Hot Wheels and High Heels (13 page)

“Jeremy Bridges.”

Darcy came to attention. This really was his cell phone. And he really had answered it himself.

“Uh . . . hello, Jeremy. This is Darcy McDaniel.”

“Darcy! So good to hear from you.”

He sounded pretty jovial, considering how they’d parted. Then again, he
had
sent her a thousand-dollar gift card, so surely there were no hard feelings on his part after their disagreement the other day. Maybe this would be easier than she thought.

“I’m just calling . . . well, I’m calling to tell you that I got the gift card, and while it’s a very thoughtful thing to do—”

“No, you can’t have the receipt.”

Darcy’s mouth fell open. “What?”

“I said you can’t have the receipt.”

“Uh . . . I don’t want the receipt.”

“Of course you do. You want to cash out the card.”

“No. Really. I don’t.”

“Then what do you want?”

She opened her mouth to say something, and several seconds later it was still hanging open. She was so utterly shocked at just how dead-on his accusation was that she couldn’t think of a thing to say.

Then she got mad.

“You are
such
a jerk,” she said. “You spend a thousand dollars, and all I get out of it is
coffee?
”

“You get far more than coffee. They have cookies, too. And pastries. And I think some of them have started carrying sandwiches and—”

“You know what I mean!”

“Hey, I think it’s kinda stupid, too. But you did say you couldn’t afford Starbucks anymore.”

“I also said I was driving a crappy car and living in my parents’ mobile home. A thousand dollars would go a long way toward fixing
those
problems.”

“Now, Darcy. What would happen if I just gave you a car? Or apartment rent?”

“Uh . . . I’d have something respectable to drive and a decent place to live?”

“But how would you ever expect to grow as a person?”

Was this man completely out of his mind? “I’ve got news for you, Bridges. Growing as a person is just about last on my to-do list.”

“I’m quite sure it is. And number one on that list is getting back all the luxuries you’ve lost. Enjoy the coffee, Darcy.”

Click.

Darcy held out the phone, staring at it dumbly, then hung it up with a sigh of frustration. He was toying with her, plain and simple. That was the only explanation. He wasn’t actually going to help her. Instead, he liked watching her flounder around, trying to keep her head above water while he dangled the luxuries of life in front of her, reminding her of what she couldn’t have. But what good would it do her to have a four-dollar cup of coffee if she couldn’t put gas in old Gertie?

The door to John’s office opened, and he stuck his head out. “I was on the phone. What did the FedEx guy leave?”

“The FedEx wasn’t for you,” she said. “It was for me.”

He came out of his office and stood over her desk. “You? Who sent you a FedEx here?”

Before Darcy could move the envelope out of his way, John grabbed it and read the return address.

“Jeremy Bridges?”

“Give me that!”

“Isn’t he the guy your husband embezzled all that money from?”

Darcy paused. “Yes.”

John glanced around her desk. “What did he send you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“New rule. If you’re on the clock, it’s my business.”

She rolled her eyes. “If you must know, he sent me a Starbucks gift card.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me.”

John held up his hand. “Wait a minute. Do you know this guy?”

“Not really.”

“Your husband embezzles from him, and he sends you a gift?”

“He’s just a very sympathetic person,” she said, hoping her nose wasn’t growing as she spoke. “He came to see me the other day. He just wants me to have one of the luxuries Warren took away from me.”

“You’re broke. Couldn’t he have sprung for something a little more useful?”

“The rich are different, John. A man like Jeremy doesn’t even think about necessities. It’s all about luxury.”

She almost choked on that. A man who swilled beer and dressed like a Jimmy Buffett groupie had a little way to go as far as a luxury mentality was concerned.

“Luxury?” John said. “Starbucks? What kind of idiot pays four bucks for a cup of coffee?”

“That’s exactly the reaction I’d expect from a man who drinks Maxwell House.”

“Damn fine coffee. And a real bargain, too.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, who needs bargain coffee when I have”—she nonchalantly
tap, tap, tapped
the gift card against her desk, then held it up with a smug smile—“a thousand dollars?”

John’s eyebrows flew up. “A thousand dollars’ worth of
coffee?
”

Finally. It was about time she impressed him with something. But instead of giving her the look of awe she expected, he shook his head with disapproval.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“That’s a lot of money.”

“He’s a very generous man.”

“Generous?” John placed his palms on Darcy’s desk, meeting her eye-to-eye. “Let me tell you something. Any man who gives a woman a thousand dollars’ worth of anything expects something in return. And I guarantee you that ‘something’ is more than a peck on the cheek. Is that really what you’re looking for?”

“He hasn’t asked me for anything.”

“Not yet, he hasn’t.”

“Why don’t you let me worry about Jeremy Bridges’s motives?”

“Just remember where you heard it first.”

With that, John turned and went back into his office, and Darcy had to resist the urge to hurl her stapler at his door. She’d never met a man so infuriatingly sure of himself in her entire life.

What she hated most, though, was that he was right. Jeremy was neither sympathetic nor generous. He had “ulterior motive” stamped all over him. And no matter how abruptly he’d hung up on her today, she had a feeling she hadn’t heard the last of him yet.

Chapter 9

D
arcy’s first week on the job passed without too many problems. Gradually she learned more about word processing, and Amy started teaching her how to run some of the reports. By Thursday she’d done away with the “to be filed” pile. She was relieved when the weekend came and John hadn’t found a reason to fire her yet, but when she rose on Saturday morning, she wished she was back at the office. Her father was at his shop, as he always was on Saturday, which left her at home to be her mother’s target du jour.

“I still can’t believe you’re working in a place like that,” Lyla said, digging the last cigarette out of a pack and lighting it. “What were you thinking when you took that job?”

Darcy shoved her half-eaten bowl of Froot Loops away, visions of brunch at the Palm dancing inside her head. “I told you, Mom. I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed with job offers.”

“Doesn’t some nice CEO need a girl Friday?”

“This isn’t the 1950s. Even receptionists have to know a lot of things. A lot of things I don’t.”

“You can stay here as long as you need to, but even without paying rent, you have expenses. Your hair and nails alone will cost half your paycheck. And what about clothes? Are you going to dress out of your luggage from now on? Isn’t it a little scary to think about doing that forever? It would scare me, that’s for sure.”

Darcy had learned long ago that there wasn’t much her mother wasn’t scared of. Her life had always been governed by fear: fear of aging, fear of heights, fear of ghosts, fear of nuclear war, fear of the number thirteen, fear of trains. And spiders. She didn’t like spiders. Anytime a spider sat down beside her, all hell broke loose.

But right now, Darcy had to admit she was starting to feel a little of that fear herself. It
was
a crappy, low-paying, dead-end job. Using it as a springboard to something better was going to take a very long time.

“I’d suggest you find yourself another man, and fast,” Lyla said. “And don’t sign a prenup this time. That way if it doesn’t work out, at least you can get a big divorce settlement. Then you can do it all over again.”

“Actually, Mom, when I get married again, I’d like it to last for a little while.”

“Right. Statistics show that half of all marriages these days end in divorce.”

“You and Dad are still married.”

“Stop being naïve, Darcy. Your father would have left me ages ago if some other woman would have him.”

Darcy sighed. Just what a kid wanted to hear. That if her father were only a better man, he’d have left her mother. She wasn’t good enough for him to want to stay, but he wasn’t good enough to find a replacement, which meant they were living in a state of mutually assured misery.

All at once, Lyla leaped out of her chair and made shooing movements with her hands. “Pepé! Off the sofa!”

As Pepé scrambled away, Lyla turned to Darcy. “That dog’s behavior is atrocious. He needs a good trainer.”

“Trainers cost money.”

“You used to have plenty of that, and still you did nothing.”

“
Mom
—”

“It’s a good thing you never had children. They’d have turned into juvenile delinquents.” She gasped. “Darcy! He’s peeing in the corner again!”

Darcy put her hand to her forehead. “It’s because you’re shouting at him, Mom!” she whispered loudly. “You can’t shout at him!”

“Of course I can shout at him! It’s my house, isn’t it?”

“I’m not arguing with your
right
to shout. I’m just telling you—” She let out a heavy sigh. “Oh, never mind. I’ll clean it up.”

“I’m going across the street to Roxanne’s. Her dog doesn’t pee on the rug.”

“That’s because she keeps him tied up in the backyard.”

“Which means he can’t pee on the rug.”

Lyla glared at Pepé, and he stared up at her as if she were Medusa with a headful of writhing snakes. Then Lyla grabbed another pack of cigarettes and her keys and left the house, shutting the door behind her with a huff of disgust.

Darcy went to the kitchen for the P-B-Gone she’d bought yesterday, knowing she couldn’t stay there much longer. Dog shrinks cost a fortune. Then again, so did people shrinks. Eventually she was going to go nuts, commit matricide, and end up in an institution for the criminally insane.

Okay, so maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. At least she’d have free room and board, along with the precious solitude only a rubber room could provide.

After she cleaned up the mess, Pepé trotted over, and she scooped him up to calm his delicate nerves. She had to get out of there before she turned into one of those sad little people who had no means of support, who lived in their parents’ basements and watched infomercials. She needed an apartment of her own. But how long would it be before she could get the money together for that?

She looked down at her wedding ring.

No. She couldn’t do it. Even though it was the only thing she had left with any value at all, it was also the only thing she had left of her former life, and she just couldn’t let it go.

She sighed. If only she made the kind of money John and Tony did for bringing in cars, she could have an apartment deposit in no time.

Wait a minute.

Darcy froze as an idea entered her mind. She turned it over, examined it from all angles, and after a few moments, she came to a stunning conclusion.

Forget being a clerk. She could become a repossession agent.

All John had done to go after her Mercedes the first time was get the key from the finance company. If she hadn’t interfered, he’d have just driven it away. All that had been required was a key and a driver’s license. Like she couldn’t handle that? Amy did say John had been trying to hire another repossession agent. He just didn’t realize that someone was right under his nose.

A sense of excitement built inside her, making her feel like a prospector who’d happened onto a vein of gold. She pictured checks for hundreds of dollars rolling in with dazzling regularity, in contrast to her piddly biweekly salary. This was the solution to her problem. Only one thing stood in her way.

She had to talk John into letting her do it.

“No way,” John said. “You get that out of your head right now. I am
not
teaching you to repossess cars.”

Darcy leaned forward and rested her forearms on his desk. “Just give me one good reason why you won’t.”

If John needed any more evidence that Darcy was a lunatic, this was it. What a hell of a thing to get hit with first thing Monday morning.

“I don’t have to give you a reason. I’m the boss.”

She sat back in her chair, eyeing him with irritation. “It’s because I’m a woman, isn’t it?”

“That doesn’t help your case any.”

“Are you really that sexist?”

“It’s not sexism. It’s just a fact that in this business, the bigger and badder you are, the less likely people are to give you any crap.”

“Tony’s not as big as you are, yet he manages to do the job.”

“Tony doesn’t need size with that mouth of his. He could talk anyone into anything.”

“I’m good with people, too.”

“I’m not talking about polite chatter at tea. I’m talking about the ability to talk your way into and out of difficult situations. People in this business can be a pain in the ass to deal with. They don’t want you to take their cars. Some of them go to great lengths to keep you from doing it. Say, like, combative women who cry, throw fits, and steal keys.”

He could tell she wanted to come back at that, but for once she was smart enough to hold her tongue.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll do both jobs. You let me do a repo every now and then, and I’ll still take care of the administrative stuff.”

“It’s not as easy as it looks.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s so tough about putting a key into the ignition of a car and driving it back here?”

“Some of the dealers keep keys on hand. Others give us the key code, and we have to go to a locksmith to get the keys cut. But for most of the cars, we have to use other means to take them. Sometimes we use the tow truck. Sometimes we pick the locks to break in, and if they’re older cars, we hot-wire them. Do you know how to do any of those things?”

“Well, no. But you can let me do the ones that have keys, and you guys can do the rest.”