, and my fingers itch to trace it.

He really is otherworldly handsome. In a different life, he'd be at this cast party as one of the actors.

That isn't why I feel lucky to be here with him, though. Hayden is one of the kindest people I know, and despite the constant attention he gets for his looks or career, or that he's essentially a celebrity in a city that loves hockey, it hasn't gone to his head. He could snap his fingers and have women fall at his feet, but he's sitting at a party with his dorky friend from university.

"This is why I don't talk about my job on dates." My smile is self-deprecating. "I'm making up a rule number six of being a player: don't talk about boring stuff on dates. Only talk about fun, sexy topics."

He grins. "Fun, sexy topics," he repeats.

"Like…" I rack my brain for something funny.

"Like…" He makes a go on gesture. "I can't wait to hear this."

"Like what your favorite sex position is."