Gold Diggers Page 13

  “Do you mind if I join you?” The unfamiliar voice snatched her mind away from her thoughts.

  Looking up, she saw Mr. UPS, sans the uniform and the box. She was speechless. Sitting there with her eyes closed and her imagination running wild, she’d felt as if he were an unreal memory, or a piece of a fragmented dream, yet there he stood, in the flesh.

  “I hope that means okay.” He flashed the smile that he’d undoubtedly used on many occasions to render women speechless. “I’m not a stalker, but I couldn’t resist the chance to properly introduce myself.” He’d been parked talking on the phone when Lauren pulled out of the driveway, and on impulse followed her to Starbucks.

  For a minute she couldn’t find her voice. “Sure, I almost didn’t recognize you,” she managed to say, which was a lie. She could have picked him out of a cast of thousands, even wearing the jeans and T-shirt he now wore, instead of stripped down to his boxers.

  “I suppose I do look different with my pants and shirt on.” He chuckled. “But if it helps, I can take them off.” He pretended to pull his T-shirt over his head.

  “No, no, that’s okay.” She laughed, putting her coffee down and holding both her hands up in mock surrender. His wisecrack broke the ice, and she suddenly felt a bit more comfortable. Flirting had never been her strong suit—she was always so attractive that she never had to cultivate that skill—and after being married for the last five years, she was essentially clueless. She marveled at how some women, particularly Reese, did it so naturally. Reese, she imagined, probably came out of the womb winking at the doctor.

  “My name is Gideon.” He reached over to shake her hand.

  She took his, still remembering how good it had felt on her neck and shoulders, and imagining how his hands might feel on her breasts and…“I’m Lauren,” she finally said, snapping out of her fantasy.

  He leaned back, appraising her. “An elegant name for an elegant lady.”

  “Thank you.” She blushed in spite of herself. Then she felt incredibly silly for behaving like a schoolgirl over a male stripper.

  Before she could gather her things to leave, Gideon asked, “So, Lauren, what do you do, besides drive men crazy?”

  “You must be thinking of another Lauren, but to answer your question, I’m a housewife.”

  “Oh, so you’re already taken?” He snapped his fingers. “I should have known; all of the good ones usually are.”

  “Yes, I’m married,” she said, trying to put a little enthusiasm into her voice.

  “Do you have kids?”

  “No.” She braced herself. Why did she always feel the need to apologize for not having kids—even to strangers?

  “So, tell me about yourself.”

  She shifted uncomfortably. “Let’s talk about you instead. How long have you been…stripping?” She didn’t know what else to call it.

  He laughed at her discomfort. “Today was my first and last day. My cousin just started a party entertainment company, and one of his dancers called in at the last minute. We drew straws and I lost. But now I’m glad I did.” He gave her that smile again.

  “So, what do you normally do?”

  “I’m a documentary photographer.”

  She was surprised and intrigued by his answer. “What do you shoot?”

  “I travel to obscure places around the world and document the cultures. Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time in Africa.”

  Lauren was taken aback. She really had had no idea what to expect from him, but Gideon seemed deep and very real. “I love art and photography. I’d like to see some of your work sometime,” she said, without thinking. For her, it was a pretty forward suggestion, so maybe her flirting skills weren’t nonexistent after all.

  “Lauren, you can see me—or my work—anytime you want to.” Though his eyes smiled, the rest of his expression was very serious.

  Lauren sat back in her chair and for the first time in months she really smiled.

  SIXTEEN

  Reese gripped the newspaper and savagely tore it to shreds, throwing the small pieces to the floor as if she were a bratty two-year-old. The only thing stopping her from having an all-out meltdown was a blistering headache, which was also the by-product of too much cheap red wine consumed the night before. Any sobbing and heaving would only add insidious pressure at her temples, thus more pain, and since last month she’d had enough.

  Reese figured that Chris had sat on the scandalous story and photo to strategically leak it as a negotiating ploy, sending a message to her and her attorney that they needed to settle on his terms. Given the prenuptial agreement, the fact that Reese was caught in flagrante, and her less-than-stellar track record as a mother, Chris definitely held all the cards and was now playing his trump.

  In a few short weeks she’d slid from her lofty perch atop the world, down a slippery slope right into the depths of hell, and she’d never even seen the precipice that loomed before her. In this deep abyss, she was without money or credit cards; Chris had cut them all off. She had no fancy house, and even her lover, Shaun, was gone with the wind; he hadn’t returned any of her urgent phone calls since that fateful night.

  She’d had to beg Paulette to let her stay at her New York loft apartment. When begging didn’t initially work, she’d resorted to a subtle form of blackmail; after all, she had caught Max, Paulette’s cousin’s husband, tipping out of their love nest. She didn’t come right out and blackmail her, but the insinuation was so clear that Stevie Wonder could have seen it clearly.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Paulette walked in from the airport to find Reese ruminating amid her ruins, a smorgasbord of empty doughnut boxes, discarded tissues, and partially eaten plates of food. “I agreed to let you stay here, but I didn’t say you could trash the place. Hell, I just bought this apartment.” She tossed her brand-new Louis Vuitton carry-on onto the leather sofa.

  “I’m finished,” Reese cried, grabbing fistfuls of hair. “Did you see today’s Post?” She was half hoping that Paulette would say no; then she could hold out some hope that she wasn’t the butt of jokes for all of New York.

  “Yeah, I saw it,” Paulette said, shaking her head in disbelief. “That shit’s pretty fucked-up.” Her summation was proclaimed without any emotion or empathy for her suffering friend.

  Reese rolled her eyes and barked, “Like I don’t know it?” The scintillating story, detailing how superstar Knicks player Chris Nolan’s wife was busted at a Midtown hotel with another man, had leaked to the press, along with a most unflattering picture of Reese looking like a drowned raccoon washed up outside of the Four Seasons Hotel. The headline read, “Baller’s Wife Caught Way Out of Bounds.”

  Reese wasn’t sure which was more upsetting to her; the sordid story, or the horrid picture. She looked a dreadful mess. Certainly it was one thing to be caught up in a seedy scandal, but quite another to look bad while doing it. It was morbidly unfair, since Reese was never seen in public looking less than fabulous, and the one time she’d been forced to, because of a faulty hotel alarm, it had ruined her life.

  “You’ve gotta stop sitting around here feeling sorry for yourself and come up with a plan.” Paulette plopped down on the sofa. Truth be told, things were going so well for her that it was hard to feel sincere sympathy for Reese. Plus, she was sick and tired of picking up the pieces for these spoiled-rotten divas. Both Reese and Gillian had always strutted around as if they were holier-than-thou, yet both were now living under her new roofs.

  Paulette wasn’t telling Reese anything she didn’t already know, but it was a tad difficult to come up with a solid plan when the world was crumbling down around you. “I know; I’ve gotta get a new lawyer.”

  The Post article had the desired effect. She’d just gotten word from her old one that without payment, which she didn’t have, he wouldn’t be doing any more work. Undoubtedly he had little faith that she’d
end up with anything worthy of his time. “And I need you to work on my publicity again. My image has to be scrubbed clean before I can ever dream of a decent settlement,” she said.

  “How can you afford my monthly retainer when you have no money?” Paulette cruelly reminded her.

  Reese wanted to slap her, but remembered that she could attract more bees with honey than with vinegar, and right now she needed a whole colony. “I know that I can’t pay you right now, but after the settlement I’ll pay your fee, plus a bonus,” she said sweetly.

  Just the thought of her divorce settlement ramped up Reese’s headache. The no-cheat clause in the prenup applied to both of them, so her little rendezvous with Shaun could cost her the millions that she had been sure to get if she’d simply divorced Chris. Of course, now she wished she’d done just that, rather than bothering to try setting him up to get more. This shifted her thoughts to Kira; she was still missing in action. She hadn’t heard from her friend since the night before all hell broke loose.

  “So, will you do my PR?” Reese implored.

  Paulette leaned back, kicked off her Chanel pumps, and carefully considered the situation. Though they were friends, this was business. What exactly did she have to gain from helping Reese? The answer wasn’t money, at least, not at the moment. The woman didn’t have any, and frankly her prospects weren’t looking so hot for the future either, especially now that Paulette was independently wealthy herself. Besides, there was no prestige in representing the whore wife of a superstar ball player. On the other hand, she needed to get Reese on her feet so that she could march her right out of the door, but she couldn’t push her, or, knowing Reese, she might slip and tell Laura about Max, and it was too soon for that. In a matter of seconds, all of these permutations sifted effortlessly through Paulette’s calculating brain, and she came to a rapid conclusion. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll do it, but let’s leave it off the record.” What PR person needed a famous ball player as an enemy, especially when she wasn’t getting paid for the trouble?

  This gave Reese a glimmer of hope, so she allowed herself to take another leap. “What about Max—you think he’ll help with my legal work?” When she saw the word no about to form on Paulette’s lips, she pressed ahead. “Think about it; The sooner I get a cash settlement, the sooner I’ll be out of your—and his—way.” This was a slick way of extending her extortion to Max’s side of the ledger.

  Paulette did not miss the thinly veiled threat. “I’ll talk to him about it, but for either of us to be able to help you, I need to know exactly what happened.” Paulette’s well-honed PR instincts told her that there was much more to the story than she’d heard or read, and to help Reese, she’d have to know all of the skeletons that rattled around in her closet, not to mention that she was just plain old nosy.

  “Chris and I had been having some problems, and I met someone else—”

  Paulette quickly interrupted her; she didn’t need to hear a canned speech. “Tell me what really happened.”

  Reese weighed her options, just as Paulette had minutes earlier. She could hide the sordid details, which would probably not gain her anything, or she could confide in Paulette and Max and, with their help, figure out some way to get out of the mess she’d gotten into.

  “I can’t help you, nor can Max, unless we know everything,” Paulette lectured. “And you have to realize that some things that you may not think are important could be crucial. So tell me everything.”

  After careful consideration, Reese made a decision. She took a deep breath and jumped in, telling Paulette the whole sordid tale.

  SEVENTEEN

  Gideon lived and worked in a real loft in Williamsburg, New York, not one of those yuppie lofts, like so many that were scattered throughout Manhattan, with their superslick marble finishes, perfect, state-of-the-art stainless-steel appliances, and the requisite doorman downstairs. His building was authentically rustic, even a bit grimy, but it was also steeped in character that only the passage of time could design.

  In the late 1800s the building had been an iron-welding factory, and still bore a lot of gritty reminders of that bygone era. The structure’s conversion to lofts had been a pioneering adventure for a few renegade artists, rather than a developer’s urban project, so there wasn’t a Starbucks around the corner, nor a Gap midblock. Gideon considered the area to be the last frontier in New York for the true artist.

  To Lauren, who was the poster child for creature comforts, seeing his world was like getting a glimpse into a third-world country. It was a far cry from her domain of elite private schools, expensive designer clothes, sprawling homes, and four-hundred-thread-count Pratesi bedsheets. When the taxi dropped her off on the barren industrial-looking block, her first reaction was to yell for the driver to come back. She felt there must be some mistake; no one she knew lived in a place like this. When the Yellow Cab turned the corner, she took a deep breath, gripped her Hermès Birkin bag a little tighter, and slowly walked toward the building that bore the number she’d written down as his address. There was a rusty old intercom with names and buzzers to the left of the door. She nervously scanned the list until she found Gideon’s name, then pressed twice, anxious to get in off of the street. Hopefully the contraption worked.

  “Hello.” With relief, she recognized his voice.

  “Gideon, it’s Lauren.” A timbre of fear resonated in her words.

  “Come on up. I’m on the third floor.” His voice was as light and airy as hers was tight and nervous.

  She heard a clicking noise, and then pulled open the large stainless-steel door. As skeptical as she had been all along, her trepidation hit another level as she entered the antique, cage-enclosed freight elevator. She almost turned around and headed for posher pastures.

  Not for the first time that day, she asked herself, What the hell are you doing? You must be crazy! She didn’t know Gideon, or anyone like him. Though he’d been hired for Stephanie’s shower, she was sure that the arrangement was purely transactional. He was simply the hired help. Besides, she couldn’t very well call Stephanie up and say, “Hi, how are you? By the way, tell me about that fine stripper you hired.” In her close-knit world, all inhabitants were a mere two degrees of separation away, certainly not the customary six, and clearly, this man was far outside of her social orbit. For all she knew he could be an ax murderer. By the time the elevator opened into his living space, she was nearly paralyzed with fear.

  “Push the lever there to open it,” Gideon said with a smile. He stood just on the other side of an intricately designed wrought-iron gate, wearing a pair of holey blue jeans, a short, well-worn gypsy shirt, and bare feet.

  This was her last chance; she could push the button for the first floor, hop off the elevator when it opened, walk out the front door, and then run for her life. But run back to what? Her distant husband, her controlling mother, or her nonexistent career? Realizing there was little or nothing to run back to, she pushed the lever and entered Gideon’s world.

  “Come on in.” His smile revealed a sexy mouth and a set of white teeth that were attractively imperfect. The star of his face was a pair of coal-brown eyes, which were surrounded by a full set of Maybelline lashes. He looked at her as if he could see right though her well-groomed facade, but wouldn’t make an issue of the truths he saw hidden there.

  “Hi, Gideon.” She stepped off the elevator into a large space whose west wall was all paned windows. The ceiling was twelve feet high, and the floor was covered in well-worn, dark brown wooden planks. They appeared to be original to the structure. The rest of the large room was a creatively assembled mix of interesting rugs, furniture, and artifacts from all over the world. The other three walls were covered in the most compelling photographs, both black-and-white and color, including a collection of electrifying images of Africa’s nomadic sheep-herding tribes, a selection of soul-searching photographs of the Ashanti tribe in Ghana, and a series o
f regal shots of beautiful Senegalese, Somalian, and Ethiopian women in their traditional garb. The images pulled Lauren into the room, moving her steadily from one to the next. “Wow,” she breathed, without even realizing that she’d spoken.

  “I’m glad you like them.” While she was completely absorbed in the gallery, Gideon observed her the way he might a subject through his camera lens, registering every nuance reflected in her body language, her posture, and her aura.

  “They’re really quite amazing.” What was also amazing to her was that this guy, whom she’d initially written off as little more than an erotic dancer, seemed to be as deep as his work revealed. She turned to face him, feeling as if she were seeing him for the very first time.

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  “What do you have?”

  “I’m afraid I’m out of French champagne,” he teased. “But I do have an excellent South African Pinotage.”

  She wondered for a split second how to take that comment about French champagne, knowing that it said something about who she was, or at least whom he perceived her to be. “That sounds good,” she answered.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” he said, gesturing to a cluster of large Czech-designed multicolored pillows nestled in a corner. A low coffee table, which was actually the base of an enormous tree, sat nearby covered in art and history books.

  When he turned to walk away, a smile toyed with the corners of her mouth. She shrugged, tossed her bag onto the table, and plopped down onto the pillows. They were surprisingly comfortable; in fact, so was she.

  When he returned with their wine, she was flipping though a book about the history of art in Africa. He handed her a glass, then joined her on one of the oversize pillows.

  She closed the book and turned to face him. “I love your place. It’s very…interesting.” She was sure there was a more fitting adjective, but at the moment it escaped her.