Hot Wheels and High Heels (33 page)

“Is that a dog?”

Darcy spun around, and she couldn’t believe who was standing behind her.
Damn
. Was it too late to try to stuff Pepé into her pocket?

She sighed. “No, Charmin. This isn’t a dog. It’s an elephant.”

“I know a dog when I see one. You haven’t paid a pet deposit.”

“I was going to, but I was a little short, and—”

“You owe me three hundred bucks.”

“Come on, Charmin! Most hamsters are bigger than he is!”

“Doesn’t matter. You got a dog, you pay the deposit.”

“Oh, all right! I’ll pay it! But you have to give me a little time.”

“You’ve got twenty-four hours.”

Darcy recoiled. “Twenty-four hours? I can’t get that kind of money together in twenty-four hours!”

“Pay the money, or the dog goes.”

Charmin gave Darcy one last snotty look, then shot one at John for good measure. Most people wouldn’t take the chance of irritating a man like him, but Charmin was too mean to be intimidated.

“What am I going to do?” Darcy asked as Charmin disappeared around the corner of the building. “I don’t have three hundred dollars! I barely have enough money to survive until payday! Can she really make me give up my dog?”

“Technically she could get a court order.”

“And she will, too. I know her. God, three hundred dollars? It might as well be three thousand.” She put her hand to her forehead, her mind reeling. “Do you know Warren and I used to have dinners at our country club that cost almost three hundred dollars?”

“I don’t doubt it. What a waste of money.”

“Okay. Maybe it was stupid. But a lousy three hundred dollars shouldn’t matter this much to anyone.”

In the distance, she heard the door to the apartment next to hers open, and one of its many scroungy residents came out. He locked the door behind him and headed for the parking lot, the hot evening wind blowing his scraggly hair in a swirl around his head.

“Will you look at that guy?” Darcy muttered. “I swear everyone who lives here looks like a drug-addicted serial killer. Those who aren’t transvestite hookers, anyway. Not exactly Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood, is it?”

John was silent, which meant she’d spoken the truth so he didn’t know what to say. Darcy hated this. She hated that she lived in this crappy place. Hated that she drove a crappy car. Hated that she had to watch every dime she spent. She
hated
it.

“John?” she said. “I know this is a lot to ask, but I can’t give Pepé up. I can’t. Do you think . . .” She exhaled. “Do you think you could loan me three hundred dollars?”

He sighed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“But I’ll pay you back.”

“I know you will. It’s just that . . .”

“What?”

“You need to do this on your own.”

“On my own?” she said incredulously. “How am I supposed to come up with three hundred dollars in twenty-four hours?”

“Tell you what,” John said. “Why don’t you let Killer here come stay with me until you can get the deposit together? He’s used to me by now. And it’ll be like a vacation for him. He’ll love running around in my backyard.”

She shook her head. “No. It would feel like I’m giving him away.”

“It’s only temporary.”

“Temporary could turn into a long time.”

“Do you trust me to take care of him?”

“Of course, but—”

“Then I’ll keep him as long as you need me to.”

“Okay. That’s fine for this time. But what about next time?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean? I’m just one paycheck away from being on the street!”

She spoke louder than she intended, and Pepé squirmed in her arms. She hugged him closer and lowered her voice, but her frustration seeped through just the same.

“Gertie could break down any minute,” she told John. “The IRS could hit me with back taxes. My electric bill could be even bigger next month. As long as I’m living paycheck to paycheck, it’s
always
going to be something.”

“And there’s always a way out. You’ll find it this time, and next time, too.”

“None of this would be an issue if you’d teach me to be a repo agent.”

John closed his eyes with a hard sigh. “You know how I feel about that.”

“You won’t loan me money, yet you won’t let me make more?”

“You make enough money. You just need to learn how to manage it.”

“Will you
stop
patronizing me?”

“You’re making too much out of this.”

“Don’t you get it? If a lousy three-hundred-dollar pet deposit sends my finances into a tailspin, how am I ever going to—”

All at once, a loud
boom
shattered the night, sounding like lightning striking the ground only yards from where they stood. John grabbed Darcy and spun her around, shielding her body with his as pieces of debris fell to earth.

With her ears ringing, Darcy looked around John’s shoulder, trying to see what had happened. And when she did, the most horrible feeling of dread slammed into her.

The door of the apartment next door to hers was blown off its hinges. Windows were shattered.

And the building was on fire.

Minutes later, the apartment complex was a whirlwind of activity. Tenants poured outside to see where the explosion had come from. Red and blue lights of emergency vehicles swirled around the scene as firefighters hit the ground running to try to put out the blaze. The sun had slipped below the horizon, and the red-orange sky behind the burning building made it look as if the entire landscape had descended into hell.

Fortunately there hadn’t been anyone in the apartment where the explosion occurred, and everyone else in the building had gotten out without injury. When the police arrived, they directed all the tenants who were standing around to the front of the complex to clear the way for more emergency vehicles and personnel. Vans from local news stations that had been tuned into the police band were already parked at the front of the complex, and reporters and cameramen were covering the story live. As they milled around, Darcy heard one of them tell another one that they should just let the whole crappy complex burn to the ground. They were probably right, but still it made her feel awful. This horrible place was the best she could do, and now she didn’t even have that. She could only stand there beside John, watching as the fire consumed everything she owned in the world but a beat-up car, a terrified dog, and the clothes on her back.

“Well, it looks like there really was a meth lab next door to you, huh?”

Darcy turned to see Charmin walk up beside her, and she almost groaned out loud. She did
not
need this woman right now.

“Yeah,” Darcy said. “I guess it wasn’t just a rumor.”

John’s eyes widened. “Did you say meth lab?”

“Don’t know what else would cause an explosion like that.” Charmin huffed with disgust. “Damn. Dealing with this is going to be a pain in the ass. The owner’s gonna go nuts.”

“I don’t really care what
you’re
going to have to deal with,” Darcy said. “Not when I don’t even have a place to live!”

“Cheer up, Darcy,” Charmin said. “You know that pet deposit you owe me?” She chuckled. “Looks like you’re not going to have to pay it after all.” She looked back at the burning building. “And while you’re at it, looks like you can forget about the rent, too.”

As she walked away, Darcy gritted her teeth. “Did I tell you I
hate
that woman?”

“You knew there was a meth lab next door to you and you didn’t tell me?” John said.

“Nobody knew for sure.”

“But you should have told me, anyway! I could have had the cops all over this place!”

“John—”

“Damn it, I should have known. I saw all kinds of people coming in and out, night and day. I should have
known
. I should have—”

“John! It’s done! The damned thing blew up! So why are we still talking about it? And it doesn’t really matter, anyway. If it hadn’t been this, it would have been something else.”

“What do you mean?”

“Crazy Bob would have left a cigarette burning, or an electrical short would have popped up somewhere, or the owner would have burned the place to the ground himself to collect the insurance money. At a place like this, it’s always going to be something!”

“Take it easy, Darcy,” John said. “Everything’s going to be okay. You have renter’s insurance, right?”

“Renter’s insurance? You must be joking.”

“Are you telling me you don’t have—”

“No, I don’t! What was I supposed to buy it with? My extra disposable income?”

“Forget it. It doesn’t matter. You can start over again.”

She looked at him incredulously. “Half an hour ago, I couldn’t even come up with a lousy pet deposit, and now I’m supposed to start
over
again?”

John took her by the shoulders. “Things aren’t as bad as you think. We’ll evaluate where you are financially and put together a plan to get you back on your feet. Then we’ll go from there. Everything’s going to be okay.”

“Will you
stop
saying that?” Darcy said, shuddering away from him. “Everything’s
not
going to be okay! How many more times am I going to lose everything before I just can’t take it anymore?”

When John turned away with a sigh of resignation, she knew the truth. He didn’t really believe the things he was telling her. For all the times she thought she’d been at rock bottom, she hadn’t even come close.
This
was rock bottom, and she didn’t see any way out.

Suddenly John came to attention. He lifted his chin, focusing on something over Darcy’s shoulder.

“That son of a bitch,” he muttered.

Darcy turned to see a sleek black limousine pull to the side of the road in front of the apartment complex and come to a halt. The back door opened, and Jeremy Bridges stepped out.

Chapter 21

J
ohn’s hand tensed against Darcy’s arm. “What the hell is he doing here?”

Jeremy walked over to where they stood, zeroing in on Darcy and completely disregarding John. “I heard a news report on the radio. Did the fire get your apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Everything?”

She nodded.

“Get out of here, Bridges,” John said. “Nobody needs you here.”

“Shut up, Stark. I’m talking to Darcy.” He turned to her. “What you’ve lost tonight wasn’t worth having. It’s meaningless. Of no consequence at all. Do you understand?”

“Darcy,” John said. “Let’s go.”

Jeremy turned on John. “Where? To that pitiful hovel you call home? Is that where you’re taking her?”

“You don’t know a damned thing about where I live.”

“Forty-four seventeen Caldwell Street. You think I haven’t been keeping tabs on her?” He turned back to Darcy. “It’s time to stop this. Time to get out of this low-class life and back to the one you know. Look around you. If you stay with him, you’ll never have anything more than this. Is that what you want?”

Her eyes filled with tears. No. God, no, it wasn’t. She wanted things the way they used to be. She wanted to wake up in the morning and worry about where she was going to have lunch with her friends, or what to wear to the club that night, not about whether she’d be able to make it to her next paycheck.

“We’ll go to my house tonight,” Jeremy said, his voice low and mesmerizing. “Tomorrow I’ll take you shopping. Then we can get out of town. Where would you like to go? New York? London? Paris? By this time tomorrow, we can be in a five-star hotel in any city in the world.”

John inched forward. “Darcy, don’t listen to him.”

“I can take you away from all this,” Jeremy said. “In no time, this life will be nothing but a bad memory.”

“Bridges—”

“You know it’s what you want. What you’ve wanted ever since Warren took your life away from you. Come with me, and you’ll have it.”

“Back off, Bridges.”

“All you have to do is say the word.”

“I said
back off!
”

Jeremy met John’s angry gaze with a coldly indifferent one, and for several seconds, neither man moved. Finally Jeremy backed away.

“I’ll be in the car. But you’d better make a decision quickly. I won’t sit there all night.”

He walked back to the limo and got inside, disappearing behind the darkly tinted glass.

“Listen to me, Darcy,” John said. “He’s an opportunistic son of a bitch. Do you see what he’s doing? He knows how you must be feeling right now, and he’s trying to take advantage of you.”

“Take advantage? A man offers me a mansion to live in, clothes on my back, money in my pocket, a private jet at my disposal, and he’s taking
advantage
of me?”

“Yes, and you’ll know exactly when it kicks in. When you get the bill. And it won’t be in the form of dollars and cents. You’ll pay, Darcy. One way or the other.”

“I don’t care!”

John drew back. “What do you mean, you don’t care?”

“He’s right. I haven’t lost anything here, because I had nothing to lose. I want
more
than this!”

“You can have more. You can have anything you want. You just have to be willing to work for it. You’ve been doing a good job at the office. Better than I ever thought you would. You deserve a raise, and I’ll give you one.”

“Great. Now instead of making minimum wage, I’ll be making barely above minimum wage.”

“It’s the best I can do for now. Maybe in a few months—”

“Don’t you see, John? It doesn’t matter. No amount of work I’m capable of could
ever
get me the kind of life I want!”

John’s gaze grew hard. “It isn’t as if you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth. It wouldn’t kill you to spend a few years struggling.”

“I wasn’t cut
out
to struggle!”

She was shocked to hear Jeremy’s words coming out of her mouth, but suddenly they rang so true that she shook with the frustration of it. Hot tears streaked down her cheeks, and she swiped them away with her fingertips.

“I just can’t do this anymore, John. I can’t be the person you think I should be. One who hits rock bottom and claws her way back up again. I just
can’t
.”

“You’re stronger than you think.”