Hustle Sweet Love

by Davis, Maggie;

  “Damn,” she heard the monstrous figure say irritably. “Don’t call that stupid dog—I just polished these boots.”

  The mugger scraped his black leather jacket open with his hand, and she could see the black T-shirt that strained over his massive chest bore the words harley-davidson does it harder and longer.

  “Never! Never!” Lacy cried, landing a kick on the black-booted shins. She followed that with a karate chop to the iron-hard midsection. “Mugger! Kill! Die!”

  “Damn it,” the mugger said again. He raised a huge leather jacketed arm to lift the plastic wind screen from his face and drag off the helmet.

  Underneath the Darth Vader mask, Lacy saw quickly, was a hard-faced brute with tumbling black curls, a grim slash of a mouth and cold, steely-gray eyes.

  “What the hell do you mean—Chinese food?” the mugger growled. “I’m going to give you all the Chinese food you’ll ever need from now on. So lay off Edward.”

  Twenty-One

  “I told you I was going to marry you—you don’t have to kidnap me!” Lacy died as the leather-clad hunk in biker’s clothes lifted her from the buddy seat of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle and set her carefully on her cramped, wobbly legs. “Where are we? I want to go back to New York!”

  “This is New York,” the menacing hulk said tersely. He raised Lacy’s plastic visor and then pulled off her motorcycle helmet. As the glistening sheath of her pale hair tumbled down, he smoothed it back from her face. “This is Brooklyn.”

  She’d have to take his word for it, Lacy thought, looking around. The Harley was stopped on a narrow street in the midst of warehouses and docks, and the night air was filled with the strong, oily smell of New York Harbor. It could be Brooklyn, but if it was, what were they doing there?

  As he released her to lock up the motorcycle, Lacy staggered around in a little circle dizzily. Her ears were still ringing from the spectacular ride over the Fifty-ninth Street bridge in heavy traffic and then their rocketing blast down the expressway south of the Gowanus Canal. She had the confused impression that if this was really Brooklyn, then they were only there because Michael Echevarria rode a motorcycle like a superbly skilled maniac. There had been a moment with a cross-town bus when she’d thought they weren’t going to make it. During the whole ride, Lacy had clutched the big, hard body in front with her arms and legs in the four-pronged attitude of a terrorized koala bear clinging to the world’s last eucalyptus tree.

  What am I doing here? Lacy wondered. She’d been dragged out of her apartment and into the night and thrown on a gigantic Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Now she was in Brooklyn; that’s what Michael had said. He parked the Harley across from the only lighted spot on the deserted street—an old brick building with a neon sign that announced, the seven seas bar and grill. “This is no way to treat a bride on her wedding eve,” Lacy muttered under her breath. “It’s ridiculous!”

  The figure in the black leather jacket finished securing the motorcycle, pulled off his own helmet and tucked it under his arm. “I’m taking you to dinner,” the familiar cool, authoritative voice of the president and chairman of the board said. “You told Edward you wanted something to eat, didn’t you?”

  Lacy stepped back a step. She didn’t recognize this towering, sexy brute with his unruly black curls, narrowed eyes and bulging muscles in biker’s leathers any more than she knew where they were. But it had to be Michael Echevarria, she thought, peering at him: the same hard, square-jawed face with its grimly sensuous mouth and flickering dimples, the glinting cool gray eyes. He looked like those tough boys in high school who’d wanted to date her. Only she’d always been too frightened to do more than hug her books to her chest and scuttle straight ahead, pretending she hadn’t seen them or heard their growled invitations.

  Good grief, Lacy realized with a shock, the way he looked now, Michael was a teenage girl’s worst sex fantasies come true! The desire to have him ravish her with one of his hard, burning kisses was so great she had to clench her teeth to keep from blurting it out.

  She gave a little startled squeak as the dark figure reached for her. But his big hands only straightened the front of her denim jacket and then buttoned it modestly over the provocative swell of her fire-engine-red pullover.

  “Take me home,” Lacy pleaded. “Please, don’t do whatever it is you’re going to do, Michael. This is no time for revenge. I still have to shampoo and set my hair.

  “Don’t you,” she asked plaintively, “want me to look nice for tomorrow?”

  “You always look beautiful,” his expressionless voice said. “Just keep your jacket buttoned.” He put a big arm around her waist and half carried, half shoved her ahead of him. “I have something I want to show you.”

  They crossed the dark, empty street to the Seven Seas Bar and Grill, Lacy struggling to free herself from his grip all the way. He pushed open the door.

  “I need to go home,” Lacy cried, bracing her hand on the doorjamb to keep from entering. “I need to pick out my clothes for the wedding! I’m not hungry anymore! Honestly, I was only kidding around with Edward!”

  “So I gathered.”

  The arm around her waist propelled Lacy forward. Her protests were swallowed up by a blast of smoke, darkness, warmth and the noise of the bar’s television set somewhere in the murk, tuned to the fights in Queens Coliseum. She quickly stopped struggling as she saw the clientele of the Seven Seas Bar and Grill in construction hard hats and windbreakers turn to them interestedly.

  “Hey, look who’s here,” the bartender cried. “It’s Mickey Evans. Long time no see, kid!”

  Aware of the impact of a dozen pairs of eyes watching them, Lacy quickly resumed her koala-bear clutch on Michael Echevarria’s body. She was practically riding his left hip and jeans-covered leg as she hobbled toward a back booth.

  “I don’t like places like this,” Lacy hissed as he propped her against the table edged and tried to shift her leg out from between his thighs. Lacy clung even more tightly, her fingers grabbing his belt where the leather front of his jacket swung open. The last time she’d been in a place like this was four years ago in Scranton, Pennsylvania, on a shoot for a Young and Rubicam ad for Ford pickup trucks. She remembered perfectly well how traumatic it had been. Bar and grill clientele were almost abnormally interested, she’d found, in tall, willowy smoky-blondes with show-stopping figures.

  “Two draft beers,” the tall hunk she was clinging to said over the deafening noise. He held up his big right hand with his fingers in a V as the bartender came over to their booth.

  “That’s my kind of woman, Mick,” the beefy man in the white apron said appreciatively, his eyes roaming over Lacy as he wiped off the Formica surface of their table. “You going to drink standing up or sitting down?”

  “We’re going to have dinner,” Michael Echevarria said. “Bring us a menu, Freddie.”

  “They have menus in this place?” Lacy wanted to know. Michael’s hands patiently forced her down in the seat. “I don’t believe it! What are they written on—old truck bodies?”

  “I ate here when I worked on the docks,” he said, sliding in next to her. “I spent six years getting a degree in business administration in night school. When I graduated, the only people who came to see me get my diploma were Otto Posniaski, Pier Thirty-seven unit boss, and Freddie, the bartender here.”

  “Mickey?” Lacy said, staring at him. “That’s what he called you, didn’t he?” She would never have believed it. He was really someone known to the Seven Seas Bar and Grill on the Brooklyn docks as Mickey Evans? Lacy suddenly began to feel better. “Mickey Evans? You mean you’re using an alias? Mickey? Mick?”

  “I got tired of having my name mispronounced,” he said evenly, handing her a menu as Freddie the bartender reappeared. “It never got spelled right on the payroll, either. So I shortened it to something my supervisors could handle.”

  “Mickey?’“ Lacy hooted, shoving the menu back at him. “Mickey?”

  “Bring
us two steaks,” the president and chairman of the board said in a grim voice. “Medium rare.”

  Their thick, superb steaks arrived two draft beers later on wooden platters with a stack of sliced tomatoes and a mountain of French fries. Michael lifted his black, tangled lashes to look at her and say, “Do you take ketchup?”

  “Yes,” Lacy breathed, looking down at her gigantic char-broiled two-pound New York strip. Before she could say another word, his large hand up-ended the Heinz-ketchup bottle, and he gave it a smart smack with his palm. A splatter of bright red goo inundated her plate, burying everything.

  “Steak and French fries, Lacy,” he said very slowly and deliberately, his clear gray eyes watching her. “Not chateaubriand aux pommes frites. Right?”

  “I thought you brought me here to show me something,” Lacy muttered, parting the red sea with her knife and dunking a large fry into it delicately.

  “I brought you here,” he said, still staring at her, “to tell you, among other things, that I’m appointing you Fad’s new managing editor.”

  “Oh, no,” Lacy choked, suddenly not able to make a mouthful of French fries go down. “Listen,” she gulped, reaching for her beer, “will you lay off?” She took a big swallow and gagged again. “If you’re going to do this to me, why don’t you wait until I’ve finished eating? Or is this some plot to kill me while I strangle in front of your eyes? Good grief—isn’t marrying me enough?”

  He kept staring at her. “The stuff you’ve written has a light, trendy touch, a style like New York magazine’s when it first started. An approach like that might work for a worn-out publication like Fad. That flake managing editor’s got to go. She’s not only incompetent, she’s destroying morale.”

  “I don’t have any technical know-how,” Lacy wheezed, gulping her beer furiously. “Are you crazy? Being a managing editor takes years of experience! Why me?” she cried with tears in her eyes. “Why not—why not Jamie Hatworth?”

  “Experience I can buy any time,” he told her. He was cutting his steak now with sure, authoritative strokes. “The magazine is overloaded with experience and not enough fresh, smart ideas. Hatworth is good, but it wouldn’t be wise to promote her out of her current level of effectiveness.”

  “You can have,” he said, chomping a piece of steak decisively with fine white teeth, “two technical assistants to start with. You supply the ideas.”

  “But I’m supposed to be marrying you,” Lacy gasped, finally managing an unobstructed breath. “Or have you forgotten about tomorrow?”

  “I want you at Fad during regular business hours,” he said with iron deliberation. He slashed at his sliced tomatoes. “I’ve just bought Houston-Maracaibo Refineries—I won’t have a lot of time to put into the magazine from now on.”

  “Time? Technical assistants?” Lacy finally managed to yell. “Is this how you do business, putting kooks like me—without any experience whatsoever—in charge?”

  “It’s worked before, yes,” he said, studying his fork packed with speared tomatoes and dripping mayonnaise. “You underestimate yourself. You did a good job with the Zebra Lounge mess—you kept your head when the place caught fire, kept down panic and got a major press break in the bargain. That’s not bad.”

  “You couldn’t know about the Zebra Lounge,” Lacy breathed, her mouth dropping open in dismay. “You couldn’t.”

  The gray eyes lifted to bore into her. “I have a complete dossier on you, Lacy. Private detectives do more than follow you around, or didn’t you know?” He looked rather smug. “I never said you were stupid. Just that I didn’t like your sense of ... humor.”

  It was a moment before Lacy could get enough breath, or wits about her, to say anything. Her lips, too, seemed frozen. She could hardly move them enough to say, “Peter Dorsey?”

  “He deserved what he got,” he said with his mouth full. “I read the court transcripts, and I believe your side of the story. Which was substantiated”—he dabbed his chin with a paper napkin and threw it into his plate as he finished—”by the reports of other models since then.”

  Deserved what he got, her mind repeated. Court transcripts. Followed and investigated the whole time.

  “Bobby Sullivan?” she whispered, almost afraid to say the name.

  He shot her a quick look from under dark brows. “Who the hell’s he?”

  Ah, the president and chairman had missed that one, Lacy thought, vastly relieved. She said in a small voice, “Did Alex van—I mean did I—if Alex has connections with some other business, will it hurt your company? My father brought it up,” she added quickly. “He said it would.”

  “I don’t want to discuss it with you, Lacy,” he said, studying the check. “Your father’s a nice guy—I like him. I’d say there’s hope for your family yet. But if I ever see van Renssalaer with you again, I’m going to break him into little pieces and send him back to Ransom Tri-Star stuffed in his Sawyer’s briefcase. Is that clear enough?”

  “You said you brought me here,” Lacy reminded him, quickly changing the subject, “to show me something. Or have I already seen it?”

  Strong, tanned fingers drew a familiar English-leather wallet from the inside pocket of his motorcycle jacket and took out several bills and laid them on the table beside the dinner check. “Lacy,” the low, husky voice of the black panther said softly, “look at me.”

  She didn’t want to. Not when he talked to her like that, in the low voice that could hold her mesmerized. She didn’t want to lift her eyes to that gray gaze gone suddenly slate colored and urgent. The same sensation, like running headlong into a speeding bulldozer, was still there.

  “This is where I come from, places like this,” he said softly. “This was my life before I started on the way up. I want you to take a good look, Lacy—you don’t know anything about me unless you understand this.

  “Tomorrow,” he added huskily, “will be different.”

  Tomorrow, she thought shuddering, tearing her eyes away. She had to keep remembering what a farce getting married to Michael Echevarria was and resist everything else—what he was telling her, the appeal to her traitorous emotions, the fire in those gray eyes.

  “Hey, Mick,” the hard hats at the Seven Seas bar chorused as they got up from their booth, “don’t be such a stranger. Bring your lady around some night.”

  “Yeah, come back, kid,” Freddie, the bartender, called. “She’s my kind of woman.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Michael Echevarria said lifting a big hand and waving it as they made for the door. “We’re getting married tomorrow.”

  Lacy whirled on him. Amid whistles, catcalls and the sound of beer mugs being slammed enthusiastically on the bar, she cried, “Oh, no we’re not! I mean—”

  In the sudden silence that fell, the towering hulk in black motorcycle leathers turned to her. “First,” Michael Echevarria said softly, “it seems I have some homework to do.”

  “No,” Lacy squeaked, “not in front of all these—”

  “C’mere, babe,” the chairman of the board growled, hooking one powerful arm around her waist and drawing her easily to his broad chest covered with a picture of a Harley-Davidson Electra-Glide on the front.

  Lacy tried to struggle, even gave a little shriek. A helpless rush of shivering swept through her as his arms enveloped her, crushing her to him.

  “Go for it, Mick,” the stamping, whistling, applauding audience encouraged from the bar.

  “You are going to marry me, Lacy.” She felt his warm breath against her mouth before his lips closed over hers. “But I warn you, just don’t try to do anything ... funny.”

  At the door to her apartment, Lacy took out her keys and said determinedly, “You didn’t have to see me up, and you’re not coming in. Actually a groom shouldn’t see the bride at all the night before the wedding. I still have to,” she said, rapidly unlocking the door and practically jumping inside, “shampoo my hair and—”

  He shouldered his way in right behind her. “L
acy, you don’t think I’m going to let you out of my sight tonight, do you? Hell, I can’t wait to get married and get this over with.”

  “Now you listen,” she told him, following him as he sauntered into the living room. “Just marrying me doesn’t mean you’re going to know where I am all the time. Get out, Michael, do you hear me? I don’t need a watchdog!”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said, his back to her. “After springing van Renssalaer on me with a federal complaint, I’m beginning to think you need more than a keeper.

  “Edward brought my clothes,” he went on, switching on a table lamp in the living room, “so I’ve got everything with me.

  “You’ve made this place very pretty,” he said, taking off his leather jacket. He ran his fingers through his hair several times and stood looking around at the green hanging plants, mirrors and white-painted furniture. He surveyed the mountain of cartons in the middle of the living room containing blenders and microwave ovens that Lacy had yet to send back. Then he checked out his Louis Vuitton suiter, shoe case and overnight bag, which the chauffeur had carefully laid on top of the pile, along with several large white boxes. Finally he put his big body down carefully on a white-painted café chair and bent to pull off the motorcycle boots.

  “You’re not, repeat, not,” Lacy cried, fleeing to the bedroom, “going to spend the night! If you think you’re going to sleep with me, you’re crazy. You can sleep in the living room!”

  “I’m not going to sleep in the living room, Lacy.” He pushed open the bedroom door easily, even though she had braced her body against it to hold it shut. Once inside, he looked around with the same careful interest. “This is pretty, too,” he observed. He looked with interest at the off-white panels at the windows, the deep-blue rug and Lacy’s round queen-size bed with its red velveteen and white canvas-stripe spread.

  “Then I’ll sleep in the living room,” Lacy announced, sweeping past him haughtily.

  He caught her arm. “Don’t let’s play kid games,” he growled, “I don’t like it, and I’m tired.