Strapless (5 page)

Claire had been right.
He's lying, Darcie.

She squished her package in rigid fingers, choking the zebra. Buster goggled at Merrick and so did Darcie—without her eyes crossed. Shoppers pushed by. A baby, like Claire's, fussed. Over the PA system a male voice announced a sale in Electronic Games.

She felt sick.

“Well. Now I know.”

“Darcie, don't make a big deal of this.”

She reeled back at his weary tone.

“No big deal? Just call me naive…” To her horror, she choked up. She hadn't thought this would really matter, if it proved true.

“It isn't what you think.”

“Oh, that's too tacky. What a classic line.” She swallowed hard. She could smell his aftershave, expensive, woodsy. Smell popcorn on the air. Smell the more acrid scent of…betrayal. “Are you saying you're
not
married?”

He turned away. Darcie snagged his arm.

“Merrick, you owe me an explanation.” When he remained silent, she said, “No wonder you didn't remember your ‘nephew.' Or are you more used to calling him your
son?
” She flicked a glance toward the table nearby. “Your daughter looks like you. So does he. How old is she?”

“Six. Yes,” he said. “I'm married.” The words came out loud, and he deliberately lowered his voice, color slashing across his cheeks as if Darcie had slapped him. Not a bad idea. “I've been married for ten years. Is that what you want to hear?”

“No, I want to hear why you're screwing me instead of your wife!”

His tight schedule. His one-night-a-week free. Two this week, lucky her.
You wouldn't leave a man in need, would you?

“It doesn't work between us,” he said.

“What doesn't work? Sex? You and me?
What?
” She'd never felt so mortified, so hurt, in her life. Which was saying a lot.

He tried to lead her to a quieter corner but Darcie dug
in her heels. She thrust the zebra bag between them like a shield.

“Just say it here.” And if there was anyplace more absurd, more public, than the doll department of FAO Schwarz, she couldn't think where. That didn't matter now. Then he shocked her again.

“I love you, Darcie.”

“Oh. You bastard.” A first, she thought. It was a wonder he didn't strangle.

“No, I mean it. It's over between Jacqueline and me. She won't even care.”

“Her name's Jacqueline?” He nodded, looking at the floor, and Darcie's mouth tightened like a prune. His wife had probably gone to Smith, like Annie.

He glanced up through a screen of thick lashes. “Do you hate me?”

“Right now, I'd say that's a definite yes.”

For several moments neither of them spoke. Darcie clutched the zebra and listened to her own breathing. It seemed capable of overriding the noise around them. Roared like an oncoming subway train. She might drop dead right here on the floor.
Attention, please. Emergency. Would Medic Barbie go to Aisle Four…

“When do you leave?” he said.

“I told you, tomorrow.”

“I can't see you before then?”

“I don't want to see you.”

He looked miserable. “How long will you be gone?”

“I don't know. Days, weeks.” She'd already told him that, too. Didn't he
listen?
“Whatever it takes to negotiate the space we want for the new store.” Whatever it took, not just in Sydney, to heal her broken heart.
Forever.

Darcie tried not to focus on Merrick. When his beautiful child bolted from the nearby table straight into his arms, Darcie flinched at her sweet voice.

“Would you buy me this one, Daddy?”

She thrust a pink, plastic-windowed package in his face. International Barbie. Dolls of the World. It seemed just right to Darcie.

Holding Darcie's gaze, Merrick grasped the box hard.

“Sure, kiddo.”

The little girl gave him a coy smile. “Do you want one, too?”

Merrick managed a small laugh. “Nice try. We'll just buy this today.”

Darcie stared over his daughter's head into Merrick's dark-blue eyes. Then she tightened her grip on Buster the zebra—and marched toward the escalator.

“Darcie. Wait!”

She kept going. She didn't look back. It was the upside escalator, of course, but Darcie only needed to escape. Suddenly the setting, the noise, the displays seemed absolutely fitting. For once, she had the last word.

“Daddy already bought himself a doll—or so he thought.”

Merrick didn't know it, but he needed the Returns Department. As for herself…

Australian Barbie.

Merrick Lowell would never see her—a.k.a. Darcie Elizabeth Baxter—again.

“‘W
altzing Matilda,'” Darcie sang to herself. “‘Once a jolly swagman…'” Losing the lyrics again, she hummed a few bars. “‘Dum-de-dum…his billabong…'” For some reason her eyes filled.

Jet lag, she thought, and tipped her head back. She hadn't thought it would be this bad. The new Westin Sydney, with its open expanse of chrome, glass and satiny wood led her gaze upward to a vast skylight showing a night-black canopy full of twinkling, but unidentifiable, stars. New to the southern hemisphere, Darcie sat in the hotel bar digesting the beef tenderloin
en croute
she'd eaten earlier in one of the trendy lower level restaurants with Walt, and nursing a glass of local Chardonnay to settle things.

Wearing her pinstripe suit, even alone she shouldn't feel this out of place. In New York—ten thousand miles to the east, as her long, sleepless night on a Boeing 747 from San Francisco could attest—women wore black, too, particularly after five. With a good strand of pearls, her mother would advise. In most big cities of the world, you couldn't go wrong in dark colors, but Darcie frowned into
her glass. She wasn't wearing pearls, and opals seemed the gem of choice in Australia, if she believed the many shop displays she'd passed on her way to the hotel tonight. And according to the group of what appeared to be thirtyish executives at the next table, beer had it over wine.

Idly, Darcie studied them.

She couldn't concentrate. A continued low-down cramping had made her order the glass of wine she didn't really want, or need.

“Thank God he didn't get me pregnant,” she said of Merrick.

Bastard.

His being married wasn't the issue. She might be naive at times but she was no brainless ingenue. As a woman of the new millennium, sexually free and unencumbered, she could handle his being married—even if that little fact rankled some deep down remnant of tradition in her own character.
Thanks, Mom and Dad.
But Merrick's failure to reveal the truth? That still hurt.

Darcie hated lying. Liars, most of all.

Blinking, she straightened in her roomy club chair. Her glass clicked onto the marble tabletop. What if he carried some STD? That's all she needed to remember Merrick Lowell—genital herpes or warts. As if she didn't feel enough of a sexual outcast.

She pressed a hand to her suddenly thumping heart. But they had used protection. Every time. Remember, Merrick didn't relish having kids. Darcie grimaced. Then why did he seem to have two of them? Maybe it was only
her
imagined children he didn't want. Her middle-class genes.

With a sigh, she fell back into the deep chair again.

Twirling the stem of her glass, she gazed around the dimly lit room—and oh, as if a band had struck up the national anthem, “Advance Australia Fair,” would you look at that. Yummy. A lone man stood talking to the bartender, another Aussie male Darcie had noticed earlier. Now, she barely saw him. Eclipsing every other man in the room, this one had dark hair, unlike Merrick's (a point in his favor) thicker, longer. Hair a woman could twine
her fingers through, letting its sinuous silk send a message of desire straight to her achy loins.

His broad shoulders blocked out the bartender to his left, behind the bar. He lounged in three-quarter profile to her, an amazing profile if she bothered to linger on it. Better than Merrick's. Busily, Darcie's gaze swept like a huntress down his long frame, from those incredible shoulders and well-developed deltoids—bunched, and nicely rounded, under his chambray shirt—to his washboard belly, then his muscled, jeans-clad legs and, finally, his feet. Boots, she saw. Good ones, if she could judge from this distance. His fingers looked lean and graceful wrapped around the beer bottle in his hand, and when he lifted it for a long swallow, Darcie watched his Adam's apple work in his strong, beautiful throat. It was true. Australian men were not to be believed.

Could he be any more perfect? Like a fantasy come true, even the Akubra hat from Gran's wish list lay next to him on the bar. Darcie decided it was on her agenda, too.

“You jolly swagman,” she murmured, sending him a flirty smile.

Heck, why not? She was on her own, for tonight at least, in an exotic foreign environment—for once in her life. No one watched her, certainly not all the executives at the next table who were telling loud jokes and laughing among themselves. Their cigarette smoke created a cloud of anonymity, like the famed Blue Mountains with their eucalyptus haze. Janet Baxter—or Darcie's father—were nowhere to be seen. And Cincinnati, though not quite as far away as New York, could be ignored for one night. Not that she needed to care. For good measure, feeling defiant after Merrick, she tipped her glass in salute.

She detected no response to the smile or the toast, but his steady gaze did even crazier things to her equilibrium, to her lower abdomen, and Darcie swallowed hard. With her nod in his direction—
three strikes, you're out
—the beer bottle stopped halfway down and he stared at her. Then he glanced over his shoulder as if to see whether she'd been signaling the bartender for a refill, not coming on to
him. He picked up his hat. What else could she do? Darcie looked down into her half-full glass, and waited. Pulse pounding. Stomach clenched.

Would he come over?

When a tall shadow fell across the table a moment later, she realized she'd been holding her breath. Raising her eyes, Darcie exhaled. Seeing him up close, she struggled not to slip out of her chair onto the floor in a puddle of need.

“If you were a mate—” he pronounced it “might” “—which you're clearly not, I'd say G'day, but we Aussies don't use the expression between the sexes.” The word hung between them. “You're a blow-in, eh? Welcome to Sydney.”

“Blow-in?”

“That's Ozspeak—for newcomer. Or you could say Strine.”

Ozspeak?
“A stranger is a Strine?”

“No.” He smiled. “That's how we say Aus-tra-lian.” He tangled the syllables.

Darcie smiled, too. “And I thought you spoke English here.”

His wasn't the smoothest line she'd ever heard, and he'd guessed she was a tourist, but that voice could warm the polar ice cap—which wasn't all
that
far away. Darcie gripped both arms of her seat. His gray-green hat, plopped at a jaunty angle on his head, the lightweight sport coat that dangled from one finger over his shoulder, shouted
Take me. I'm yours.

She couldn't help herself. Darcie hummed the first few bars again of “Waltzing Matilda,” for his benefit this time, and he laughed.

“Mind if I sit down?”

She gestured at the opposite club chair. “Park your ‘tucker' right there.”

He grinned—a gorgeous grin. “Already had my tucker, thanks.”

Darcie had no idea what
tucker
meant either. All she
knew was, it was in the song and that her abdomen, even her thighs, had begun to ache in a different way.

His grin widening, he leaned back in his chair. “Puffaloons, yabbies, Vegemite, a nice bit of Pavlova… What're you drinking?”

What was he talking about?

“Uh, Chardonnay. Anything…Strine.”

“It's really
Or-strall-yan.
Since you're trying so hard to fit in here, I thought I'd point that out.” Charmingly, in addition to his mangled vowels, his deep voice lifted at the end of each sentence, as if asking her approval of the thought. He raised a finger—which Darcie didn't resent as she had with Merrick at the Hyatt—to a passing waiter who'd delivered another tray of beer to the next table. A shout rose up at someone's latest joke. “Tucker means food,” he explained.

“That was food you mentioned?'

“Puffaloons are fried-dough scones, yabbies are little freshwater crayfish, Vegemite's a national treasure—yeast extract. Pavlova's dessert. Meringue, whipped cream, fruit…”

“You were teasing me.”

He nodded. “Besides, the tucker you meant is from the bush, often carried in a backpack.”

Darcie smiled. “By a swagman like yourself?”

He glanced at his blue shirt. “Do I look that bad?” Then down at his jeans. “Sorry. A swagman's a bum. A hobo.” Darcie flushed at her error and he said, “I came in from the station this afternoon. Didn't take time to change.” He looked at the executives' table. They all appeared as well-dressed as Merrick. “Left my good bag of fruit upstairs.”

Station?
“I didn't see any trains.”

He grinned again. “There are some. But that's not what I'm talking about.”

Blinded by his smile, Darcie ran a finger around the rim of her glass, his gaze instantly homing in on the motion. “You're a cowboy?”

His eyes had darkened. So did her blood.

“Yes, ma'am. I raise sheep. On what you'd call a ranch.”

Surprised, she took a breath. The air felt thick with smoke and…lust.

“Bag of fruit?” she repeated, recalling what else he'd said.

“Aussie rhyming slang. For suit.”

“Oh. I didn't mean to insult you. You look nice.”
Understatement of the entire timeline of mankind, Darcie.
She could put him in a display window—oh God, yes—and with his body draped like a coat hanger with filmy lingerie, wouldn't that sell undies? Or she could send him down a fashion-show runway with a skimpily dressed model on each arm. “And that hat…”

He removed it, as if suddenly remembering his manners, then playfully plunked it on Darcie's hair. When his hand brushed her cheek, she felt a flash of frenzied desire.

“There you go,” he said, and her ache grew more insistent, her blood thicker. She couldn't stop staring. He wore a gold signet ring on his right little finger and even that melted her. His touch lingered, his tone softened. “Now you look just like an Aussie.” He gave her a long once-over she couldn't read. “Guess I need to teach you a few things.”

Darcie's libido puckered. “We can trade.”

He held her gaze. “All right, I'll help you learn Ozspeak. My language—the language of a convict subculture full of rebellion. For what? Your…straight-laced English grammar?” He laughed, then offered his hand, his dark eyes warm and too direct. Could they see right into her more than friendly fantasies? She couldn't tell. Until he said, “Or maybe we'll work out a different bargain. Something more interesting.” He paused when she took his hand. “Good to meet you. I'm—”

Before he could say his name, Darcie reared back. His firm grasp, the feel of his fingers around hers, the whisper-light brush of his thumb over her palm threatened to turn her to pudding. Butterscotch. Her whole body tightened. Too perfect.

“Let's not,” she said.

“Not what?”

“Exchange names.” She fiddled with the hat, tilting it rakishly over one eye. She'd had enough of Merrick Lowell and his lies. If she ended up with this Aussie hunk—oh, Gran, you should see him—she wouldn't regret it in the morning. “Let's keep things…mysterious.”

He went still in his chair. He waited until the bartender set their fresh drinks on the table and left. The growing heat in his eyes had cooled. Considerably.

“You're not working here, are you?”

Working?
“Not at the moment.” Why did he ask?

He gazed at Darcie with suspicion.

“I finished at five today,” she continued, “your time, whatever it's called.”

“Eastern Standard Time in New South Wales. Greenwich mean time plus ten.”

In New York that would be…yesterday sometime. Darcie felt too jet-lagged, too enthralled by him, too unsettled by his look to do the math. She waved a hand. Why did he seem…disappointed?

She hurried on. “The man I work for told me to go home. I can't seem to get my clock turned around, though. I don't know whether to yawn or do my morning bends and stretches.” Then she knew. Shocked, Darcie swallowed.
A working girl.

“You think I'm—”
A lady of the night?

“Darling, I think you're the cutest thing I've seen. But I don't do hookers.”

“I'm glad to hear that.”

 

Hoping she'd convinced him of her relative innocence, Darcie leaned against the up button at the bank of elevators opposite the Westin gift shop. It was closed now. In the past hour the executives in the bar next door had raised their level of laughter and camaraderie another few decibels, and several women in trendy power suits had joined them. She and the cowboy had also taken their new “relationship” onto a different plane. Talk about verbal foreplay—once she made him understand that Walt Corwin
wasn't her pimp. The elevator doors glided open. Darcie and the sheep farmer entered the car.

He punched his floor, she punched her button…so to speak…then with his hand catching hers, he nailed her up against the rail along the wall. His gold signet ring clinked against the wood. Darcie still wore his Akubra hat when his mouth lowered to her throat. His warm breath sent a thrill of lust from the roots of her hair to her too-high shoes, toes cramped like her uterus into a suddenly too-tight space.

Murmuring, he kissed her neck, her earlobe, then drew it between his teeth. Beautiful teeth, she remembered. His hands began to roam. “So, you're in retail.”

She'd had to tell him something about herself. That wary look on his face had threatened to spoil their evening. Darcie kept things general, though, except now he knew she was staying here. Well, of course he did. Her head swam a little from the wine but she could still think. More or less. They were in the elevator, rising quickly to the upper floors, not out on the street saying goodbye. Darcie had a sinking feeling of déjà vu. Monday nights with Merrick at the Grand Hyatt…

“It's a new job,” she said. “I'm not sure I'll be able to do it.”