Mia Like Crazy (2 page)

“I know everyone’s acted like you’re crazy, leaving a place like this, but you’re smarter than most of them put together,” Lauren said earnestly. “I think you’re going to do great.”

There was that feeling again. My breath caught in my chest as I gazed down at the mug. “Thanks. It’s really…nice.” I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve anything whatsoever from Lauren.

“Well, it’s actually a thank you gift, for the advice you gave me.”

“Advice?”

“Yeah, remember that morning we talked? We both ended up here before anyone else, and I was really freaked out. I gave you an earful.”

“Oh, yeah.” It all came back to me. Thirty of the most uncomfortable minutes of my life. Much too personal for office acquaintances.

“Well, you gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten. You said, ‘If the street’s so full of trash you’re tripping over it, sometimes you’ve got to go through it with a street sweeper.’ I went home and sent my boyfriend packing that day. Best thing I ever did.”

“I’m glad it worked out for you.” I smoothed the ribbon with my fingers, trying to pretend this conversation wasn’t making me nervous.

I rarely gave guidance that wasn’t of the legal nature. I’d worded Lauren’s vaguely, so it wouldn’t seem like we were getting too personal. In fact, if she’d thought about it, it was more like a fortune cookie message than actual advice.

“To be honest…” She leaned in closer and dropped her voice to a near-whisper. “When I first saw you, I thought you were hired because…well, because men were the ones doing the hiring.”

Maybe I should have been annoyed at that, but I was just relieved it wasn’t the Hispanic thing.

“You know, I used to be jealous of you when you first came,” she continued. “The guys were all talking about you. They said you were ‘exotic looking’ and watched you when you walked by.”

I found it ironic that in my lawyer clothes, I was considered “exotic.” I could still remember how people looked at me when I was just another brown little girl in housing project clothes. I forced the memory away, reminding myself I wasn’t that person anymore. I tried to focus on what Lauren was saying.

“Well, anyway, you turned out to be really great. I know everything will work out for you. Here’s my home number in case you ever need anything.” She held a small yellow square of paper out toward me.

I accepted the Post-it, even though I knew I’d never use it. I never needed anyone, not when I was a kid and not now. But for some reason I couldn’t seem to take another breath until Lauren left my office.

Sometimes you’ve got to go through with a street sweeper.

That’s what I’d done with my own life. Since I finished high school, I hadn’t confided in a soul about my childhood. I’d made a clean sweep and invented a brand new person. Except for the red file, it was almost as if I didn’t exist before my freshman year in college.

I looked around my bare office. In the movies, people always carried a box or two out with them when they left a job, perhaps filled with framed photos of family or mementos of the time they spent there.

I picked up my briefcase and my coffee mug and walked out.

Chapter Two

Three long days after speaking to him on the phone, I climbed out of the freshest cab I’d ever ridden in and peered up at Drew Larson’s apartment building. It was one of only a few high rises I’d seen on the ride over, and none of them were any match for what I was used to in the Big Apple. Most people seemed to live in houses in this town. I wondered why millionaires would choose to live in Vaughndale, New York at all, although the air definitely smelled better and the trees were kind of nice too.

Even the elevator music on the ride to the penthouse was pleasant. After looking at my watch to triple-check that I was on time, but not too early, I rang the doorbell.

“Who is it?” a voice yelled from inside.

“Mia Medina,” I answered, noticing the door had a peephole. Surely he wasn’t mistaking me for a home-invasion robber.

The man who opened the door looked at me like I was a used toothbrush salesman. Everything about him scowled at me, including his bleak coal-black suit. Instead of a greeting, he gave me a blatant examination, from my nearly black, below-the-shoulder-length hair to my favorite high-heeled pumps.

My eyes suddenly had a mind of their own. They flicked from his hand on the door to his white tieless dress shirt, which was buttoned from the third button down. I felt strangely uncomfortable and couldn’t seem to focus on his face.

However, after seeing how he dressed for a meeting in his own home, I was glad I’d worn a conservative gray suit. I glanced down to make sure my blouse was still buttoned all the way and wished I could check my pantyhose for runs, wondering the whole time why I was so self-conscious.

“Um…sorry,” he finally said. His shrug said he wasn’t. “I guess I should use the peephole. Come in.”

I pulled myself together and tried to meet his gaze, but he’d stepped back several feet into his dimly lit apartment.

Despite his initial inspection, his dark eyes now focused on anything in the room, but me. As I watched him, I noticed his medium brown hair stopped below his collar, as though he hadn’t had a haircut in a while. But somehow it looked right on him.

He didn’t bother to introduce himself, but I knew he was Drew Larson because he sounded exactly the same as on the phone.

“Your apartment is beautiful.” I looked around at the warm furnishings, which bore no resemblance to the man who occupied them. But whoever decorated had managed to mix masculine items, like the leather couch and square wooden end tables, with soft throws and decorative pillows, to perfection.

“Yeah, my sister Meridith got all this after she came over the first time. She said my stuff was cold. Go figure.”

“Meridith Vaughn?” I asked, putting two and two together.

“You know her?”

“Her name’s very familiar.”

“To a lot of people,” Larson replied blandly. “She’s involved in all that high society charity stuff. You know ‘Save the This.’ ‘Feed the That
.
’”

I ignored his cynical tone. “Your sister must really care about you to go to so much trouble.” I wished I had a sister—a really rich sister with really good taste.

“I guess. Too bad I didn’t know her most of my life, maybe I’d have more—” He stopped abruptly before his meaning was clear.

It was an odd comment for a multimillionaire
.
How could anyone want more than he had at his fingertips? And inherited, no less. How lucky could he be?

I felt the familiar pang of envy I experienced whenever I thought of how much some people got so easily.

Wondering why his sister had the Vaughn name and he didn’t, I asked, “So, who is it you’re inheriting from?”

“Herbert Vaughn. My
father.
” When he said it, it sounded like a four-letter word.

He led me over to a dining area adjoining the living room. The small, yet expensive-looking, square table and four chairs were positioned next to a window with a pleasant view of homes, some businesses, and a tree-lined park. A stream of light from the window cast a pleasant glow over most of the dining area.

Larson stopped just short of the light. I looked around and noticed none of his lamps or ceiling lights were turned on. “Here are the papers.” He motioned carelessly toward a file, as I sat down in front of it. “I don’t know anything about it. Some kind of investments and companies, and there’s the will and other stuff from his lawyer.”

So, he stood to inherit a fortune, but was too lazy to learn the first thing about his father’s lucrative business interests? I was disgusted by his lack of appreciation for the empire being handed to him on a silver platter. I was also sure that if my father had been Herbert Vaughn, even as a child, I would have been at his knee, pestering him with questions.

I shuffled through the documents, noting that Larson stood a good distance away, staring out the window. “So your dad never taught you anything about his business interests?”

“My ‘dad’? You mean Pops, my old man, Daddy Dearest?”

“Uh-huh,” I murmured, pretending to be too distracted to notice the adamant tone in his voice. I continued to glance over the will. “You weren’t very close, then?”

“Are you asking as a lawyer, or as a shrink? Because the last ambulance chaser I had started getting his job mixed up.”

“Well, if you don’t think it’s pertinent—”

“Oh, it’s
pertinent
all right. It’s also about four of those made-for-TV movies rolled into one.” As he spoke, he began pacing the length of the room. “My biological ‘dad,’ as you call him—the illustrious Herbert Vaughn—had an affair with a pathetic, lonely housewife with a real creep for a husband. She got knocked up, but Vaughn preferred to pretend it never happened, leaving his bastard kid in the care of his lover and her husband Jack Larson, who I like to call ‘Satan.’ She got more unstable after she found out the baby wasn’t going to make Vaughn save her from her husband and marry her.”

Larson looked down, seemingly distracted by a tiny speck of something on his otherwise immaculate, black shoe. His voice dropped to a murmur. “She killed herself when I was seven.”

Okay, so his blandness on the phone the day before had been misleading.
He had plenty of emotions. Unfortunately, they were all negative.

The attitude made a lot more sense now, but this was starting to seem more like a “session” than a meeting, and I felt immensely under-qualified. Besides, I wasn’t sure he still knew I was in the room.

But he propped his foot on a chair, flicked off the offending piece of fuzz, and started talking again.

“Satan knew I wasn’t his kid, but he didn’t want to risk the humiliation of the truth.” He projected his voice like he was in the middle of a stage performance. “Instead, he decided to make my life a living hell while pretending to be my father. So, I guess you know what that makes me?”

He paused as though expecting an answer, but didn’t look at me. Instead, he straightened the painting that hung several yards away on the living room wall. I got the feeling this was his version of a pop quiz.

“The son
of Satan?” I answered skeptically.

Was I on Candid Camera? This guy seemed to be taking his act from some gothic novel. In his black clothes, averting his eyes as he did most of the time, I was starting to feel like I’d stepped into a
nouveau
version of Phantom of the Opera.

I’d always prided myself on my ability to read people and, although I believed the facts he’d given, something in his manner didn’t ring true. He
wanted
me to find him distant, rude…scary?

I thought about the boys in my old neighborhood who managed to fake tough guy personas pretty well when they needed to. But that was self-preservation. Why would Drew Larson need the act here? He was tall, rich, and good looking.

He stared out the window as if it were some portal into his past life. I suspected he was in danger of falling through it permanently. It disturbed me that I had an inkling of how he felt, and I had the urge to reach out and pull him back into the present.

I cleared my throat. “Well, I’m sorry about the whole father-Satan thing.” The statement sounded ridiculous to my own ears after I said it. “If you thought you were Jack Larson’s son, how did you end up an heir to the Herbert Vaughn fortune?”

“I don’t know. The old creep didn’t give a rat’s ass about me all those years, but put me in his will. It was a surprise to my half-sister Meridith too. She took it well, though, considering she’s only inheriting about ninety million instead of a hundred-eighty.”

I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic, using “only” and “ninety million” in the same sentence, since he sounded sarcastic most of the time.

“She turned out better than I did, even though Herbert Vaughn could’ve easily been elected Satan himself, if my ‘dad’
hadn’t been able to fulfill his term in office. I guess it didn’t really matter. I was out of the frying pan into the fire. Mom had great taste in men.”

More than ready for that conversation to be over, I went back to skimming through the documents, until something caught my eye.