by Leigh Riker
“She doesn’t really do that.”
“Get real, Walt. That, and more. Hide your condoms.”
He frowned. “I thought Nancy was pulling my leg.”
“Greta would like to pull something a bit higher up. See paragraph above.”
He flushed. “Where did you get that mind of yours?”
“In a Happy Meal, where else?”
Filled with dread, Darcie plopped onto the chair in front of his desk. An actual office, she thought, gazing around with admiration. Pictures on the walls—bad water colors, but still, pictures in frames. Wood, or plastic? She couldn’t tell. His walnut desk looked like an ocean compared to hers, and, as with any good executive, its top was mostly bare. As if he didn’t have any work to do while peons like Darcie took care of the grunt jobs. True, she had to admit. Claire had been right about that, too. Walt dragged open a drawer, drew out a half-finished cigar, and clamped it between his teeth.
Darcie wished for more red licorice, like a security blanket.
“I’ve heard from the agent in Sydney. The contractor will rip out the old Sheetrock this week, then the electricians are scheduled to come in. We need to figure out where we’ll want more outlets, that kind of thing.”
Darcie rose to the challenge. And fibbed. “I’ve been working on that.”
“You have?”
She needed to reassure him of her competence. Somehow. “I’m a self-starter, Walt. It was obvious when we got approval of the contract for the space in the QVB that things would start to move. Quickly, I hoped. Time is money.”
He smiled in approval. “What have you got?”
She could see Walt was relieved. Nothing new. In the four years she’d worked for him—as Claire also pointed out—Darcie had anticipated his needs more often than not. More often than her own, just as she had with Merrick. She’d worked extra hours. Rewritten Walt’s reports. Made him look good. He owed her, she figured.
Darcie hoped to collect—and secure her position in Wunderthings-Sydney. If she played her cards right, she might see Dylan again, which had become an especially appealing notion in the past hour.
Darcie suppressed an image of him…she could still hear his voice, yes, but those broad shoulders, too, that great smile. And those kisses…
“Greta threw me off a bit. I left my notes in my desk. I’ll get them.”
“Later. Just fill me in now.”
“Well.” She cleared her throat, mind whirring. Darcie plucked a brass paperweight off Walt’s desk. “We’re in a very upscale neighborhood there.”
“That’s news? Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Good hotels all around, Darling Harbour a stone’s throw away—if you’re walking downhill, that is, not up—other malls and restaurants.”
“Get to the point, Darcie.”
“Yes.” Quick, get one. She hefted the paperweight. Not as good as red licorice, but it would do for comfort. “Uh—in the QVB we have a prime location. We need to showcase that, make the rest of the stores around us dim bulbs by comparison. We want the shopper’s eye to home straight in on Wunderthings the instant that person gets to the second level.”
“Right,” he agreed, nodding, looking interested in her hasty concept.
“Man or woman,” Darcie rushed on, improvising as she went. “Young mothers, lovers, newlyweds, hard-assed professional types…”
“Darcie. What?”
Her brain slipped into higher gear. Necessity being the mother of invention. “So besides the interior of the shop—which I believe should be highly sophisticated in appearance—we need a dramatic front window display.”
“Define sophisticated.”
Um… “Cream walls, maybe silk paper, gleaming wood floors, I think, yes, with scattered Oriental rugs…real ones. Dark, rich mahogany display cases, matching rods for the hanging displays, everything coordinated. Lush. Sensual.” She took a breath, on a roll now. “A visual, auditory, tactile feast for the senses. We’ll scent the air with expensive perfume. I think we should develop one of our own.”
“Where have you been? We launched FloralMist last spring.”
Momentarily derailed, Darcie wrinkled her nose.
“Too sweet. Too young. Too un-sexy.”
“Customers love it.”
She dropped the brass paperweight on her toe but didn’t dare cringe. Pain throbbed through her. “They’ll love the new one more. We’ll call it…Australove. No, Sin-dney.” She couldn’t even say that and Darcie waved a hand in temporary dismissal of a bad idea. “I’ll come up with something. Or Marketing can. But do you see the concept?” She didn’t dare call it hers, take credit for the notion and further irritate Walt.
“It’s different from any of our other stores.”
“Exactly. So is the Pacific Rim market. Think Orient, Walt. We’re talking a blend of cultures, lifestyles…diversity. We may want a few Japanese or Chinese models for the opening. No, a Eurasian girl. That’s it. Exquisite, stylish, sensual herself.”
“We can’t afford a live model.”
“Mannequin, then.” She paused for another breath. “Or would we be better going with a multiethnic look? Lots of mannequins. You know. Irish, English, Scots, Italian, German…along with the Asian angle. Kind of highlight Australia’s melting pot quality.”
Walt studied his empty desktop. He flicked a glance around the office, his gaze landing on a hazy water color of New York harbor, then glancing off a desk picture of his wife before her last illness. Something he never talked about. Darcie sometimes forgot he was a widower. He settled a look on her.
“What else?”
She didn’t know. Suicide?
“Uh, um…”
“You don’t have a plan written down. Do you?”
“No, but I think well on my feet.” She stood up.
“Get me something by five o’clock. Something great.”
“You don’t like what I just told you?”
“I love it,” he said.
Darcie drifted from his office, Greta Hinckley forgotten. Merrick Lowell temporarily eclipsed. Dylan Rafferty…she’d talk with him tonight.
Phone sex. You had to love that, too.
Giving herself a mental high-five, she floated back to her cubicle.
“Damn, but I’m good!”
Darcie worked late. She took the ten-fifteen ferry home, then couldn’t find a cab. By the time she arrived at Eden’s apartment building on the Palisades, it was almost midnight. Exhausted, Darcie barely noticed that Julio wasn’t on duty in the lobby when she passed.
Scarcely remembering what night of the week it was, she punched the elevator button and rode upstairs, yawning. Tuesday, that was it. A week after Sydney. Would Walt like her concrete ideas? It had taken Darcie the rest of the afternoon to get them down on paper. Then, after his initial comments, she’d slaved through dinner—wonton soup and a bag of fried noodles delivered from the Chinese deli on the corner—to revise her proposal, the only person on the sixth floor until nearly ten o’clock.
If she’d seen Merrick tonight, she might have been forced to make some decision about their new “relationship.” But since she hadn’t seen him, especially after Dylan’s call, she wouldn’t hate herself in the morning.
Oh, God. Dylan.
Jamming her key in the lock with sudden haste, Darcie let herself into the duplex. Intent on getting to the answering machine, the first thing she saw was Sweet Baby Jane blinking sleep from her eyes at the top of the foyer steps.
“Evening, SBJ.”
The cat showed her teeth in a snarl.
“Well. If that’s how you want to play…”
She’d been trying to treat the cat with kid gloves for days. Patting her on the head. Chucking her under the chin. But nothing helped Darcie where the evil feline was concerned. Not even last night’s full can of turkey and giblets dinner before bed. Jane had vomited the rich food all over the carpet, and Darcie wasn’t certain she had fully removed the stain from her gran
dmother’s precious new possession.
Face it, she thought. “You hate me. Don’t you?”
Shuffling sounds from the upper level caught SBJ’s attention—and Darcie’s. Her grandmother appeared on the landing, then smiled. Guiltily. Why did she look guilty?
“There you are, dear. I thought I heard you come in.”
Eden’s cheeks turned pink. She was wearing a silk wrapper—circa 1972, Bonwit Teller, Darcie guessed—a filmy nightie underneath, and scarlet nail polish on her toes. They were usually bare. And so was Eden, who preferred to sleep nude.
“Company?” Darcie murmured.
“You wicked girl.”
“Me?”
“You would call attention to my visitor. We won’t disturb you.” Eden swirled around to head back along the upstairs hall. “Have some coconut cream pie. It’s in the fridge.” She stopped. “Oh, your man in the Akubra called.”
“Dylan?” Who else.
Darn. Lost in her work, she’d forgotten for a time—how could she?—and now she’d missed him. He would think she was avoiding him.
“What did he say?”
Her tone softened. “His little lamb is doing fine.”
“Me?” Darcie asked again.
“No, that’s not right. He said your little lamb. I think he meant a sheep.”
“Oh. Darcie II.”
Eden pattered down the hall. “He has a marvelous voice, dear.”
Darcie agreed. He had marvelous everything. Maybe she’d judged their lack of suitability too quickly. “I may be going back to Australia, Gran.”
“I thought you should.”
With no further explanation, Eden disappeared into her bedroom—from which Darcie heard, when she tried to avoid Sweet Baby Jane’s flying claws and danced by in the hall, the unmistakable sounds of…definitely…lovemaking.
“Julio?” Darcie called, unable to resist.
“Sí…” he gasped. “Señorita.”
“Welcome to the club.”
Eden sang out, “You wicked girl.”
“Me?” Darcie said, giggling. And went on into her room.
She slammed the door shut on Sweet Baby Jane—nearly catching her tail in it. My grandmother, she thought. Eighty-two years old. Hot as a silicone-enhanced Las Vegas showgirl. It was enough to make Darcie—alone in her bed without Dylan’s voice to warm her after all—feel an emotion as strong as Greta Hinckley’s threat of revenge.
“I do not believe in envy,” Darcie muttered to herself.
She didn’t believe in envy, but she did need to sleep.
It wasn’t Gran keeping her awake nights, she told herself. In the past three nights Darcie hadn’t slept, and she could no longer blame jet lag for her bleary mornings.
By Friday Dylan still hadn’t called.
Caught up in work at Wunderthings for Walt, she’d missed Dylan’s phone sex date on Tuesday night. Wednesday and Thursday she’d spent lying on her bed, listening to Eden and Julio in the other room again. Earplugs were becoming a distinct possibility. For the fourth night in a row, she sprawled across the wide mattress and wished the telephone could let her off the hook.
Maybe he was giving her the business. After all, she’d stood him up the other night after his first call to the office. After “dumping” him in Sydney.
Her track record with men wasn’t getting any better after all.
Merrick Lowell, either. Since his separation from Jacqueline, they no longer needed to rendezvous only on Mondays, but neither would Darcie meet him at the Grand Hyatt. They met in public now.
Why make it into anything more?
She didn’t know what to do with the new Merrick, the wounded Merrick. Still, they were talking now, a little, and that was different.
As for Dylan…she blotted out an image of him.
Mr. Right hadn’t materialized.
Darcie blanked out another vision, of Eden with Julio.
She even managed not to think about Claire, with Peter the Great. Or not.
No more waiting for the phone like a weepy teenage girl, she thought. No more envy of her own grandmother. She was back where she belonged. For now. For now, at least…
“You’re seeing him again?” her sister Annie asked by phone the next night.
“Don’t tell Mom.”
“You know what she thinks about New York. And unless Merrick puts a ring on your finger, she’ll think the same of him.”
Darcie pleaded into the phone, “Annie, don’t say a word. Promise.”
“Is he good?”
She didn’t answer. Who knows? She couldn’t remember. A recent downturn in the stock market—it went up, it went down, Darcie thought, why get excited?—had Merrick stressed out, and his divorce made things worse. Or was she imagining the change in him?
Why didn’t she feel any better today?
Annie wasn’t helping, even when she changed the subject.
“You need to tell Mom that you’re willing to room with me.”
But I’m not. “She’ll never allow it. Not with Gran.”
Annie laughed. “No, an apartment of our own.”
“Look, Annie. I’m busy at work—frantic now that Walt has me refining the Sydney project design, which he changes every day. I don’t have time to look for an apartment and I’m happy enough where I am.” Wasn’t she?
“Listening to her with Julio every night?”
“Not every night. He works.”
“What kind of life is that, big sister? Schloffing back and forth to Manhattan on the ferry—”
“Schlepping.”
“—living with your grandmother? We’d have such fun fixing up a place. I’d get a job—something—and we could party every night.”
“I don’t want to live in a sorority house, Annie.”
Her sister had been party girl of the year at Smith four years running, but she could almost hear Annie shaking her head now.
“You’ve been with Gran too long.”
Darcie smiled. “She swings better than I ever could, believe me.”
“And it’s depressing you. I can tell. You need to be around younger people—like me—you need to be free and wild in New York.”
“You talk like that and Mom will never let you leave Cincinnati.”
“Oh, yes, she will. I’m wearing her down. Dad, too. All I need now is for you to—”
“Contribute to the delinquency of my baby sister? I’d never live down the shame. Mom and Dad—”
“Will relax if I’m with you. I won’t be any trouble.”
“Like a rogue elephant on a rampage?” Darcie sighed. “I can’t talk about this now, Annie. I have to go.”
“Are you meeting Merrick at the Hyatt?”
“Not tonight.”
“Is your Aussie calling?”
Thanks for that reminder. “I doubt it.”
“Phone sex,” Annie said with a wistful sigh, then disconnected the call.
Wistful herself, Darcie lay back on her bed, and when she’d promised she wouldn’t, waited for the telephone to ring.
As if she were Greta Hinckley. Without any life at all.
Chapter
Nine
“Another night with Merrick, dear?” Gran’s dry tone followed Darcie along the upstairs hall to the steps.
“It’ll leave you and Julio the apartment to yourselves.”
“I’d rather have you home.”
Uh-oh, Darcie thought. Here we go again. Like another cue that this Wednesday evening wouldn’t turn out well, Sweet Baby Jane wound around Eden’s slim ankles, twined between Darcie’s feet like a bobbin weaving cloth, and all but tripped her down the stairs—not an accident, Darcie felt sure.
Avoiding Jane’s claws, she skimmed down the steps in front of Gran.
“Merrick’s taking you to dinner?”
“And a movie,” Darcie murmured. “Last week we went to a play.”
“His son’s third grade pageant? That’s hardly Broadway, Darcie.”
&
nbsp; “No, an off-off-Broadway thing. But I’ve seen his son’s picture from the pageant. He looked really cute dressed like a turnip.”
In the center of the room, Eden whirled. “How could one possibly dress like a turnip? Much less look appealing.” Clearly, she wanted a fight.
“Julio dresses like a doorman…and you seem to find him fetching. That dark-brown uniform, those fake gold epaulets, braid hanging everywhere.”
“That isn’t the part of Julio I like to see hanging.”
Darcie arched a brow.
“Well, not hanging exactly,” Gran said. Was that a faint blush in her down-dusted cheeks? She patted her newly tinted hair. No apricot tonight. She looked more like a russet apple.
Darcie didn’t respond about Julio. “I won’t be late,” she told Eden.
“So it’s just a quickie? He’s a premature ejaculator. I knew it.”
“Gran!”
“Do I shock you?”
“Only every time you open your mouth. What would Mom say?”
Gran bristled. “If she knows what’s good for her, she won’t say squat until next Christmas. Do you know how many telephone calls I’ve had from that woman this week?”
Darcie silently groaned. Annie.
“Four,” Darcie guessed.
“Ten. Three of them last night. She interrupted Julio and me right in the middle of the most delightful—”
“I get the picture, Gran.” Darcie tried not to shudder. Like Merrick, Julio was far from her idea of a dream man. “What did Mom say?”
“She threatened me. If I didn’t know better, I’d tell you that woman can see through fiber optics. Straight along the telephone wires from Cincinnati to Fort Lee. She told me if I didn’t mend my ways, she’d have your father come see me. I always knew she was nosy, but it was as if she sat down right on my bed while Julio and I—”
“Please don’t tell me she’s putting Annie on a plane.”
“Judging from the loud wails in the background, no. Your sister may be fighting the good fight, but she hasn’t won yet.”
“You wouldn’t want two of us in the apartment. Would you, Gran?”
“It won’t come to that.”
Darcie didn’t quite know what that meant. Nothing new for her these days—at home or at work. She gathered her coat, her gloves, her tote bag and started for the entryway, Jane hissing at her heels. If she hurried, she could catch the next ferry to Manhattan.