Hustle Sweet Love

by Davis, Maggie;

  “I don’t believe this,” Lacy cried. “In the first place, I can’t be sure what you’re talking about!”

  “The methodology is already established—we can take it from there. I can make space for you,” he continued, picking up a pencil from the tooled English-leather holder on the desk and drawing the note pad before him, “on Fridays. You will have a weekly appointment to meet me at my East Side condominium here in New York. Let’s say early evening sometime, as soon after work as is feasible.”

  “Methodology?” She stared at him. “Is that what you call it? I thought you said it was moonlighting. Or my weird sense of humor!”

  “Only Friday nights are available,” he informed her, “as I spend my weekends out of town.”

  “This is completely crazy.” She took a deep breath. “Did you say you’re, ah, going to supervise my free time? To protect your company?”

  “Sufficient free time,” he said, not looking up. “I haven’t got room on my schedule for all of it.”

  “That’s insulting,” Lacy yelled. “It’s probably downright illegal!”

  “On the contrary,” he shot back, “conducting your ... unauthorized activities ... while you’re employed here, is a violation of your contract with Fad. That’s what’s illegal.” The pencil in the tanned fingers began to draw heavy parallel slashes on the white surface of the note-pad paper. “I’m demanding total exclusivity,” he said, scribbling dollar signs next to them. “Otherwise, the whole thing’s a waste of my time.”

  “Your time? I’m not even sure what we’re talking about!” Lacy stared at that set, handsome face, thinking it seemed impossible that this was the man who had held her in his arms and loved her so passionately and tenderly for one whole fantastic night. And yet it was, she thought, feeling almost tearful. What made him think she wouldn’t show up for a Friday-night date with him just because she wanted to? And without all this garbage about corporate stability and protecting the work environment?

  In the next moment, Lacy regretted her weakness. Whatever he was offering had really taken her off guard, but that didn’t mean she was absolutely lacking in integrity, in self-respect. “That’s blackmail,” she cried, coming to her senses. “That’s all it is, you’re blackmailing me!”

  “Call it job insurance,” he said smoothly.

  “I’m a writer—a writer, do you hear me?” Lacy found herself suddenly breathless as those furious eyes met hers. She was so distracted by the effect of his hard-bitten, incredibly sensuous face, even the faint virile smell of the shower soap that he used, that she felt her indignation leaking out of her like air from a punctured bicycle tire. Quick, Lacy told herself, he may be fantastic looking, but remember, this man is ruthless, cruel and unfair. And obviously all too willing to believe you’re something you’re not. He’s probably severely neurotic.

  He didn’t look severely neurotic, she thought. He looked dangerously, sexily irresistible. Even scowling.

  She was struck with the vengeful thought that she ought to agree to the stupid idea if only to get him to stop haunting her dreams. Once she gave him enough rope to demonstrate thoroughly what a total rat he was, it would wipe him from her subconscious forever.

  “Do you mean,” Lacy hooted, “that you’d go to all this trouble, that you’d actually blackmail me, just to get me to go to bed with you on Friday nights?”

  Their eyes locked, her emerald glare pinning his gray, chilling gaze. “Is that your interpretation, Miss Kingston?” He lifted a dark, sardonic eyebrow. “I said we’d meet on Friday nights. That could mean dinner, the theater, nothing more than that in some social circles.”

  “Not in mine,” she snapped, “I know what you mean.” In the next instant she could have bitten her tongue. “That is,” she croaked, “ah, what did you mean by ‘total exclusivity’?”

  “No other men,” he growled. “I damned well don’t intend to join any long line forming at your front door.”

  “It’s blackmail!” Lacy cried, not wanting to give up. “It’s unfair! I told you how much this job means to me. You’ve got a real meatball mentality, do you know that? I bet you’re convinced the whole female population of the world is divided up into ‘good women’ and ‘bad women,’ with no in-between! It’s exactly what I’d expect from a—a—Spanish half-Irishman!”

  “Basque,” he barked. “Basque, not Spanish. There are Basques living in France as well as Spain, for your information. Besides, I’m just as American as you are. I was born here.”

  “Then you ought to know better,” Lacy retorted loftily.

  He glared at her for a long moment. “Seven p.m.,” he said. “My car will pick you up promptly at six-forty-five. That should give you time to change and freshen up. The new work guidelines for Fad magazine stipulate no more overtime on Fridays, so you shouldn’t have any problems with that.” He made some more notations with the pencil on the paper before him. “Also, no last minute requests to shift our date to some other evening, please. Other nights are out because of my heavy workload. And as I’ve told you, weekends I’m out of town.”

  “I’m not going to let you do this to me again,” Lacy screeched. “You practically forced me to have sex with you in Tulsa. Yes, you did! I couldn’t find my way out of that penthouse and you knew it when you brought me up there! All that ginger ale, and dancing and—and the rest of it!”

  There was another sizzling moment’s silence as their eyes locked.

  “Clean out your desk, Miss Kingston,” he said with menacing softness. “I’ll call down and have Fad’s payroll department write you a check for your wages through the end of this week.”

  “I haven’t got a desk! I’m sharing a corner table with four other junior fashion writers! That’s the way it is around here.”

  “If you stay, I’ll see one’s assigned to you,” he said indifferently. His hand was poised over the intercom button.

  That’s the way he does business, Lacy thought, keeping her eyes fixed on the finger that was ready to call the secretary in the outer office and give the command to fire her. Hard, ruthless, powerful—it was so different, she thought despairingly, from the way he made love.

  “I can’t do it, I live on the West Side,” she protested. There was nothing even remotely fair about this; at the end of the three months’ employee-re-evaluation period, he could fire her along with all the rest of the Fad staffers who were going to get the ax. It looked like the publishing business was going to be just as bad as fashion modeling, and for the same reason. She didn’t believe a word about dinner and the theater; it was just the same old line all over again. “I don’t even get home until six. How can I be across town by seven!”

  After a moment’s silence he said, “I take it that’s a ‘yes’?”

  Lacy gritted her teeth. “How long is this supposed to last?” she demanded. “I mean this so-called ‘Friday-night date.’ Are we talking about the whole three-month job freeze? Or what?”

  She’d seen his big frame stiffen. For the first time the arresting gray eyes looked at her with an expression that was not coldly furious or challenging, but knowing and slightly vulnerable. It made her own soft flesh quiver as though it had been pierced by quick, sensuous arrows.

  “Why don’t we,” the black panther’s voice said huskily, “see how it goes?” The dimple-indents flickered at the corners of his hard mouth and then disappeared. “I’ll call down and have them find you a desk,” he told her.

  When Lacy took the elevator down to the floor of the Fad editorial department, she noticed that people seemed to glance at her, then hurry out of her way. Managing editor Gloria Farnham was waiting at the door of her office, oddly enough, just to greet her. A couple of assistant editors, including Jamie Hatworth, were lurking in the background; they seemed to be waiting to greet Lacy, too.

  “Oh, Stacy, sweetie,” the managing editor said, grabbing both of Lacy’s hands in hers. “So sorry we seemed to have lost you in the absolute shambles of everything taking place this m
orning. But I did see your little accident in the auditorium. Are you all right? Do you need a cup of coffee? A Band-Aid? Would you like to go lie down in the lounge?”

  Lacy shook her head. She saw that two building servicemen were carrying a file cabinet and a lamp out of a corner editorial office, and a third stood by to supervise.

  “We’re just getting things fixed up for you,” the managing editor said, taking Lacy by the arm and steering her past the furniture movers. An associate editor was grabbing down some framed photographs of fashion models wearing surreal gowns by Kenzo and Tohji Yammamoto from the office wall, looking over her shoulder at Lacy apprehensively.

  “How do you like it?” the managing editor said, waving her hand to indicate the corner office. “If you’re not comfy here—the air conditioning is a beast, it does blow right down your neck sometimes—you will let me know, won’t you?”

  “It looks very nice,” Lacy said diplomatically, watching the associate editor clean her things from the top of the desk and throw them hurriedly on top of the framed pictures she had just taken down.

  “You’ll love it,” Gloria Farnham said with enthusiasm. “The only thing is, sweetie, I’m afraid we can’t take you off the little Seventh Avenue Garment District assignments just yet.” She pushed her hair back quickly and smiled her vague smile. “Personally, I wouldn’t want to tie you down with beginner’s stuff at all those obscure dress houses Jamie’s got you going to—I think you’ve got too much talent. But the new management was very definite about it when they called down a little while ago. No change in assignments yet was what they said.

  “But I guess you know that already,” she finished meaningfully.

  “That’s OK,” Lacy said, looking around. She was beginning to feel rather numb. But she was putting two and two together. And it added up to awful.

  When the president and chairman of the board relayed a command to Fad magazine to find a desk for her, this was what happened. It was a wonder they didn’t give her the whole editorial floor, including the restrooms. And they assumed, of course, what Michael Echevarria was getting for it. Who wouldn’t?

  “But a little basic run-through in the Garment District for a few weeks won’t hurt a bit, love,” the managing editor consoled her, giving Lacy’s hand an affectionate little pat. “After all, you’re still, ah, a beginner.”

  “You can say that again,” Lacy muttered disconsolately.

  Ten

  As Lacy made her way late Friday afternoon through Fishman Brothers’ loft on Thirty-second Street, where the sewing machines were still going rapidly and noisily to fill the orders for the now-famous Disco Queen line, she was feeling particularly beleaguered and out of sorts.

  Nothing was going right in her chosen career of magazine fashion writing, especially since her meeting with the black panther of Echevarria Enterprises, Inc. A person would think that Harvard public-relations expert Harrison Salstonstall Potts IV and the literally explosive Fishman Brothers fashion showing would be enough for one person to cope with. She never thought there’d be more.

  It had been a hectic week, scheduled with back-to-back lingerie and rainwear assignments. And this had been an especially bad Friday, trying to do interviews with the owners of an establishment called Tiny Lady Training Brassieres. Now it looked like her life was once again in danger of being reduced to absolute chaos, Lacy couldn’t help thinking, thanks to the sudden appearance of the tycoon from that night in Tulsa. She needed a sympathetic shoulder to lean on. A shoulder belonging to someone kind. Someone with worldly experience who might know, perhaps, how this outrageous demand from the president and chairman of the board of Fad’s new owners could happen. She wasn’t going to divulge all the details, because not even Irving Fishman would believe them, but the dress manufacturer seemed like the man to confide in. After all, she remembered, he had a daughter, too.

  As Lacy made her way down the length of the Fishman Brothers workroom, with its rows of rattling machines and busy seamstresses at work on piles of mega-color purple and green satins, she could see that the door to Mr. Fishman’s tiny glass office was closed and that he seemed to have someone with him. Too late it occurred to her that an afternoon at the end of the week was probably not the best time in the world to visit the successful fashion entrepreneur Mr. Fishman had just become. But before Lacy could turn back, he saw her and stood up at his desk to beckon her inside.

  “My dear genius young lady,” Mr. Fishman said, embracing her warmly and placing a large audible kiss on her cheek, “so how’s it with you? I see you still have your job at the magazine, they should be so lucky to have you yet. Speaking of that, Mr. Potts the fourth called me to have a long, friendly conversation, and he tells me he’s returning to Boston to open his own public-relations firm, now that he has a world-renowned promotional triumph like Fishmans’ Disco Queen behind him. I wish him the best of luck.

  “Why don’t you join his firm, Lacy dear?” he asked. “I get the very great impression Potts the fourth would like to have you in Boston.”

  “Oh, no,” Lacy murmured, genuinely appalled. “I really don’t want to do P.R., Mr. Fishman. I—I have too many things I’m involved with as it is.” She shot a cautious glance at Mr. Fishman’s visitor, who had gotten politely to his feet, balancing a superb alpaca topcoat in one arm and a handcrafted Mark Cross saddle-leather briefcase in the other. “If you’re busy, I can come back another time.”

  “Busy?” Mr. Fishman boomed genially. “Never too busy for you, my gorgeous young woman. Permit me to introduce Mr. Alexander van Renssalaer,” he said, turning to the other man, “a lawyer for the insurance company which underwrote the former great but now destroyed Zebra establishment. He is just paying a friendly visit to clear up a few liability questions, which, I am happy to say, are no longer a problem, thanks to the fact that Mr. van Renssalaer also happens to be a friend of Mr. Potts the fourth, who went with him to Harvard.

  “This,” the dress manufacturer said introducing Lacy with a fond smile, “is Miss Lacy Kingston, the famous fashion model of a few years ago, now a writer for Fad magazine and also the marvelous young lady whose original idea was the late, lamented Zebra disco promotional dress showing.”

  Lacy winced. Mr. Fishman had obviously forgotten that her participation in the Zebra disco event was supposed to be a deep secret. The lawyer extended a firm, nicely manicured hand and seized Lacy’s tentative one with a particularly interested smile.

  “Fad magazine,” he murmured. “You people have just been bought out by the Echevarria conglomerate, isn’t that right? Good luck. Not many employees survive their takeovers.”

  The insurance-company lawyer was certainly very attractive, from the top of his close-cropped, rather reddish hair to his broad shoulders, clothed smoothly in finest heather-gray English worsted, and the thick, sturdy soles of his handmade Rawson Smith brogues. Everything about him spoke decisively of breeding. The name, van Renssalaer, was one of New York’s oldest and finest. That penetrating look in his amber eyes had taken thorough stock of Lacy from the moment she’d stepped into Mr. Irving Fishman’s office.

  “A rough type, Echevarria,” the lawyer said in guarded tones, “and ruthless. He’s a very dangerous man to work for.”

  “Well,” Lacy said, “I—why, do you know him? I mean, does he have the reputation for being dangerous, ah, generally?”

  “There are all sorts of reputations,” Alexander van Renssalaer smiled at her, “and Echevarria’s got several. Which one are you referring to? Financial? Personal? His way with women?” He shook his reddish head. “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” he said by way of description.

  Lacy had just remembered with a guilty pang that this perceptive New York corporate lawyer was, after all, talking to Michael Echevarria’s regular, exclusive Friday-night date. “Just asking, actually,” she said quickly. “It’s not all that impor—”

  “It’s a subject, if you’ll allow me to say so,” the lawyer said, with a flash of predatory white teeth, �
�that needs a whole luncheon to do it justice. Anyone, my dear, who works for Echevarria should really know what he or she is getting into. It would be my pleasure, Miss Kingston, to tell you all about it—say at the Yale Club, noon tomorrow? I love eating at the Yale Club even though I went to Harvard. I’m also an expert on how Echevarria operates. I’ve certainly taken him to court enough times.”

  Lacy stared at the broad-shouldered man, who looked at her with undisguised interest. Tell her how Michael Echevarria did business? After her interview with him in the Fad publisher’s office, she already knew! “Some other time,” she breathed, inching toward the door of Mr. Fishman’s little office. “It’s nice of you to offer, but I really have to go now.”

  “May I call you at Fad?” the urbane voice persisted. He followed her to the door and held it open. “You’re a writer, is that what I heard Irving say?”

  “I’ll give you her number,” Mr. Fishman offered approvingly. “She works so hard—what this beautiful girl needs is a nice lunch every once in a while in a cultivated atmosphere like the Yale Club. I don’t know it personally, but I hear the food is excellent.”

  Drat Irving Fishman, Lacy thought, beating a hasty retreat through the Fishman Brothers’ busy workrooms. He was kind, he was sweet, but after all, she thought uncharitably, if it hadn’t been for him, she’d never have seen the Zebra Lounge go up in smoke and flames in what had definitely been one of the most terrifying experiences of her life. Now he was trying to be a one-man dating service.

  Lacy pulled the collar of her denim jacket up around her ears as the wind on west Thirty-second Street tore down the gritty canyons of the Garment District. As she did so, she saw out of the corner of her eye that the burly man in the doorway across the street snapped to attention.

  The sight of that broad figure trying to be furtive was the last straw. Impulsively, Lacy decided to take a cab. She was running late as it was. And, she remembered, she was out of her Fad-magazine bus tokens. Even more impulsively, Lacy nodded to the man in the doorway, lifting her hand and crooking an imperious finger. Come here, her gesture said in no uncertain terms.