Too Damn Rich (3 page)

Further than anyone imagined ...

Dina Goldsmith's earliest memories were of
cheese, which was why she refused to touch it now—and woe be to
anyone who put so much as an ounce of it in the refrigerator!

Like Proust's petite madeleine, the very
smell, indeed the mere
thought
of cheese, was enough to set
off remembrances of things past. Which wasn't surprising,
considering the fact that her father had worked in one of Gouda's
famed cheese factories.

Trouble was, that's what she remembered best
about him. The smell of cheese which surrounded him like a miasma.
Clinging to his clothes. His hair. His skin. Somehow, no matter how
much he bathed, the stench never quite washed out. Even now, after
all these years, she still couldn't seem to get it out of her
nostrils.

But life, always rich in ironies, had used
cheese to provide her the ticket out of Gouda.

Dina Van Vliet was a classic Nordic golden
girl. Five feet, nine inches tall, she had hair like cornsilk,
sharply etched cheekbones, and wide-set aquamarine eyes. Besides
her looks and a knockout body, she possessed legs that made her a
showstopper—enough so that she won the title of Miss Gouda.

From there, it was a hop to Amsterdam, where
she garnered the crown of Miss Netherlands, and then a skip and a
jump to the Miss Universe pageant in Caracas, Venezuela.

Alas, Miss Netherlands never made it to the
semifinals. But no matter. Dina Van Vliet was a realist. No one
needed to tell
her
what her most valuable assets were. She
knew that better than anyone.

She also knew she wasn't about to return to
the land of windmills, wooden shoes, and cheese. So she packed up
her consolation prizes, took the nine thousand dollars her maternal
grandmother had left her, and moved to the mogul-rich canyons of
New York City, where she shared a rent-controlled apartment on the
fashionable Upper East Side.

More important, she invested in one very
good, very expensive, and very revealing multifunctional black
evening dress and a passable string of cultured pearls.

Thus armed, and shamelessly using her pageant
title to gain entree, she plunged into the Manhattan social circuit
like a cruising shark. Cocktail parties, dinners, opening nights,
and charity benefits—Dina worked them all, in the process turning
down countless offers for hops in the sack, and just as many
marriage proposals, all from some of Manhattan's dreamiest and most
handsome young men.

But Dina had no use for trust-fund babies.
She knew what she wanted, and was determined to get it.

And lo and behold! Before you could say
"Cheese!", she had found her Moneybags in Robert A. Goldsmith, the
recently widowed founder and chairman of GoldMart, Inc.

So it wasn't exactly love at first sight.

So he was overweight, unattractive, balding,
and fiftysomething.

So he was a little rough and rusty around the
edges.

So he wore the same abominable, off-the-rack
polyester suits he sold in his nationwide discount department store
chain.

And so his West Side penthouse was furnished
with cut-rate furniture, orange wall-to-wall shag, artificial
plants, and framed prints of clowns, cats, and children with big
eyes—GoldMart products all.

So what?

He was ripe for the picking, and that was all
that mattered. That, plus the fact that he had moolah coming out of
his ears.

Equally as important, Robert A. Goldsmith had
no ex-wives or children to dispute his estate if and when the time
came—she'd checked that out discreetly but thoroughly.

As far as his shortcomings went, Dina was
convinced that none were unconquerable. After all, manners could be
taught. A strict diet prescribed. His abominable wardrobe changed.
And the hideous penthouse on Central Park West redecorated.

Marriage soon followed, and Dina Van Vliet no
longer existed. Dina Goldsmith did—and with a vengeance.

Now that she had become an official member of
that most elite of all clubs—the wives of the one hundred richest
men in the world—she threw herself into the social arena with the
same calculation and coldbloodedness with which she'd set out to
capture herself a husband of incalculable wealth.

Her life suddenly became a whirlwind of
activity.

There were the daily lunches with fellow
socialites at La Grenouille and Le Cirque, where the court bouillon
with lobster paled beside the real entrees—juicy gossip and
whispered scandals.

The evenings of cocktail parties followed by
formal dinners. The opening nights on Broadway. Plus the
traditional Monday "dress" nights at the Metropolitan Opera, the
requisite charity balls, and the weekend commutes to the Hamptons
in the summer and Palm Beach or the Caribbean in the winter.

Anyone would have thought that Dina Goldsmith
had it made.

But soon she discovered the truth.

While socializing with certain people was a
matter of course, Mr. and Mrs. Goldsmith weren't accepted
everywhere. At least, not where it really counted. The old guard in
New York, Newport, the Hamptons, and Palm Beach snubbed them, and
all because Robert was a self-made man, and as such, his money was
new money and hadn't gained the patina of respectability which can
only be acquired over several generations.

Except when it came to charity fund-raisers,
at which any donors were welcome, Old Money locked its doors to
them.

Once again, just as she had done at Caracas,
Dina took stock of the situation and decided that some major
changes were due. First, she and Robert would have to move: to the
East Side, no less, and Fifth Avenue at that. She was determined
that only a palatial Wasp stronghold along Central Park would
do.

Money being no object, she soon found the
perfect thirty-four-room duplex, complete with sweeping marble
staircase, greenhouse, and no less than two wraparound terraces.
She hired the socially correct decorator, a seventy-two-year-old
dragon of impeccable Wasp pedigree.

But if Dina thought moving to the right Fifth
Avenue address and having the right decorator would magically open
all the closed doors, she was dead wrong. And the continued
ostracism was driving her crazy.

And now, eight long years later—Hallelujah!
Her prayers had been answered! Her husband's successful takeover of
Burghley's would succeed where all else had failed—for no one
needed to tell Dina that his majority stake in Burghley's had
suddenly made her the hottest social item in town. And overnight,
yet!

After all this time, she had been catapulted
to the top! To the very, very pinnacle of Manhattan society!

And now ...

Ah! Now there were debts to be repaid in kind
... snobs she would snub ... an entire vanquished society just
waiting to lick the soles of her Maud Frizons!

Oh, yes! She would revel in every last minute
of it! For was there anything, anything on earth quite as
deliciously satisfying as giving tit for tat?

The scented water in the marble Jacuzzi
bubbled and boiled as Dina slid down into the huge pink oval tub.
Closing her eyes, she rested her head on a pink scallop-shell
cushion, her fertile mind doing quantum leaps.

A knock on the door intruded on her pleasant
thoughts, and her eyes snapped open as Gaby marched right in. Dina
scowled up at her, but Gaby couldn't care less. She was a bossy
squirt of a tweedy woman, with gray iron wires for hair, glasses
hanging from a chain around her neck, and a voice like James Earl
Jones's. Approaching the tub, she smacked the button and shut off
the noisy whirlpool mechanism. "There's a call for you," she
announced gruffly. "Wanna take it?"

Dina slapped the button to turn the whirlpool
back on. "That all depends on who it is," she sniffed.

"Someone named Berg. Sandra Berg." Gaby
shrugged.

Frowning to herself, Dina reached for a giant
loofah. Sandra Berg? Was she supposed to know whoever that might—?
And then a lightbulb glowed. Of course! Gaby must mean Zandra!

Zandra, who she hadn't heard from in
ages!

"Hand me the telephone," Dina commanded
loftily.

"Pick it up yourself," Gaby snapped, and
marched right back out, shutting the door behind her.

Bitch! Dina wanted to shout, but settled for
throwing the loofah at the closing door. Then she reached for the
remote phone on the tub- side table.

"Zandra?" she squealed happily, sliding back
down into the gurgling cauldron.

"Dina?" The British-accented voice came
faintly across the wires amid a cacophony of background noises.

Dina could barely hear and shut off the
Jacuzzi. "Zandra? Where in heaven are you?"

"Thank God, Dina! Darling, if I couldn't have
reached you, I don't know who I would have called!" Zandra's
voice—equal measures of clipped upper-class boarding school,
Belgravia slur, and Oxfordshire country-house throwaways—for once
sounded uncharacteristically panicked.

Alarmed, Dina sat up straight, water sluicing
down her bony clavicles. "Zandra! What on earth is it?"

"Oh, there isn't time to go into all the
sordid details now, Dina. I mean, I've had an absolutely
beastly
time. Would it ..." Her voice turned hesitant. "...
would it be all right if I came and stayed with you for a few
days?"

"Why, you know you're always welcome. And I
long to see you." Dina paused, a frown flitting across her smooth
features. "Zandra, are you in any sort of ... difficulties?"

"Gosh, Dina, that would take the whole of
forever to explain . . . I'm in a pay phone and—well, I fear it'll
just have to wait. I've just put down at Kennedy, you see, and if
the traffic's horrendous it might take me a while to get into the
city ... anyway, you're positive it's all right? I mean, I know
it's awfully short notice and the most horrible breach of etiquette
to blatantly invite oneself ... besides which, I really wouldn't
want to impose—"

"Oh, but you're not imposing!" Dina assured
her. "I'm delighted, sweetie! Really I am! Tell you what. Come
straight to the apartment. I'll probably be out until sometime
after lunch, but I'll get back as quickly as I can. Meanwhile, I
shall inform the staff to expect you. Feel free to make yourself at
home."

"Oh, you are a darling—you've positively
saved my life! And I can't wait to see you!"

Frowning, Dina looked at the receiver in her
hand and then reached out and replaced it. As she slid back into
the now-tepid water, worries nibbled at her. She had definitely
detected a disturbing note in Zandra's voice, almost an
undercurrent of ... yes ...
hysteria
.

Dina's frown deepened. Indomitable, sparkly,
but always level-headed Zandra panicking? That was most unlike the
Zandra she knew. Yet she was certain she hadn't imagined it.

What on earth, she wondered, could be the
matter?

Zandra von Hohenburg-Willemlohe, Countess of
Grafburg, had no intention of reliving the past twenty-four
hours—at least, not if she had anything to say in the matter. She
didn't think her nerves could stand it. Now that she was out of
imminent danger, she allowed herself to feel a little safer. She
was, after all, in America—and three thousand miles of ocean
separated her from England and Big Trouble.

"I think I'm in lust," a junior executive
keeping pace with her said in a voice just loud enough for her to
hear.

When ignoring him didn't thwart his ardor,
she iced him with her eyes. "I make it a point never to rob the
cradle," she retorted so loudly that passersby smirked, and that
having done the trick she hurried on, her outsize shoulder bag
bouncing.

Zandra von Hohenburg-Willemlohe had long
become an expert at rebuffing the advances of strangers. She'd had
to. Without meaning to, she attracted men the same way pollen
attracts bees.

Zandra was twenty-eight years old and had the
face of the beauty queen she'd once been, and the body of a whore,
which she most definitely was not. Her wide-spaced eyes were
bright, pranksterish, and mermaid green, and her mouth was wide and
full and sensuously pouty.

She was five feet, ten inches tall before she
put on her shoes, and her skin, that celebrated Limoges complexion
for which the English are so famed, was, in her case, made all the
more delightful by the triangle of irrepressible freckles on the
tip of her nose. She weighed one hundred and eighteen pounds, and
her hair, the precise color of Wilkin and Sons' Tiptree orange
marmalade, billowed around her head in a soft, cloudy aura.

On anyone else, the baggy cable-knit sweater,
second-hand motorcycle jacket, and tight faded jeans tucked into a
pair of crimson, flame-stitched, secondhand Tony Lama cowboy boots
would have looked decidedly downscale. But on her the outfit looked
absolutely smashing, for she belonged to that tiniest percentage of
women who could carry off anything, even rags, and still look the
height of chic.

Oddly enough, while men were naturally drawn
to her, women never seemed to resent her, for Zandra was altogether
too vivacious and down to earth, too fun-loving and crazily
uncomplicated for anyone to take offense to her beauty. If
anything, her mischievous joie de vivre and high- pitched giggles
rubbed off on others, and made anything she did—no matter how
outrageous—seem blithefully innocent and done without wishing the
least bit of offense or ill will.

Twenty-four hours earlier, however, that
bouncy spark had deserted her, and was yet to be fully
regained.

Now, carried along by the surging horde of
passengers following the signs marked TO BUSES AND TAXIS, she
silently blessed Dina Goldsmith. Without her old friend, she would
have had nowhere to hide out—and then what?

Then I would have been at the mercy of
those goons
, she thought grimly.