Hot Wheels and High Heels (37 page)
Finally her father had spoken from his La-Z-Boy in the living room. “Lyla. Invite the man to dinner.”
“I will not. There’s no sense encouraging something like this.”
“Darcy,” her father said, “we’ll see you and John at seven o’clock on Saturday.”
Now Saturday had come, and John looked as if he was going to his own execution.
Her father greeted them at the door. He shook hands with John and escorted them into the kitchen, where her mother was bent over the oven. She closed the door and stood up, wiping her hands on a tea towel. Judging from Lyla’s frigidly restrained expression, Darcy’s father had clearly had a word with her about her behavior tonight.
“Mr. Stark,” she said with an icy smile. “How very nice to meet you.”
She shook his hand with all the warmth of a cadaver.
“Dinner sure smells good,” John said.
“It’ll be ready in a moment. I hope you like quiche.”
John’s smile faltered. “It’s my favorite.”
Uh-huh. This from a man who could finish off a side of beef and then wonder when dinner was going to be served.
“Vegetable quiche,” Lyla went on. “With a side salad of iceberg lettuce and cherry tomatoes. You do like low-fat dressing, don’t you?”
“Uh . . . sounds great.”
Darcy rolled her eyes. Passive-aggressiveness was
so
unattractive, but since it seemed her father had warned her mother against
active
-aggressiveness, she had no other weapon left.
“I’d be delighted to get both of you a drink. Mr. Stark? What will you have?”
“It’s John. And, uh . . . a beer would be fine.”
“Of course, Mr. Stark.”
John’s hand tightened on Darcy’s.
Is she going to be this way all night?
“Darcy? What would you like? Shall I open this lovely bottle of wine you left here when you moved?”
She nodded toward the bottle of Penfolds Grange Shiraz sitting on the kitchen counter. Darcy had forgotten all about it.
“Nah. I can drink beer right out of the bottle. That way I won’t dirty a glass.”
Lyla’s nose crinkled with disgust, but she was still smiling. It was one of the funniest combinations Darcy had ever seen. John, though, didn’t appear to see the humor in it, eyeing her mother as if he expected her to bite his head right off his shoulders.
As Lyla went to the refrigerator, Darcy whispered to John, “Don’t let her attitude fool you. Her drink is Wild Turkey and diet Coke.”
Lyla opened the refrigerator door and pulled out two beers. She started to put them on the counter and froze.
“No,” she said.
“What?” Darcy said.
She shoved the beers back into the fridge and slammed it. “No! I just can’t do this!”
Clayton raised an eyebrow. “Lyla . . .”
“Our daughter has lost her mind. She could have had a millionaire, and she settles for a repo man?”
A look of thinly veiled horror spread across John’s face. He’d spent eighteen years as a cop looking danger in the eye and never blinking, but three minutes with Lyla Dumphries had put the fear of God into him.
Darcy smiled up at him. “Money isn’t everything, Mom.”
“The only people who say that are people who have plenty of it, which you don’t.”
“It’s love,” Darcy said. “
Love
. Never forget that.”
“Love. Please. Try eating love instead of food and see how long you survive.”
Clayton sighed. “Lyla. Not now.”
“Yes,
now
. I’m making a point here.”
“So is Darcy.”
“Darcy doesn’t know what’s good for her.”
“She knows very well what’s good for her.”
“Try paying the mortgage with love,” Lyla said. “That’ll go over big.”
“Lyla . . .”
“Or the electric bill.”
“Lyla!”
“Sooner or later you’ll be freezing in the—”
All at once, Clayton grabbed her, hauled her right up next to him, and bent her backward over his arm.
Oh, God,
Darcy thought.
This is it. After forty years of bottled-up frustration, he’s going to gnaw right through her jugular
.
Instead, he kissed her.
Darcy’s eyes widened with astonishment because it wasn’t just any old kiss. It was a kiss so hot she was surprised the sparks didn’t catch the mobile home on fire. Clayton finally brought Lyla to her feet again, and she stared up at him with a dumbfounded expression.
“Now, what were you saying?” Clayton asked her.
Lyla just stood there, her eyes glassy, gaping at her husband. “Uh . . . nothing.”
“Good answer.” Clayton reached into his wallet, pulled out a pair of twenties, and handed them to John. “John, I want you and Darcy to go to dinner on me. Lyla and I need to be alone tonight.”
“W-we do?”
“Do you have a problem with that?”
She swallowed hard. “No. No problem.”
“Uh . . . okay,” John said, looking so disoriented that Darcy almost laughed out loud. “Well, then. I guess we’ll be taking off. It was nice to meet both of you.”
“Yeah,” Lyla said, still staring up at Clayton. “Nice.”
John and Darcy stepped out to the front porch and closed the door behind them. John still looked a little woozy, and for a moment she was afraid he was going to trip right down the steps.
“What the hell just happened in there?” he asked.
“Something that should have happened about thirty years ago.” She smiled up at him. “Welcome to the family.”
Darcy wanted to go to Taco Hut for dinner, where they could spend ten bucks and pocket the other thirty, but John put his foot down and told her to stop being a tightwad. After a nice dinner at an eclectic little restaurant in east Plano, they came home and curled up on the sofa to watch the end of the Rangers game. Darcy couldn’t see ever liking baseball to any large degree, but since she’d taken over three-quarters of John’s bedroom closet, most of his dresser drawers, and virtually all of the counter in the bathroom, she had no doubt he’d chop off her hand if she so much as reached for the remote.
When the Rangers finally won the game, Darcy excused herself, went to the bedroom, and put on something she’d bought earlier that day. She slinked back down the hall, the feathers at the hem tickling her thighs. When she reached the living room, she ran her hand up the doorway, striking a provocative pose.
John turned, and his mouth fell open.
“It’s pink,” she said. “My favorite color. And it was on sale. Seven-ninety-nine. Hell of a bargain.”
He stared at her for a good ten seconds, his mouth slowly closing again.
“Beautiful,” he murmured.
“You said before you thought it was ugly.”
“I’m not talking about the nightgown. Come here.”
Feeling a shiver of delight, Darcy walked across the living room, and John pulled her onto his lap. He slid his hand beneath the feathers and stroked her thigh, leaning in to kiss her neck. Then he stopped suddenly, his hand tightening against her leg.
“Wait a minute. There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“What’s that?”
He winced a little, as if he was afraid to say the words. “Who was the first man to walk on the moon?”
Darcy drew back. “You don’t know?”
“Of course I know. Do you?”
“Sure. Neil Armstrong.”
He let out a long sigh. “Thank God.”
“What has that got to do with—”
“Never mind.”
But as he pulled her down for another kiss, Pepé jumped up on the sofa and stuck his nose under John’s arm.
“What’s the matter, Killer? Is your mom getting all the attention?”
John scooped him up and plopped him into Darcy’s lap. Darcy lay her head on John’s shoulder, stroking Pepé’s ears and sighing with contentment.
“I read a romance novel once where the heroine fell in love with a man with no money,” she said.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. She threw away her inheritance to marry him, only to find out he was a prince in disguise who had millions of dollars.”
“Hmm. Lucky woman.”
“Uh . . . I don’t suppose . . .”
“Nope.”
Darcy sighed dramatically. “Well, I guess this means I have to settle for love instead of money.”
She smiled furtively and snuggled closer to John, unable to believe she’d gotten halfway through life before she finally figured out that
this
was what life was all about.
Jane Graves began writing stories at the age of five, and she hasn’t stopped since. She’s a graduate of the University of Oklahoma, where she earned a B.A. in Journalism in the Professional Writing program. The author of fifteen novels, Jane is a six-time finalist for Romance Writers of America’s Rita Award, the industry’s highest honor, and is the recipient of two National Readers’ Choice Awards, the Booksellers’ Best Award, and the Golden Quill. She lives in Texas with her daughter and her husband of twenty-five years.
You can visit Jane’s website at
www.janegraves.com
, or write to her at
[email protected]
. She’d love to hear from you!
More sassy, funny, and sexy romance from Jane Graves!
Please turn this page for a preview of
Tall Tales and Wedding Veils
available in Spring 2008.
T
hey were the ugliest bridesmaid dresses Heather Montgomery had ever seen, and she’d seen her share of them. When you had a family that could fill Texas Stadium, somebody was always getting married, and it was family law that cousins asked cousins to be bridesmaids, even if it meant blood relatives had to stand in line behind five of the bride’s sorority sisters.
This time around it was Heather’s cousin Regina tying the knot, and she’d chosen these dresses for one reason only: her high-priced wedding planner had convinced her they were the height of fashion. To Heather they simply looked ridiculous.
“Regina!” squealed Bridesmaid Number One, as she fanned out one of the six petticoated, pouffy-sleeved, waist-hugging creations. “They’re
fabulous
!”
Two and Three voiced similar opinions, while Four and Five stroked the satin reverently, making breathy little noises of approval. Heather had given up trying to remember five names all ending in “i”—Cami, Taci, Tami, whatever—and which blond woman belonged to each one. In the end, she’d simply assigned them numbers according to hair length.
In the wake of all the
oohs
and
ahhs
, Heather traded furtive eye-rolls with her mother. Barbara Montgomery had come along on this dress-fitting excursion, even though she didn’t particularly like her sister
or
her niece. She was there because family weddings always stirred things up, and if she stayed in the thick of things she was sure to be around when the pandemonium began. The whole family thrived on chaos in a way that boggled Heather’s mind. Given her own preference for a calm, tidy, organized life, sometimes she wondered if the stork had taken a wrong turn twenty-nine years ago and dumped her down the wrong chimney.
“Oh, yes,” Barbara said. “The dresses are simply adorable. Don’t you think they’re adorable, Heather?”
Was Heather the only one who heard the sarcasm oozing through her mother’s voice?
“Yes,” she said, sounding almost as Stepford-like as her mother. “Adorable.”
“Of course they’re adorable,” Aunt Bev said, as she fluffed the skirt on Three’s dress. “They’re by
Jorge
.”
“Well, pink must be Jorge’s signature color,” Heather said. “I mean, look at how much of it he used here.”
“They’re not
pink
,” Regina said, with a toss of her head that sent a shudder through the mountain of lace attached to it. “They’re
salmon
. It’s all the rage this season.” She fluttered her hands. “Go ahead, girls. Try them on.”
Heather grabbed her dress, went to a dressing room, and stuffed herself into it. The sleeves drooped to her elbows, at least six inches of hem dragged the ground, and it fit so snugly around her waist that breathing was a chore.
She pulled back the curtain. One through Five had morphed into gushy, grinning quintuplets with perfectly toned abs that didn’t make the slightest bulges in the waistlines of their perfectly hideous dresses. It was like watching models on a Parisian runway wearing ridiculous clothes, yet for some reason, nobody laughed.
The seamstress smiled as she surveyed the perfect members of the wedding party. Then she zeroed in on Heather.
“Hmm,” she said, running her hand over the waist of Heather’s dress and shaking her head. “It’s a little tight.”
Heather sighed. “I told Regina to get a fourteen, just in case. I knew it would have to be taken in, but—”
“A fourteen?” Regina said, blinking innocently. “I’m sorry, Heather. I swore you said size twelve.”
There wasn’t a damned thing wrong with Regina’s hearing. It was just Regina’s way of coercing her cousin into a smaller size so she wouldn’t have five women walking down the aisle who were pencil-thin followed by one who looked like a gum eraser. So what if Heather wouldn’t be able to breathe? As long as enough oxygen went to her brain that she stayed upright during the ceremony, that was all that mattered to Regina.
“I can let it out a little,” the seamstress said. “But only a little. There’s not much seam allowance.”
“Can’t you order the fourteen?” Heather asked.
“Too short notice.”
“The wedding’s not for a month,” Regina said. “I’m sure you can drop a size by then.”
Drop a size in a month? When she hadn’t been able to drop a size in the past ten years?
“Try the Hollywood Watermelon Diet,” Four said with a vacuous smile. “I once lost six pounds in a weekend on that one.”
Great. Not only did Heather have to be in a wedding she was going to hate, she was going to have to starve herself for the privilege. As the seamstress knelt down to mark the hem of her dress, Heather wondered how many celery sticks she’d have to eat in the next month so she wouldn’t look like ten pounds of potatoes in a five-pound sack.
“So, Heather,” Aunt Bev said. “Are you seeing anyone right now?”
The eternal question. One whose answer never seemed to change. “No, Aunt Bev. Nobody right now.”
