Hot Wheels and High Heels

by Jane Graves

  Tears filled Darcy’s eyes for the umpteenth time that night. “Oh, John. I was so wrong, and I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s over now. Let’s just go home, okay?”

  She thought about his tiny house on that tree-shaded street, the one with the cracked sidewalks, the honeysuckle growing wild over the fence, and the gutters John had never found the time to clean, and she couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful. But it was because she could finally see through the surface to the heart of his house, to the man who was offering her everything. She’d just been so blinded by all her preconceived notions that she hadn’t been able to see it.

  She wanted to spend every moment with him she could. She wanted to cuss him out for being stubborn and overbearing, then have him pull her back and convince her that he and sensitivity weren’t mutually exclusive. She wanted him to tell her what a low tolerance he had for high-maintenance women, then spend the next hour treating her like a pampered princess. She wanted to feel that rush of excitement as they made love, then the slow, gentle descent into the kind of togetherness that made her glow from the inside out.

  All at once her throat tightened and her eyes started to burn, and all the tears she’d kept bottled up for the past few minutes spilled out like flood waters over a broken dam.

  “Oh, God,” John said, his eyes wide with panic. “What’s the matter?”

  “N-nothing,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  “Then why are you crying?”

  She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know.”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “I know.”

  “Is this one of those crying-in-the-bathroom things, where things are good, but you cry anyway?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  With a heavy sigh, John just took her in his arms and held her tightly. Darcy dropped her cheek to his shoulder, and he turned his head to whisper in her ear, “Do you know what it feels like to be in love for the first time in your life?”

  “Yeah,” Darcy said through her tears. “I know. Believe me, I know.”

  He held her until her tears wound down, and through it all she could feel the steady beating of his heart, like a clock ticking away the seconds, the minutes, and soon the hours and days of their lives they were going to spend together.

  Before they went to the office the next morning, John drove Darcy back to her apartment complex so she could pick up Gertie. After all, a girl had to have wheels, even when the wheels and the tires attached to them were the most valuable part of the car.

  Even several blocks away, the sharp odor of the burned-out building permeated the air. As they drove through the complex, Darcy was astonished at how awful it looked in the light of day. Just the brick shell of the building remained intact, blackened by the flames. Two men were picking through the rubble.

  “Who are they?” Darcy asked.

  John brought his car to a halt behind Gertie. “Fire inspectors. Trying to determine the cause of the fire. Or at least trying to make the cause of it official.”

  Yesterday the thought of everything she had going up in smoke had sickened Darcy, but all she could think now was good riddance.

  “I’ll see you back at the office,” she told John as she leaned over the console to give him a kiss. She started to get out of the car, only to glance to the far side of the parking lot in front of building four. “John. Look over there.”

  “What?”

  “I think that’s Larry Howard’s car.”

  John looked at the car. “Might be. It’s a red Corvette.”

  Then Darcy noticed whose apartment it was parked in front of, and any doubt about whether this particular Corvette belonged to Larry disappeared.

  Apparently he was here to see Georgette.

  Given Larry’s history with hookers, it was pretty clear what kind of massage he was paying for. And how funny was it that he had no clue Darcy lived in this apartment complex, so he’d left his car right out in plain sight?

  “It’s his,” Darcy said. “I’m sure of it.”

  She turned off John’s car and grabbed the keys out of the ignition.

  “Hey!” he said. “What are you doing?”

  She stepped out of the car. Walking around to the back of it, she opened it up, dug through John’s toolbox, and grabbed a screwdriver. When he circled around to the back of the car to see what she was doing, she tossed his keys back to him.

  “We’ll get Gertie later,” she said.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Stay here.”

  “Darcy! No! You stay away from that Corvette!”

  She turned around and put her palm to his chest. “John. Stay here.”

  “Darcy—”

  “Please! And keep your voice down!”

  Darcy strode to the Corvette. She opened the driver’s door and slid into the seat, glancing occasionally to Georgette’s apartment to insure the coast was clear.

  Using the screwdriver, she quickly popped a plastic piece off the steering column, revealing the ignition wires. They looked like multicolored spaghetti.

  Oh, God. Now what? Think. Think!

  When her father had shown her how to do this, he’d crossed two red wires. But there weren’t two red ones here.

  She glanced back at Georgette’s apartment. Please, Larry, keep your pants off for a little while longer.

  Wait a minute. Now she remembered. Her father hadn’t said it had to be two red ones, just two matching ones, and there were two blue wires.

  She looked quickly at John, who stood impatiently by his car with an expression that said he wholeheartedly disapproved even though he was staying put.

  She had to pull this off.

  She grabbed the two blue wires and twisted them together, her hands shaking like crazy, remembering her father’s admonition: If you get it right, the car will start. Get it wrong, and you’ll probably blow the whole electrical system. She held her breath and sparked a third wire against them.

  The engine roared to life.

  She wanted to throw her arms up in the air and shout with joy, but that wouldn’t have been professional, and her boss was watching.

  She put the car in reverse, eased off the brake and touched the gas, backing out of the parking space like a pro. Nothing was going to stop her this time. Not a locked garage. Not a stick shift. Nothing.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Darcy whipped around to see Larry standing in Georgette’s open apartment door. At first she felt a glimmer of panic, but when he streaked into the parking lot wearing nothing but baby-blue boxers and a pair of black socks, it was hard to see him as much of a threat.

  He ran up to the driver’s door. “Get out of my car!”

  “Sorry, Larry. Not this time.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  She looked at Larry’s boxers, a deflating erection still tenting their crotch. “Yeah, Larry. I’m nuts.”

  “You’re not taking my car! You don’t know how to drive it! You’ll just tear up the transmission!”

  “This transmission is going to be just fine.” She reached for the gearshift.

  “Wait!” Larry said. “Just get out of my car, and I swear I’ll go straight to the bank to take care of things. I swear I will.”

  “Sorry. I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. You don’t get the car until you make up the back payments.” She put the car in first gear, her foot hovering over the gas pedal.

  “You can’t do this to me!” Larry shouted.

  “Sure I can. And Larry?”

  “What?” he snapped.

  “Your lady friend?”

  “Yeah?”

  Darcy leaned toward him and dropped her voice. “Georgette used to be George.”

  Larry whipped around to look at Georgette standing at the open apartment door. She ran her hand up the door frame, her purple peignoir fluttering in the breeze.

  “Come on back in here, honey,” she said, flashing him a sizzling smile. “We haven’t
finished our business yet.”

  Larry’s expression went from astonished to horrified. He spun around to Darcy again, shouting as she began to drive away.

  “You can’t leave me here like this! Take me with you!”

  “Sorry, Larry. I’m a repossession agent, not a taxi driver.”

  Darcy hit the gas, and Larry was still shouting as she circled around the parking lot and pulled up next to John. She’d done it. By herself. And if she did it once, she could do it again.

  “I believe you owe me the fee for this one,” she said.

  John shook his head with disbelief. “Where’d you learn to hot-wire a car?”

  “My father.”

  “Most fathers don’t teach their daughters how to steal cars.”

  “Most fathers don’t have daughters who want to be repo agents. He’s actually proud of me.”

  “How does your mother feel about it?”

  “She doesn’t know yet. But she’s going to hate it, of course. Maybe I can tell her it’s my talent for the Mrs. America competition.”

  John just shook his head, then leaned into the car and gave Darcy a kiss. “You’re really something, you know that?”

  “So it was okay for me to grab this car?”

  He sighed with resignation. “Looks as if I couldn’t stop you if I tried.”

  She smiled. “So you’ll show me the ropes?”

  “Yeah, I’ll show you the ropes. In a few weeks, you’ll be stealing all the cars you want to. The ones I’m pretty sure aren’t in dangerous situations, anyway.” He closed his eyes. “God, I hate this.”

  “I know,” she said with a smile. “But I promise I’ll be careful.”

  “Just try to keep all the wing-nut stuff to a minimum, will you? I can’t afford to bail you out of jail.”

  “Whatever you say, John.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right.”

  Darcy looked over her shoulder. “Oops. Here comes Larry.”

  As Larry circled around the back of the car, John slowly stood up again, folding his arms across his chest and glaring down at him. Larry stopped in his tracks, his startled gaze traveling up. And up. And up some more.

  “Darcy?” John said.

  “Yes?”

  “Hit the gas.”

  Darcy flashed him a brilliant smile, then stomped the clutch, shifted into first, and peeled out of the parking lot.

  “You sure this is a good idea?” John said a week later as he and Darcy climbed the steps to her parents’ front door. “Maybe I could just talk with her on the phone or something.”

  “Nope. Meeting my mother is kind of like swimming in ice-cold water. If you just stick your big toe in first, you’ll see how bad it is and you’ll never get in. It’s best just to leap right off the dock.”

  “I think I’d rather jump in that ice-cold water.”

  Darcy smiled. “You’re actually nervous, aren’t you?”

  “Nervous?”

  “John. You have a death grip on my hand.”

  John let go of her hand and wiped his sweaty palm on his pants, and Darcy felt a tingle of pure delight. If he didn’t love her, this wouldn’t matter so much. But it was just a formality. It didn’t matter in the least what her mother thought. She was going to love him right back.

  A few days ago when Darcy told her mother that Jeremy Bridges was out of the picture for good, she thought the woman was going to collapse with despair. And when Darcy told her she just happened to be in love with another man who didn’t exactly reach that same pinnacle of financial success, Lyla tried every way under the sun to get Darcy to see the error of her ways. She cajoled. She whined. She even shrieked a little when she didn’t think Darcy was taking her seriously, which she wasn’t. In a half hour, she went through every argument in the book, half a pack of Virginia Slims, and three shots of Wild Turkey.

  Finally her father had spoken from his La-Z-Boy in the living room. “Lyla. Invite the man to dinner.”

  “I will not. There’s no sense encouraging something like this.”

  “Darcy,” her father said, “we’ll see you and John at seven o’clock on Saturday.”

  Now Saturday had come, and John looked as if he was going to his own execution.

  Her father greeted them at the door. He shook hands with John and escorted them into the kitchen, where her mother was bent over the oven. She closed the door and stood up, wiping her hands on a tea towel. Judging from Lyla’s frigidly restrained expression, Darcy’s father had clearly had a word with her about her behavior tonight.

  “Mr. Stark,” she said with an icy smile. “How very nice to meet you.”

  She shook his hand with all the warmth of a cadaver.

  “Dinner sure smells good,” John said.

  “It’ll be ready in a moment. I hope you like quiche.”

  John’s smile faltered. “It’s my favorite.”

  Uh-huh. This from a man who could finish off a side of beef and then wonder when dinner was going to be served.

  “Vegetable quiche,” Lyla went on. “With a side salad of iceberg lettuce and cherry tomatoes. You do like low-fat dressing, don’t you?”

  “Uh . . . sounds great.”

  Darcy rolled her eyes. Passive-aggressiveness was so unattractive, but since it seemed her father had warned her mother against active-aggressiveness, she had no other weapon left.

  “I’d be delighted to get both of you a drink. Mr. Stark? What will you have?”

  “It’s John. And, uh . . . a beer would be fine.”

  “Of course, Mr. Stark.”

  John’s hand tightened on Darcy’s. Is she going to be this way all night?

  “Darcy? What would you like? Shall I open this lovely bottle of wine you left here when you moved?”

  She nodded toward the bottle of Penfolds Grange Shiraz sitting on the kitchen counter. Darcy had forgotten all about it.

  “Nah. I can drink beer right out of the bottle. That way I won’t dirty a glass.”

  Lyla’s nose crinkled with disgust, but she was still smiling. It was one of the funniest combinations Darcy had ever seen. John, though, didn’t appear to see the humor in it, eyeing her mother as if he expected her to bite his head right off his shoulders.

  As Lyla went to the refrigerator, Darcy whispered to John, “Don’t let her attitude fool you. Her drink is Wild Turkey and diet Coke.”

  Lyla opened the refrigerator door and pulled out two beers. She started to put them on the counter and froze.

  “No,” she said.

  “What?” Darcy said.

  She shoved the beers back into the fridge and slammed it. “No! I just can’t do this!”

  Clayton raised an eyebrow. “Lyla . . .”

  “Our daughter has lost her mind. She could have had a millionaire, and she settles for a repo man?”

  A look of thinly veiled horror spread across John’s face. He’d spent eighteen years as a cop looking danger in the eye and never blinking, but three minutes with Lyla Dumphries had put the fear of God into him.

  Darcy smiled up at him. “Money isn’t everything, Mom.”

  “The only people who say that are people who have plenty of it, which you don’t.”

  “It’s love,” Darcy said. “Love. Never forget that.”

  “Love. Please. Try eating love instead of food and see how long you survive.”

  Clayton sighed. “Lyla. Not now.”

  “Yes, now. I’m making a point here.”

  “So is Darcy.”

  “Darcy doesn’t know what’s good for her.”

  “She knows very well what’s good for her.”

  “Try paying the mortgage with love,” Lyla said. “That’ll go over big.”

  “Lyla . . .”

  “Or the electric bill.”

  “Lyla!”

  “Sooner or later you’ll be freezing in the—”

  All at once, Clayton grabbed her, hauled her right up next to him, and bent her backward over his arm. Oh, God, Darcy th
ought. This is it. After forty years of bottled-up frustration, he’s going to gnaw right through her jugular.

  Instead, he kissed her.

  Darcy’s eyes widened with astonishment because it wasn’t just any old kiss. It was a kiss so hot she was surprised the sparks didn’t catch the mobile home on fire. Clayton finally brought Lyla to her feet again, and she stared up at him with a dumbfounded expression.

  “Now, what were you saying?” Clayton asked her.

  Lyla just stood there, her eyes glassy, gaping at her husband. “Uh . . . nothing.”

  “Good answer.” Clayton reached into his wallet, pulled out a pair of twenties, and handed them to John. “John, I want you and Darcy to go to dinner on me. Lyla and I need to be alone tonight.”

  “W-we do?”

  “Do you have a problem with that?”

  She swallowed hard. “No. No problem.”

  “Uh . . . okay,” John said, looking so disoriented that Darcy almost laughed out loud. “Well, then. I guess we’ll be taking off. It was nice to meet both of you.”

  “Yeah,” Lyla said, still staring up at Clayton. “Nice.”

  John and Darcy stepped out to the front porch and closed the door behind them. John still looked a little woozy, and for a moment she was afraid he was going to trip right down the steps.

  “What the hell just happened in there?” he asked.

  “Something that should have happened about thirty years ago.” She smiled up at him. “Welcome to the family.”

  Darcy wanted to go to Taco Hut for dinner, where they could spend ten bucks and pocket the other thirty, but John put his foot down and told her to stop being a tightwad. After a nice dinner at an eclectic little restaurant in east Plano, they came home and curled up on the sofa to watch the end of the Rangers game. Darcy couldn’t see ever liking baseball to any large degree, but since she’d taken over three-quarters of John’s bedroom closet, most of his dresser drawers, and virtually all of the counter in the bathroom, she had no doubt he’d chop off her hand if she so much as reached for the remote.

  When the Rangers finally won the game, Darcy excused herself, went to the bedroom, and put on something she’d bought earlier that day. She slinked back down the hall, the feathers at the hem tickling her thighs. When she reached the living room, she ran her hand up the doorway, striking a provocative pose.