Hustle Sweet Love

by Davis, Maggie;

  “Hey, kid, are you all right?” the layout artist cried, getting out of his seat and stepping over Jamie Hatworth to help.

  Someone a few rows back said loudly, “Did she faint?”

  “Shouldn’t we all?” another voice drawled from the other side of the auditorium.

  Since Lacy’s legs would not cooperate, the layout artist and advertising man on Lacy’s right were having a difficult time dragging her out from under the row of seats. The ad man held Lacy awkwardly under her arms, her elbows at right angles, while the layout artist rather enthusiastically ran his hands down Lacy’s thighs to her knees and gave them a helpful tug. Between the two of them they finally got a flushed, disheveled Lacy to her feet.

  Which was the last place she wanted to be, standing up alone and facing the stage.

  The president and chairman of the board had observed the rescue operation in the left row of auditorium seats with a stony expression. Now his cool, assessing stare took in Lacy, first as an employee who had managed to interrupt him in the middle of a sentence, then, as his gaze passed over Lacy’s elegantly slender figure in her Geoffrey Beene suit, with the growing interest of a man who could not help but be impressed with a ravishingly beautiful young woman. Even one who had just fallen flat on her fanny.

  As the silence dragged on, the chairman’s thoughtful look lingered on the topknot of Lacy’s distinctive hair and the strands of dark-blond curls beginning to unravel around her cheeks and ears. Even more slowly and thoughtfully his look dropped to Lacy’s wide emerald eyes and then to her mouth, which was hanging open, helpless and speechless. In the few seconds it took for recognition to register, the gray eyes turned dark, black pupils dilating in sudden shock. Then there was an Antarctic blast of something indescribable.

  For a long moment they stared at each other.

  Without taking his probing gaze from Lacy, whose knees were giving way, allowing her to sink back down slowly into her seat, the president and chairman of the board raised his hand commandingly, index finger crooked, to the group of executives standing behind him. A young man in a charcoal pin-striped suit rushed to the black panther’s elbow. The chairman murmured something to him, not turning his head, his eyes still fixed on Lacy. The pin-striped executive immediately left the stage.

  “I would now like to introduce,” Michael Echevarria said in the same cool, uninflected voice, “a man you will get to know very well in coming weeks, Fad’s new vice-president of administration, transferred from our corporation to yours, Mr. George Hanley.”

  Another hard-faced executive took the podium while the pantherish figure of the conglomerate head strode quickly from the stage.

  What Mr. Hanley, Fad’s new vice-president of administration, had to say to the assembled Fad employees Lacy never knew. She sat where she was, immobilized and nonfunctioning, not even hearing Jamie Hatworth’s anxious whispers prodding her, only thinking about what she was going to do now that she was out of another job. It was probably even too late to make contact with the Western States Wholesalers for their spring tour. Not to mention that the show coordinator had been rather nasty about the return, via priority mail, of the somewhat-worse-for-wear black crepe Claude Montana.

  When the last of the speakers on the stage had filed out of the auditorium, Lacy was not surprised to see the Echevarria executive in his pin stripes bending over her. “Miss Kingman,” the conglomerate wolf said. He was muscular and keenly self-important. But he couldn’t resist an appreciative look as Lacy bent to examine the runs in her stockings where they’d caught on the rows of the seat in front when she fell. “That’s your name, isn’t it—Miss Tracy Kingman?”

  They’d gotten to Gloria Farnham, Lacy thought, groaning. All it took was that crooked finger from the chairman of the board and his corporation executives had scurried off to find out who she was.

  When Lacy nodded, not bothering to correct him, the corporate wolf went on, “Mr. Echevarria would like to see you in the office of the publisher, Miss Kingman, as soon as possible.”

  There it was, she told herself. The blow had fallen. Now she was being summoned by the new owner of Fad Publishing Group to explain how she had jumped from one place and profession in Tulsa to another in New York so quickly. When anyone in their right mind would know no explanation was possible.

  Lacy got to her feet with the resigned air of a felon who has just been ordered to the warden’s office. He hadn’t believed her before. She had no hope of being able to explain her way out of this, either.

  Eight

  Unfortunately, Keith got on the elevator with Lacy. Before she could punch up, the Fad management trainee had punched the down button. Keith’s coat jacket was open, his tie was loosened, and he was pale, as though he were recovering from a great shock. He looked as unhappy as Lacy felt.

  “Please, I really have to go upstairs,” Lacy said weakly as the elevator cage started down. “I’ve been summoned to the executive offices.”

  “Well, I’m leaving,” he told her. “You’ll just have to wait.”

  “Leaving?” For a moment Lacy was distracted from her own troubles; Keith, their ex-millionaire Wall Streeter who was always so condescending with the other junior writers couldn’t be quitting, she told herself. “You mean like—leaving permanently?”

  He turned to look at her scornfully. “Well, you don’t expect me to stay here, do you? With Michael Echevarria—’El Lobo’ himself?”

  “El Lobo?” Lacy gasped.

  Keith looked even more condescending. “It means ‘the wolf.’ Of Wall Street, of course. His reputation’s not as questionable as Ivan Boesky’s,” he went on. “I mean, nobody’s charged Echevarria with anything illegal. He’s just a basher. His specialty is bashing stocks, corporations, brokers—anything that gets in his way.”

  He looked at her with suddenly narrowed eyes. “He’s called you to his office, hasn’t he? I saw what happened in the auditorium. You better not go. I hear he’s the same way with women.”

  “W-with women?” Lacy stammered as the elevator doors opened and they stepped out into the Fad Publishing Group Building’s lobby. “You—you don’t mean he ‘bashes’ them, too?”

  “Who knows?” Keith said ominously. “It would certainly be in character.”

  “But what’s bashing?” Lacy said frantically as she tried to keep up with him crossing the lobby. “Do you mean psychological or—” She shuddered. “You can’t mean anything like physical abuse!”

  They went through the Fad Publishing Building’s swinging doors, and then they were on the sidewalk. Keith stood with one foot on the curb to hail passing cabs.

  “Bashing is an attitude, my dear,” he shouted over the mid-Manhattan traffic. “I once saw Michael Echevarria grab a broker by his tie and push him into a computer and screw up an hour’s trading. He got a buddy of mine fired for talking to his girlfriend on the telephone about good stocks to buy.

  “He’s El Lobo, all right,” Keith said, jumping into a cab that had just drawn up. “I wouldn’t work for him if you gave me fifty percent of Fad magazine’s stock.”

  Lacy shuddered. It sounded bad enough. She bent to the cab’s open window. “But, Keith, isn’t talking to your girlfriend about what stocks to buy illegal?”

  Their former management trainee pointed to the People magazine Lacy was still clutching. “Read about him,” he shouted as the cab pulled away. “But don’t let him get near you!”

  Nine

  The gold on the heavy plate-glass doors said simply, publisher and under that, fad magazine group. Beyond the executive secretary’s lushly furnished area there was another door of carved Norwegian oak, and beyond that was the Fad publisher’s office with Sheraton and Hepplewhite wing chairs, a Persian rug and green-silk-damask-draped windows that overlooked the corner of New York’s Madison Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street. Seated behind a huge Second Empire mahogany desk in the borrowed office was the black panther from Echevarria Enterprises, Inc., reading something from a file fol
der spread before him. He did not look up when Lacy came in.

  He looked even bigger, even more powerfully broad shouldered sitting down, if that was possible, she thought with a sudden leap of her wildly thudding heart. His hair was a little rumpled, as though he had just run his lingers through it several times in the privacy of the publisher’s office, but otherwise from what she could see of it and the angle of his jaw, his high-cheekboned face registered a familiar icy reserve.

  “Sit down,” he told her, not looking up.

  Lacy stayed on her feet.

  “Tell me what you’re doing here,” he said smoothly as he studied another sheet from the file folder.

  Lacy lifted her chin. “I really am a model,” she declared, wanting to be employed but wanting to go down fighting, too. “That is, I was a model. Now I’m a junior fashion writer.” Even as she spoke, she knew it sounded terribly unconvincing.

  “Is your name really Kingston? Adelaide Lacy Kingston?” He set the paper aside and began on another. “That’s not another alias, is it?”

  It looked like her job résumé, Lacy thought, craning. “I was named for my grandmother, actually.”

  If it was her job résumé, then it was her personnel file he had in front of him. Lacy could guess what frantic effort must have gone into pulling her file in Fad’s personnel office, what rushing around and hysteria there must have been to find it. She’d only been there a few weeks and she already knew about personnel’s chronic problems.

  “You started this month as a writer?” he said from behind the paper. “That’s quick work. Did you have a friend on the staff who got you the job? Someone you, ah, did a few favors for in return? What’s his name?”

  “What?” Lacy said, incredulous.

  “His name, please.” Now he lifted his head and those all-too-familiar Antarctic-gray eyes met Lacy’s with all the crushing impact of a moving concrete truck.

  Oh, wow, she thought weakly, did this always happen? When a man you’d been to bed with looked at you, did you always remember suddenly and with such hot, devastating reaction what it was like to have his arms around you, his naked beautiful body holding you and his hard mouth kissing the corners of your lips? Just barely, tenderly brushing them?

  “Stop that,” his cold, furious voice said.

  Lacy gulped. Whatever her face had been registering, it must have been her own version of 220 sizzling volts. While his expression had hardened with an ice coating of black fury.

  “I’ll give you your money back!” Lacy blurted. She’d already spent part of it on the rent, but not much. “I’ll—write you a check!”

  He looked as though he could grind, chew up and swallow ragged pieces of automobiles, she thought, fascinated, as she watched his teeth clamp together.

  “I really am a model,” Lacy squeaked. Her throat had gone dry. “I even had one year as the L’Oreal Girl, before I got my B.A. in English from NYU.”

  “You were out of work for fifteen months,” the cold voice chopped her off. “It’s there in your résumé. And it’s well known what models do to supplement their incomes. Tell me the name of the man who got you your job here.”

  “Some models!” she protested. “A few models maybe, not all of them!”

  “What did you live on for a year and a half?”

  “My earnings!” Lacy yelled.

  Wrong line again, she knew immediately. “And unemployment!” It was too late. “Listen, I really need this job,” she pleaded. “I’m a fashion writer—I submitted all my clippings when I applied here at Fad. I’m a darned good one!”

  “You free-lanced a couple of times for Women’s Wear Daily, that was all,” he said, lifting a clipping from her file folder to study it.

  “I’m good, or Fad wouldn’t have hired me!”

  “Tell me his name,” he persisted.

  For a moment she could only stare her fury. “Hollings J. Blackhammer!”

  She saw his tanned, strong fingers reach for a note pad on the desk and a pencil. “What does he do at Fad?” he said in a tone like ice floes grinding together.

  “How do I know?” she flung back. “I just made him up!”

  There was a small snapping noise as the pencil in his fingers broke in two. He stared down at the polished expanse of the Fad publisher’s desk with a stony expression. “Your contract with Fad prohibits moonlighting,” he said with the control of limitless rage, “in any, uh, conflicting activity. I suggest you read it again.”

  “Moonlighting? Is that what you thought I was doing in Tulsa?” Lacy cried, appalled. “Moonlighting? I was modeling in a wholesalers’ show!”

  He tapped a finger ominously on the polished surface of the desk. “I imagine you made substantially more with your sideline,” he rasped, “than you did with modeling.”

  “You’re not serious!” Lacy cried, knowing that he was.

  “Fad does not need,” he said, his grim lips hardly moving, “employees with this sort of ... conflicting vocation. I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you the reasons why.”

  Lacy continued to stare at him. Obviously he was absolutely convinced that she was some sort of part-time —

  She realized, with genuine horror, that on the basis of the evidence there wasn’t much else he could think. There she’d been in Tulsa—and here she was now. Due to a horrible stroke of miscalculation, she still had his money, and he thought she was capable of supplementing her junior fashion writer’s salary (which of course wasn’t permanent yet) the way—he also thought—she’d been doing in Tulsa.

  “I tried to get rid of you,” she blurted, “I told you I was all booked up!” Inwardly, Lacy groaned. It was happening all over again, the weird, demon-ridden words just came spilling out. “You’re the one,” she tried again, “who practically dragged me out of the bar and wouldn’t let me explain! Drat, it was all supposed to be a joke!” She took a deep breath. “Listen—did I act like—what you’re trying to tell me I acted like? Don’t try to mix me up, you know what I mean! It’s all your fault,” she quavered, “you and all those crazy, wild—”

  Kisses, Lacy was going to say. But she stopped abruptly.

  There he sat, insulting her with every word that he uttered, obviously hating her, and himself, for what had happened. The way he was acting, she’d die before she’d tell him that she’d lost her head in Tulsa. That for the first time his sensuous, magnificent love-making had aroused her own passionate nature and left her shaken and confused and unable to forget the experience. Or the man.

  She was astonished to hear him say suddenly, in a low, vibrant growl, “Why did you walk out when I told you I wanted you to stay? I had something to say to you.”

  “Walk out where?” Lacy said, baffled, thinking of the auditorium.

  “You know very well where,” he ground out. “You know what I’m talking about. In Tulsa.”

  Oh, that. Suddenly she could not meet those probing gray eyes. She couldn’t explain about that morning in the penthouse, not now. It brought back an aching sense of guilt, and embarrassment. Besides, there couldn’t possibly be any explanations: he had the sort of mind that made him believe, even now, that she had some sort of influential friend at Fad who’d helped get her a job.

  “Look, I need this job,” she pleaded. “You can’t take it away from me! I worked so damned hard to get it!”

  Oops—wrong move again, she saw as the muscle in his jaw froze. What she’d meant was she’d spent eight months job hunting, sandwiching it in between modeling assignments and traveling, submitting her few free-lance articles to practically any fashion publication that would look at her stuff and trying desperately to get into print. Not what his face was showing.

  “Echevarria Enterprises,” he said, looking stonily down at the surface of the desk again, “has announced all editorial personnel will continue in their present jobs for the next three months. The magazine doesn’t need a panic right now about who’s going to be terminated and who’s going to stay. It needs to get on a
moneymaking basis without any further unnecessary”—he bit down on the word—”disruptions.” He reached for a note pad on the polished mahogany and drew it toward him. “If you continue to be employed here, there has to be some guarantee that you won’t have a negative impact on the job environment.”

  What was he saying? Negative impact? “What am I,” Lacy cried, “some sort of acid rain or something? I can’t believe this!”

  The gray eyes glittered. “Disruptions,” he snarled, “being here. Using your obvious ... ‘appeal’ ... to get special jobs, special treatment.”

  “Are you kidding?” Lacy gasped. “You mean, you think I’m going to be hooking here on the job at Fad?”

  “I haven’t accused you of that,” he scowled. “On a purely business basis, I have to accept your explanation that what happened in Tu—in your recent past was your idea of a joke. That is your explanation, isn’t it, that you were suddenly overcome with a desire to be humorous?

  “Whatever your motivation,” he went on before he could answer, “it’s not going to happen again. Not at my magazine, anyway. I intend to see there’s some control maintained over your sense of ... fun.”

  “Oh, dirty,” Lacy breathed, staring at him. She got the message this time. “That’s really low, you know.”

  “Therefore, during the three-month period of job re-evaluation, it’s going to be necessary to protect the work environment here and keep personnel on a stable, efficient basis, so I intend to intervene personally. That is, I want an agreement with you that there’s an exclusive demand not only on your on-time but your off-time activities, too. It is,” he finished, “purely precautionary.”

  For a moment, Lacy couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “You’re going to make a demand on my what?”

  “There’s a lot at stake in any takeover, and corporate stability is top priority during the initial shaking-out process,” he said grimly. “I can’t afford to let you complicate the status of a particularly sensitive acquisition.”