Drive Me Wild

“All right. I’ll expect you back full-time October first.”

“Thanks,” Justin said, and handed Mel a statement authorizing his leave of absence. “Would you sign this, please? I’ve learned to have anything important in writing.”

“Yeah. I see you typed it on the paper’s letterhead.” Mel signed and dated the document and handed it back to Justin. “If you let any other reporter on the staff know about this, I’m through with you. Get it?”

Justin folded the paper and put it in his shirt pocket. “Fair enough. I’ll keep in touch.”

Justin said goodbye to Mel Scott and walked to his apartment on West End Avenue. He wondered if Gina Harkness had noticed his upscale address. Would she have hired him for the job if she had? Was she familiar enough with New York neighborhoods?

What a woman! He had expected an older woman and not one so solidly in control of her life. And he certainly had not expected to see a woman who took his breath away. She wasn’t as beautiful as she was perfect. When she smiled and stood to greet him, tremors had streaked through him. He knew he was looking at a warm, loving woman who liked what she saw when she looked at him.

Justin was used to having women take a second and then a third look at him, not that it fazed him one bit. He considered female admiration as much a nuisance as anything.

He flagged a taxi and got in it seconds before a heavy rain shower would have drenched him. When the car reached the building in which he lived, he paid the driver. Although he sprinted to the door, he still got soaked. Upstairs in his apartment, he stripped, hung up his wet clothing, sat on the side of his bed and phoned a close friend in the Department of Transportation.

“Hi, Jake, this is Justin. I have a difficult assignment, and I need a chauffeur’s license today. Can you manage it?”

“Sure thing, man. E-mail me a photo and fax me a copy of your driver’s license. It’ll be ready in an hour. You’ll have to come for it because you have to sign it.”

“Thanks, buddy. I owe you one.”

“Gotcha.”

Gina answered her office phone that Friday morning hoping the caller wasn’t Miles. She did not plan to give him a daily accounting of her activities, though she suspected that he would like that. “Hello. This is Gina Harkness. How may I help you?”

“Miss Harkness, this is Justin. Where do I come for you Tuesday morning?”

She gave him her address on Broadway. “It’s very temporary, Justin, because I’ll be moving in a few days. Actually, I probably don’t need you until after I move.” She listened to the silence. “Are you still there?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m here. I was just thinking maybe I could help you move. I want to earn my pay. Besides, you have to get to work, don’t you?”

She thought for a moment. Maybe he needed the money. “Justin, I was hoping that you’d be willing to check out suitable cars for me and help me choose the best one for my purposes. We’ll have to take some long-distance trips occasionally. I’m not interested in prestige, I want comfort,” she said.

“Fortunately, you don’t have to choose between comfort and status in this case, ma’am. The cars with the most prestige usually offer the most comfort. I take it you don’t want a limo,” he said.

“Nope. Not my style,” she said. She wouldn’t know how to sit in one of those things, she thought. “Definitely not, but I want a car that was made here. Seems as if we import everything, and if that weren’t enough, we ship the rest overseas wholesale.”

She thought she heard him clear his throat. “My sentiments, precisely, ma’am. That leaves us with a choice between a Lincoln and a Cadillac.”

“Is there a big difference?” she asked him.

“To me, yes, ma’am, but you have to be satisfied. Why don’t we meet tomorrow and shop around? We can even test drive a few models.”

“Oh, dear. I was going to pack, but—”

“Miss Harkness, excuse me for making a suggestion, but why don’t you hire a good moving company and let the movers do the packing.”

“Good gracious, I hadn’t thought of that. Great idea. Would you say four hours is all we need to shop for a car tomorrow?”

“Absolutely.”

“Good. Call a car service and make arrangements for them to pick you up, then get me, and we’ll go shopping?”

“Works for…Yes, ma’am. I’ll be at your place at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

She called a moving company, agreed to an estimate and rubbed her hands together, symbolic of freeing herself from the packing chores. “Maybe I’ll eventually learn how to live like someone who doesn’t have to count pennies.”

What did a woman wear when she was going shopping with a gorgeous chauffeur to pick out a car that cost as much as her previous year’s salary as an accountant? Gina stepped out of the shower, sat on the little stool in the corner and began drying her feet. “This is stupid,” she said to herself as she got up and toweled her body. I’ve never been so discombobulated. Maybe poor is better. You just go to a used car lot and get the cheapest model they have. No fuss. No choices and no wasted time.

Gina enjoyed a good laugh at her silliness and then decided to wear whatever she liked. After all, it was none of Justin Whitehead’s business how she dressed. In a green silk suit, black accessories and with her hair down, she told herself she’d dressed for a casual day of shopping. However, when she put gold loops in her ears, she knew she’d lied to herself. She wanted to make an impression on the man she’d hired to be her chauffeur? “I was never stupid,” she said aloud in an effort to console herself.

Butterflies seemed to have found a home in her stomach, so she made coffee and managed to drink half a cup before the building guard—the building in which she lived didn’t have a doorman, but an armed guard—rang her buzzer.

“A gentleman here to see you, Miss Harkness.”

“Thanks, Arthur, I’ll be right down.”

She managed one more swallow of coffee, locked her door and headed for the elevator. She hated to keep anyone waiting, and it seemed as if the elevator would never come. When she stepped into the lobby, she saw him leaning against the guard’s desk.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said, and suspected from Justin’s raised eyebrows that she’d said the wrong thing.

“My time is your time,” he said with a half bow, and she knew she’d made a mistake. She could only thank God that Miles hadn’t been there to witness it. Her feeling of discomfort at his appreciative appraisal was immediately overlaid with feminine pride that such a stunning man found her attractive.

He opened the back door of the hired car for her, closed it and then sat beside the driver.

Had she actually expected him to sit in the back with her?

Justin sat with his back to the door and spoke to her. “We’re going to Eleventh Avenue to look first at Cadillacs and then at Lincolns. I made an appointment with a salesman at each dealership.”

“Thank you, Justin. I didn’t think to make an appointment.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to, ma’am. If you tell me to do something, I’ll try my best to do it right.”

She didn’t doubt that. She also knew that the shopping trip wasn’t her idea, but his. “I see from the logo that this is a Lincoln, Justin. Which Lincoln is it?”

“A Town Car, ma’am.”

“It’s very comfortable,” she said.

Justin turned face forward and spoke softly to the driver. She locked her gaze on the back of his head, noticed that his hair was perfectly trimmed. She recalled that when she’d seen him lounging against the guard’s desk, she’d noticed her new driver’s grooming was impeccable.

The car stopped, and Justin turned so that he could look at her. “This is the Cadillac dealer, ma’am. We’re right on time.” He got out, walked back and opened her door just as she reached for the handle. If he noticed that, he didn’t let on.

“Will he wait for us?” she asked Justin as they entered the dealer’s office.

“Yes, ma’am. We’ve hired him for four hours. I think that’s all we need.” A salesman approached them and spoke to Justin.

“Mr. Whitehead? Glad to meet you.” He shook hands with Justin and then with her. “Thank you for your patronage, Ms. Harkness.” He smiled at Justin. “May I see your driver’s license?” Justin showed him the license. “This way, please. I suggest you take it up the Major Deegan, Mr. Whitehead,” the man said with such pride that one would have thought he engineered the automobile.

Justin opened the back door for Gina, then seated himself behind the wheel. “Relax, and let’s see how comfortable this thing is. Wait a minute.” He got out, opened the door beside her and reached across her to fasten her seat belt.

She noticed that he avoided looking at her when his hand brushed her thigh. At first, she expected him to apologize, but he didn’t, and it dawned on her that he didn’t want to call attention to what was evidently an accident. He seated himself behind the wheel and pulled out of the lot to the sound of Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp.

“I take it you like Mozart’s music.”

She opened her eyes and sat forward. “What did you say?” He repeated the question. “I love chamber music. It’s so peaceful.” She looked out of the window at the river beside them. Did you or the dealer choose that radio station?”

“I did. Why?”

“I thought for a minute that it was part of the dealer’s sales pitch. Thanks for selecting it.”

“My pleasure, ma’am. What do you think so far?”

“I can’t see the difference between this and the one you rented for us, but I’d like to test the other one.”

“Then, we’ll take this one back. The Town Car dealer is also on Eleventh Avenue around Fifty-fifth Street.”

“Well, what do you think?” the salesman asked when they returned the car.

Justin made the thumbs-up sign. “As I told you, she wants to check out another model. You’ll know one way or the other this morning.” They thanked the man and left.

“Gee, there’re three couples ahead of us,” she said as they entered the second dealership.

“Not to worry, ma’am. They didn’t make an appointment, I did.” He showed the salesman his driver’s license, and they were soon once again driving north on the Major Deegan Expressway. “I thought we’d take the same route as we did in the Cadillac, go over the same bumps and around the same curves so you can make a proper comparison,” he said.

“Smart thinking. If the service and the performance histories are the same or approximately the same, I think I’d like this one, but before I choose, I’d like your opinion,” she said.

“Thank you, ma’am. If all things were equal, I’d take this one, but I’d like to check the ratings.”

“Then, can we get some information on the performance and the ratings of these cars?”

“I have it right here.”

“Wonderful. Let’s stop somewhere and go over it.”

“Good idea, ma’am. I suggest we return the car, get our driver and find a quiet coffee shop somewhere.”

I wish he’d quit calling me ma’am. He could only be a few years older than me. Now, where did that thought come from?

Twenty minutes later, the driver of the rented limousine stopped in front of a small, yet elegant café. Justin got out and opened the back door for Gina. He stood beside the door trying not to notice her long shapely legs as she maneuvered herself out of the car. Then she looked up at him and smiled. This is definitely not going to work. And as if she read his thoughts, she lowered her lashes and moved away.

He held the chair for her, all the while wondering how he was going to get used to her paying the bill on the occasions when they had to eat together in restaurants.

“I didn’t have any breakfast,” she said, “and I’ll bet you didn’t, either. I’d had about two swallows of coffee when the guard buzzed me. I’m going to have waffles and sausage with maple syrup, lots of it.”

He stared at her. “You mean, you’re not worried about gaining weight?”

She shook her head. “I get plenty of exercise. Order whatever you want. I’m starving.” She gave the waitress her order. “Could you bring some coffee now, please?”

He ordered waffles with bacon fried to a crisp and coffee. “I don’t usually allow myself all these calories,” he told her, “but if you’ve got the nerve to do it, so have I.” She smiled when he said that, and her eyes shone with what he could only describe as merriment. He told himself to remember that he was a journalist working on a story, and that he couldn’t afford to let himself succumb to the spell she had begun to weave. If she were less considerate, he could at least manage not to like her. But she took great care not to treat him as a chauffeur in the presence of others. He corrected himself; she hadn’t treated him as an employee.

Their waitress poured each of them a cup of hot coffee, and it didn’t escape him that she said “please” and “thank you” to the waitress. He’d give this woman high marks for good manners. She sipped the coffee, closed her eyes, and inhaled its aroma and sighed.

He squirmed. Good Lord, this woman was sensuous. Suddenly, he wanted to know everything about her, everything she’d done and who she did it with. He wanted to reach out and touch her smooth brown face.

“Damn,” he said to himself. “I’m way off.” He gulped down a swallow of coffee and wished he’d been more prudent when the liquid burned his throat. He opened the envelope that he’d placed in the chair beside him and put his mind on the business at hand.

“Let’s eat first,” she said. “We’ve got time for that.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said as the waitress placed his food in front of him.

To his amazement, she said grace. She continued to look at her plate and then, clearly having come to a decision, she said, “Justin, how old are you, if I may ask?”

His eyebrows shot up, and he didn’t try to control his reaction. “I’m thirty-seven. Why do you ask?”

This time, her eyebrows went up. “I’m thirty-four, which makes me too young to be your mother. So, would you please stop calling me ma’am. It’s getting on my nerves.”

He didn’t laugh, although he’d have given anything for the right to let it out. Instead, he savored his meal for a minute, glanced up and saw that she hadn’t begun to eat.

“Age doesn’t have anything to do with it,” he said. “It’s a matter of respect, and ma’am is shorter than saying Ms. Harkness all the time.”

She sucked her teeth so loudly that he stopped chewing. “Is the sky going to fall if you call me Gina?”

He wanted to tell her that calling her ma’am was a hell of a lot safer for both of them than calling her by her first name. He needed all the help he could get if he was going to keep his mind on his two jobs—his work as a journalist and his job as her chauffeur.

“Maybe not,” he said to himself, “but if I don’t watch it, we’ll both think it fell.”

“What? What did you say?”

“Nothing. Looks like I was thinking out loud, ma’am. Did you make arrangements for a mover to pack your things?”

“Yes, and I thank you for the suggestion. How long do you think I’ll have to wait for my car?”

“Not long. I’ll speak with the dealer and let him know this is an emergency.” He finished eating, pushed his plate aside and showed her the chart he’d made comparing the ratings of the two cars. “There’s not much of a basis for choosing between them. On the matters that count, they’re both boss cars.” He handed her the chart.

She studied it for a few minutes, waved the waitress over and said, “Miss, could we please have some more coffee? You’re right. They’re fairly equal, and that’s comforting. Which do you like to drive?”

“I like the Town Car. I’ve driven it a lot, and I enjoy riding in it.” She didn’t have to know that his parents always drove one. “If you do much traveling, you’ll appreciate its roomy trunk, too,” he added.

She sipped coffee, thoughtfully it seemed to him. “Okay. We’ll get the Lincoln.” She folded the papers and handed them to him. After he drained his cup, she rose. “Ready to go?”

He stood at once. Didn’t she know that a rich New York woman wouldn’t ask her chauffeur if he was ready to do anything, and she certainly wouldn’t have waited while he took his time drinking coffee.

He stood. “After you, ma’am.”

She gave him an outraged look, and he couldn’t help laughing as he walked behind her. But his mood immediately switched to serious as the view of her perfectly shaped tush wiggling in front of him heated his groin. He’d never been so relieved as when he stepped outside into the cool of April, and his gaze could fix itself on something other than her mobile behind.

She looked up at him. “Do you think we should have brought our driver a cup of coffee?”

He needed no more evidence of her humble background than that question. “I’m sure he’d appreciate it,” he said, mainly to avoid making her feel bad, “but his company probably has rules against his drinking or eating anything while on the job.”

They returned to the dealer where she wrote the salesman a check for half the price of the Town Car. “I want a silver-gray one,” she said. “These big black cars make me think of funerals.” She looked at him with what he thought was a silent appeal for approval.

“Ladies tend not to like black cars,” he said, based on his experience with his mother and sister. “Silver-gray is elegant.”

“When will I get it?” she asked the manager of the dealership who had joined his salesman.

“I can have it here for you Wednesday afternoon.”

“How’ll he manage that?” she asked him as they headed for her apartment. “It usually takes weeks to get a new car.”

“You didn’t ask him to give up any of his commission. If you had, you’d have had to wait at least six weeks. He’ll call around, find out which dealer has a gray car coming in, give him a few hundred bucks, and you’ll get your car.”

“Are you serious?”

“In deals this big, Gina, money talks.”

“I thought it always talked,” she said.

“There are some mountains that money won’t move, and I’m sure you’ve encountered one or two of them.” The car stopped, and he got out and opened the door for her.

She stood between him and the open car door. “Yes, Justin, and that’s a good thing.” She stared up at him as if searching for something, then shook her head from side to side. “Life is strange,” she murmured, almost inaudibly. “You never know what will happen next.”

Chapter 2

Once inside her apartment, Gina kicked off her shoes, walked into her living room and looked around. What on earth did she need a big expensive car and a chauffeur for? She could drive as well as anybody, provided she had something to drive, and her need of a man like Justin Whitehead definitely had nothing to do with automobiles, large or small. She didn’t have to pack, she didn’t have to clean because she was moving in less than a week, so what could she do? The phone rang and she raced to answer it.

“Well, how’re we coming?” Miles asked.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied, aware that her tolerance for Miles lessened each time she saw him or spoke with him.

“Well, we ought to be getting on with the terms of the will.”

“We? You mean, there’s something in the will that applies to you? I read it carefully, and that is not the impression I got.”

“Well, you know what I mean. As executor of the will, it’s my duty to see that it is carried out to the letter.”

“Miles, I appreciate help when I need it, but if you lean on me too heavily, I may make you very uncomfortable. Goodbye.” She suspected that Miles Strags would one day be her enemy, but knowing it didn’t mean she’d kowtow to him.

Later that day, Gina went furniture shopping for her new place. Being wealthy certainly had its perks, she thought. Her first stop was Bloomingdale’s furniture department to choose the furnishings for her bedroom and guest bedroom. She didn’t like what she saw, called a car service and visited the big furniture-store showrooms in the borough Queens. Two months earlier, if she had needed furniture, she would have gone directly to the Lower East Side. Within two hours, she found what she wanted. After releasing the car, she stopped by her favorite Italian restaurant and ate dinner. It wasn’t the haunt of the hoity-toity, but it suited her. Veal scallopini with spaghetti and broccoli, a salad and a glass of pinot grigio, all for under thirty dollars, was as much class as she needed. She felt as if she’d just splurged. As she walked out of the restaurant, she wondered what Justin would have thought of her having dinner in the same suit she’d worn all day. She did that regularly when she dined out, but she’d bet his previous employers wouldn’t have done it.

I wish I’d met him under different circumstances. I wonder what he did before he decided he had to work as a chauffeur. He’s nice and all, but somehow, it doesn’t suit him.

Sunday, after church, Gina went to Heddy’s apartment for one last visit. While there she saw a vase that reminded her of Heddy and decided to take it. She telephoned Miles. “People from the charity will be here tomorrow to take the things from Heddy’s apartment. Would you like to come and see if there’s something here you’d like to have, perhaps as a memento of Heddy?”

“Uh…well, now…that’s very nice of you. I think I would. Are you there now?” She told him she was. “If you can wait about twenty minutes, I’ll be there.”

Hmm. Interesting. The man was too proud to ask for a souvenir of someone he’d known, by her calculation, approximately thirty-five years. When he arrived, he went directly to a hutch in the dining room, lifted a pair of blue porcelain lions and caressed them.

“These are very old. I believe Heddy said they were Ming Dynasty or something like that. I’m not sure, but I’ve always loved them. Thank you so much. I…uh…Would you care to join me for supper?”

She caught herself just before her bottom lip dropped. “Thank you, Miles, but I already have plans,” she said.

“Some other time?” he asked, leaving no doubt about his purely male interest in her.

“Perhaps, but I’m so busy, I can’t say when.” Suddenly ill at ease with him, she walked toward the door.

After closing the door behind him, she slumped against it.

Was he after her or Heddy’s money? Stupid question. If he got her, he’d have both with no further hassle.

She heard her cell phone ringing and raced back to the living room where she’d left her purse. The ringing stopped just as she reached the phone, but a check of the messages showed Justin had called her.

“Sorry to bother you,” he said when she identified herself, “but I dialed your home phone and you didn’t answer, so I dialed your cell number. Where are you? Can you turn on a television? I’m watching an unbelievable show on channel thirteen.”

“I don’t think this TV is working. Can you tape it?”

“Yeah. I’ll save it for you,” he said.

“Thanks for thinking about me,” she said. “I’ll look forward to viewing it. Have a pleasant evening.”

“You, too.”

She hung up and stared at the cell phone in her right hand. Her driver was somewhere watching a program and enjoying it and wanted to share it with her. That wasn’t normal, was it? And he was thinking about her, too. Surely, his mind was not immersed in appreciation for her as an employer. He’d said he needed the job, but that suit he wore when they shopped for a car fitted him as if it had been tailor made. Annoyed because she seemed to be developing a crush on her mysterious chauffeur, Gina looked toward the ceiling and blew out a long breath.

“Everybody’s innocent until proved guilty,” she reminded herself aloud. “I’m going to stop second-guessing the man. He behaves properly, and seems to be an expert driver, and that’s all I can ask.” Her shoulders sagged. “But if that man isn’t a walking advertisement for sex, I don’t know what is.”

Justin stared at the television set, seeing nothing. The program had been off the air for a full fifteen minutes and he hadn’t willed himself to move. He was a grown man, and he was used to women—all kinds, ages, colors and shapes of women. But there was something about the way Gina looked at him. Every time she smiled at him, she threw him for a loop. The woman was educated, intelligent and, he suspected, accomplished. But she wasn’t jaded, nor did she have the sophistication that comes with old money. He walked over to the window and looked out into East River.