Rich Bitch: Everything's Going to the Dogs (4 page)

He sighed and fell in with the other three.

So, the four of them walked the block to where he garaged his vehicle and piled into his dusty SUV. The Doberman leaped into the back without a second’s hesitation, but Mimi, naturally, wasn’t a jump-in-the-back kind of dog. She sat on Sophie’s lap the entire way as he headed south.

Sophie lived in an efficiency sublet in Greenwich Village, he learned. As he pulled up in front of a renovated town house, the kind that had been broken down into tiny apartments, he realized that he was well chaperoned. With two dogs along for the ride, one slobbering in the back as though he was applying a coat of paint to the car’s interior, getting invited up to her place was not going to be an option.

Perhaps that’s why she suddenly stiffened and said, “Oh,
merde
.” She’d turned her head and was looking out the window. He followed her gaze and saw a gaunt-looking man about his own age sitting on the red concrete steps.

“Problem?” he asked, his own hackles rising.

“Gregoire.” She sighed. “Gregory. My ex.” She sat there for another moment, then gave Mimi a kiss on top of her head, and reached for the door handle. “I’ll see you in the morning.” Carefully, she eased out of the car, putting her weight on her uninjured leg.

Vince jumped out of the car and strode around to her side, to help her. As he did, he got a good look at
Gregoire
.

The former chef turned drug addict and jail bird looked as though he didn’t get out much. He was pale, and his eyes had the look of an angry, bitter man. He was smoking something he’d hand rolled.

“What do you want?” Sophie asked when he rose from the steps to lounge against the black wrought-iron railing. Vince noticed that his expression transformed when he gazed at Sophie. He was obviously still in love with her.

“I want to talk to you.”

She rubbed her arms. “Your probation officer called on Wednesday. You missed your appointment again.”

He dropped his gaze and shuffled his feet on the cement step. A garbage truck roared by before he answered. “I was busy.”

“You’ve got to stop seeing those men, Gregory. They’ll only get you into more trouble.”

“They’re my friends,” he insisted.

“Then I no longer am your friend.” She shook her head sharply. “Don’t come here again,” she said, and hurried up the steps. Vince could see the effort she put into not limping.

Her ex grabbed her arm as she tried to pass.  He spoke in rapid French and Sophie shook her head and pulled away.

Vince had seen enough. He pulled himself to his impressive height making himself appear as big as possible. He strode to the bottom of the stairs. “Sophie told you to go.”

The thin guy let her go and turned to glare. “Yeah? And who de ‘ell are you?”

“Her friend.” He motioned behind him. “Get in the car and I’ll drop you somewhere.”

“Why don’t you fuck off?”

Sophie was inside by this time, which was all he cared about. He trod deliberately up the stairs until he and the deadbeat ex were on a level. He had a good six inches on the guy and probably eighty pounds.
”I look after my friends. I hear you’ve been anywhere near this street, and I’ll be on you. Get it?”

Gregory exercised his impressive vocabulary by repeating his last line. Vince didn’t move, simply pulled out his cell phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“The police. They might be interested in talking to you about rescheduling your appointment with your probation officer.”

Gregory knocked the cell phone out of his hand and turned and ran.

Vince caught the phone and repocketed it, then hung around awhile before heading back home. He hadn’t been able to protect her from getting knocked down today, but he could sure as hell keep the weasel chef away from her.

When he arrived back at his place, he discovered Sophie had been wrong about the dogs being company for each other. After he got them in his apartment, the Doberman ran through the place sniffing everything thoroughly, lapping Mimi’s water and cleaning out her food bowl and then launched himself on the pink princess bed and stretched full out as though unable to believe
 his luck. Vince did his best to encourage Mimi to shack up with her new buddy instead of him, but it was hopeless. She stayed in her princess bedroom while he was in there, but as soon as he moved into his own room, he heard the click, click, click of her pink polished nails on the hardwood as she followed him, springing like an over-sized flea onto his bed and heading straight for his feather pillow.

He was going to wake up in the morning smelling of Joy again. And not for the right reason.

“Now that you have a love interest, we must update your image,” Sophie said to Mimi the next day.
”No, don’t give me that pathetic look. We must speak English when Sir Galahad is around. It’s all he understands.”

Mimi whined, but Sophie was firm. “When I fell in love with and followed my lover to America, I learned English … Of 
course, that did not have a happy ending, but you may be luckier in love.”

She put the leads on both dogs, delighted now that Vince had bought the leather and chain leash. Really, the man must be clairvoyant. He’d bought the perfect leash for Sir Galahad the day before they met.

He was much more intuitive than he knew, that Vince.

“Now, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you can’t go around with blue hair and be considered
au courant
. The look was fine when you lived with old ladies,
naturellement
, but now you have Vince to think about, and the Doberman. You have to update,
oui
?”

Mimi looked unconvinced but trotted happily on one side of her, while Sir Galahad strained against his leash on her other side. “Look,” she finally said in exasperation. “You are bigger. Your legs are longer,
 but Mimi can’t keep up. She only has little legs. Now, you must behave.”

After that it was better. She’d cancelled Mimi’s standing hair appointment, deciding that any salon that would give a French poodle a blue rinse didn’t need Mimi’s business. Instead, they went to a place that Sophie herself patronized. It was run by an ex-patriot Frenchman who was brilliant with scissors. Most of the salon’s staff had learned their craft in Paris.

Mimi was in her element. Surrounded by French people who cooed and fussed over her, she made no protest when her fur was colored back to white.

“I don’t suppose …” Sophie gestured vaguely to where the Doberman stood with his nose against the door, leaving a big slobber mark on the glass.

“Sophie,
mon ange
, you know I love you, but the poodle is a fellow countryman, and
certainement
one helps one’s own. The Doberman can go to the dog groomer around the corner.”

Since there was a dog groomer nearby, Sophie was happy not to argue the point.

The Doberman, however, was less than happy when he reached his destination, letting her know by pulling away from the door that he was not inclined to be groomed. But since they stocked dog cookies and bribed him freely, he consented to be washed and brushed. And defleaed.

While he was being groomed, she went back to Mimi and decided she looked so pretty when she was white again that her manicure needed redoing. They decided on a pale pink, and Sophie opted for the same shade herself.

That done, they picked up the other dog and walked home via the butcher so she could buy some filet mignon for the dogs, and a T-bone steak for Vince. “Because he has been very good to us, and we want to give him something a little special.” She decided to buy some wine to go with the beefsteak, added some green beans from the greengrocer and tiny potatoes.

On their return, the Doberman again began to pull on the lead, and, since she wanted time to cook and 
for the wine to breathe, she picked Mimi up and hurried along. She stopped to shift the combined weights of Mimi, the groceries, the wine, and the straining Doberman when she heard a sound like popcorn popping. Pop, pop, pop. There was a thud as something hit the tree behind her and then she felt a sharp pinch in her upper arm. For a crazy second she thought she’d been shot, then noticed a thick splinter of wood had scratched her skin. A piece of tree bark clung to the cut which was bleeding slightly.

“
Mon Dieu
,” she cried. Moving on instinct rather than conscious intent, she huddled Mimi closer and pulled them all around to the other side of the tree. It wasn’t much of a refuge, but it gave her a moment to take in the fact that she’d been shot at. Her arm burned a little where the bark chip had scratched her, but she didn’t even want to think how much worse she’d feel if the bullet actually hit her instead of the tree.

She fumbled in her bag, praying she could get to the cell phone before the gunman got another crack at her.

A breathless female voice cried, “Are you all right?”

She’d never been so happy to hear the sound of another human voice. A middle-aged woman with what looked like twin Spaniels ran to her side, pulled the cell phone out of Sophie’s trembling grasp, and called 9-1-1.

“Hold still, dear,” the woman said, chattering to her that she’d learned first aid when her second husband developed heart problems. “He’d stop breathing, you see, and I had to learn to bring him back.” While
 she chatted, she eased the splinter out of Sophie’s arm and pressed a handkerchief— which she assured Sophie was clean—against the trickle of blood. Sophie’s uppermost thought was that she’d been lucky enough to be hurt when possibly the only woman in New York who still used cotton handkerchiefs was 
in the vicinity.

Mimi trembled in her arms, or maybe it was her own trembling making the dog wobble, but Sir Galahad once more lived up to his name. Every hair on his body bristling, he stalked back and forth in front of them, a canine terminator.

Within a gratifyingly short time she heard the familiar peal of a siren. Before they arrived, she made a second call. To Vince. She suspected he was going to fire her. So far, in her short employment with him, she’d run into disaster twice.

But, contrary to her expectations, he wasn’t upset with her, but frantic over her safety.

He acted a lot like the Doberman when he got home less than half an hour after she called. Having given a statement to the police, and refused a ride to the hospital, she was sitting with her feet up, Mimi curled in her lap and Sir Galahad pacing in front of the door ready to attack anyone who came after them. Sophie had the oddest feeling that he was chagrined not to have prevented her injury earlier.

The Doberman growled deep in his throat before she heard anything. Instinctively, she grabbed Mimi tighter, then relaxed when the I’m-a-guard-dog-mess-with-me-at-your-peril growling changed to a puppyish whine and the dog wagged its stub of a tail.

Vince was home. She let out her breath and loosened her vise-like grip on poor Mimi. Somehow she felt that everything would be okay.

Vince was so big and tough that her tension left her when he roared through the door with an absent pat for Sir Galahad and eyes only for her. “Why aren’t you in the hospital?” were his first words.

“There’s no need.”

“I came as fast as I could. My God, you could have been killed.” As he spoke, he crossed the room in a couple of fast strides and dropped to his knees beside her chair, studying the bandage a paramedic had applied.

“I’m fine. Really. It’s just a graze.”

“You were attacked. You are not fine.” He touched her hand, her face, as though he could impart his strength to her. “You’re pale.”

“I had a shock,” she admitted. “I’m so sorry.”

“That bastard.” Vince jumped to his feet. “I hope you’re pressing charges.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That pissant who wants you back.”

“You mean Gregory?” In truth, she’d never considered him as the one who’d shot at her.

“You were mugged yesterday; he’s hanging around your place when you get home, where you tell him
 to piss off. Then you get shot at today. Don’t you think that’s a bit of a coincidence?”

“This is New York.”

He did not look convinced, and she began to wonder. Was it possible? Gregory was a man of weak character, as she’d discovered too late, but would he try to hurt her? It was hard to believe. It was tough to think at all when her arm felt as if it had been burned, and her head ached.

Vince began to pace, a little like the Doberman had earlier. In fact, Sir Galahad was now lying across the door, as though he’d given over the pacing part of the job to Vince.

“You’re not going home,” Vince said at last.

“I’m not?”

“No. You’re staying here for a few days. I’ll take some time off work, and we’ll figure out what’s going on.”

“I thought you were going to fire me,” she said.

He sent her an impatient glance. “Don’t be stupid. He wouldn’t be going after you if he didn’t sense I’m interested in you. This is my fault.”

She knew there were problems with Vince’s logic, but right now she didn’t feel like working them out.
All she wanted to do was lie down.

She couldn’t quite work up the energy to argue, but she tried. “My things …”

“We’ll go later and get them.” He looked down at her, and his hard face softened. “You need some painkillers and some sleep.”

“I can’t share your bed,” she managed.

“Then you can share Mimi’s.” And without another word, he put a strong arm behind her shoulders and another beneath her knees, then scooped her up with great gentleness. “But for today, you can nap in my bed. It’s bigger.” So she found herself in moments tucked into his big, big bed, with the scent of Vince comforting her. He brought her a glass of water and a bottle of extra-strength painkillers. He shook out two which she swallowed, then lay down. A moment later she felt the bed covers give, and the fluffy coat of Mimi brushed her hand. She smiled and drifted into sleep.

***

Vince called a buddy, Ed, who just happened to be a cop, and told him of his suspicions. Sophie’s ex wasn’t going to get another chance to hurt her. Vince couldn’t imagine a man sick enough to try to shoot
 a woman to keep her out of the arms of another man, but he had to admit that Sophie was the kind of woman who inspired the grand gesture.

Here he was in the middle of a tricky negotiation, and he’d just walked away to take a few days off. No explanation. No definite return date. But right now the safety of a woman he’d already come to care for rated a lot higher on his list of priorities than whether the latest union shop with a grievance got a four percent increase instead of two and an end to contracting out of services.

Vince made his living off this stuff. Normally he’d be salivating over the two percent difference, loving the working guys with their straight-up talk, and the management position, which predictably complained that the company could no longer be profitable with that kind of raise.

There was always a solution, always an answer that pleased neither side but was acceptable to both, and Vince was the man who could instinctively find the delicate balance point between the two.

But not this week.

Not when he was worried sick about Sophie and wanting to take apart the asshole ex who was trying to hurt her.