Strapless (13 page)

Her fork clattered to the floor. It rang like a dinner bell. Or an alarm?
He's still a snake,
Claire had said. Stuck in the elevator, Darcie thought, without Dylan.
Merrick needed her?
Now,
that
was new, and Darcie needed to believe she had a life after Sydney. She'd think about forgiveness. Later.

Merrick leaned near and caught her hand.

When he drew her closer and his mouth moved the last inch toward hers, Darcie didn't resist.

He might be lying again. She might be naive. But she needed to be held.

Suddenly, Australia seemed even farther away than it really was.

“Okay,” she murmured when his lips touched hers. “A friendly kiss. But no sex.”

“We'll see.”

“H
ey, Matilda.”

At the deep, mellow voice the next day, Darcie froze, her hand on the telephone. She cast a startled glance over her desk at Wunderthings then swallowed hard.

“Dylan?”

“Who else calls you Matilda?”

She took a scattered breath. Oh, God. Oh, God.

She'd given up on him, let Merrick kiss her again—just once—only last night. Now…she'd gone from zero men in her life to two at once.

“I didn't think you'd call.”

“Kinda hard to put in a call, darling, to someone who fails to leave her phone number behind.” Uh-oh. He sounded edgy. Her listing was in Gran's name. Guilt swamped her and Darcie swallowed before he spoke again. “Good thing I knew where you worked. The Internet's a great research tool, don't you think?”

“You found this number on the Web?”

“One of those programs that has every telephone directory in the world. I use it for business with my stud.”

The last word went through her like a streak. She knew he meant
farm,
not
sex,
but still…

“That must have taken you a full minute to track me down.”

Silence. So he hadn't tried to find her. Until now.

“What changed your mind after all this time?” Darcie asked.

Dylan's voice dropped lower. “You remember that thing we did…middle of the night…my room, my bed…you climbed on top…did that reverse and—”

“Dylan. I'm at work. I can't talk like this.”

“I'll talk. You listen.”

Darcie fidgeted in her desk chair. Across the aisle Greta turned to look at her, eyes sharp as an eagle about to consume its prey. Darcie shifted again, putting a shoulder to the cubicle entry. Damn. She'd said Dylan's name, more than once, and Greta likely hadn't missed it. The office rumors—Walt's rumor—were true, she'd realize. And resent Darcie even more.

“I'm not on a speaker phone, am I?” Dylan wanted to know.

“No. But if you're going to talk dirty…”

That wasn't what Dylan had in mind after all. His tone hardened.

“Actually, no. I've been pretty pissed.”

“I thought maybe you were.” So Claire and Gran had suggested, but Darcie felt her spirits rise. He hadn't called
not
because he didn't like her. He was just mad.

“Why'd you run out on me?” he said.

“We had fun, Dylan. Two weeks' worth. But I told you—”

“Let the other shoe drop. Dump me. I dare you.”

“How could I—” She'd said too much. She didn't want to repeat the word
dump
with Greta's ears flapping just across the way “—when I'm in New York and you're—”

“—in the barn.”

“You are so literal, Dylan.” Every time she said his name, she lowered her voice another notch. She almost whispered now. “You know what I mean.”

And then, as only Dylan could, he nailed her.

“It's past midnight here. I just doctored a sick lamb. I named her Darcie.”

Surprised, touched, she felt her eyes fill. “That's…thank you.”

“Welcome. I thought you'd like to know. So I picked up the dog and bone.”

“Is that Aussie rhyming slang again?”

“For telephone.”

“What does she look like? Darcie II.”

He laughed a little. “She looks like a sheep. Merino. Top-quality, of course.”

“You could send me a picture. On the Web.”

“Yeah, I could. Maybe I will.”

He was warming up again now. The anger, the obvious hurt she'd caused, was fading. So did her guilt. Darcie spun in her chair, and smiled.

“She has your eyes, your…determination,” he continued. “She willed herself to pull through.”

“Oh, Dylan…”

“I really like your eyes. And your hair. Your mouth, your br—”

She cleared her throat. Walt Corwin had appeared at her cubicle doorway. Greta leaped from her seat to stand beside him, and Darcie put a finger to the disconnect button. “My, uh, boss is here. I have to go.”

She heard a panicked grunt. “Darcie, quick. Give me your home number.”

She rattled it off, not even stopping to think this wasn't wise—any more than in Sydney the morning she walked out on him. Leaving Dylan in bed, bare all over.

Her heart beat triple time, her palms had left moist prints on the phone. Dylan Rafferty had called. He'd named a feisty sheep after her. No one…but no one…had ever done
that
before.

“I knew you were a hard act to follow,” she murmured.

“Believe it, darling.” He paused for a long moment. “Ever had phone sex?”

She blushed. “Um…”

“Tonight,” he said, and she could hear his smile. “Unless I have trouble with your lamb again. If I do, then tomorrow.”

“I'll…look forward to it.”

Strange, that she might prefer telephone seduction to the real thing, not that she was ready—if she ever would be—to encourage Merrick, but there it was. She'd think about that later.

“Fair dinkum,” Dylan murmured. Good enough.

She covered her grin with a hand. “Fair dinkum.”

“Darcie.” Walt wanted her
now.

“I really have to go,” she said into the phone.

“Don't bust a gut.”

“What?” He'd lost her again. She was far behind in her Ozspeak lessons.

Dylan laughed. “Don't work too hard, Matilda.”

He hung up, humming the tune that had become their song.

 

“You're blushing,” Walt informed her.

She didn't meet his gaze. Or Greta's. They were both still standing in the entry to her cubicle, and Darcie had been avoiding Walt since Friday. She always avoided Greta when possible. Darcie grabbed a red licorice whip, a comfort treat, from her desk drawer.

“So it's true,” Greta said. “You did meet an Aussie.”

“You tell her, Walt,” Darcie murmured, still irritated that he'd started the rumor.

“Big guy, shoulders, wearing a—what do you call it—an Outback hat?”

“An Akubra?” Greta said, making the word sound like a smutty joke. Her eyes narrowed another inch into venomous slits.

Darcie couldn't resist. “You can imagine what we found to do with that.”

Greta folded her arms over her scrawny chest. Then she glanced at Walt, and her gaze warmed. “I am a woman of more than average imagination….”

She implied the opposite of Darcie and obviously re
membering Greta's yen for him, Walt shot Darcie a frightened look.

“Can we talk in my office? I need your update on the Sydney project.” He was gone before she answered.

Oh, Lord. Caught up in jet lag, Merrick's reappearance, and her nightly dreams of Dylan, she hadn't prepared a thing.

“Should I come, too, Walter?” Greta's voice followed him like a hound on the scent. “I wanted to discuss my idea….”

“Save it,” Darcie murmured. Competition she didn't need just now.

“If Wunderthings puts my hose design into production right away, and starts the marketing campaign, Walter can launch it in Sydney.”

“Look into the demographics,” Darcie suggested. “With the growing weight problem in this country, I'd rethink your notion about hose for thin thighs.”

Greta's face fell. “There are plenty of skinny women. Look at Hollywood.”

“That's anorexia, bulimia…” Darcie whizzed from her cubicle into the hall. “We'll talk later, if you want. Walt's waiting.”

With Dylan's phone call still buzzing through her mind, her senses, she whipped down the long aisle to the anteroom where Nancy Braddock sat nursing a cup of coffee.

“Greta barking at your heels again?” she said, and Darcie rolled her eyes then marched into Walt's office chewing on her licorice stick.

She could use the distraction of the Sydney opening to quell her own desire for Dylan, her confusion about Merrick, even her vision of Greta's beady eyes boring into her back. Too bad she didn't have any new ideas for Walt Corwin.

In his office she closed the door and leaned against it.

“That woman wants my blood.”

“You and Nancy may have to form a vigilante group.”

He was joking. Darcie wasn't.

“Couldn't they find something for Greta to do in Marketing?”

The department's offices were located two floors below, and Darcie hardly ever saw anyone who worked there. Mainly because she despised Marketing. It would be a good place for Greta.

“I wish.” Walter obviously hadn't missed the yearning look on Greta's face. At least Darcie had warned him. He groaned. “She left some harebrained design on my desk before I got in this morning—”

“Probably when she read all your files. And plowed through your drawers looking for embarrassing personal items with which to blackmail you.”

“She doesn't really do that.”

“Get real, Walt. That, and more. Hide your condoms.”

He frowned. “I thought Nancy was pulling my leg.”

“Greta would like to pull something a bit higher up. See paragraph above.”

He flushed. “Where did you get that mind of yours?”

“In a Happy Meal, where else?”

Filled with dread, Darcie plopped onto the chair in front of his desk. An actual office, she thought, gazing around with admiration. Pictures on the walls—bad water colors, but still, pictures in frames. Wood, or plastic? She couldn't tell. His walnut desk looked like an ocean compared to hers, and, as with any good executive, its top was mostly bare. As if he didn't have any work to do while peons like Darcie took care of the grunt jobs. True, she had to admit. Claire had been right about that, too. Walt dragged open a drawer, drew out a half-finished cigar, and clamped it between his teeth.

Darcie wished for more red licorice, like a security blanket.

“I've heard from the agent in Sydney. The contractor will rip out the old Sheetrock this week, then the electricians are scheduled to come in. We need to figure out where we'll want more outlets, that kind of thing.”

Darcie rose to the challenge. And fibbed. “I've been working on that.”

“You have?”

She needed to reassure him of her competence. Somehow. “I'm a self-starter, Walt. It was obvious when we got approval of the contract for the space in the QVB that things would start to move. Quickly, I hoped. Time is money.”

He smiled in approval. “What have you got?”

She could see Walt was relieved. Nothing new. In the four years she'd worked for him—as Claire also pointed out—Darcie had anticipated his needs more often than not. More often than her own, just as she had with Merrick. She'd worked extra hours. Rewritten Walt's reports. Made him look good. He owed her, she figured.

Darcie hoped to collect—and secure her position in Wunderthings-Sydney. If she played her cards right, she might see Dylan again, which had become an especially appealing notion in the past hour.

Darcie suppressed an image of him…she could still hear his voice, yes, but those broad shoulders, too, that great smile. And those kisses…

“Greta threw me off a bit. I left my notes in my desk. I'll get them.”

“Later. Just fill me in now.”

“Well.” She cleared her throat, mind whirring. Darcie plucked a brass paperweight off Walt's desk. “We're in a very upscale neighborhood there.”

“That's news? Tell me something I don't know.”

“Good hotels all around, Darling Harbour a stone's throw away—if you're walking downhill, that is, not up—other malls and restaurants.”

“Get to the point, Darcie.”

“Yes.” Quick, get one. She hefted the paperweight. Not as good as red licorice, but it would do for comfort. “Uh—in the QVB we have a prime location. We need to showcase that, make the rest of the stores around us dim bulbs by comparison. We want the shopper's eye to home straight in on Wunderthings the instant that person gets to the second level.”

“Right,” he agreed, nodding, looking interested in her hasty concept.

“Man or woman,” Darcie rushed on, improvising as she went. “Young mothers, lovers, newlyweds, hard-assed professional types…”

“Darcie.
What?
”

Her brain slipped into higher gear. Necessity being the mother of invention. “So besides the interior of the shop—which I believe should be highly sophisticated in appearance—we need a dramatic front window display.”

“Define sophisticated.”

Um…
“Cream walls, maybe silk paper, gleaming wood floors, I think, yes, with scattered Oriental rugs…real ones. Dark, rich mahogany display cases, matching rods for the hanging displays, everything coordinated. Lush. Sensual.” She took a breath, on a roll now. “A visual, auditory, tactile feast for the senses. We'll scent the air with expensive perfume. I think we should develop one of our own.”

“Where have you been? We launched FloralMist last spring.”

Momentarily derailed, Darcie wrinkled her nose.

“Too sweet. Too young. Too un-sexy.”

“Customers love it.”

She dropped the brass paperweight on her toe but didn't dare cringe. Pain throbbed through her. “They'll love the new one more. We'll call it…Australove. No, Sin-dney.” She couldn't even say that and Darcie waved a hand in temporary dismissal of a bad idea. “I'll come up with something. Or Marketing can. But do you see the concept?” She didn't dare call it hers, take credit for the notion and further irritate Walt.

“It's different from any of our other stores.”

“Exactly. So is the Pacific Rim market. Think Orient, Walt. We're talking a blend of cultures, lifestyles…diversity. We may want a few Japanese or Chinese models for the opening. No, a Eurasian girl. That's it. Exquisite, stylish, sensual herself.”