The Penny Pinchers Club (3 page)

But something had happened in the meantime. Something unexpected and terrifying and more life altering than I’d have ever expected.

I’d fallen head over heels in love.

CHAPTER TWO

I
t happened shortly after I began working for Chloe Sykes, having left PharMax on the advice of my supervisor, who worried, rightly so, that my romantic relationship with Liam could create issues for the corporation. No matter. I never cared much about OvuTerm—as my sales records proved—and Chloe was in dire need of an assistant when I went hunting for an interior decorating job. Sometimes, the stars are just aligned.

Chloe owned Interiors by Chloe, a boutique firm in the heart of posh Princeton, where she tried to recast herself and her perky redone nose as a blond Presbyterian raised in New Jersey’s horse country amid polo matches and white-gloved luncheons, a distant relative, naturally, of New York City’s A-list Sykes.

It was all a sham.

In reality, Chloe had been born Tammy Ann Szabo, native of Manville, New Jersey, where asbestos used to roll in big white balls down Main Street like cancerous tumbleweed. Having grown up across the street from heiress Doris Duke’s 2,700-acre walled estate, Duke Farms, young Chloe was the girl with her face pressed to the proverbial candy store window. She grew into adulthood with a bottomless appetite for wealth, status, and luxury.

What she got was Scotty Boy Sykes, her rich duffer of a husband some thirty years her senior. With his blue lips, liver spots, paunchy eyes, and tendency to spit while stuttering, Scotty Boy would have repulsed most women of Chloe’s age and beauty. But Chloe was
that
desperate and he’d had
that
last name, although years later she would learn Sykes was merely an Ellis Island shortcut from his family’s original—Siemankowski.

I think this is why Chloe hired me. Once she learned I was Katarina Popalaski from Manville’s not-too-distant cousin South River, she knew she was onto something. Here, at last, was one of her people. Had our descendants not stepped onto the boat at Gdansk, both of us would have been wearing ankle socks and headscarves, gumming salted fish and cursing the apparatchik. Only, unlike Chloe, I hadn’t changed my name and tried to parlay my blond hair into WASP credentials. Therefore, she assumed I was clay to mold, a novice she could impress with her late-model Range Rover and designer bags.

I
was
impressed—mostly by Chloe’s determination to get out of bed every day and put on a show, arming herself with Chanel, Ferragamo, Nancy Gonzalez satchels, Bulgari shades, and constant dieting. It took so much work to fight back those Szabo genes, so much studying and brushing up on who was in and who was out in the Bedminster-Far Hills set, that being in her presence was often enervating.

Especially when she was second-guessing herself into a nervous breakdown.

That was what she was doing the fateful day beaucoup bucks client Barb Gladstone (as in Peapack Gladstone, an irrelevant detail Chloe never failed to mention) announced she was displeased. The drapes Chloe had designed for Barb’s master bedroom were doing absolutely nothing about shutting out the morning sun, as she’d specifically requested. She demanded Chloe come up to Bedminster ASAP.

In the incestuous world of high-end Jersey redecorating, this spelled disaster. Barb knew everyone who was anyone and she’d taken a chance on Chloe after she and her regular interior decorator had suffered a minor falling-out. It had been Chloe’s golden opportunity to wedge her Dior sandals in the door and she’d blown it big-time.

“It’s not a huge deal, don’t you think? I mean, it’s not as if the drapes can’t be replaced or that I’m not willing to absorb every last penny of replacing them.” She furiously flossed her teeth while zigzagging the Range Rover through Bedminster’s winding roads, paying scant regard to nuisances like stop signs and speed limits. Or trees.

I’d only been working for Chloe two weeks, so I wasn’t quite sure what to say. At the moment, I was more concerned with staying alive as I gripped the door handle and assessed the situation. It seemed to me that the cost of replacing the drapes that had averaged about $800 a panel was prohibitive. Plus, my sense was that Barb had given Chloe a simple task as a test case. If she couldn’t throw up a pair of curtains, then how could Chloe be expected to redo a whole kitchen?

“I’m sure you’re fine,” I lied, patting her purse as a safe alternative to patting any part of her physical presence. “Barb’s probably one of those grand dames who complains about everything. Look how she fired her regular decorator.”

Chloe slammed on the brakes. “If Barb fires me, then I should fold up the business right now. My name will be mud.”

I decided if I was going to keep my job, I had better work on my tact.

We arrived at the white stone house where Chloe, so beside herself, nearly plowed her Range Rover into the back of a truck filled with dirt and grass belonging to two landscapers hard at work resetting the Gladstone slate walkway. They leaned on their shovels and stared at Chloe, who inconsiderately left her car smack in the middle of the driveway so no one else could get around.

I shrugged in apology and trotted after her, though I had no idea what I was expected to do or say.

Inside the mansion, that role became no clearer. Barb, dressed in blue, glided down the stairs—pale from insomnia—and escorted Chloe to the bedchamber of horrors. It was understood that I was to stay put.

Meanwhile, I conducted a self-guided tour, wandering from room to room, gradually forgetting about Chloe and the drapes while I let myself be dazzled by Barb Gladstone’s artwork, including an original Picasso and a collection of intricately painted antique Chinese vases that must have been pre-eighteenth century. I took mental notes of how Barb placed the fresh flowers and chintz furniture for when Liam and I moved into the Morrisville colonial. Someday, we’d have a home just like this, sans the Picasso, of course. I could hardly wait.

It wasn’t until I strolled outside, humming a tune and taking in the earthy aroma of freshly mowed spring grass, that I realized I was in deep, deep trouble. The landscapers were gone. So was Chloe’s Range Rover.

Uh-oh. There was a brief moment of panic as I rapidly assessed my options. Since this was before cell phones, in the 1980s, it was impossible to call Chloe while she was on the road. But, surely, she would be back soon. Perhaps she’d been made to move her car. Or Barb had sent her on an errand.

Still, it would be a good idea to check with her office just in case. Unfortunately, despite possessing every luxury imaginable, Barb Gladstone seemed to have overlooked modern communication. There wasn’t a phone anywhere. Not even in the library, where I rushed in and was stopped short at the sight of one of the landscapers going through Barb’s personal belongings.

His back was toward me, his faded red T-shirt smudged with dirt, a maroon line of sweat running between his pronounced shoulder blades. Longish black wavy hair curled from perspiration at his neck, and from where I stood at the door, his metallic, musky odor of heavy physical labor mixed with the library’s more distinguished aroma of fine leather and bound books. I couldn’t imagine that Barb would approve of a man in his state flipping through her collection with his filthy fingers.

“Excuse me.”

He plunked a finger between the pages and turned, at first seemingly annoyed by my interruption and then, seeing me in my short black shirt and white sweater with the plunging neckline, more forgiving.

“Hello.” He raised a curious eyebrow. “Lost?”

“Kind of.” I really was in no mood for idle chatter. This was serious. “Do you happen to know if the woman with the Range Rover—”

“Left? About a half hour ago.”

A half hour ago? So it was true! Chloe had
ditched
me. Not only that, but my car was parked back in Princeton at the university since there was no room in Chloe’s lot, a definite risk considering I wasn’t a university student and that I’d been warned once before. . . .

“Shit!”

The landscaper approached, his head cocked slightly in interest. I noticed that his eyes, while blue, were very dark, and there was a slight scar on his forehead. Other than that scar, he was strikingly handsome, almost like a Greek statue, with a pointed chin, graceful nose, and a strong, long neck with sinews so pronounced I was tempted to reach out and trace one of them with my finger.

Not that I was interested, of course. I was almost engaged to Liam. But Liam was completely averse to anything smacking of physical labor. That’s what checks were for, he liked to say: to pay others to do what he didn’t have to.
This
man, with his grime and muscles, was an intriguing, albeit slightly disgusting, fascination—like raw oysters.

He said, “I gather there’s a problem.”

I quickly explained about being stranded and about my car being parked illegally back at the university. I wasn’t out and out asking for a ride, but as soon as I described my dilemma, I realized I’d dropped a very strong hint.

“Is this a common practice of yours?” He casually leaned against a bookshelf as if we had all the time in the world. “Using Princeton University as your personal parking lot?”

“I wouldn’t have to if I weren’t in hot water with the town,” I said, choosing to ignore his amused smile.

“And that’s because . . . ?”

“Because I owe them about three hundred dollars in unpaid parking tickets and if I so much as idle at a stoplight, they’ll slap a boot on my car.”

“I see.” He ran a finger under his lower lip, taking me in, trying to decide if I was worth the effort. “I’ll tell you what. Give me ten minutes and I’ll drive you down.”

It was a supremely generous offer, exactly what I needed, and I would have leaped at it immediately if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was a dirty stranger. For all I knew, he could have been a rapist or a serial killer or . . . both! But before I could ask a few more prudent questions, he was gone, taking Barb’s book with him.

He returned as promised, having showered and changed into clean jeans and a heavy white cotton shirt that he was buttoning up with one hand, his other holding the book and a set of keys. With his black hair wet and slicked back, his odor of filth replaced with the refreshing scent of soap, he bore only a vague resemblance to the landscaper from before.

“Come on.” He nodded to a side door. “My car’s out back.”

“You can shower here? I mean, Barb lets you?” She seemed like such an ungenerous old woman.

“Oh, she lets me do more than that.”

I’d assumed that we were going to take the landscaping truck. Instead, he opened the door to a small green MG Midget that looked barely large enough to hold my niece’s Barbies.

“And along with using her shower, I gather Barb lets you drive her car, too,” I said, getting in.

“No. This I let
her
drive, if she behaves herself.” He closed my door and extended his hand. “By the way, I’m Griff.”

I told him I was Kat, but inside I wasn’t sure. My world seemed to have turned upside down like the book he’d taken from Barb’s library and tossed into my lap
.
Nothing made sense. Why would a landscaper be showering in one of Barb’s many bathrooms? Why would he be reading her books and driving an MG, walking about the house like he owned it?

I regarded his tanned bare forearm flecked with dark hair as he shifted gears and sent us zooming through Bedminster’s quiet roads, the top down, my hair flying in the breeze. It was exhilarating, and, yet, I had to remember Liam. There was no point in even flirting with another man, not with all the unspoken plans for my marriage already in the works.

“Keep hold of that book.” He boldly leaned over and placed my hand on top of it securely. “It’s a classic.”

I checked the title:
Capital Vol. 1: A Critique of Political Economy.
Modify that earlier question. Who was this sweaty landscaper with the sexy MG he drove way, way too fast who
read Karl Marx for fun
?

I didn’t know. But I wanted to. Suddenly, I was possessed with an overwhelming, pressing need to know exactly who this Griff was. Unfortunately, he beat me to the punch.

“Pardon my bluntness, but I assume you do realize that racking up hundreds of dollars in parking tickets is a complete waste of money.” He downshifted as we entered Princeton’s city limits, where the cops were notorious for picking off speeders. “Three hundred dollars is what I pay a month in rent.”

“I don’t care.” I tried not to think about my parking tickets. They gave me a headache. “I hate talking about money.”

“Do you? That’s too bad.”

“Why?”

“Because I love it.”

“Oh, I love money, too,” I agreed. “Love to have it in my wallet. Love to spend it or, better, have other people spend it on me.”

“No.” He frowned. “I hate that. Money sucks.”

“I thought you said . . .”

“I like studying how money influences the tide of human events, its ability to corrupt and redeem. But mostly corrupt, as he would say.” He tapped the Karl Marx. “When you’re looking for the source of evil, it’s hard to go wrong with money.”

“So you’re a Marxist.”

“Even Marx once said, ‘I am not a Marxist.’Though he did say, ‘I am only as young as the women I feel.’”

“Karl Marx was only as young as the women he felt?”

“No. That last quote was Groucho’s. Different Marx. Old econ joke.” He chucked me under the chin playfully, as if we’d known each other forever. “Now tell me where we can find this illegal car of yours.”

We turned into the lot just in time to see the front end of my blue Honda Civic passing by on the back of a Princeton University tow truck. I let out a whimper and Griff slammed on the brakes.

“Hold on.” He killed the engine and leaped out without opening the door, dashing toward the tow truck and flagging it down. After much discussion and cajoling on Griff ’s part, the driver agreed to free my Honda as long as I promised never, ever to so much as idle the car within five feet of the university’s gates.