Hot Wheels and High Heels

by Jane Graves

  Now that they were both standing, she had to look up to meet his eyes—sharp, intelligent, nothing-gets-past-me eyes she’d been wary of from the first time she’d climbed into his limousine.

  And then there was that smile.

  “Hello, Darcy.”

  “Hello, Jeremy.” She eyed him up and down. “Was a trip to Margaritaville not on the agenda today?”

  “This is millionaire casual. I thought you’d enjoy the look.”

  Actually, she did. What woman wouldn’t? But even though he had the money of a millionaire, he was someone else at heart.

  In the distance, Darcy saw the tail end of his limousine inching away, the driver probably looking for a place to park. Her advice: west Plano.

  She glanced around warily. “So where’s your guard dog?”

  “I persuaded Bernie to stay in the car. But don’t worry. I cracked the windows.”

  “Darcy!” her mother said. “Don’t just stand there! Invite Mr. Bridges in!”

  Darcy sighed and opened the door wider. He came across the threshold and strode past the kitchen doorway and into the living room.

  “Jeremy, this is my mother, Lyla Dumphries.”

  Her mother lifted her hand, limp-wristed, her head cocked. “Mr. Bridges. What a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Why, I had no idea I’d be meeting your mother, Darcy,” Jeremy said. “It’s easy to see where you get your beauty.”

  Then he kissed her mother’s hand. He actually kissed her hand. Darcy thought she was going to barf. And her mother giggled. Toss one millionaire her way, and she turned into Blanche DuBois.

  “So . . . ,” Lyla said. “I understand you and Darcy have been getting to know each other?”

  “Why, yes, we have,” Jeremy said.

  “No, we haven’t,” Darcy said. “I’m simply a means by which Mr. Bridges entertains himself.”

  “Well,” he said, “good entertainment is hard to come by.”

  “I find that hard to believe from a man who could buy Disney World.”

  “Darcy!” Lyla whispered angrily. “Show some respect!”

  Respect? Just because the guy was made of money?

  Well, okay. That was a good reason. If only he’d get real about being interested in her, with the kind of interest that might eventually lead to the altar, she might take him seriously. But until he convinced her he wasn’t just yanking her around, she had no intention of putting up with it.

  “To what do we owe the honor of this visit?” Lyla said.

  “I just dropped by to see your daughter’s new place.”

  “How did you even know I moved?” Darcy asked.

  “Come on, Darcy. I’m disgustingly rich, and money talks. Is there anything I can’t find out?” He gazed around the room. “Love what you’ve done with the place. It’s stunning.”

  “Yeah,” Darcy said, “it stunned me, too, the first time I saw it.”

  “It’s temporary, of course,” Lyla said. “My daughter has met with difficult times of late caused by that scheming husband of hers. But of course you know that. He also caused you some problems.”

  “That embezzling thing? Haven’t given it another thought. If it got Warren out of the picture”—he turned and gave Darcy a suggestive smile—“it was worth it.”

  Darcy rolled her eyes. “You are so full of crap.”

  “Darcy Elaine Dumphries! What did you say?”

  “Trust me, Mom. He’s probably got a battalion of private investigators looking for Warren and that three hundred grand.” She turned to Jeremy. “Why are you here? Really?”

  “I brought you a housewarming gift.”

  He set the basket down on the bar between the kitchen and the living room.

  “Did you hear that, Darcy? A gift! How nice!”

  “Yeah,” Darcy said. “Nice.”

  “Well, aren’t you going to open it?” her mother said.

  Letting out a sigh, Darcy pulled the bow loose until the cellophane fell away. That was all it took for her mother to dive right in. She pulled out a small tin.

  “Beluga caviar! That’s the expensive kind, isn’t it?”

  “Outrageously so,” Jeremy said.

  Okay. Now Darcy knew why he was here. He was at it again. A thousand dollars’ worth of Starbucks coffee and now Beluga caviar. She’d had it only once before, and it had been exquisite. At a hundred and fifty dollars an ounce, it better have been.

  Lyla extracted a silver box from the basket. “Oh, my God. Waterford wineglasses?”

  Waterford? This from the man with Mountain Dew in his limo fridge?

  “Tell the truth,” Darcy said to Jeremy. “There’s no Waterford around your house, is there? I’m thinking . . . Tupperware?”

  “God, no,” Jeremy said.

  “God, no!” Lyla echoed.

  “I just bring home those big plastic cups every time I go to a Cowboy’s game.”

  Lyla stared at him blankly for a moment before she figured out that he was joking. Or maybe he wasn’t. With this guy, it was hard to say. Finally she giggled nervously before turning a scolding glare to Darcy. “You’re lucky Mr. Bridges has a sense of humor. I wouldn’t blame him if he took back his generous gifts.”

  She fished through the basket some more. “Ohmygod! Darcy! Godiva chocolate!”

  “It’s only four pounds,” Jeremy said. “I’m afraid that’s the biggest box they make.”

  Darcy thought about how she always went for the dark chocolate ganache first and how the flavor made her taste buds quiver with joy. But she wasn’t going to give Jeremy the satisfaction of going gaga over it. She’d wait until he was long gone before eating the majority of it in one sitting.

  “Oooh! Perfume!” her mother said.

  Darcy looked at the box. It couldn’t be. Clive Christian No. 1?

  The last time she was in Nordstrom, she’d looked longingly at the lead crystal bottle trimmed with gold-plated sterling, knowing full well Warren would have heart failure if she bought two-thousand-dollar-an-ounce perfume. And for the cost of one ounce of that perfume, she could pay her rent for months. Why was Bridges doing this to her?

  Lyla pulled out another box. “Dog biscuits?”

  “They’re from the Pampered Pet,” Jeremy said. “Treats for the discerning dog.”

  “How did you know I had a—” Darcy sighed. “Oh, never mind.”

  Jeremy opened the box, pulled out a mini dog biscuit, and called Pepé over. He wolfed it down, then looked up at Jeremy with total adoration.

  “Look at that,” Jeremy said. “Your dog has good taste.”

  “Uh-huh. Pepé’s a real connoisseur. He also eats rubber bands and carpet fuzz.”

  “And one last thing,” Jeremy said, reaching into the basket and pulling out an envelope. He handed it to Darcy.

  “What’s this?”

  “A gift certificate for a consultation with Hiro Kasamotsu, feng shui master to the stars.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just say the word, and I’ll have him on a plane from Los Angeles to Dallas. First class, of course. No butt-to-butt coach seat or Motel 6 for Master Kasamotsu.”

  Darcy looked at him dumbly. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Jeremy grinned. “I knew you’d be surprised.”

  “A what master?” Lyla asked.

  “Feng shui is an ancient art,” Jeremy explained. “Supposedly if you get all your furniture and mirrors and plants in the proper place in your house, it brings good fortune.” He leaned toward Lyla and spoke confidentially. “From what I’m told, all the big celebrities have their houses feng shuied.”

  “Ohh!” Lyla said, even though she didn’t have a clue what Jeremy was talking about. The only master her mother was familiar with was Thigh Master. She wouldn’t know a thing about feng shui until they started selling how-to videos on the Home Shopping Network.

  “Feng shui?” Darcy said. “In this place? Are you out of your mind?”

  “What?” Jeremy said. “You don’
t want your new home filled with harmony and prosperity?”

  “Forget the harmony. Let’s talk prosperity. How about some cold, hard cash? That I could use.”

  Jeremy smiled. “Who was it who said, ‘Take care of the luxuries, and the necessities will take care of themselves’?”

  “A woman who wasn’t dead flat broke. That’s who.”

  “Darcy!” Lyla snapped, then turned back to Jeremy. “I hope you’ll overlook my daughter’s surly attitude. She’s been under a lot of pressure lately.” She gave him a simpering smile. “The gifts are just lovely.”

  “Thank you, Lyla.”

  “Well,” Lyla said, looking back and forth between them. “I suppose I should be going.” She held her hand out to Jeremy again. “It was so nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, too, Lyla. I hope we see each other again sometime soon.”

  Her mother smiled coquettishly, then turned her back to Jeremy and gave Darcy an evil eye that could have withered a redwood tree, mouthing the words Behave yourself.

  Darcy could already hear her mother at the next potluck. She would be telling everyone that her daughter was seeing the owner of several big corporations who lived in a five-million-dollar mansion and owned an island off the coast of Belize and had a bodyguard because he was such an important man.

  Yeah, that sounded pretty good. But when all Darcy got out of the deal was the opportunity to smell good while her hips expanded from eating fish eggs and chocolate in a harmonious environment, what difference did it make?

  After her mother left the apartment, Darcy went back to the basket and stuffed all the items back inside it.

  “Call me paranoid,” Jeremy said, “but I’m getting the impression you don’t like my gifts.”

  “Yeah? What was your first clue?”

  “I sure did impress your mother.”

  “That’s because my mother is easily impressed.”

  “I give you all these lovely housewarming gifts, and this is the thanks I get? I do believe you’ve hurt my feelings.”

  “Come on, Bridges. You don’t have any feelings to hurt. All this is just ridiculous, and you know it.”

  “Ridiculous, huh? Tell me, Darcy. Would it have been so ridiculous a few weeks ago coming from your husband?” He inched closer. “Tell me that if you hadn’t lost everything, somewhere along the line you wouldn’t have had some weird Asian guy flitting through your house, moving furniture around and creating a water garden in the middle of your living room.”

  Darcy opened her mouth to object, only to close it again. Yes, she probably would have. But now that her life had turned upside down, spending money for things like that seemed kind of . . . silly.

  “I just thought a woman who’s used to the finer things in life would jump at the chance to have a few of them again,” Jeremy said.

  “What I’d be happy to have right now is food on the table, gas in my car, and rent in my landlord’s pocket.”

  “You’re talking about maintenance.”

  “You bet I am.”

  “Gifts are free.” He inched closer. “Maintenance has . . . strings.”

  As he said the words, his eyes seemed to darken with sexual suggestiveness, and suddenly the overgrown kid looked very much like the man he was.

  Darcy looked away. “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

  “Come on, Darcy. You’re a lot of things, but clueless isn’t one of them.”

  She faced him. “What do you really want from me?”

  “Why, sex, of course.”

  “You give me useless gifts like these and then expect me to sleep with you?”

  “So you’re saying you have a price, but I just haven’t found it yet?”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “Sure you are.” He opened the Waterford box and extracted one of the wineglasses. He held it up, the light playing through the cut crystal. He traced his finger slowly around the rim. “Did you know if you wet your finger, then run it around the rim of a crystal glass, it sings?”

  Yes, she did. When she and Warren first got married and he’d shown her that, she remembered thinking, When you’re rich, the glasses sing. Imagine that.

  “How did you know that?” she asked him. “You drink out of the good plastic.”

  “I went to millionaire finishing school. The instructors were really strict.” He set the glass down on the bar and picked up the tin of caviar. “Did you know they recently limited the export of caviar to the United States because the sturgeon that produces it is an endangered species?” He turned the tin over in his hand, looking down at it reverently. “Imagine what a single ounce must cost now.”

  One hell of a lot. And she wouldn’t mind trying it again sometime.

  “What about the Godiva chocolate?” she asked. “Do you have any interesting facts about that?”

  “Nope. Premium chocolate pretty much speaks for itself.” He picked up the perfume bottle. “I don’t know a thing about perfumes, but I’ve been assured they don’t come any more expensive than this one.”

  He opened the bottle as he spoke, then dabbed some on his fingertip. In a slow, deliberate motion, he touched the pulse point beneath Darcy’s ear. As he dragged it downward, the subtle notes of jasmine and sandalwood wafted up to her nose.

  With her mother here oohing and aahing, it had been easy to downplay her reaction to these things. But now, with Jeremy’s deep baritone voice narrating an even better life than the one she’d lost, she couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to have this kind of opulence every day of her life.

  Leaning to within inches of her neck, Jeremy inhaled softly, then made a sound of approval. “Do you remember what it was like?” he murmured. “To live like a princess?”

  Of course she remembered. She tried to put it out of her mind most of the time, and most of the time she was successful. But with these things right in front of her, memories came racing back. Part of her wanted desperately to dive headfirst into that basket and overdose on chocolate and caviar. To bathe in expensive perfume. To drink the best wine out of Waterford crystal. To have a weird little Asian man bringing harmony and prosperity to her new home, a home also occupied by a wealthy man ready to lay the best life had to offer right at her feet.

  But she didn’t trust this man. Not by a long shot.

  “You can have any woman on the planet,” she said. “Why me?”

  “I’ve been asking myself that same question.”

  “Come to any conclusions?”

  He came closer still. “Lust is unpredictable. Who knows when it will strike?”

  Lust. Exactly. This was all a game to him to see just how much it took to get her into bed. That the moment she gave him what he wanted, he’d laugh his way right out her front door. Or . . .

  Or there was always the possibility that once she gave him what he wanted in a way he couldn’t forget, he’d find his way back for more. One thing would lead to another, and she’d have him wanting her. Needing her. And then she’d have him right where she wanted him.

  He closed his hand around her wrist, stroking the tender skin with his thumb. “Come to my house tonight, and I’ll show you what real luxury is.”

  Which was clearly going to involve seven-hundred-thread-count Egyptian sheets.

  He took another step forward and closed the gap between them, staring at her lips the whole time. She knew what he intended, and something in the back of her mind was screaming at her to stop him. But the closer his lips came to hers, the more that little voice faded into the distance.

  Just kiss him. Kiss him like you’ve never kissed a man before, and sooner or later, you’ll have everything you ever—

  Knock! Knock! Knock!

  At the loud raps on the door, they both jerked back.

  “Damn,” Jeremy said. “It’s probably Bernie, checking to see if the bad guys swooped in through the back door.”

  Damn was right. Darcy was ready to kill whoever was on the other
side of that door for their impeccable timing.

  She backed away slowly, then turned and went to the door. She opened it, expecting to find Bernie, and got a shock.

  “John?” she said incredulously. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I didn’t just happen to be in the neighborhood, that’s for sure.” He brushed past her, taking an immediate right into her kitchen, where he set the stuff he held down on the counter—a toolbox, a Home Depot sack, and a box from Pizza Hut.

  “I can’t believe you’re living in this dump,” he said.

  “John—go away.”

  He upended the sack on her kitchen counter, and some kind of hardware tumbled out.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “A deadbolt.”

  “I have a lock.”

  “In the door handle. That’s useless.”

  “How did you know my door didn’t already have a deadbolt?”

  “I told you I know this complex. The owner’s a tightwad.”

  “But there’s a chain lock, too.”

  “One good kick and that’s history. How safe do you think that makes you?”

  “John—stop!”

  He ignored her, grabbing the deadbolt along with a drill out of his toolbox. He turned to head back to the front door, and that was when he looked across the counter between the kitchen and living room and saw Jeremy.

  “John,” Darcy said, “this is Jeremy Bridges. Jeremy, my boss, John Stark.”

  John eyed Jeremy for a moment, then set down the drill and the deadbolt and came into the living room. He moved slowly, clearly taking the time to analyze the situation he’d just walked into. The men shook hands the way men do unless they have a real good reason not to, all the while sizing each other up. Money versus might. Both formidable powers.

  “So you’re the man who repossessed Darcy’s Mercedes,” Jeremy said.

  “So you’re the man Darcy’s husband embezzled three hundred thousand dollars from,” John responded.

  There was a long silence as both men stared each other down. Finally John spoke to Darcy, but his eyes never left Jeremy.

  “Darcy? Have I interrupted something here?”

  She wanted to say, Yes! I have a millionaire on the hook, and you’re messing things up. Go away!