Rich Bitch: Everything's Going to the Dogs (2 page)

“Viens-ici, you little rug rat,” Vince bellowed, deciding that after the twenty-four hours he’d had, the little powder puff on legs better not push him.

If she didn’t come back in thirty seconds, he was going to get one of Uncle David’s hunting rifles, put a bullet through the Parisian pooch, and have her stuffed to hang on his wall like a trophy.

“I know you understand English, you little varmint.” Ahead of him he saw the bouncing curls of Mimi’s ears as the dog carefully squatted and squeezed out her two hundredth drop of pee. He didn’t have time for this. He didn’t want to be seen with this embarrassment of a dog. If the media caught wind of his new accessory, his career as a tough labor negotiator was over. Bulldog? Hah, they’d be calling him Pierre.

Since the dog was keeping up the pretense that it didn’t understand a word he was saying, he grabbed the French/ English dictionary he’d bought last night in desperation.

“Viens-ici,” he shouted. Then he flipped a few pages. “Ou je going to, going to, je va wring your hairy little neck.”

Somewhere close by, he heard a woman’s soft laughter. Oh, shit. He’d taken today off, waiting until everyone was at work, and bypassed the park nearest his place in Hell’s Kitchen for the anonymous expanse of Central Park so he’d be as good as invisible.

He glanced up and promptly dropped the dictionary on the ground. In front of him was the most beautiful woman in the world. Dark sultry eyes, rich black hair, lips so plump and red he couldn’t help but 
fantasize about cherries, and a body to make a man weep with frustrated desire. She wore black pants and a black-and-white sweater that clung in a lot of very interesting places.

“It’s
viens-ici
,” she said, in a voice that reminded him of Audrey Hepburn. “You don’t pronounce the ‘s,’ and it’s
“je vais, not je va
,” she bent down to pick up his dictionary which she handed back to him with a smile.

“You speak French,” he said in a daze.

She laughed again, and he thought that sound ought to be age restricted. “I am French.”

“Would you do me a big favor and call my dog? She only understands French. Or so she pretends.”

The woman didn’t seem to find a French dog in the middle of New York at all strange. “Of course, what is its name?”

He cringed. “Mimi.”

“Mimi.” the woman called in a clear, sexy tone. “
Viens-ici, je te donnerai un petit biscuit.
”

At the first words, he’d seen the little white fiend perk up its head and turn. As the French woman spoke, its head cocked from side to side as though listening for a trick. Then, suddenly, just when Vince had pretty much decided it was either the shotgun or the pound, there was a flurry of blue-rinsed white, a scattershot of yippy-yappy barks, and Mimi was prancing at the woman’s feet, her little pink tongue hanging out and a patch of dirt clinging to one of her pristine paws.

“
Oh, que tu es mignonne
,” the woman said, scooping the dog up into her arms, for which Vince, too stupid from lust to realize he should have grabbed the dog when he could, was more than grateful.

“Look, children, a sweet little dog.”

Children? Vince turned around in shock to see a child of about nine and one of about five standing there regarding him. He didn’t even realize he’d been fantasizing about getting to know this amazing woman better, until it occurred to him with a double shock that she was both wife and mother.

“We’re not supposed to talk to strangers, Mademoiselle Veneau,” said the oldest—a humorless-looking 
girl in some kind of uniform with a kilt.

Vince might not know much French, but he knew mademoiselles weren’t married. His world began to right itself.

“Vince Grange,” he said, bowing slightly to the children and then extending his hand to the French woman.

She took it, and he was immediately struck by how much better she looked with Mimi in her arms than he ever would. “Sophie Veneau,” she said, with that gorgeous lilt to her voice that made him want to swap places with Mimi and take over the job of licking her neck.

She passed him back the dog and said, “Come, children. We must go to the pediadentist.”

As she walked away, Mimi whined softly. Vince knew how the dog felt.

He wanted to ask Sophie for her phone number at least, but with the elder girl glaring at him as if he were a skanky pervert, he decided against it. He had a name now. In a city of nine million people, how hard could it be to find one Sophie Veneau?

Then little miss stuck-up did him an unexpected favor. “You know, mademoiselle, if my mother hears about this incident, she’ll probably report you to the Tyler Agency.”

Sophie’s response was, “
En frangais, s’il te plait
, Morgan.”

The pint-size troublemaker scowled and spoke in French, and soon they were beyond his hearing range.

Vince wasn’t stupid enough to put the dog down again, and since it had had plenty of exercise running away when he called it, it seemed content to be carried half hidden in his coat like a wino’s bottle.

But, in spite of one full day of poodle-induced torment, Vince was smiling broadly. For the first moment since he’d been saddled with Mimi, he wondered if Great-aunt Marjorie might have done him a favor.

In the twenty-four hours since he’d inherited Mimi, Vince had discovered that he needed help. If he was out, the dog howled, his neighbors had informed him. This was bad. Worse, it needed regular trips outside and a gourmet chef to prepare its meals.

He’d scoffed when the limo pulled up in front of his building and delivered Mimi’s things, which included a Limoges china set of dishes, for the dog’s exclusive use, a book of handwritten recipes of Mimi’s favorite foods, and her appointment diary. She had a standing appointment at Bliss for a weekly manicure, she was scheduled for a hair appointment in two weeks, and her doctor made house calls. The doctor was French.

Andre, who’d delivered Mimi’s essentials before Vince’s bemused gaze, had hauled in a case of Perrier, and that had struck Vince as the final straw.

“You have got to be kidding.”

Andre had sniffed. “It is all she drinks, monsieur.”

“You mean she doesn’t slurp Dom Perignon with every meal?”

“Alcohol is not good for dogs, monsieur.”

“Mimi, my friend,” Vince had said, as he looked at all the stuff littering his apartment, “things are going to change.”

The first change he made was to go out and get a couple of cans of dog food. He didn’t want to shock her little system too much, so he dumped the stuff on one of her fussy hand-painted plates with the gold rims. He even poured her Perrier into one of the fruity little china bowls.

She drank a little Perrier, lapping it with her tiny pink tongue, but she didn’t so much as acknowledge the existence of the plebian dog food.

Sooner or later, Vince figured, she’d get hungry, and she’d eat.

In twenty-four hours it still hadn’t happened, and now the dog food had a brown crusty layer. He wasn’t a cruel man at heart, and he didn’t think he could handle it if the dog starved to death. He also wasn’t going to cook up its special foods. That was plain ridiculous.

And there was the little communication problem he and his new pet were having. He only spoke English. The dog only understood French. Privately, he thought she was putting him on, but she was doing a damn good job of driving him into the nuthouse.

What Mimi needed, he realized in a blinding flash of brilliance, was a French nanny. More to the point, what Vince needed was Sophie Veneau.

The Tyler Agency was amazingly easy to find. Vince made an appointment with the agency’s president for later that day—explaining that his case was an emergency.

The woman who owned the agency tried to convince him that they didn’t hire out dog nannies; then she tried to convince him that Sophie Veneau was unavailable.

Vince smiled at her. He’d ended vicious strikes, negotiated settlements between teamsters and multinational trucking companies. One little nanny agency was a piece of cake. Every time the woman objected, he simply upped the price he was willing to pay. Or that Mimi was willing to pay. With fourteen mil, an extravagant nanny salary was chicken feed to Mimi.

“Please, Mr. Grange,” Ms. Tyler said at last, when she was flustered, torn between her rules and Mimi’s money, and he knew he had her, “I can’t simply take a nanny away from a family. They have a contract.”

“I’m not asking you to, Ms. Tyler,” he assured her. “Naturally, I’ll pay the wages of their new nanny until the end of the contract.”

“Well,” she hesitated.

“And, of course, I’ll pay an extra bonus to the agency to cover your trouble.”

He privately thought Ms. Tyler would make an excellent shop steward when she regarded his ridiculously generous offer with indifference. “Ms. Veneau will have to be agreeable.”

“Of course,” he said. After seeing the obnoxious elder daughter, he suspected Sophie would swap her for a poodle any day. At least until she saw the menu plan. But, by then, he’d have her.

He gave the Tyler woman his phone numbers, a couple of character references, and a hefty deposit.

“Well,” she said, “I’m making no promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”

He wasn’t surprised at all when he answered his phone later that evening to hear the sexy tones of Sophie Veneau on the other end. Mimi yipped a couple of times when the phone rang, but soon settled back into his lap, the only place she’d stay put when he was around.

Great. His own personal chastity poodle. Unless he could get her sorted out, his sex life was over. And he wasn’t giving that up, not even for fourteen million bucks.

Some things were priceless.

“Am I speaking to Mr. Grange?”

“Yes, but it’s Vince.”

“Very well. I understand you want me to be the nanny for your dog.”

It hadn’t occurred to him that he might be insulting this woman by trying to hire her for Mimi, and now he was smitten by conscience. “I hope I didn’t… I mean, would you be interested at all?”

Her sigh fell soft as a spring breeze on his ear. “Frankly, it would be wonderful to spend the day with a creature who doesn’t keep threatening to report me to the Tyler Agency.”

Vince laughed, the tightness in his chest easing now he knew he hadn’t insulted the woman. “So, when can you start?”

“I understand it is an emergency?”

“Yes. I can’t go to work and leave Mimi. She’s …” He looked down at the ball of fluff too tiny to be so much trouble. “She’s a little high-strung.”

“Surely you want a dog trainer, Mr…. Vince.”

“No. I want you.”

There was a moment’s silence, and he shut his eyes. “That, as you French would say, was a faux pas.”

She laughed. “It was, indeed.”

“I mean that you speak French and Mimi took to you right away. She doesn’t need dog obedience, and she’s house trained. It’s that she’s used to being with people all the time. French people.”

“I see. If you don’t mind me saying so, she seems an odd choice of dog for you.”

“I don’t mind you saying so at all. I didn’t choose her; she was willed to me.” It occurred to him that he probably shouldn’t explain that Mimi would probably head the Forbes list of the country’s richest canines.

“I see.”

“She’s a little spoiled. She has to have her food specially prepared. Could you handle that?”

“I think so. I’m a very good cook.” Of course she was; she was French.

“So, will you give it a try?”

“Yes.”

He beamed, even though she couldn’t see him. “Great. Can you start tomorrow?”

“You must know I can. The family were quite happy to let me leave early since you’re going to pay for their next slave until the contract is up.”

He chuckled. “That bad, eh?”

“Impossible. Give me your address. And what time tomorrow?”

When he’d done that, he tried to think of something to say that might keep her on the phone a little longer, but she forestalled him.”I’d better get ready for tomorrow, then. I will see you and Mimi in the morning.”

“Good night,” he said.

“Tell Mimi
bonne-nuit. A demain
.”

Vince patted the poodle’s soft blue-rinsed head. 
”Mimi, she said good night. And I’m pretty sure she said, I de man.”

Sophie had never imagined when she’d trained at the Cordon Bleu in Paris that she’d one day be called upon to prepare Escalopes de Veau Chasseur for a dog.

Of course, she hadn’t imagined back in those days that she’d end up in New York as a nanny, either.

Bien sur
, there was a demand for a woman who could teach the little Brittanys and Morgans, the Adams and Zacharys, a second, or third, or fourth language while she walked them to school, drove them to ballet, Karate, and Junior Achievers. In her last job, she was also supposed to cook elegant gourmet meals for the children of the family so they’d grow up with refined palates.

She shuddered to think of the number of meals she’d prepared and then quietly thrown out. If a child wanted to eat like a child instead of a sophisticated diplomat, she tended to look the other way. Still, her work was lucrative, and for the most part, she enjoyed it.

However, she was certain a little dog was going to be no trouble at all in comparison to her usual overachieving charges. And at least she wouldn’t have to teach Mimi French as they walked the park every day. La petite chienne was French.

It wasn’t her language skills but her culinary ones that Mimi was in need of. Bah, the stuff that man had put in her bowl was
degoutant,
when Mimi was obviously used to the best of cuisine. The dog clearly needed her, and she was happy to help.

No. It wasn’t Mimi who put a frown between her brows and a sliver of unease beneath her ribs; it was
 the dog owner who did that. Monsieur Vince was going to be a problem.

Une grande probleme.

A big, tall, brawny problem with eyes that were like slow, sleepy sex. She shivered a little when she remembered the way he’d looked at her.

Well, she couldn’t turn down a fellow Frenchwoman in a time of need, especially when her sparkly leash was attached to a man who couldn’t speak her language or give her decent food to eat.

Sophie had been attracted to Vince from the first moment she saw him struggling over a French/English dictionary looking huffy and helpless. Though, if he were responsible for the blue rinse in Mimi’s hair, she might have to reconsider her attraction to the man. Except there was something so sexy about a big, virile man with a tiny poodle in his arms. She got the same melting sensation when she saw a macho young guy with a baby. So sweet, with all that power, cradling such a small creature so he appeared both endearingly clumsy and reassuringly protective.

She’d dressed for her new job with more than usual care, certain that a dog who sported a fresher manicure than Sophie was going to notice.

She struggled into the skin-tight jeans she’d bought in Italy last year, paired them with the sage green cotton designer shirt she’d bought on sale at a little boutique off the Champs Elysee. Her boots were from a Prada sample sale, her sweater from Bloomingdales. She was an international fashion maven.

Since she wasn’t about to be outshone in the jewelry department by a canine, she stuck with small gold hoops in her ears and left it at that.

As she sped to her destination on the subway, she knew she hadn’t really dressed for Mimi. Mimi, for instance, didn’t care that her lingerie (also French, naturally) was absurdly wispy and utterly decadent. Sophie was Gallic enough, and fatalistic enough, to accept that sexual attraction happened. She couldn’t help her unmistakable lust for her new employer. She could, however, decide when or if it should be acted on.

In this case, she hadn’t yet made up her mind.

Still, her pulse skipped a little when she walked into her new employer’s building on Forty-fourth and announced herself to the doorman.

The dog began barking hysterically when Sophie knocked on the door of 17A. The timbre of the barking changed when Vince opened the door and Mimi clattered across the hardwood floor, her manicured nails like two pairs of castanets.

No sooner had she sniffed Sophie than her barking changed from hysterical fear to hysterical excitement, as she leaped in the air a few times, then rose on her hind legs and turned three perfect circles.

Sophie laughed and looked at Vince, who stared at the twirling poodle as if it were a new—and possibly deadly— life form.

Having twirled seven or eight times, her ears flying around her head like fluffy blue-tinged propellers, Mimi abruptly dropped back to all fours, staggering a little as though dizzy and looking expectantly at her audience.

Sophie broke into laughter and clapped her hands. “
Oh, que tu es adorable
!” she cried, at which Mimi, delighted to hear her own language, jumped up and spun faster. Then she pawed the air until Sophie scooped her up and pressed a kiss to her fluffy head, which appeared to Sophie to have been backcombed.

She held the dog to her breast as she looked up, and up, at Vince towering over her.

He wore almost the same thing he’d worn yesterday. Jeans, a T-shirt that revealed muscular arms and hinted at an equally muscled torso, and casual leather tie-up shoes. His hair, she noted, was still damp from his shower.

“I have to leave for work soon, so we’d better go over the ground rules.”

Such a serious owner for such a sweet little dog.

“All right.” She tore her gaze away from the man who was as magnetic as he’d been the day before, more so in the confines of an apartment where he seemed bigger, his presence more potent. She stepped all the way inside and took her first good look at the apartment.

Compared to her minute efficiency sublet, Vince’s home seemed enormous. A big, open room combined living and dining, and she suspected he’d knocked out walls to make one big space. Even the kitchen was open. A couple of large windows offered a view of the Hudson River. The walls were white. For decor he had a calendar from some football team, one very nice, large abstract canvas, and a black-and-white framed photograph of Hell’s Kitchen in the twenties.

His furniture was fairly standard American bachelor fare. An oversized TV dominated the living area, and a comfy chair, obviously Vince’s favorite, faced the screen. A few magazines that looked like sports and business sat on the side table, and a second table flanked a gray leather sofa.

The kitchen was spotlessly clean but a little sterile. Something she’d soon change.

“This is Mimi’s cookbook,” he said, walking her into the galley kitchen and pointing to a binder on the kitchen counter. “She only eats stuff out of there.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I got some things, but I put some cash in an envelope inside the front cover if you need—I don’t know, spices or something.”

“Definitely I will need spices. Don’t you have any?” Who could survive without spice?

“Sure I do.” He sent her a grin that made her pulse speed. “Salt and pepper.” He tilted his head to one side, and his eyes crinkled at the corners in a disturbingly attractive way. “And mustard. Is mustard a spice?”

“Not in my kitchen.” She understood now what he’d meant when he said his case was an emergency.

She put Mimi, who was wriggling, down, and the dog pranced down the hallway toward one of two closed doors.

“And this is where I keep a spare key,” he said, pulling open a drawer and taking out a key chain with a tiny football on the end, “which you’ll need when you go out.”

She nodded, noting Mimi had reached the door and was scratching. Still listening, while Vince explained how to get in and out of the apartment, she crossed and opened the door for Mimi.

She blinked. Inside was a double bed with a bright pink satin bedspread and a headboard shaped like a tiara. On it, in silver script, was the word Princess. There were rhinestones dotted here and there.

“And this is…”

“Mimi’s room,” Vince said sharply.

“Oh, I’m so relieved,” she said, then, realizing how she’d sounded, added hastily, “I mean, it’s nice for her to have a place of her own to …” She broke off when Vince opened the other door as though he needed to prove a point. His cheeks sported a slight ruddiness that hadn’t been there before.

“This is my room,” he said. One peek told her it was a shrine to testosterone. A big, sturdy-looking bed with a hefty pine headboard and a plain navy cotton spread that gave off the indefinable air of having seen a lot of action. There wasn’t much else in the room. A deep armchair with a reading light beside it, a simple chest of drawers with a dish of change on the top. It was, like the kitchen, clean and simple. Nothing fussy or feminine at all. In fact, Vince could have come from central casting as a rough, tough he-man but for the effete Mimi in his life. From where she was standing she could see into both bedrooms, and her sense that these roommates were a very odd couple grew.

“Mimi seems an odd choice of pet for you.”

Vince puffed his cheeks and let out a sigh. “I think I’m going to have to explain that to you. Mimi’s
 very . . . precious.”

“Yes, she is.”

“What I mean is … I told you I inherited her from my aunt. She pampered that thing and treated it like a baby. Like the baby of royalty, to be precise. I promised I wouldn’t let anything happen to the dog.”

“Oh, how kind of you to look after your aunt’s cherished pet.”

He shifted, visibly uncomfortable with her praise, which only made her think him more adorable.

“I got her a couple of days ago, so we’re still getting used to each other. She—uh— sleeps in the other bedroom, in her own pink silk bed.” She could have sworn that those rugged, already-stubbly-at-eight-in-the-morning cheeks, deepened slightly more in hue. “Theoretically.” He glanced down at Mimi. “She gets lonely, and if I don’t let her in with me, she starts barking and whining and scratching on the door.”

She suppressed a smile. “I see.” And she did see. The mental picture of that big man in his big-man bed with little Mimi curled up beside him did something to her insides. She was going to have to have a stern talk with her hormones; they were acting foolish. She sighed. Again.

Well, her hormones hadn’t led her too far astray. All the way from Paris to New York, certainly, but she liked it here. Even though she’d soon lost her liking for the young man she’d crossed the ocean to be with.

“So, you’ll need to walk her. And you have to keep her on a leash or she won’t come back.”

“It’s your French,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s why she won’t come when you call. She doesn’t understand. We’ll have to work on teaching you some French,
oui, Mimi
?”

He appeared stunned at the idea. Speechlessly so.

She smiled at him. “But it’s only logical. Your dog speaks French. You will have to learn.”

His tough-guy eyes narrowed. They were an attractive mix of green and gray and blue, she’d noted. There was a name for that, which she could never remember. “Why can’t Mimi learn English?”

“She’s a dog,” Sophie reminded him. “How many multilingual dogs do you know?”

“A dog needs a master,” he said a mite huffily. “I am Mimi’s master.”

Sophie looked down at the poodle who was tilting her head back and forth as they spoke. “Not if she doesn’t understand a word you say.”

“Here’s the leash.” He pulled out a length of chain with a clip on one end and a black leather strap on the other that looked as though it had been manufactured for prison guard dogs. “And her collar. I’m having trouble getting her into it. Maybe you can explain in her own damn language that she has to put it on before she can go out.”

He handed her a black leather collar appropriate for a very large, very fierce Rottweiler. Or an over-the-top S & M party.

Mimi took one look at the contraption and minced away with her nose in the air. “But what happened to her beautiful sparkly collar?”

He scowled. 
”She can’t wear that around here. She’ll get mugged.”

“Mugged? But they’re only crystals, surely?”

She stopped when he shook his head. “Cartier. It’s a custom job. There are twenty carats of flawless diamonds in that collar.”

“
Mon Dieu
!” No wonder it was so deliciously sparkly, that collar.  “Well. Well, she can’t wear this.”

Seeing he was about to argue, she said, “Never mind. Mimi and I will sort it all out,
n’est pas mignonne
?”

Mimi’s pom-pom tail wagged, and her head came up. Sophie patted Vince’s shoulder reassuringly and felt strong muscle that made her want to purr. For a second she envied Mimi being able to curl up beside him in that big bed.

He stared down at her for a long moment, and his shoulder seemed to warm beneath her palm. She felt that insistent and inconvenient quiver of arousal again deep in her belly.

“I have to go,” he said suddenly, when the moment had moved beyond comfortable. “I’ve got a meeting.”

“Have a good day.” She smiled and took her hand back, resisting the urge to shake the heat from it.

“Thanks. You’ve got my numbers?”

“Yes. Don’t worry.”

As soon as Vince was gone, she lapsed into French, thinking Mimi must miss hearing her own language. First, she read through all the recipes, found a veal one that she could easily adapt for Vince’s dinner. As he’d warned her, his kitchen was woefully ill-equipped.

She scrawled a list of essentials, helped herself to some cash from the envelope, and then picked up the leather-and-chain monstrosity. She managed to coax her reluctant charge into it, but the weight of the collar bowed Mimi’s little fluffy head, and the chain dragged on the ground.

“Bah,” she said in frustration. “My poor Mimi. It’s not for you.”

She replaced the original diamond collar on a much happier Mimi. She’d have to hope everyone made the same assumption she had that the stones were rhinestones, because neither she nor Mimi were going to
be seen with that black leather and chain monstrosity.

With Mimi happily prancing beside her with her own diamond-studded collar and leash, they left the apartment.

It was a gorgeous fall day, and she was being paid a great deal of money to spend time with the nicest charge she’d ever had.

Life was sweet.

While they stopped every few steps for Mimi to mark her trail, Sophie wondered what vegetables Vince liked, which was appropriate since she’d cook his dinners for him. She also wondered if any female but Mimi was sharing his bed with him, which was inappropriate, but truthfully occupied her mind a lot more enthusiastically than the man’s vegetable preferences.