Strapless Read online

  She couldn’t see a grin from her position by the dining table, well away from Sweet Baby Jane’s predatory feline prowl, but she heard her grandmother’s cheeky tone of voice. “My men keep me that way.”

  “You have more boyfriends at eighty-two than an entire block of apartment-dwelling single females on the Upper East Side.”

  “Isn’t that bad?” Meaning good. Darcie eased away from the table. In the living room Eden rubbed a slender finger over a gold picture frame, checking for dust. The eagle in the expensive print seemed to glare back in disapproval, as Darcie’s mother might.

  “You’re famed for your liaisons—in this building anyway.”

  Gran paused. “Has that naughty doorman been talking again?”

  “Julio?” Darcie raised her eyebrows. “I hear he’s the soul of discretion.”

  Eden snorted delicately. “As long as he gets his weekly tip for bringing up my groceries—gets that huge wad of bills I slip him every Christmas. I’m telling you, the list of maintenance people here who deserve ‘appreciation’ every holiday season is the nearest thing to extortion.”

  “Julio just likes the feel of your soft little hand in his pocket.”

  “Nothing soft about him.” Eden turned. “Myra Goldstein says he has a shaft the size of Long Island. And she should know.”

  “Jealous, Gran?”

  “Who, me? If I took half an interest in that man, he wouldn’t be able to walk for a month. Make that a year. Myra is no competition.”

  Darcie grinned but let a few beats pass while her grandmother scooped up a stack of newspapers, some magazines. She was addicted to the New York Times crossword puzzle and at least twenty financial publications. Since being widowed fifteen years ago, Eden had become a success in the stock market. Her love life was equally legendary.

  “If you don’t behave, I’ll have to tell Mom.”

  Eden made the sign of the cross. “Spare me, you thankless child. That son of mine could have married well. Instead, look at him. Henpecked by that virago of a wife in Via Spiga pumps and—have you seen it?—that faux fur jacket. It looks like road kill.” She admired her own thinly strapped sandals with three-inch heels. Sweet Baby Jane wound around Eden’s slim ankles before moving on. “Still, if it weren’t for Janet Harrington Baxter, I wouldn’t have you.”

  In spite of herself—Eden said such things a hundred times a day—Darcie felt her eyes mist. “I love you, too, Gran.”

  She waved away the sentiment. “You, and every man in this building.”

  “That’s hardly the same thing.”

  “God be praised.” Eden’s blue-green eyes twinkled like peridots. “I’m going to miss you, you know. There’ll be no one to keep those wolves from my door.”

  “With that sign dangling from the bell saying Abandon Trousers, All Ye Who Enter Here? I suppose not.” As she spoke, she tracked the cat’s slow saunter in her direction. Every time Sweet Baby Jane got near, she clawed the hell out of Darcie—on purpose, Darcie felt sure. She’d never known an animal so vicious at heart (dogs usually like me) but the small injuries seemed worth the free rent at Gran’s. Never mind the traffic.

  “Darcie Elizabeth Baxter, there is no such sign.”

  “There should be,” she had just said when, without warning, Sweet Baby Jane’s sharp teeth suddenly clamped down on her calf. Darcie yelped, but Eden chose not to notice. Her beloved pet could do no wrong.

  “I am far from being a promiscuous woman. At my age?” She covered her heart with scarlet-tipped fingernails. With the exception of her one mild heart attack years ago, Eden remained in excellent health, allowing for occasional bouts of angina during stress. “Don’t be ridiculous. If you even think of spreading that vicious rumor, no one will believe you.”

  Darcie shook off the cat, trying not to draw Eden’s attention, her leg stinging.

  “They won’t listen,” she teased. “They know you.”

  “Well.” Eden raised a perfectly penciled brow. “The last man who slept in my bed did leave with a big smile on his face.”

  “Norman?”

  “No, not Norman. Jerome Langley.”

  Darcie rubbed her injured calf. “The little bald Jewish guy who never holds open the elevator door? He picks his nose, Gran. I’m disappointed in you. Again.”

  “The last man—it may have been Norman at that—was six months ago.” Eden spun Darcie toward the stairs that led to the second level of the apartment. “How promiscuous is that?”

  “Not very. But you’re lying.”

  Her grandmother marched her across the pale-beige carpet, Sweet Baby Jane following Eden like a devoted dog. “You’ll never know. And although I’ll miss you, it’s time to pack instead of snooping in my romantic business.”

  “You’re right. But did I tell you? They sun topless over there.”

  Gran’s steps faltered. “That southern hemisphere sun is strong, I’m told, and the new hole in the ozone doesn’t help. Be careful then—but do show your wares, Darcie. You have nice breasts, which some Australian hunk is bound to appreciate. With a bit of ‘exposure’ there’s no telling what you’ll find.”

  “You want me to look for a man?” And bare herself so he’d even notice?

  “You’re not getting younger yourself, dear. It’s time you considered a home of your own, several children…not right away…but still, a nice hard organ to bump up against you every night.” She repeated, “Every night, Darcie.”

  She groaned. “I’ll see Merrick twice this week.”

  Darcie had a sudden image of him on Monday, Palm Pilot in hand. Thursday night’s free, too. Same time, same place.

  “Then by all means,” Eden murmured, “let’s fling open the patio doors and shout. Loud enough that those idiots trying to kill each other in traffic on the bridge can hear—” she waved toward the George Washington “—that man has seen fit to bestow his presence and his sexual attributes—”

  “Down, Gran.” She was blushing. When Sweet Baby Jane smirked at her, Darcie sidestepped the cat. While Eden wasn’t looking she booted SBJ gently in the rear. With a shriek of outrage, the animal streaked upstairs to lie in wait for her.

  “Why, what happened, my little furball?” Eden called. As if she didn’t know.

  Darcie cleared her throat for attention. “It’s not only Merrick’s fault we don’t see each other often. I have the trip across the river to consider.”

  “Horse pucky.”

  At the stairs to the upper floor Eden dumped her duster in a teak stand by the shorter flight of steps that led down to her small foyer. No cloud rose from the clump of feathers, which seemed to satisfy her.

  “I know you don’t welcome my meddling. But if I were you,” she said, “I’d kick Merrick’s highly toned ass right down an elevator shaft at the Grand Hyatt. You can do better. Remember your father’s mistake.”

  Gran had a point. Her words about Merrick only echoed Claire’s.

  “Merrick does like Via Spigas, too,” Darcie admitted.

  Eden grinned. “I am going to miss you. You always make me laugh.”

  But before Darcie could put a foot on the first step to go upstairs, and shut her bedroom door before the cat could find her, Eden caught her arm. “Here’s more advice—which I urge you to heed, dear. It’s a very good sign for future happiness. Never—but never—marry a man who can’t make you roar with laughter.”

  “Assuming I find this paragon of masculinity while I’m in Sydney working, would you like me to bring you one, too?”

  “Don’t stop there. A pair would be nice. In those sexy Akubra hats.”

  “Roll over, babe. You know you love it from behind.”

  Darcie couldn’t imagine what she’d done to deserve such sweet nothings in her ear—just as she couldn’t comprehend Merrick’s indifference to her news last night that she was going to Australia. He’d barely said a word. In the dark hotel room on Friday near dawn she came awake to the murmured male voice beside her. A hard arm lightly covere
d with honeyed hair wrapped around her waist to drag her closer across the warm sheets, then turned her. A hard appendage jutted against her spine, insistently moving in a provocative rhythm Darcie recognized too well—but at the moment didn’t welcome.

  His delivery left something to be desired, too. His attitude.

  “Would you stop? Merrick, quit.” She shoved hair out of her eyes and struggled up in bed. She stared at him, bleary-eyed, then squinted at the clock on the night table. How had she slept so long? “It’s almost 5:00 a.m. I need to get home to change for work. You know Gran worries when I don’t come back all night.”

  “That’s what you get for living with an eighty-two-year-old woman.” His laugh turned into a groan when she jabbed his ribs. “Ouch. I bet she hasn’t made love in four decades.”

  “You’re wrong.” So wrong he couldn’t imagine. “And rude.”

  “Come on, I’m joking. I could tell, the one night we had dinner at her place, that she had eyes for me.” He reached for Darcie again, his long-fingered hand grazing a breast before she scooted away. “You wouldn’t run off and leave a man in need, would you?”

  Darcie didn’t plan them. The words popped out.

  “Claire thinks you’re married.”

  Merrick sat up. “Claire should mind her own business.”

  “Are you?” Darcie persisted.

  “If I was, I wouldn’t tell her.”

  “Or me?” she couldn’t help saying.

  His gaze flickered. “What is this, Darce? We went to dinner. Fell into bed. Had a good time. Just like usual. Didn’t we?”

  “Did we?” She wasn’t sure at the moment.

  “Christ’s sake.” He rolled out of bed, raising the scent of stale sheets. “If you’re going to get funky on me with the relationship thing, I’m gone.”

  “The relationship thing?”

  “You know. ‘It’s time for us to talk about commitment.’ Wedding rings. Honeymoons on Maui or St. Kitt’s.” He grimaced. “Babies.”

  “What’s wrong with children? You always tell me you love kids.”

  “Sure, somebody else’s.” He leaned over to plant a kiss on her mouth while an image of his sweet-faced nephew, then Claire’s newborn daughter flashed through Darcie’s mind. “Why would you want to get fat and gassy carrying some guy’s brat?”

  “I don’t. Yet. But someday…” With someone, she thought.

  He brushed another kiss along her collarbone. “You sure can’t see me walking the floor with a squalling infant, can you?”

  Hmm. With that image, another flash of memory caught her. Merrick in a dimly lit bar the night they met. Merrick, with his smooth blond hair, his dark-blue eyes, his upper-class smile, talking her into bed that first time. Then a newer fantasy came to mind: Merrick, pushing a baby carriage. Obviously, a far-off vision he didn’t share.

  “No, I suppose not.” She didn’t know why but disappointment surged inside her. “I suppose your nephew’s birthday party is enough for a man of your stature….”

  “What, are you being sarcastic?”

  Darcie slid from bed to face him, toes digging in the carpet. “No. Are you?”

  “What nephew?” he said.

  She frowned. “The little boy you told me about. Remember? The one who learned to ride a tricycle before he was two. The favorite nephew who could throw a baseball at five and knew how to swim when he turned six. You bragged about him.”

  “Oh. That nephew.”

  Darcie blinked. “Merrick, how could you forget?”

  “I didn’t. Jesus, I’m only half-awake.” He turned toward the bathroom. “Since we’re both up—” he gestured at her wild hair, at his jutting boxer shorts “—and there’s nothing happening here, between us that is, I guess I’ll get moving. The earlier I get to work, the more money I’ll make today—if the market’s up, too.”

  Darcie stared after him. Claire’s words, then Gran’s, kept running through her brain. You can do better. Never marry (or sleep with?) a man who can’t make you roar with laughter.

  She should have stayed in Ohio. She should never have met Merrick.

  No, it was only that she didn’t expect things to work out with men just because they never had. But some day they would… Until then, logically it didn’t make sense to give up regular sex with Merrick, even if he could be a pain otherwise.

  Right now, she didn’t like him, not in a dim bar, in a hotel bed, or anywhere else—especially a little kid’s birthday party he claimed not to remember.

  Australia looked better and better.

  The next day Darcie popped an analgesic tablet in her mouth and washed it down, praying it would at least kill her cramps. Still in a mood after Merrick yesterday—not all owing to PMS—across the small table in a crowded coffee shop just off Broadway, she watched her mother ease a manicured finger around the inner lining of her black pump. Thank heaven Darcie had been busy packing until now. She sure wasn’t in the mood for this.

  “I must have stood in line at that ticket kiosk in Times Square for over an hour,” Janet Baxter said, one reason they were meeting here. “This is still a filthy neighborhood. I hope I don’t regret even the half price. Most of these shows have no substance.”

  “The audience, either. That’s what you get on Wednesday and Saturday matinees.”

  Only tourists and suburbanites from Connecticut and New Jersey filled the seats then. In town from Cincinnati, Janet Baxter belonged to the former group, and had come with friends from Ohio, but of course she must have another purpose, too—something even beyond this visit with her older daughter, Darcie had decided. Her mother’s clear brow furrowed before she seemed to remember that a frown could cause lines. Permanent ones at fifty-five. Her expression smoothed out like a banana peel.

  “I’m deeply concerned about your grandmother,” she said, apparently the real reason for their chat over tea (for Janet) and black coffee (for Darcie). Cheap tobacco, sweat and bad perfume roiled in the heavy air around them. So did conversation from the other tables, and Darcie had to raise her voice.

  “About Gran? Why?”

  Naturally, Darcie thought she knew. But in her current frame of mind she’d enjoy hearing her mother talk about a subject Janet found distasteful and uncomfortable.

  “Your father and I sent you to live with Eden for two reasons.”

  “Cheap rent. Free utilities.”

  “And…” She obviously wanted Darcie to recite this part of the old litany, and one of Darcie’s hot buttons. It was all about security, a safe place for their firstborn daughter to live. Darcie felt she could take care of herself.

  “There’s a third? You go ahead, Mom.”

  Janet squirmed in her chair. She pursed her lips, then just as quickly stretched her mouth to erase the tension. Toying with her cup of Darjeeling, she avoided Darcie’s all-knowing gaze. Darcie let the moment—and her own chance to escape her bad mood—build. Until her mother surprised her.

  “We wanted you—” Janet cleared her throat “—to keep an eye on her.”

  “There’s a new slant. I’m supposed to baby-sit my eighty-two-year-old grandmother?” Darcie paused for effect. “Mom, she’s had more dates in a month than you and I combined, in our entire lives. You should see the guys she comes up with.”

  Janet turned pale. “You’re joking. Aren’t you?”

  Sure, but why let her off that easy? “I tell you, those men are already wearing a path in the brand-new carpet she had installed in December—a trail from her front door to her bedroom.” Let her tell you what’s in Julio’s pocket.

  Janet plucked lint from her navy Talbot’s suit, straight from the Kenwood Mall store in Cincinnati. “You’re trying to upset me.”

  “Go see for yourself.”

  Janet looked around the narrow shop, at the various array of Saturday-in-Times Square characters, as if only just aware of them, and wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t cross the river to stay with her. I’m not welcome. Eden has always hated me.”
/>   “Hate’s a strong word.” Darcie couldn’t even use it on Merrick yesterday.

  “I’m sorry we ever suggested you share her apartment for a few months.”

  With the seemingly casual statement, Darcie’s instincts went on full alert. Uh-oh. Checking up on her wasn’t the issue, but neither was Eden’s sex life. Darcie had lived in Fort Lee for her four years in the East. Both she and Gran liked the arrangement. Although Darcie planned to get an apartment of her own, in the meantime, except for Sweet Baby Jane, they didn’t get in each other’s way and Gran was as tolerant of Darcie’s lifestyle as Darcie had become of hers. She liked to think Eden’s social life was mainly invention (good grief, she’s my grandmother) even when she knew better. But obviously, she’d missed something. Janet had still other ideas.

  “Perhaps we should find you a place now. With your pay increase—”

  “It’s not that much.”

  Which seemed to play right into her mother’s hands. “You could get a roommate to share the rent. A real roommate.”

  “Mmm.” Darcie remembered her college days sleeping with the lights in her face because her art student roomie needed to finish a project. All night. Tripping over someone else’s clothes, someone else’s boyfriend. Finding used tampons on the dresser and spent condoms on the rug. “I’ll pass. At Gran’s I have my own room and no one bothers me.”

  Janet was undaunted. “When you get back from Australia, we’ll see.”

  “See what?” Darcie shook her head. “Mom, I don’t need help.” Not from her Midwestern parents anyway. “What’s this really about?”

  “Your sister,” her mother finally murmured, sending Darcie’s sharpened senses into another spin. Janet studied her lap. “She graduated from Smith last June. Seven months ago.”

  “Now there’s a tragedy.” UC—the local university—for Darcie, the Ivy League for her kid sister. “I was at the ceremony. What’s she done?” Darcie smiled to soften the words. So Annie was the bottom line here. Annie, who didn’t give a damn what other people thought. Darcie wouldn’t mind if she had gotten herself into some sort of trouble for the first time in her life. Not serious trouble, of course. “Speeding ticket?” she said. “Didn’t register to vote Republican?”