Strapless. Leigh Riker

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СКАЧАТЬ yesterday with Greta and what you’re saying about Merrick, maybe I should go home,” Darcie said. “That would make Mom and Dad happy. If I lose this chance at Wunderthings, if Merrick is lying to me—”

      “You’re in love with that ass?”

      Darcie backpedaled. “Well, no. But Merrick’s pretty good in bed.”

      Claire wouldn’t ask about last night. She’d only end up angry with Merrick, and sad for Darcie. Running on three hours’ sleep herself, with her postnatal hormones all over the place, she’d just start crying. For a single instant she envied Darcie. Her figure. Her single life. Her chances.

      “I wouldn’t compromise. I’d look for damn good. Make that stupendous. Lights and laser shows. Fireworks. Excitement, Darcie,” Claire insisted. “Thirty—the big 3-0—is staring us both in the face. You first.” She couldn’t help gloating. “Six months, sweetie. From then on, you don’t settle for third-rate when you choose a man. Or a career, for Pete’s sake—not to take my own husband’s name in vain.”

      “Peter the Great. He’s crazy about you.”

      Was he? Claire didn’t feel certain these days. She thrust her shoulders back to emphasize her newly maternal shape. She needed to remember that she was still a woman. A bigger woman right now but… “Since the baby was born, I’m a goddess. At least after a night’s sleep, which is rare, I am. Did I tell you? He loves my new chest.”

      Darcie turned and rolled her eyes. “He always did.”

      Not that Claire let him touch her yet. “Peter’s a breast man, I admit.”

      “The man is completely obsessed.”

      “He loves all of me,” Claire murmured to convince herself. She worried sometimes…most of the time…about going back to work soon, about marriage and being a good mother—what a change from her freewheeling, prebaby life with Peter—and about not being sexy to him now. Talk about obsessive. Silly, she supposed. Once they made love again…when she felt ready…

      “Maybe you and Peter are a fluke.” Darcie hesitated. “A hunky husband, a beautiful baby, that fancy job of yours. Vice President, Heritage Insurance, Inc.,” she intoned, making Claire smile. “A new shape that stops traffic….”

      The smile faded. “Except for my oh-so-generous and saggy-to-my-knees belly.”

      “You fit my mother’s profile of Woman perfectly.”

      “Uh-oh.” Claire knew Janet Baxter could be a handful, but she had Darcie’s best interest at heart, too. They both wanted to see Darcie happy. Claire picked up another cookie, wondering why, if she was so happy, she cried all the time. “Your turn will come.”

      “To be pregnant, with morning sickness? I watched you, remember. I need that at the moment like a pink slip from Walter Corwin.”

      Claire frowned. The small but upscale women’s lingerie company had seemed like a good opportunity for Darcie four years ago, but she’d gotten stuck behind Greta Hinckley—who wasn’t naive at all—and Claire feared she would lose her creative momentum to Greta’s continued sabotage. She pushed aside her own muddled emotions and the topic of Merrick Lowell.

      “You’re really worried about your job?”

      With a groan Darcie strode away from the windows and Claire regrouped. She’d heard all about Greta.

      “Listen. Hinckley’s so caught up in her own underwire, gel-enhanced bra—top-of-the-line of course—she doesn’t hear people whispering behind her T-strap back.”

      “Whispering what?” Darcie said. “About her stealing underwear, or getting the new assignment we’re competing for in Expansion?”

      “She won’t get it, sweetie.”

      “She’s a shark.” Darcie told Claire more about the stolen proposal yesterday and Nancy Braddock’s rescue, then forced a smile. “I’ll know whether she mentioned that to anyone else by noon tomorrow. Either way I’m having lunch with Walt. If he chooses me, I won’t have time for men,” she added. When Claire snorted, Darcie said, “I may need sex but that’s all. Until I get my life in order.”

      Claire bobbed her head. “I see. Then sex is why you stay with Merrick. What a deal. He gets laid with no strings. You get screwed with no consideration….”

      “If so, that’s my choice. Temporarily.” She plucked a throw pillow from the sofa and threw it at Claire, who dropped the last of her cookie. “End of discussion.”

      Claire retrieved the chocolate macadamia nut crumbs from the carpet. “A new assignment is the least you deserve for all your hard work. For instance, rewriting Corwin’s reports so they sound like a form of intelligent life wrote them in the first place. Working late three nights out of four on his projects—then coming in on weekends. If that slimeball Hinckley does get the spot, I swear—”

      “I’ll kill her myself. Walt, too.”

      “Give me a call. In this case I don’t mind being an accessory to murder.”

      “We get along so well. We could share a cell.”

      Claire grinned. “Hang curtains, lay rugs…a few pictures, and it’ll be home.”

      “Listen to us. Home for the Criminally Insane.”

      Claire joined her in a snicker then sobered. “But about Merrick…”

      “He’s okay. He takes me out, opens doors like a gentleman—”

      “Once a month. The rest of the time he just pokes you.”

      Darcie couldn’t argue except to add, “He’s smart, makes good conversation—”

      “When he’s not on top of you.”

      “And he loves his nephew,” Darcie finished.

      Claire gaped at her, her own fatigue forgotten. “See?”

      “What? Now you’re saying his nephew doesn’t exist? Merrick carries his picture in his wallet, and why would he lie? He’s a sweet little boy with fair hair, the Lowell smile…” But she grabbed a cookie from the plate and so did Claire.

      “I’m telling you, Darce. Wake up. The guy is married.”

      At noon the next day on the corner of Fifty-Fourth and Fifth, Merrick Lowell was the last thing on Darcie’s mind. She stepped off the curb reciting her own vital statistics.

      “Darcie Baxter. Twenty-nine years old and, possibly, about to be cast aside. I stand five feet four in my panty hose, which are soaked at the moment—no, not with lust but, like the rest of me, from this freaking rain.” On the other side she marched along the sidewalk in the freezing January downpour. “I live with my grandmother, whose cat despises me. I’m sleeping with a man who likes his cell phone better than me, and obviously—” she drew a deep breath “—I talk to myself.”

      A yellow cab rushed past splattering slush over her down trench coat and nearly running Darcie over.

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