“Look, buddy,” Bruno said. “We don’ wanna hafta do this, but we got no choice. When you can’t pay the money you owe, this is what happens. It’s that simple.”
“I won’t submit to this kind of terrorism,” Wheeler insisted, feeling much less confident than he sounded. “Leave now, or I’ll call the police.”
“It ain’t terrorism,” Bruno assured him. “This is bidness, plain and simple. You can’t call the cops. You don’ have a leg to stand on.” He cracked his knuckles menacingly, suggesting that Wheeler really wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, once the other man broke it. “You hear what I’m sayin’?” Bruno continued. “Now stand up and move away from the desk. Hey, you brought this on yourself, pal. Be a man about it, for God’s sake.”
Wheeler narrowed his eyes, hating to hear his manhood impugned in such a way. The last thing he wanted to do was submit to these two goons, but what else could he do? Bruno and company had come for a specific purpose, and they weren’t going to leave until their work was complete. Sick to his stomach, he realized he had no choice but to do exactly as they had instructed. He simply should have shown better judgment in the beginning, when he’d gone into business for himself. Instead, he had played too fast and too loose with money that wasn’t his, and now he was going to have to face the consequences.
“Listen, buddy,” Bruno growled again when Wheeler still hadn’t risen, “I’m sorry for your unfortunate professional downturn, but I got a job to do like any other guy, okay? And me and Harry here got a long day ahead of us. Now stand up and move away from the desk. Don’t make us get ugly.”
Wheeler clamped his lips over the retort that threatened to leap from his mouth, then, reluctantly, he stood up and did as Bruno had requested. “Fine,” he muttered a bit more gruffly than he’d intended. He ran a restive hand through his dark brown hair, tugged anxiously on his necktie and jerked his dark suit jacket from the back of his chair. “Let’s just get this over with. Whatever you do, please...don’t get ugly.” Or rather, he amended to himself, uglier.
Bruno and his missing-link companion stepped forward, stretching their arms out fiercely, and instinctively Wheeler flinched and took a step in retreat. When he did, one man grabbed one end of his desk and the second hefted the other end. Then, effortlessly, the two of them lifted the massive, and very expensive, teakwood, art deco piece of furniture and carried it out the door, presumably into the waiting truck that held the rest of Wheeler’s expensive, teakwood, art deco ex-furniture.
He watched the repo men go, and sighed as if they’d just carried out a childhood friend, feetfirst. Now the contents of his desk and filing cabinets would have to remain against the wall in a long row of cardboard boxes cast off from the wine shop below his newly rented apartment.
The apartment, he recalled, that was barely a tenth the size of the elegant, old, brick Victorian he’d called home as recently as a few months ago. The old, brick Victorian on Tony St. James Court, he further reminded himself ruthlessly, that he’d been forced to sell for less than it was worth in an effort to save his fast-sinking business. Now Wheeler lived in a cramped studio on the top floor of a battered old Federal in the borderline Original Highlands neighborhood.
Damn.
He’d had such high hopes when he’d gone into business for himself. Now, barely nine months after having his name etched in the glass on the outer office door, Rush Commercial Designs, Inc. was already going belly-up.
“Mr. Wheeler?”
He turned his attention to the open door of his office. The unmistakably feminine voice that called out from the reception area beyond was unfamiliar.
“It’s Mr. Rush,” he replied automatically, wearily, his irritation at having his last name used as his first rising nowhere near as quickly as it usually did when that happened. Which was often. “Wheeler Rush,” he added under his breath. When no one came forward at his summons, he cranked up the volume on his voice a few decibels. “I’m in here!”
Just as he shouted the announcement, a woman’s head appeared in the open doorway, about halfway down, as if she were bent at the waist. A shock of blue-black curls was caught at the very top of her head, a few errant corkscrews dangling about her face and neck, the rest of it bobbing wildly from the source of its confinement at her crown. Huge, round sunglasses covered her eyes, and her lips, the color of autumn apples, formed a perfect O.
“Can I help you?” he asked on a halfhearted sigh.
The woman smiled and straightened, then stepped into the doorway. He stifled a gasp when he noted her attire. A very brief, very snug, very red miniskirt hugged her hips, and an even briefer, even snugger, even redder sweater clung to her torso. The combination was big enough to cover what a woman needed to cover in polite society, but not big enough to hide a bare strip of creamy flesh that peeked out between the top and bottom parts of her ensemble. A huge red straw bag, sheer red stockings and red high heels completed the outfit
Wheeler blinked a few times, as if doing so might tone down the color a bit. But when he opened his eyes to consider the woman again, she was still...red. Really, really red.
“Actually,” she said, her smile growing broader, “I think it’s me who’s going to help you.”
Try as he might, he couldn’t for the life of him pull his gaze away from her legs. But then, seeing as how just about every inch of leg was visible—and quite a number of very shapely inches there were, too—that wasn’t altogether surprising.
“I beg your pardon?” he finally managed to ask.
As he watched, those legs began to approach him, the miniskirt at their tops hitching higher and higher with every step forward the woman took. When he darted his gaze back down toward her ankles, he noticed, too late, that she was heading straight for a bump in the lavender-and-yellow dhurrie rug that must have sprung up when Bruno and company left with the last of his repossessed furniture. Before Wheeler could warn the woman to watch her step, her toe connected with the bump, and her body went sailing forward.
She had been extending her hand to him in greeting when it happened, and as she fell, she must have instinctively bent her fingers as if groping for something to grab onto. The action resulted in what basically amounted to her punching Wheeler right in the stomach before she crashed to her knees before him.
He doubled over—more from surprise than from pain—at the impact of her fist driving into his belly right about the same time she began to push herself up from her position on the floor. As a result, their two heads collided with enough force to send the woman back down to her knees and Wheeler snapping backward.
With a quick shake of his head to clear it of its stars, he reached down—gingerly this time—to lend her a hand. But she chose that moment to glance up at him, an action that would have resulted in him poking her in the eye had it not been for her ridiculous sunglasses. Instead he only knocked them from her face, and they went clattering to the floor between them.
Wow.
That was the only thought that came into Wheeler’s head when she looked up at him again. Whoever this red woman was, she had the greenest eyes he’d ever seen. Pale green, like the shallowest part of the ocean, but deep enough to drown a man if he wasn’t careful. Framed by long, sooty lashes and topped with elegant ebony brows, they completely overpowered the rest of her face.
For a long moment he could do nothing but stare at those incredible eyes. Then finally he managed to recapture his balance and
