Hot Wheels and High Heels (4 page)

“My gas tank?”

“After you look at these.” He tossed the newspaper down on the table, then ambled down the hall.

Lyla glanced at the section of the paper he’d given Darcy, then whipped around and shouted, “You want her to get a
job?
”

But Clayton had already disappeared. If he was going to drop a bomb, he knew to stay clear of the fallout.

Lyla huffed with irritation. “Didn’t I tell you he was useless in a crisis?”

For once, her mother was right. After all, Darcy had been an employee once—a receptionist at a big manufacturing company—and she hadn’t liked it in the least. She had to be at her desk at some ungodly hour of the morning, she got only an hour for lunch, and as much as she liked talking on the phone, after a while the ringing drove her nuts. If Warren hadn’t worked there as a senior accounting manager and eventually taken her away from all that, she’d have been forced to rethink employment as a means of making a living.

Marry rich, Darcy. It’s your only hope.

She’d heard those words from the moment she realized boys didn’t have cooties to the day she said “I do.” Her mother believed every woman needed a man to take care of her, and the richer he was, the better. And if you couldn’t find a rich one, you made do with whatever you could get and then spent the rest of your life bitching about the monthly shortfall and trying to make him into something he wasn’t.

Lyla stabbed out her cigarette and rose from the table. “I have to go do my hair. In the meantime, I suggest you make a few phone calls and see if you can find your husband. And when you do, tell him you’re sorry for whatever you’ve done, and then pretend nothing ever happened.”

“Sorry? What do I have to be
sorry
about?”

“Whatever you did to make him leave you.”

“Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? I didn’t
do
anything!”

Lyla shook her finger like a cranky schoolmarm. “Do you like pretty clothes? A big house to live in? Lunch at those fancy restaurants? You’re not twenty-five anymore, you know. Do you think you’ve still got what it takes to snag another man who can give you a lifestyle like that?”

Darcy felt a slap of reality. Her impending birthday hadn’t meant a thing to her two hours ago when she had the money to look thirty. But now she pictured her roots growing out. Her Botox wearing off. The lump of Play-Doh her body was going to become if she couldn’t pay Vlad to push her to exercise.

As those horrific thoughts swept through her mind, she quivered with dread. All she wanted was for Warren to surface with some kind of plausible explanation—or even a not-so-plausible one that was at least semi-believable—so she could get her life back again and pretend all this had never happened.

Lyla went to her bedroom to make herself as presentable as nature would allow. Darcy found leftover chicken in the fridge for Pepé, and then she fixed herself a drink with the only ingredients she could find: diet Coke and Wild Turkey. After her parents left the house, she drained that glass and filled another one, then picked up the phone and made calls to Warren’s friends, his golf buddies, and his CPA. Nobody had seen a single hair on his mostly bald head. Or, if they had, they weren’t telling her.

She hung up and took stock of her situation. It didn’t look good. She had a hundred and eighty-three dollars, a couple of suitcases full of clothes that would be perfect as long as she moved to a Mexican resort for the rest of her life, and a dog she loved dearly but who was about as useful in a crisis as dryer lint.

But she did still have her Mercedes. Thank God she still had that.

She glanced out the window and adored her car for a moment, taking a mental tour of the interior, with its walnut door panels and its heated seats and its Thermo-Tronic climate control, not to mention the intoxicating smell of the black leather seats. Maybe everything else in her life had gone to hell, but no one was taking her car away from her.

Except maybe those guys out there stealing it.

Chapter 3

A
s John unlocked the door of the Mercedes Roadster, he experienced the same thrill he always did whenever he was in the presence of a truly extraordinary vehicle. He couldn’t wait to feel the walnut-inlaid steering wheel beneath his palms, smell the leather, hear the thunder of three hundred horses under the hood. It was a convertible, earning it extra points, and firemist red with black interior, which were exactly the colors he would pick if fate ever chose to drop fifty thousand discretionary dollars in his lap. It was getting near dusk, but he’d bet this baby would glow in the dark.

Parked behind the Roadster was a ’91 Corolla, blue with rust accents, with a Jack-in-the-Box antenna ball and a purple rosary hanging from the rearview mirror. Since that vehicle was typical for those that resided at Wingate Manufactured Home Park, the Mercedes Roadster stuck out like a champion show dog in a pack of mangy mutts.

Tony gave a low whistle, running his hand over the fender of the car with utmost appreciation. “Man, one of these days I’m going to buy one of these instead of stealing other people’s.”

“Yep,” John said. “Nice car. Now, keep an eye on that double-wide until I can get it out of here.”

He unlocked the driver’s door and opened it so he could check out the vehicle identification number, careful as always to see that the numbers matched. Nothing on earth caused a bigger mess than grabbing the wrong car.

“The VIN matches,” John said.

“Okay, then,” Tony said. “I’m out of here. There’s a certain depressed woman who needs me tonight. I’ll just give her a call. . . .” He paused. “Uh-oh. We’ve got trouble.”

John heard a door slam. He looked over his shoulder to see a woman tearing down the front steps of the double-wide, teetering on ridiculously high heels as she ran across a lawn that was more weeds than grass. Christ, a woman could break an ankle in shoes like those.

“Hey, you!” she shouted. “Get away from my car!”

John stood up. She halted in front of him, coiling her perfectly manicured hands into fists and resting them on her hips. And he couldn’t help noticing the tight white pants that followed the curve of those hips and the lime-green off-the-shoulder shirt she wore that was just short enough to reveal an inch of skin below it—smooth, tanned skin that said she was a poolside lounger who wore just the right SPF. And her hair—long, dark, and silky—looked as if she’d just stepped out of a shampoo commercial.

Although she was nice to look at, he’d discovered long ago that high-maintenance women only made his life hell, and she was clearly one of those. Anytime one of them popped up on his radar, he ran the other way.

She flicked a strand of dark, glossy hair over her shoulder and skewered him with an angry glare. “What are you doing with my car?”

“Returning it to its owner.”

“I
am
its owner.”

“Nope. This car is owned by Atlas Financial Services.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m repossessing it.”

She drew back with a stunned expression. “
Repossessing
it?”

“That’s what happens when you don’t make the payments.”

“Hold on. Wait a minute. Payments? What do you mean, ‘payments’?”

Not only was she high maintenance, she was dumb as dirt. Dangerous combination. It meant she had the basic motor function to start shopping but not enough brain power to tell her when to stop.

“It was financed,” he told her. Slowly, so she’d get the picture. “By your husband.”

“No. There are no payments. My husband has plenty of money. He pays cash for everything.”

“Maybe for everything else, but not for this.”

“You’re not listening to me,” she said sharply. “You clearly have the wrong car.”

“Nope. The VIN matches.”

“VIN?”

“Vehicle identification number.”

“Maybe somebody gave you the wrong number.”

“And the wrong number matches? What are the odds?”

He turned to get into the car, but she grabbed his arm. “Hey! I’m telling you you’ve made a mistake!”

John let out a breath of irritation. He rarely bothered to explain himself, but since it might be the quickest way out of here, he pulled the repossession order from his pocket.

“Warren McDaniel,” he read. “Is that your husband’s name?”

“Yes. But you must have the wrong Warren McDaniel.”

John rattled off the social security number. “Is that your husband’s?”

“Yes, but—”

“Is this a Mercedes SLK350 Roadster?”

“Of course it is. But—”

“The vehicle identification number matches.”

“Okay, but—”

“And the loan is sixty days delinquent.”

“Well, you
say
it is, but—”

“So tell me where I’m out of line by taking this car.”

She snatched the order out of his hand and tore it up, tossing the pieces into the air for the evening breeze to carry away, then planted her fists on her hips again.

Tony’s eyes widened. “Oops,” he told her. “Big mistake. John’s real funny about his paperwork.”

“Will you shut up?” John snapped. “I’ll handle this.”

Tony held up his hands in surrender and went over to lean against the fender of his 4x4, popping a Tic Tac and not even bothering to hide his smirk of amusement. John, on the other hand, was not amused in the least.

“That did you no good at all,” John told her. “I don’t have to have paperwork to take the car.” He slid into the convertible and stuck the key into the ignition.

“Wait a minute. Where did you get a key?”

“Some loan companies keep a copy. Makes life easier when their cars have to be repossessed.”

“They can’t do that!”

“They can until the loan is paid off.” He shut the door.

“No! You are
not
taking my car!”

The hell he wasn’t.

He started the engine and revved it a little. As he was reaching for the gearshift, though, she circled around the front of the car, turned, and leaned against the hood.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Get out of the way!”

She didn’t move, so he laid on the horn. She jumped a little but stayed put.

Shit.
What now? He couldn’t keep honking. If he did, pretty soon an audience would gather, and in his profession that could only lead to disaster.

He looked over his shoulder. Unfortunately, the crappy Corolla parked behind him hadn’t decided to move of its own accord. It was hugging the Roadster’s bumper so close he had no room to back up.

Enough was enough.

John ripped open the door and strode around to where she stood. “Get away from the car.”

She held the fingers of one hand in front of her, apparently overcome with a sudden need to inspect her fifty-dollar manicure.

Okay. He could physically remove her. Hell, he could pick up three of her and never break a sweat. But as soon as he did, she’d start screaming, and the neighbors would come running, and assault charges would be filed, and he sure as hell didn’t want to deal with any of that.

“I said get away from the car,” he repeated, injecting as much venom into his voice as he possibly could. Intimidation was his strong suit. This expression and this voice had brought felony suspects to their knees. But she merely glanced at him nonchalantly as if to say,
You are absolutely boring me to death,
then went back to checking out her perfectly polished nails.

“I’m warning you,” he said. “I’m a very stubborn man.”

“And I’m a stubborn woman.”

“I’ll stand here all night if I have to.”

“How nice. We can watch the sun come up together.”

“It’s supposed to rain.”

She glanced at the sky, where a brilliant Texas sun had just slipped below the horizon. “I believe we’d need some clouds for that.”

He glanced at the hose coiled haphazardly near the front steps of the mobile home. “Not if I haul out a garden hose.”

She whipped around. “You wouldn’t
dare.
”

“Try me.”

“You’re a horrible,
horrible
man.”

“Why? Because it’s my job to pick up a car that hasn’t been paid for?”

“No. Because you run a business that thrives on the misfortune of others.”

“You mean those misfortunate people who refuse to honor their commitments and pay their bills?”

“Some people are down on their luck. Ever stop to think about that?”

“Yeah. A few are. But most of them squander their money. That’s not misfortune. That’s misallocation.”

“I didn’t
misallocate
anything! It was my husband who didn’t make the payments, not me!”

“I don’t care who missed the payments. The loan on this car is delinquent, so it’s my job to take it back.”

“You don’t understand! My husband left me. He took everything. This car is the only thing I have left!”

John made a scoffing noise and started to tell her she might want to take that up with a divorce attorney, but all at once her challenging expression fell away, and her face crumpled. He froze, overcome by a horrible sense of foreboding.

Oh, God. She was going to cry. Sure enough, her eyes began to glisten. Her lips tightened.

“No,” he said, holding up his hand. “For God’s sake, don’t cry.”

“I can’t help it.”

John glanced at Tony, who had conveniently turned his attention to the yard next door, where a stray dog was peeing on a crape myrtle tree.

“Yeah, you can,” John said. “Really. You can help it. Just . . . don’t.”

But then a tear ran down her cheek, and another, and John knew he was in for a deluge.

“You have no idea what I’ve been through,” she sobbed. “None at all.”

“No. You’re right. I don’t. And I really don’t think you should tell—”

“I came home from a vacation today and found out that my husband had left me!”

John closed his eyes. Here it came. The whole damned story.

“He took everything. He sold our house. There was another family living there. I actually walked through the door to find
another family living in my house.
Can you believe it? And he cleaned out our bank accounts. Ran up our credit cards. Now all I have is my dog and . . .” She ran her hand over the hood of the car, tears rolling down her face. “And my beautiful,
beautiful
car.”