First (Wrong) Impressions: A Modern Pride & Prejudice by Krista D Ball

felt she was patronizing and infantilizing them. Not tonight, though. Tonight, she felt she was helping.
    The chili was served with stale bread. No green anything tonight. None had been dropped off from the grocery store leftovers and salad for a hundred people was well outside her budget, especially now.
    “Um, Ms. Bennet?”
    She turned around. “Don’t use my last name here.”
    “Right. You’d already told us that. Sorry, Lizzy.”
    “It’s okay. I’ll cheat and call you Darcy?” She eyed his dress sleeves rolled to his elbows and the front of his shirt damp and clinging to his torso. “Did the dishwasher attack you?”
    “Several times. I wish someone had warned me I’d be sprayed with scalding water every time I opened the lid.”
    “Sorry. I forgot.” That wasn’t a lie, though looking at the mess he was in, she was happy it had slipped her mind. “Did you need an apron or something?”
    “David said dishes were his job, so I let him take over washing the pots.”
    “Oh, I didn’t see him come in. Yeah, sorry, he’s one of our regulars. He’s on something of a probation around here. Doing dishes is part of it.” She gave him an apologetic smile. “I would’ve told you if I’d seen him.”
    “What did he do?”
    She didn’t like to scare volunteers with the juicy details. In David’s case, he’d been tripping out on way too much meth. He’d attacked her, put her into a headlock, and punched her three times before she could get free. Four people jumped him and beat the living shit out of him. It went downhill from there.
    Melissa closed The Faith down for two days so they could clean up all the blood and make sure Lizzy was okay. She wasn’t badly hurt, just a black eye and busted lip, but no one fooled around when one of them got hurt. While she was off, Luke arranged a refresher non-violent self-defence course and they hired a fourth staff member to work every shift.
    And then they forced her to take two weeks’ stress leave, “Just in case.”
    She didn’t want to tell Darcy all that. He didn’t need to know and he’d probably just look down on her for being too weak to control an uncontrollable environment where only street code kept the place standing. “He wants to earn back my trust, so I’m letting him.”
    Darcy said nothing in reply, which suited Lizzy just fine.

Chapter 6
    It was nearly eleven-thirty by the time they were gathered in Lizzy’s living room. Caroline feigned a headache and took a cab to her hotel when it was clear that Darcy was going to follow Charles back to the house. Lizzy couldn’t understand why Darcy came back with them; there was nothing there for him. Plus, this was totally date night for Charles and Jane. Lizzy wanted to shoo him away.
    “You sang really well,” Charles was saying to Jane.
    “Thank you,” Jane said, blushing. “You did…” she searched for the right word, “an admirable job with Desperado. “
    Everyone but Darcy laughed. But even he couldn’t help but crack a small smile and say, “Charles needs to be significantly drunk to even hit the right key.”
    “Yeah, but by then I’ve forgotten all of the words!”
    Darcy’s mouth twitched. “That’s no real difference from tonight.”
    Charles erupted into laughter and pointed at Darcy. “At least I tried singing!”
    Darcy ignored him, though his smile didn’t fade.
    “And Lizzy,” Charles said, “I didn’t realize you could sing so well.”
    Lizzy returned to the kitchen with a glass of water for Charles, and mint tea for herself and Darcy. “Mom was determined one of her daughters would be successful at something famous. She didn’t care what that ‘something’ was. Jane got out of it once we realized she could figure skate, and the rest of us had to suffer through singing, acting, and music lessons.”
    “The lessons seemed to have stuck,” Darcy said.
    Jane chuckled. “If they have, it was only by luck. Lizzy screamed before every class until she was