Strapless. Leigh Riker

the Roman Colosseum. Lions, gladiators, victims…

      Daddy. Darcie bent down until she reached eye level with the child.

      “Hi.”

      Merrick stepped between them. “Uh, why don’t you run over there, kiddo.” He pointed at a pyramid of dolls on a nearby table “Pick out one you like.”

      Assuming he was talking to the child, not to her, Darcie straightened and the little girl said, “Can I? Can I?”

      “Yes,” he said. “You may.”

      Her mission approved, she scampered off. A heavy silence hung in the air.

      Claire had been right. He’s lying, Darcie.

      She squished her package in rigid fingers, choking the zebra. Buster goggled at Merrick and so did Darcie—without her eyes crossed. Shoppers pushed by. A baby, like Claire’s, fussed. Over the PA system a male voice announced a sale in Electronic Games.

      She felt sick.

      “Well. Now I know.”

      “Darcie, don’t make a big deal of this.”

      She reeled back at his weary tone.

      “No big deal? Just call me naive…” To her horror, she choked up. She hadn’t thought this would really matter, if it proved true.

      “It isn’t what you think.”

      “Oh, that’s too tacky. What a classic line.” She swallowed hard. She could smell his aftershave, expensive, woodsy. Smell popcorn on the air. Smell the more acrid scent of…betrayal. “Are you saying you’re not married?”

      He turned away. Darcie snagged his arm.

      “Merrick, you owe me an explanation.” When he remained silent, she said, “No wonder you didn’t remember your ‘nephew.’ Or are you more used to calling him your son?” She flicked a glance toward the table nearby. “Your daughter looks like you. So does he. How old is she?”

      “Six. Yes,” he said. “I’m married.” The words came out loud, and he deliberately lowered his voice, color slashing across his cheeks as if Darcie had slapped him. Not a bad idea. “I’ve been married for ten years. Is that what you want to hear?”

      “No, I want to hear why you’re screwing me instead of your wife!”

      His tight schedule. His one-night-a-week free. Two this week, lucky her. You wouldn’t leave a man in need, would you?

      “It doesn’t work between us,” he said.

      “What doesn’t work? Sex? You and me? What?” She’d never felt so mortified, so hurt, in her life. Which was saying a lot.

      He tried to lead her to a quieter corner but Darcie dug in her heels. She thrust the zebra bag between them like a shield.

      “Just say it here.” And if there was anyplace more absurd, more public, than the doll department of FAO Schwarz, she couldn’t think where. That didn’t matter now. Then he shocked her again.

      “I love you, Darcie.”

      “Oh. You bastard.” A first, she thought. It was a wonder he didn’t strangle.

      “No, I mean it. It’s over between Jacqueline and me. She won’t even care.”

      “Her name’s Jacqueline?” He nodded, looking at the floor, and Darcie’s mouth tightened like a prune. His wife had probably gone to Smith, like Annie.

      He glanced up through a screen of thick lashes. “Do you hate me?”

      “Right now, I’d say that’s a definite yes.”

      For several moments neither of them spoke. Darcie clutched the zebra and listened to her own breathing. It seemed capable of overriding the noise around them. Roared like an oncoming subway train. She might drop dead right here on the floor. Attention, please. Emergency. Would Medic Barbie go to Aisle Four…

      “When do you leave?” he said.

      “I told you, tomorrow.”

      “I can’t see you before then?”

      “I don’t want to see you.”

      He looked miserable. “How long will you be gone?”

      “I don’t know. Days, weeks.” She’d already told him that, too. Didn’t he listen? “Whatever it takes to negotiate the space we want for the new store.” Whatever it took, not just in Sydney, to heal her broken heart. Forever.

      Darcie tried not to focus on Merrick. When his beautiful child bolted from the nearby table straight into his arms, Darcie flinched at her sweet voice.

      “Would you buy me this one, Daddy?”

      She thrust a pink, plastic-windowed package in his face. International Barbie. Dolls of the World. It seemed just right to Darcie.

      Holding Darcie’s gaze, Merrick grasped the box hard.

      “Sure, kiddo.”

      The little girl gave him a coy smile. “Do you want one, too?”

      Merrick managed a small laugh. “Nice try. We’ll just buy this today.”

      Darcie stared over his daughter’s head into Merrick’s dark-blue eyes. Then she tightened her grip on Buster the zebra—and marched toward the escalator.

      “Darcie. Wait!”

      She kept going. She didn’t look back. It was the upside escalator, of course, but Darcie only needed to escape. Suddenly the setting, the noise, the displays seemed absolutely fitting. For once, she had the last word.

      “Daddy already bought himself a doll—or so he thought.”

      Merrick didn’t know it, but he needed the Returns Department. As for herself…

      Australian Barbie.

      Merrick Lowell would never see her—a.k.a. Darcie Elizabeth Baxter—again.

      Chapter

       Three

      “‘Waltzing Matilda,’” Darcie sang to herself. “‘Once a jolly swagman…’” Losing the lyrics again, she hummed a few bars. “‘Dum-de-dum…his billabong…’” For some reason her eyes filled.

      Jet lag, she thought, and tipped her head back. She hadn’t thought it would be this bad. The new Westin Sydney, with its open expanse of chrome, glass and satiny wood led her gaze upward to a vast skylight showing a night-black canopy full of twinkling, but unidentifiable, stars. New to the southern hemisphere, Darcie sat in the hotel bar digesting the beef tenderloin en croute she’d eaten earlier in one of the trendy lower level restaurants with Walt, and nursing a glass of local Chardonnay to settle things.

      Wearing her pinstripe suit, even alone she shouldn’t feel this out of place. In New York—ten thousand miles to the east, as her long, sleepless night on a Boeing 747 from San Francisco could attest—women wore black, too, particularly after five. With a good strand of pearls, her mother would advise. In most big cities of the world, you couldn’t go wrong in dark colors, but Darcie frowned into her glass. She wasn’t wearing pearls, and opals seemed the gem of choice in Australia, if she believed the many shop displays she’d passed on her way to the hotel tonight. And according to the group of what appeared to be thirtyish executives at the next table, beer had it over wine.

      Idly, Darcie studied them.

      She couldn’t concentrate. A continued low-down cramping had made her order the glass of wine she didn’t really want, or need.

      “Thank God he didn’t get me pregnant,” she said of Merrick.

      Bastard.

      His being married wasn’t the issue. She might be naive at times but she was no brainless ingenue.