He started across the street toward her. Lacy couldn’t help thinking he looked rather tired and cold. “Couldn’t you even grab a cup of coffee while you were hanging around out here?” she wanted to know. “There’s a deli on the corner of Seventh and Thirty-second.”
“I hadda wait,” he told her gruffly.
His name was Joe. She’d gotten that much out of him when he’d nearly fallen on top of her trying not to lose her on the crowded stairs of the IRT Thirty-fourth Street subway station. But he wouldn’t admit that he was following her or watching her. Or who had hired him to do it. It wasn’t hard to guess. Joe had picked her up in the lobby of the Fad Publishing Company at 5:00 p.m. last Monday, and he’d been tailing her ever since. She didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that Joe was a walking, watching guarantee of the “exclusive” part of her Friday-night date.
At first she’d been so furious to find what was obviously a private detective following her that Lacy had slammed around her apartment to express her outrage that Michael Echevarria could have done this. To have put a tail on her, just to see if she was going out with other men! Dishes had rattled on their shelves as she stamped through the kitchen. She could almost hear the black panther saying coldly that he was only protecting his Friday-night “exclusive” arrangement.
“Come on,” Lacy said, now taking the detective by his burly arm and pulling him toward a taxi that had just stopped in the middle of Thirty-second Street. “Make it easy for yourself—we’ll travel together.” She practically had to push the heavyset man into the cab ahead of her. “I’ve got to go to Daitch Shopwell and get some groceries before I go home. You wouldn’t,” she said suddenly, feeling an impish devil prodding her, “want to eat spaghetti with me for dinner tonight, would you?”
“Miss Kingston, please.” His rough-hewn features wrinkled up in anguish. “You wouldn’t wanna get me in big trouble, would you?”
Lacy smiled at him. He looked about fifty, probably a former detective with the NYPD, that’s what they usually were on television. From what she could tell, he was practically on 24-hour duty. Joe had been downstairs in front of her apartment building no matter how early she’d left for work that week, and he came back with her at night when she returned from Fad, no matter how late.
“Are you following me, Joe?” Lacy asked. “You would tell me if you’d been tailing me all week, wouldn’t you?”
He twisted his eyes at her, dumbly.
Why was she letting Michael Echevarria do this to her? she asked herself. The answer was She needed her job.
That’s no answer, she argued. Why didn’t she tell herself the truth? You’re putting up with all this because you’re falling in love, her inner voice admonished her.
No, I’m not! she protested. Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve never been in love in my life!
And what makes you think there isn’t a time and place for everything? the first voice jeered. Even you, Lacy Kingston?
No—but not like this! she complained. Michael Echevarria is hard, ruthless, a chauvinist exploiter of women! You know what he thinks of me! Never, never! Not with him!
Why not? the inner voice countered. Have you been able to forget him since the first night you met him? Does he haunt your dreams, make you miserable, do you long to be in his arms, feel his kisses again?
The truth was devastating.
“I’m falling in love,” Lacy murmured, staring wide-eyed at Joe’s beefy form next to her.
“Please, Miss Kingston,” the detective almost screamed, “don’t say things like that! I’ll lose this job! I gotta wife and two grown kids in Mamaroneck!”
As the taxi sped up the West Side Highway, Lacy felt a sudden rush of compassion for the man beside her. She was, after all, a tenderhearted girl; she couldn’t help it if Michael Echevarria brought out the worst in her. She slipped her hand under Joe’s big arm consolingly, even as he gave a muffled shriek. “Have you ever met Mr. Echevarria personally?” Lacy wanted to know.
Silence.
“Oh, come on, Joe,” Lacy persisted, “it’s been pretty dull for you this past week, hasn’t it? I’ll bet your whole report sheet, or whatever it is, is blank.”
“I logged you every place you went, Miss Kingston,” he said stiffly, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. “Even when you had lunch with the tall blond guy.”
“Mr. Paul, from the Thornton Modeling Agency,” Lacy said gently.
“Yeah.”
“He’s gay,” Lacy said even more gently.
“I’ll put it down on the report,” he said, “and check it out.”
“But somebody,” Lacy murmured, “is already checking it out, aren’t they, Joe?”
“Please, Miss Kingston,” he said, rolling his eyes to look at her without moving his head. “Don’t ask me that.”
The taxicab stopped on Broadway at Seventy-ninth Street in front of the Shopwell supermarket, and Lacy let him go.
“OK, Joe,” she told him determinedly, “I’m going to see that you and I get something out of this. No more subways, OK? No more crowded Seventh Avenue buses, right? From now on, we’re on Mr. Echevarria’s expense account.” As Joe stared at her, she pointed to the taxi meter. “That means,” she told him sweetly, “you pay.”
Eleven
At seven-thirty sharp that evening a Rolls Royce limousine with dark-tinted windows picked Lacy up at her apartment house on west Eightieth Street and whisked her through Central Park to the East Side, where it delivered her to a very select, and impossibly expensive, condominium tower on Sutton Place. The Rolls Royce’s good-looking, very polite and silent young chauffeur in gray livery saw Lacy into the arms of the condominium doorman. He in turn escorted her inside to a private elevator with all the care of a Brink’s armored-car driver depositing several million dollars’ worth of cargo in canvas sacks at Fort Knox.
Going up in the mahogany and gold-mirrored elevator, Lacy stared at her reflection with a mix of emotions. At the last moment she had decided to dress for her so-called date with the president and chairman of the board of Echevarria Enterprises, Inc., in an old lavender cashmere sweater that went well with the smoky blond of her long, curly hair and a purple and gray tweed skirt. She’d thrown an old beige belted London Fog over her shoulders, thinking that whatever Friday night’s activities consisted of, she’d save wear and tear on her really good clothes. She really didn’t care, she told herself, whether he liked it or not.
Still, her heart jumped into her throat when the elevator doors opened and she saw the black panther waiting for her in his condo foyer in another magnificent black tuxedo.
She had to admit that he looked absolutely fantastic. He held a drink of Scotch in his hand, his long, tanned fingers grasping the glass tightly as he took in her sweater, skirt and London Fog and the old white plastic boots she wore. His chiseled features flickered with some expression she didn’t recognize.
Wow, she thought, staring back at him. Before, he had only to touch her hand and all the zap! bam! powie! zeroed in. Now all he had to do was look at her!
“Hi,” Lacy whispered feelingly. It seemed like the right thing to say.
But actually the black panther was so heart-stoppingly beautiful in his marvelously tailored tuxedo, his dark curls tamed, his imported cologne so warm and musky in her nostrils, that Lacy half closed her eyes and actually swayed.
She caught herself just in time. No matter what she was there for, he had a name now, Michael Echevarria. He was owner of the conglomerate that had just acquired Fad magazine. He was the boss over all her bosses. He was also the cold, furious executive in the publisher’s office who’d told her that her job was in jeopardy unless she dated him exclusively. In a word, he was despicable.
“Come in,” the black panther said in his low voice. His hard, handsome face was just as impassive as it had been Monday morning when he’d stood on the stage of Fad’s large auditorium zapping all the poor magazine staffers with his ruthless directives. “I hav
e something I want you to do.”
I’ll just bet, Lacy told herself.
She flinched when he took her by the arm and steered her from the foyer into the living room of the apartment, which was decorated, Lacy saw somewhat apprehensively, in a style that was pretty ruthless and commanding, too. The décor was Sutton Place Expensive Contemporary, with leather, chrome, spare Finnish design work, hand-woven Greek fabrics and dark, waxed woods. It all had the unmistakable mark of an exclusive East Side, perhaps even international, interior decorator. A curious note was a bank of étagères, brass-trimmed glass showcases for a collection of eighteenth-century miniatures painted on ivory and set in diamond-and-gold frames, lovely enameled snuffboxes, raw hunks of semiprecious stones and antique gold and silver jewelry. He had said he loved beautiful things, she remembered; it certainly looked as though he didn’t mind having them around. The étagères and their contents looked like a collectibles show someone had staged for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
He didn’t pause to let Lacy stop and look. “The bedroom,” he said, his hand on her arm.
Lacy gritted her teeth. He was certainly getting right down to business. Talk about overbearing and crude! Besides, she had no intention of cooperating!
Still, the prospect of having the black panther make love to her returned now, with all the sneaky force it had had when she’d stepped out of the condominium elevator. Just the thought of it brought a hot, rushing sensation, like an invisible Jacuzzi roaring through her.
He was obviously too determined to get what he wanted to realize that given half a chance, the magic that had happened in Tulsa could easily overwhelm her. That she would probably be in his arms, willingly, eagerly, if he so much as kissed her. She had to fight the crazy, uncontrollable effect he had on her every moment she was with him. Stop thinking about such things! she told herself.
Lacy stumbled a little nervously on the inches-deep softness of a fabulous rug in orange and black geometrics. Three sides of the sternly masculine bedroom in silver, charcoal and beige were smoke-tinted beveled mirrors. They reflected back an image of a delectably slender young woman in a London Fog raincoat looking as though she were ready for anything.
“Good night, what’s the rush?” Lacy cried. “It isn’t even eight o’clock yet!” Obviously there would be no candlelight dining. Obviously there wouldn’t even be romantic waltzing to music from Dr. Zhivago. He thought he had it made with her job on the line.
She came to a sudden stop. The bed that dominated the room was emperor size, truly regal in its proportions, covered with a charcoal and beige silk bedspread. Laid out on the spread was, incredibly enough, a dark-green silk chiffon evening gown with a V neck, long transparent sleeves made of the same filmy fabric, matching dark-green strappy sandals in silk and a scandalously brief pair of lacy bikini panties.
“Get dressed,” the black panther told her. “We’re going out to dinner.”
Dinner? She could only stare at the green gown on the bed. Did that mean they were going to have a date after all? Her next thought was that she was the only person in the world who knew that this particular subtle shade of dark green set off her dark-blond hair and creamy-gold skin to perfection.
She gathered he had bought a long, green formal gown for her to wear to dinner. It was a lovely dress, her very own shade of green.
Well, Lacy thought, dinner it is. She wasn’t in the mood to complain. As she lifted the green silk chiffon, she ran her fingers along the neck seams, looking for a label. Her guess would have been Galanos or a Givenchy. But there was no label, and all the long seams were exquisite handwork, no machine stitching at all. The dress was a gorgeous piece of couture, she realized with something of a shock, with its simple lines, lavish yards of incredibly fragile silk fabric and thousands and thousands of tiny little hand stitches.
She guessed he’d called some New York designer to whip up this dress for their first Friday evening. It had only taken a fortune to do it.
“It will fit,” the low voice said from the doorway. “It was made from your measurements, supplied by your modeling agency.”
Good lord, the private eyes had been at it again! Naturally the president and chairman of the board of the Echevarria Enterprises conglomerate could afford unlimited time and expense hiring people to look up details like that. Even her 35-22-36 vital statistics!
Lacy stared down at the beautiful green dress. “I’ll be out in a minute,” she said, turning her back.
It only took a few seconds to strip off her lavender sweater, the tweed skirt and her mauve silk panties and bra and put them on the bed beside her. She perched on the edge of the coverlet to pull on the green silk bikini and matching panty hose. Only after a few seconds it dawned on her—she was not exactly alone. She looked up to see him still standing there in the doorway.
In total silence her stunned, emerald gaze locked with that totally impassive stare.
“I’ve seen you naked before,” he reminded her before she could speak. His interested gaze watched a crimson glow beat in her temples and up to her hairline as he took a sip from the drink in his hand. “I didn’t know women blushed anymore. It must be a lost art.”
“I practice a lot,” Lacy gritted.
He wants me, she was thinking with a slight ringing in her ears. I’ve been thinking all this time of how he affects me, and I’ve forgotten the way he looks. Hot and smoky. In his eyes, in his voice.
“Get dressed,” she heard him say. “We have reservations at the restaurant for eight-thirty.”
She was blushing so, she could feel the blood beating in her face like a bad case of sunburn. She slipped the cool, slithery green chiffon silk over her head and put her feet into the delicate dark-green silk sandals. He came around behind her to pull the zipper of the gown up the back.
“I need more lipstick,” she managed. She shied away from the brush of his hands against her bare skin. “I should put on a brighter red to go with—”
“Be still a minute.” He was standing so close behind her she could feel his breath on her hair.
Seconds later she heard the click of a box snapping open. He evidently tossed it on the bed behind him, for in the next moment both his hands put a cold, heavy object around her throat, taking some time with the catch.
In one of the beveled mirrors on the wall opposite the bed, Lacy saw herself standing in a stunning dark-green chiffon gown that fell in flowing straight lines from the fabric’s firm clasp on her breasts to froth like foam around her feet. It had been a long time since she’d worn fabulous haute couture, but even the famous unused Virginia Slims ad couldn’t compare with this. Around her throat, Lacy saw, her mouth dropping slightly open, was a magnificent show-stopping necklace of emeralds and diamonds that, if they were real, would have been worth several years of her salary as junior fashion writer for Fad. With Gloria Farnham’s annual wages thrown in, too.
“Nice,” she murmured, staring. “I’ve never seen better fakes.” Even imitations of this quality, she knew, cost a small fortune.
Somehow, though, as she watched the green fire and brilliant sparks clasping her throat, she had the uneasy feeling that what looked like white gold or platinum and replicas of marquise diamonds and large square-cut emeralds were real. The diamonds sent a shaft of sparks in the soft lights of the bedroom when she breathed, and the deep green depths of the emeralds exactly matched the shade of her eyes.
“They are fakes, aren’t they?” she asked.
His big, powerful hands rested lightly on her chiffon-clad shoulders as he stood behind her. In the mirror, Lacy saw his dark head bend slowly and descend to the back of her neck, and she felt the inexpressibly shivery brush of his lips there.
“What do you think?” he muttered, his teeth taking a little sensuous nibble of her smooth skin.
The old, familiar instant paralysis was back. The feel of his mouth was as overwhelming as the imperial ransom of emeralds and diamonds that rested so heavily against her throat.
<
br /> “God, you’re beautiful,” he whispered as he lifted the weight of her hair to run warm, firm lips under the curve of her ear. When Lacy shuddered, he said huskily, “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. You’re just as I pictured you, wearing this.”
Lacy closed her eyes. Mr. Rushmore was back, she thought, with an irrepressible shiver of joy. Just the memory of all those fantastic kisses, the earthquakes of passion, sent answering rivers of fire running through her. Who could forget that once-in-a-lifetime experience, that night in Tulsa, the magic that had lasted—and that had given her anguished hours of insomnia just trying to get it out of her head? She knew at that moment, trembling, hating herself, she would have given him anything he wanted.
“Let’s go eat,” he murmured against the cloudy curls of her hair.
Unfortunately, Lacy knew almost at once that dinner was a bust. The president and chairman of the board of Echevarria Enterprises, Inc., had chosen the great New York restaurant Lutece, renowned for its superb French cuisine and elegant atmosphere. But they had rushed through the main dining room as though the New York Fire Department was close behind them, leaving Manhattan’s most prestigious and fashionable patrons gaping at Lacy’s stunning couture gown, her jewels and crowd-stopping beauty, to a table in the back that was almost a semiprivate dining alcove.
“I want to see the people here,” Lacy wailed. “Do you call this dining out? If we get any farther back, they’re going to collect us with the garbage in the morning!”
“The food is excellent,” the black panther said stonily, bending his dark head to the menu. “Please keep your voice down.”
“Then why are you ordering steak and potatoes?” Lacy demanded, settling herself in her chair and craning to see into Lutece’s main dining room.
“It’s not steak and potatoes,” he said between clenched teeth. “It’s chateaubriand avec des frites.”
Hustle Sweet Love Page 10