Mad About The Man (2 page)

Rita Nagel eyed the flashy creation on her finger.
"I guess your people fiddle around with stuff like this
when there isn't enough to do."

Her own frown, Gaby was certain, must rival
Rita's. "Not exactly." Almost every hat in the show
room had been commissioned. They were merely kept
there for convenience and to act as window dressing
when people came to pick up orders.

Sighing, Rita set the hat down on one of the gold
wire, head-shaped cages that were arranged in spot-lighted alcoves around the shop.
"I think you're going to be very interested in my
reason for being here," Rita said, a tight smile jerking
up the corners of her small, red mouth. "I expect
you'd love to be busy enough to need every one of
your employees full-time—and then some."

The man beat a tattoo on the tiles with the toes of
his shiny, Gucci loafe
rs. Dressed in a fashionably re
laxed-looking gray linen suit, a khaki shirt and beige
tie, he would definitely be much more at home on Rodeo Drive.

"Ms. McGregor?"

Gaby dragged her attention from the silent, smiling
man "Yes?" Someone should tell Rita about making
introductions—if he couldn't make them himself.

"You've probably heard the name Jacques Ledan." Rita inclined her head toward her companion.

Gaby stared at Ledan with unwilling curiosity. "Probably," she told Rita without enthusiasm.

"Are you aware of his proposed project in Goldstrike?"

"Project?" She darted a glance at the blond man, who nodded pleasantly.

"So you don't know very much." Rita's eyes took on the glaze of a woman experiencing a satisfying inner vision. "Mr. Ledan is a very forward-thinking
man. I'm sure you've heard of Ledan Confectionery."

How forward thinking did you have to be to keep on making the candy your family had been selling forever? "I've heard of it."

"What's your favorite?" Ledan's mellow, all-
American accent surprised Gaby. He turned his blue eyes toward the ceiling. "Let me guess. You're either
a Latin Lover's Cordial or—and this is probably the one—Sinful Sensations." His smile shone upon her once more. "For the woman who likes a selection?"

Gaby detested glib men
…
particularly glib,
egocen
tric men.
"I guess you haven't noticed that in Goldstrike we're strictly on the simple side. Around here it's a treat to buy caramel apples at Artie's Grocery. This is definitely not the place to come if you're a Ledan's type."

"It will be," the man said, grinning complacently.

She hated him
…
had already hated him. Now she detested the man.

Rita snapped her fingers for attention. "As I was
saying, Mr. Ledan is a man of vision. He sees poten
tial in this town. And need. He intends to make it his
mission to bring Goldstrike into the twentieth cen
tury."

Almost too amazed to respond, Gaby eyed Rita's
fingers, still poised in snapping mode. "I'm very
busy
… so if you don't mind…
"

"Using all you little local people
,
" Rita continued
without missing a beat. "That's part of Mr. Ledan's plan. I'm his assistant and he wants me to approach those tradespeople in the town whom we've already identified as having some useful contribution to make—for Mr. Ledan and for their own benefit."

Gaby avoided looking at Ledan. "Is there any reason why he can't be the one to tell us little people what he has in mind?"

"He is. Through me."

"Has he suddenly lost the gift of speech?"

"Mr. Ledan doesn't deal with these things directly.
He hires people to carry out his wishes—like me."

Rather than show the pair of them the door, Gaby
decided the wiser course would be to gather as much
information as possible about Ledan's "project"
plans.

Rita was smiling, showing small, perfect teeth. "Eventually Mr. Ledan hopes to find things for all the existing local businesses to do. He wants every one of you to feel truly cared about and involved in what he intends to do for you."

Gaby couldn't form a single complete sentence of response.

"I can see you're overwhelmed. I can well understand that you must be." Rita hitched a shapely hip
onto the desk where Gaby did all her paperwork and
crossed one long, elegant leg over the other. She pulled a notebook from her red Chanel purse and flipped it open. "Gaby's. You make hats."

Make hats!
Not, you are a millinery designer! Not,
you are currently negotiating a contract to design hats
for the upcoming movie musical
Going to the Dogs.

"Ms. McGregor?"

Gaby swung wide her arms to encompass the show
room filled with hats. "I suppose you might say I make hats, yes."

"Well—" Rita's white teeth flashed "—this is
your lucky day. Mr. Ledan is looking for simple items
that can be produced in small quantities at first, then
mass-produced later. Of course, for the mass produc
tion we'll have to go to a professional."

Gaby choked back an exclamation.

"You're astounded," Rita said. "Understandable, but you'll discover that Mr. Ledan is very generous. Too generous sometimes. People try to take advan
tage of him. But he'd like to commission you to make
baseball caps."

"Baseball caps?" Heat climbed steadily up.,Gaby's
neck.

"Yes, you know the sort of thing. Like the baseball
players wear."

"Baseball players?"

"Exactly. We'll need them in small, medium and large and we've decided on green."

"Green." This had to be a bad dream—or a bad joke.

"Mmm. With the logo GFTG above the word Goldstrike. I expect you've already guessed what
GFTG stands for." Rita giggled—an unlikely sound.

"Surprise me," Gaby said through stiff lips.

"Go for the Gold!" Rita wiggled delightedly. "Go
for the Gold in Goldstrike. With a little rainbow pop
ping into a pot of gold. Isn't that clever? At first we
intend to send the caps out to publicity people and so
o
n. In time everyone who is anyone will have come
to Goldstrike to find their little bit of gold and they'll
all be wearing GFTG hats. And
you
will always know
that the very first ones were made right here in your little factory."

Factory!
Gaby breathed slowly and carefully
through her nose. She spared a glance for Ledan only
to find him deeply engrossed in Rita's spectacular legs. "Why would GFTG ever come to mean anything but winning Olympic medals—to anyone but Mr. Ledan? And you, of course."

Rita tutted and shook her head pityingly. "I
mustn't forget what a quiet life you lead in a place
like this. I suppose it might be nice to be cut off from it all—for about a day. TV, of course! We'll be doing
commercial spots eventually. And radio and print.
The whole country will know what's happening here.
The rainbow with the pot of gold is perfect. Guides—
you know, the people who will show visitors
around—they'll be dressed as leprechauns, and we're going to have a series of fixed mining displays show
ing carefully accurate mining procedures." Rita
leaned closer and her wavy auburn hair swung forward. "The equipment will be accurate, but we're
going to dress the models of miners like leprechauns, too! Leprechauns with miners' lamps on their heads!"

A picture, a ghastly nightmarish picture of oversized leprechauns leaping down Goldstrike's two
business streets and between the scattering of public
buildings, houses and trailer parks that composed the
entire settlement, stunned Gaby.

Ledan finally broke his silence. "You're really
bowled over, aren't you? We've got a long, long way
to go before we can declare this thing a success, but
with responses like yours I'm convinced this is going
to be really something."

Remain calm,
Gaby ordered herself. She closed her
eyes for a moment and deliberately ironed all expres
sion from her face.

"Are you all right?" Ledan asked, sounding concerned.

"Yes, I am." She raised her chin. "I certainly
am."
Combating
t
he kind of power this man repre
sented would take organization and a lot of levelheaded thinking Blowing her top in front of him
would accomplish nothing. "Thank you for stopping
by."

"But—"

Gaby raised a silencing hand to Rita. "No, no. Don't say another word. I'm going back into the
workroom now. Quietly. Then I'm going to go
through everything you've said to me."
To make cer
tain she didn't forget a word the rest of the locals would want to hear.

"But—"

"Please!" Gaby walked between Rita and Ledan.
"I definitely need to be alone. Absolutely alone for a
while. I'm sure you can find your way out."

As she passed into the short hallway leading to the
workroom she heard Rita say, "Odd person. I guess living in a burg like this might make your tolerance for excitement real low. Do you think she's angry?"

"Come on, Rita," Ledan said. "Let's get back
.
Like I already said, she's bowled over. Imagine being
in her shoes. Imagine living here all your life. Then think how you'd react to hearing you were about to become part of the biggest thing that ever happened in your little world."

"I don't know. She looked angry to me."
Rita wasn't a complete dummy after all.

"Not at all. Just try to visualize—"

Gaby shut the door to the workroom firmly behind
her and leaned against it. Ledan, on the other hand, might well be a dummy—a dummy with mo
ney—a terrible prospect. "Char."
She covered her face with
her hands, then dropped them to her sides. "Char,
you are never going to believe this
. That creep…
Char?"

The workroom was empty. A piece of paper flapped from the cork head form they used as a bul
letin board. Muttering, Gaby went to rip it off. Char's
elegant handwriting announced that she had gone over to Sis's, the town's diner and primary meeting
spot, the only place in Goldstrike that served food—
unless you counted Barney's burners, the tacos sold at the local tavern.

Gaby thought of Sis, sixty and full of energy, sister
of three burly, silent older brothers who were fruit farmers. Sis's was the center of everything in Goldstrike and had been, so Gaby was told, since Sis's
brothers bought her the diner to take her mind off the
trucker who passed through and broke her heart—
forty years earlier. What place could Sis possibly have
in Ledan's damnable Leprechaun City?

And Barney who ran the Hacienda Heaven—
known as Barney's Bar until he returned from a trip to Tijuana twenty years ago. Barney served tacos
made of whatever he could buy cheaply and douse liberally in hot sauce. What would Ledan's plans be for him?

If this curse of a "project" ever got off the ground,
it would change the face of Goldstrike forever.

"I won't let it," Gaby said, pressing the thumbtack back into the cork head until a screwdriver would be
needed to extract it again. "No way."

She sat at a worktable, turned over Char's note and
began jotting. "GFTG in Goldstrike." It was
horrible!

The jangle of the shop bell, distant through the door
she'd closed, made her hands curl into fists. She got
up very slowly and walked toward the showroom. If
they'd come back she'd need every fragment of her
control not to let them know what she thought of their
"project."

She opened the door and felt instantly relieved. The
man standing in almost the same spot where Ledan had stood had dark hair.

Gaby paused on the threshold to the shop. This man
was tall, very tall
…
and broad-shouldered
…
and slim-
hipped
…
and dressed completely in black