“What’s he doing?” Lacy asked, wide-eyed.
“He’s trying to get the color of your hair,” Michael Echevarria said impassively, “for the custom-paint job on your Ferrari Testarossa.”
“You’re kidding!” It wasn’t possible he had believed every word she’d said to him last night in his Sutton Place condo just to get his attention when he was telephoning and getting ready to leave for Boston. “Good grief—do you know how much Ferraris cost?”
He folded his arms across his big chest and regarded her imperturbably. “Around eighty-seven thousand, before sales tax. I never buy anything, Lacy, without pricing it first. You know that.”
Lacy made a small strangling sound. Before her vocal cords could recover from their paralysis, the salesman from Greenwich said, indicating the Italian sports car parked in the driveway, “Would you like to take a look? It’s red right now—Kuwait Scarlet, actually, is the shade, but the Testarossa’s ready for a test drive if you want to see how she handles.”
“Mr. Echevarria,” Walter Moretti said desperately over the vicious snarls of Sicky-Poo, who was lunging on his chain at the Ferrari salesman, “where do you want me to put this laundry?”
“Oh, I can’t believe this,” Lacy moaned. “This is very funny, isn’t it? Well, where’s the white cockatoo? What about”—there was not the remotest possibility of this—”what about the Russian sable full-length coat?”
“Start with these,” Michael Echevarria said, taking Lacy by the arm and steering her past the sports-car salesman and the private eye. Lacy stumbled slightly on Sicky-Poo’s chain and then over a line of boxes stacked on the floor of the entrance hall to the English manor house.
The stacked cardboard boxes had names like Sunbeam, Waring and Proctor-Silex printed on their sides. Some of the containers had been opened to show a variety of assorted blenders in several colors and their attachments. Beyond the boxes of blenders there were larger shipping crates pried apart to display the chrome and glass shapes of a variety of microwave ovens. Somewhere in the shadows of the hall behind the microwave ovens, a faintly inhuman voice said, “Awrk? Awrk?” plaintively.
“I don’t believe it!” she cried.
“It seems there are more kinds of blenders on the market,” Michael observed thoughtfully, “than one would think. Also microwave ovens. Bloomingdale’s sent these on approval.” He indicated the boxes with a gesture of one big, powerful hand. “Take your choice.”
“You can’t do this to me!” Lacy burst out.
“Morton’s Birds, in Westport, sent a very nice sulphur-crested cockatoo,” he continued judiciously. “It’s their most popular type.”
“No!” Lacy knew what he was trying to do in front of Edward, the private eye and now the sports-car salesman from Greenwich. She wasn’t that stupid. “Oh, how low. How dirty! You knew it was just a joke!”
She held an avocado-colored blender over her head as Walter Moretti and the Ferrari salesman backed hurriedly out the front door.
“Lacy, don’t throw the blender,” Michael said calmly. “Put it down.”
“Dirty bird,” the hollow voice said from the back of the entrance hall.
“The whole idea is to humiliate me, isn’t it?” The blender wobbled over her head. “To show them you’re paying off your floozy! Well, I’m not a tramp, even though you’re trying to make me look like one! It was bad enough with gowns and jewels—but now! Blenders and microwave ovens?”
“I thought you said you needed a blender, and every kitchen should have a microwave oven,” he decided firmly. “I want to give you everything you desire, Lacy. I told you, you just have to name it.”
“I won’t take your rotten Ferrari,” she shouted, glaring at him. “I won’t take your microwave ovens or blenders or anything, do you hear me, Michael? You can take your cockatoo and—”
“Lacy,” he said, scowling, “if you don’t want these things, just tell me what you do want, and we’ll get it.”
“You’re not going to trick me!” She threw the blender at him, but he ducked, and it hit the wall with a crash. Lacy stood trembling before him, her breasts heaving indignantly under the Irish hand-knit sweater. “Why don’t you go back to the hotel you own in Tulsa,” she burst out recklessly, forgetting all her good resolutions, “and buy some other woman? That’s what you usually do, isn’t it? Come on, let your buddies know what you really do—you pick up hookers in bars! You are,” she taunted him, “a closet degenerate, Michael Echevarria!”
She saw the fury in his eyes that meant winter had come again to the Antarctic. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She saw him make an effort to keep his voice down so that the others couldn’t hear. “I don’t pick up hookers. I don’t care whether you believe it or not, but I never bought sex before in my life!”
“That isn’t what you said to me!” He was right—she wasn’t going to believe it. “You grabbed me so I couldn’t get away and hustled me into a hotel elevator before I could scream for help. You kidnapped me! You said, ‘I’m buying,’ that’s what you said! You said—”
“I know what I said,” he growled, grabbing her arm. “Frankly, I don’t need to explain this to you, but it so happens I came into the bar that night checking out the volume of business. It’s something I always do when I’m in town. When I came in, there you were—selling yourself.”
“Oh, really,” Lacy cried, “don’t try to wriggle out of this! You said, ‘I’m buying.’ Just like you try to buy everything else you want!”
A small vein throbbed in his temple. His mouth was grim, furious. “Look at me, Lacy. Do I look as though I need to pay a woman to go to bed with me?” He gave her arm a slight shake. “Answer me.”
Lacy took a deep breath. Good grief, he was right! You just had to look at a big hunk like Michael Echevarria to know what he was saying was true.
“Why,” she whispered, “did you do it? Why did you offer to pay fifteen hundred dollars when you could have had somebody else”—she gulped—”for free! You must have been out of your mind.”
His hands on her arms tightened. “I was out of my mind,” he growled, “you were right. I plead temporary insanity from the moment I walked into that damned bar and saw you dressed like a hooker and still looking like an angel.”
“It was a joke! I couldn’t help it about the dress—I was modeling it for the Western Sta—”
“You were beautiful,” he said, harshly. “When something is as beautiful as you, price is no object.”
Her mouth dropped open in dismay. They were back to that again. “Look, I’m not just a great big collectible,” she said, yanking her arm in his hard grip. “I brought the money with me. You’ve got a surprise coming, Michael Echevarria! When I give you your fifteen hundred dollars back, what are you going to do?”
She saw a flicker of some unfathomable expression in that hard face. Then his expression smoothed. “I’m going to take you horseback riding.”
“I’m not going horseback riding; you’re changing the subject. You think I’m lying, don’t you?” she demanded. “Well, I’m tired of having you order me around. I won’t be your mistress; you’re not going to treat me like one. I’m not going to be forced out of my job at Fad. I won’t do anything you tell me to do!” she yelled. “That’s it!”
Michael Echevarria bent his dark head to her, sliding his arms around her softly. “Yes, you will, Lacy,” he said softly, “you’re going riding. The horses are all saddled.”
His mouth closed over hers and smothered her protests, his tongue caressing her adamant lips, persuading them to softly open to him. Lacy closed her eyes. When she moved to him, his kiss deepened and grew hungrier. Lacy clung to him, shaken by the sudden sensuous heat that poured between them and the heady sweetness of the zap! and the powie! as if played by a whole symphony orchestra of singing violins.
“Aren’t you, Lacy?” he murmured huskily against her partly opened lips.
“Where do you ride,” she breathed,
“around here?”
Forty-five minutes later, as Michael worked to disentangle her blond silky hair from a tree branch she’d ridden under, he said, “Somehow I have the feeling, Lacy, that when I’m with you, chaos enters my life.”
“Well, you said you liked my hair down loose and wavy,” Lacy grumbled. She hadn’t seen the overhanging tree branch until she was right under it, and the horse she was riding was a tall, powerful hunter, not the easiest mount to control. He did insist on doing these things, anyway—Lutece, the opera, horseback riding. The first night she’d met him, Michael Echevarria had whirled her around the penthouse in a waltz to “Lara’s Theme,” from Dr. Zhivago. Would she ever forget that evening? she wondered, looking at the incredibly thick brush of his eyelashes against the hard planes of his cheeks as he carefully pulled another strand of her hair from the oak tree. “I don’t ride English saddles very well,” she murmured. “Daddy always let us use Western saddles at home.”
“On Long Island?” he said, shooting her a look from under dark brows.
“My sisters and I wanted to be cowboys. Outlaws, actually. We were terrible tomboys,” Lacy told him as she reined in her horse for about the twelfth time to keep from getting scalped. “All the other little girls in East Hampton took riding lessons and had nifty little English riding boots and those little black jockey hats and Lord and Taylor riding jackets. But my father had lost his money right about then, so my sisters and I wore old jeans and cowboy hats and sort of slouched around, trying to look like Clint Eastwood. Daddy bought us the Western saddle. Then the next year my oldest sister, Felice, got into junior homecoming queen and the year after that Miss Universe tryouts, and looking like Clint Eastwood sort of got”—she shrugged—”harder to do.”
“But you ride very well”—the corners of his mouth quirked—”when you’re not hung up in trees. How did your father lose his money? I thought he was a lawyer,” he said as he freed the last of her hair from the oak twigs.
“When he stopped being a partner in a big law firm in Manhattan.” Her horse jostled his hunter and brought them face to face. “He made some bad investments, so Daddy moved back to East Hampton and opened a small law practice there. We were supposed to be well off, with the big house and everything, but we weren’t. We really needed all the money and clothes we won from beauty pageants, although”—she shrugged—”we weren’t supposed to tell people that.”
Michael Echevarria rode beautifully, better than anyone Lacy had ever seen. The article in People magazine had said he was an exercise boy at race tracks in his youth, a homeless teenager who’d slept in the stables. No wonder he rode so well, she thought, studying him. As for how the three beautiful Kingston girls had worked the beauty-queen circuits—she supposed she couldn’t tell Michael much about needing money. “When I started modeling, Daddy made me put my money into a savings account for college.” She finally got out from under the oak tree and kicked her horse into a canter. “I made good money the first few years.
“Race!” Lacy yelled suddenly over her shoulder.
His reactions were good, but Michael Echevarria was untypically startled, a few seconds late in responding. Then, as Lacy bent her head over her horse’s neck, tucked in her elbows and crouched forward for a gallop down the wooded lane, she saw the answering slash of a grin break over white teeth. She knew he was coming after her with a vengeance.
The horses charged down the November-brown woods, their hooves loud in the fallen leaves. The Echevarria country estate was miles of old, walled fields and meadows and twisted byways, a tremendous place by any standards, especially here, just outside New York City, where every acre literally cost a fortune.
It was no small feat to guide the big hunter under trees and around sudden curves in the lane hemmed in by field-stone walls. Lacy could hear Michael coming up fast behind her. Her hunter stretched its legs, trying to get his head, and Lacy fought to keep him under control. At the last moment she heard Michael’s hoarse shouted warning, saw the lane come to an abrupt end at a gate and leaned forward, digging her heels into the horse’s ribs.
The hunter lifted his coiled body, sailed over the gate and stone wall with a gliding motion, his stride faltering only for seconds on the unexpected down slope of a pasture on the far side. Lacy pulled him up quickly and turned his head to circle him. Michael’s big black came thundering up behind her.
“Damn!” If she didn’t know better she would swear Michael Echevarria’s face had gone slightly ashen. “Do you do these things deliberately?” he barked. “Are you a total crackbrain? You—you—didn’t know what was on the other side of that wall!” He pulled the big black under control, fighting its tossing head. “You—you’re a good rider,” he said grimly. “Or you wouldn’t have taken that gate like that.”
“Oh, he really likes to jump, doesn’t he,” Lacy breathed, her eyes sparkling as she bent forward to pat her mount’s neck. “I could get used to hunters. There must be something in riding English saddle, after all.”
“Lacy.” There was a peculiar expression on Michael’s face, gray eyes glittering as he moved his horse closer to hers. “If I ever let you—”
“What, Michael?” she asked softly. It was strangely satisfying to see him like this. He was even breathing hard. “If you ever what?”
“I think,” he said, staring at her, “that either you’re crazy, or you have more guts than most men I’ve seen. You’re not like ... any woman I’ve ever known, believe me.” He rested his forearms on the pommel and leaned to her. “I still can’t understand why your parents let you grow up the way you did.”
Lacy sighed. “Oh, Michael, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Modeling,” he said abruptly, “is too damned tough for an innocent young girl in New York. Even someone as ... independent as you are. Why didn’t your parents do a better job of taking care of you, Lacy?
“You know the sort of wolves that go after beautiful women,” he said, chomping down on each word. “And they went after you, didn’t they?”
“Is that what’s bothering you?” she cried. “Good grief, Michael, I could take care of myself. It wasn’t as bad as you think.”
As she brushed her hair back from her eyes, she realized it wasn’t the moment to tell him the whole story about Peter Dorsey. Their horses were dancing restlessly, wanting to gallop again. Was there ever going to be a right time? she wondered, despairingly.
They ate dinner prepared for two in front of a roaring fire in the Tudor-style den, rather than in the formal dining room, and the sense of cosiness, of being shut away from the world, was enhanced by a cold autumn drizzle falling outside. They dressed for dinner, Michael in his Savile Row tuxedo, which brought back a Hood of memories, Lacy in a pair of gold silk crepe de Chine trousers, a matching gold satin shirt and a black velvet jacket from Altman’s that managed to look ten times more expensive than they actually were. Sicky-Poo was allowed to come in during dinner, but while the butler was pouring the Aufstadler-Rhone ‘78 during the first course of duck-liver pâté en croute, the Doberman had an anxiety attack. It ate part of a Time magazine from the coffee table and then threw up on the sheepskin rug in front of the fireplace.
“I hate neurotics,” the chairman of the board said, viewing the Doberman coldly. “I had plans for that rug in front of the fire later.”
“A little cold water and dish-washing detergent,” Lacy began helpfully, but he had already shoved his chair back from the table. “Don’t use violence,” she cried, “Sicky-Poo has a defective hostility mechanism! His shrink says he identifies with the unresolved conflicts of the oppressor.”
The tall figure in the Savile Row tuxedo went to the door of the den, opened it and pointed forcefully to the hallway. Sicky-Poo slunk meekly out of the den.
“How did you do that?” Lacy exclaimed. “That’s incredible—I’ve never seen Sicky-Poo behave, especially when anybody told him to!”
“Intimidation,” he growled, returning to the vichysoisse the b
utler had served. “It’s a successful corporate technique.”
Unfortunately, during the beef Wellington, they had a large argument about Republican foreign policy. “What are we talking about?” Lacy cried finally, exasperated. “Republican foreign policy doesn’t exist, it never has. Good grief, it’s a non-subject!”
He just stared at her. “Nobody,” he said in an even voice, “argues with me like this except you, Lacy.”
Lacy stared back at him. “I’m not afraid of your successful corporate techniques,” she said.
But for once she didn’t want to start an argument. Instead, she began a long story about the time her middle sister, Charity, set fire to the roof of their house with a homemade rocket after reading the life of Dr. Goddard. At that time, Lacy explained, no one knew that Charity was going to become an astrophysicist.
Halfway through, when Lacy was giving her famous dramatic impression of the East Hampton fire department scaling the front porch through her mother’s rose beds, he was still staring at her with a curious expression.
“Usually,” he said, interrupting her, “I find most dinner conversations with women excruciating.”
“I thought you liked hearing about my family,” she sighed. “I was only telling this to make you feel better. All right, I’ll bite—what’s so excruciating about your dinner conversations with women?”
“Boring,” he said flatly. “But at least they don’t argue.”
“Do you want to go back to discussing Republicans?” Lacy cried. “Do you or do you not want to hear about my sister Charity? She has her Ph.D. in astrophysics now, and she’s probably going to be an astronaut. She’ll be the only astronaut who was first runner-up in the 1980 Miss America contest.”
His eyebrows went up. “You fascinate me, Lacy,” he said after a long moment. “I never know when to take you seriously. I love hearing about your sister.” He reached into his tuxedo and extracted a silver cigar case. “Go ahead.”
Hustle Sweet Love Page 17