Shit! He needed to tell Fitz!
Darcy lunged across the sofa for the white intra-plane phone, knocking the receiver off. Scrambling for it with clumsy hands, he finally got it up to his ear and pressed the right button. His cousin picked up on the first ring with a sleepy greeting. “Fitz,” Darcy said quickly, “I’ve got a problem. Can you come to the suite? And”—Darcy exhaled heavily—“you better bring Hilliard with you.”
Twenty minutes later he had finished explaining the whole thing to his press secretary and his cousin, whose mouths were hanging open so widely that it was almost comical. “You did what?” Hilliard yelled.
“He made a pass at her.” Fitz’s eyes were closed, and his shoulders slumped forward.
“I did not make a pass at her,” Darcy ground out through clenched teeth. “I kissed her.”
Hilliard tugged at the few hairs remaining on the top of his head. “Sir, that could be interpreted as a sexual assault.”
“She wasn’t unwilling!” he exploded. “She kissed me back.”
Hilliard rolled his eyes. “Yeah, try proving that in a court of law.”
Darcy dropped his head into his hands. How had things gone south so quickly? He’d been elated to finally get Elizabeth alone…and now, half an hour later, he was discussing possible accusations of assault. The bottle of scotch was more and more appealing, to hell with the press.
“I wanted to ask her on a date,” he moaned. “I just got…enthusiastic and kissed her first.”
Pacing as much as the small space would allow, Hilliard scribbled notes in his spiral-bound notebook. “Okay. Did she slap you or push you away?”
“No!” he insisted. “I wouldn’t—I thought she liked me.”
“What did she say?” Hilliard’s voice had a slightly hysterical edge.
“I don’t know.” Her words were the last thing he wanted to remember. “She made it clear she didn’t like me.”
The press secretary regarded Darcy blankly. “I could have been an accountant,” Hilliard said.
“What?” Darcy asked, turning to Fitz, who seemed equally confused by the non-sequitur.
Hilliard wasn’t looking at Darcy, and he almost seemed to be talking to himself. “Mom wanted me to be an accountant. I have a good head for numbers. And it’s low stress. But no, I wanted the excitement of politics. I just had to—”
“Bob?” Darcy tried to catch his eye.
Hilliard shook himself. “Never mind, sir.”
Fitz frowned briefly at Hilliard, but then his eyes came to rest on Darcy. “Why doesn’t she like you, Darce? I don’t get it.”
“Well, I called her ugly and stupid.”
Both men gaped at him. “Not to her face!” he added hastily. “And not in public! It was just that—well, her sister overheard…and so did she. Then her sister put it on Twitter. Okay, it sounds bad when I put it that way.”
“She’s that woman? I thought her name sounded familiar.” Hilliard paused his pacing long enough to make another note.
“I can’t believe she agreed to speak with you after that!” Fitz exclaimed.
“I apologized to her! Months ago.”
Fitz shook his head. “Still, you’re lucky you got anything more than a polite grin out of her.”
Darcy supposed that was true; he’d never thought of it that way. “She said a snob with an apology was still a snob,” he murmured.
Fitz chuckled. “I like her.”
Hilliard made an impatient gesture. “What else did she say? What else did she object to?”
“I was rude to her family and called them nouveau riche.”