Oh Stupid Heart Read online

  A group of noisy, grungy teens rushed in, pushing people out of their way, crowding onto a bench facing a young woman. “Hey, baby. Wanna step in the crapper and join the not-so-high club?”

  Without a word, she grabbed her purse and hurried to the next compartment.

  “Baby, come back. I was just teasing. We can do it here if you want. I’m not shy.” The other boys laughed as they took over her seat.

  “Someone needs to toss those kids out,” Trent muttered.

  With a glance at the boys, Carrie resumed resting against his arm. “The conductor will make them settle down.”

  Sure enough, when the conductor walked down the aisle, he warned the boys to behave, or he’d kick them off the train. Carrie had called it. She had a talent for predicting what people would do. One of her many skills was her ability to deduce what her competitors would do and how Lancaster Chairs should respond.

  He recalled the first decision Coco made upon becoming his HR manager: fire Carrie. Naturally, he refused. Carrie was the heart and soul of his company. Without her, Lancaster Chairs would have fallen into bankruptcy two years ago.

  When the ice bitch threatened to walk, they compromised. Carrie would become his change specialist and Coco would find him a “better” executive assistant. He snorted softly at the idea. No one could out-EA Carrie.

  He initially thought Coco had made up the job of change specialist, but upon googling, he not only discovered it to be a real position, but he located a firm in California to train Carrie. And once Coco hired their new people, he’d send his ex-fiancée packing and either fire the new EA or let him work for Carrie, whichever she chose.

  As if sensing their grand future, Carrie moved in closer and a smile stretched those beautiful lips.

  God, he loved her.

  The conductor returned and watched Carrie sleeping. “Two one-ways to New York. That’ll be $30.00.”

  What a ridiculously high price to sit in a tin can that spent more time loading people than moving. He reached into his inside suit pocket and pulled out his wallet, handing the man a hundred.

  The guy frowned. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I don’t carry smaller bills, they make my wallet thick.”

  “Well, I don’t have change for this yet.”

  Did he really have to do everyone’s job for them? “Then keep the damn change.”

  Carrie opened her eyes and smiled at the conductor. “He’ll be grumpy all day if you do. Could you bring back seventy dollars once you do have change?”

  He returned her smile and winked as he rapidly clicked up and down a long narrow strip of paper. “Sure.”

  Shuffling a bit, she resettled herself against Trent’s arm and closed her eyes.

  He didn’t want her thinking him a miser. “I wouldn’t have been grumpy. Hell, I gave the doorman two hundred.”

  She bolted up and glared at him. “The one who had me arrested?”

  “Hell no! I’m going to get him fired.” The idiot penthouse lobby guard had not only refused to let Carrie in the elevator yesterday, but called the police to arrest her when she refused to leave.

  “Then who are you talking about?”

  “One who knows how to do his job. He’s at the rent-a-office place and promised me he’d let you enter, no matter how badly you’re dressed, so I tipped him big.”

  Satisfied, she calmed and let him resume being her pillow. “I bet you made his day.”

  He stroked her clean-smelling hair, leaned back, and closed his eyes. “These seats aren’t terribly comfortable, are they?”

  “Nope,” she muttered.

  “Why don’t you live in Manhattan and skip this torture and expense?”

  “I can’t afford it, and I’d miss my garden and fish.”

  He frowned. The garden he could replicate easy enough, but the fish were a trickier matter. Damn, he wished his penthouse butler would hurry up and recover from his overdose on the drug Europa. There were several things he needed done and only Mars would know how to do them. Unfortunately, Carrie’s narcotic-laced chocolate turtles had put both his butler and Lancaster’s only working systems person in the hospital.

  As the train filled with lesser quality people wearing tennis shoes, all talking on their cell phones, the noise and body odors began to irritate him. If not for the pleasure of holding Carrie, he would have demanded the conductor stop the train and let them off so he could have his driver rescue them. The train barely picked up speed before it slowed down, stopped, and allowed more people on. They just kept coming and coming. His glare discouraged a few people from sitting on the other side of Carrie, but eventually an old, heavyset black woman collapsed in the seat with a sigh.

  “Don’t normally get to sit.” Her faded, crumpled, threadbare clothes looked as tired as she did.

  The conductor stopped and demanded five dollars. She pulled out a coin purse and tried to pay him in quarters.

  “No coins.”

  The woman put a calloused hand to her forehead and shook her head. “It’s all I got.”

  “Not my problem,” the conductor said.

  “Take her fee out of the change you owe me,” Trent snapped. Why did the guy have to be such a jerk?

  The guy clicked more paper then thrust a ticket into her coin-filled hand. Finally, he handed Trent three twenties.

  “And a five,” Trent growled.

  Flashing a glare at Trent, the conductor thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a five. “You’re only getting this, because of her.” He nodded at Carrie. “Otherwise, you’d pay a second service fee.” He handed Trent the bill and stormed off.

  The old woman flashed Trent a weary smile, displaying brown and yellow teeth, which made him slightly nauseous.

  His grandmother had always said, “Never engage with the common people. Perform all charity at a distance.”

  “Thank you for the ticket. They’re so expensive, especially since I got sick last month and needed medicine. I didn’t have any money left to buy a monthly ticket.”

  “How much is a monthly ticket?”

  “A hundred and twenty-five dollars. But I don’t have it, so I’m paying ten dollars a day. And I only make sixty a night, forty once they take out taxes.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I clean an office building. Job starts at 8 p.m. and I have to be done by 5 a.m. with no excuses. If I don’t show, or I don’t finish, I get fired.”

  He retrieved his wallet, culled two hundred, and added it to the change the conductor had returned. He passed it to the woman. “Here’s enough to buy the monthly ticket and a bit extra to put aside to buy medicine the next time you get sick.”

  The woman studied the hundred dollar bills. “Are these real?”

  “I assume so. I got them from the bank.”

  The woman’s brow furrowed. She handed them back to him, keeping the twenties and five. “I can’t afford to get arrested. I’ll lose my job.”

  Never had a person refused his money before. It hurt his feelings and frustrated him. Damn it, I wanted to be charitable. Why can’t the damn woman just do her part?

  Carrie sat up and asked to see the bills. “See the blue ribbon on the front of the bill? Now tilt the bill back and forth. See how the bells and the one hundred move back and forth?”

  “My lord!” The woman took hold of the bill and wiggled it. She smiled. “It’s like magic.”

  “Watch the bell in the inkwell. See how it changes colors and appears and disappears?”

  The woman took the note and chuckled as she wiggled the bill.

  Trent suspected she hadn’t had something to laugh about in a long time.

  “You sure these are real?”

  “A hundred percent. But you can take them to a bank and ask them to verify it. And when they tell you they are real, ask them to exchange them for twenties.”

  “What if they think I stole them?”

  Carrie glanced up at Trent. “Can I have one of your business cards?”

  He handed her one, curious why Carrie wanted it.

  She flipped it over and wrote, These bills were given to Miss Claire as an act of charity. They are hers to spend.

  She handed Trent the card. “Sign it, please.”

  He signed the card and Carrie presented it to the old woman.

  Her eyes rounded as she read it. “You know my name.”

  “We’ve talked before.”

  “Right. You’re the nice girl who pointed out how much cheaper it would be for me to buy a monthly card instead of paying the daily rate. I appreciated your advice. I’ve been able to buy better food and even had money saved up, so when I got sick, I could get well enough to keep working.” She patted Carrie’s arm. “I’m glad you got yourself a good man. You deserve it.”

  Carrie glanced up at him and smiled. “He is a good man.”

  She whispered in the old woman’s ear. Whatever she said caused the woman’s forehead to furrow.

  She thrust the bills into Carrie’s hand. “I appreciate the thought, but I can’t take your money. But thank you both. You’re good people, and the world could use more like you.”

  To his shock, Carrie didn’t argue. She only hugged the woman. “You’re good people, too.”

  Half the crowded train watched the fiasco. Great! Not only had the old woman rejected his act of charity, but a mob of commuters had witnessed his failed attempt at being a “good person.” His grandmother had to be thrashing in her grave.

  Carrie glanced at her watch. “Trent, you should call your armed security guard and let him know we’ll be arriving in about fifteen minutes, probably track two, but he needs to read the monitor to be sure. We’ll be at the far end. Our car number is 903.”

  Armed security guard? Sam? Her in
tent stare left him no option but to call his driver and provide the information exactly as she said. Once he had done so, she snuggled up against him, like a contented kitten.

  He noticed a couple of young punks in the aisle arguing over something. One of them glanced at Carrie before focusing on Trent. He met the guy’s stare head on. He may have been sheltered as a child, but he had ridden the New York subway as a teen and could spot trouble.

  Now Carrie’s words made sense. She’d hoped to scare the guys off. Unfortunately, they had two hundred reasons to stick to their plan for enrichment, especially when the person possessing the money barely weighed eighty pounds. They intended to grab the money before the armed guard showed up. Hell, they might try to grab Carrie and steal her too.

  When the train came to the next stop and the old woman stood, Trent stood as well.

  “This isn’t New York,” Carrie warned him.

  He moved to the aisle seat and faced the punks. He wished to make a rather large and formidable roadblock on their road to riches.

  As the four boys approached, he kept eye contact with the one in front, daring him to try.

  The front guy’s eyes narrowed and his face turned hard.

  An angry voice barked from behind them. “Get off where you said, or you’ll pay the difference.”

  They glanced at the conductor and scurried off the train as the door was closing.

  The conductor stared at Trent woefully. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  “I’m protecting my girl.”

  The man’s face softened. “Don’t blame you, but in the future, carry a few twenties and don’t offer people money. It makes the kids think you have more than you need.”

  Trent rolled his eyes. “Right. I’m at fault.”

  He turned to Carrie for support. She huddled against the window, hugging her purse, her complexion pasty white.

  “You okay?” He sat in the middle seat and pulled her to him.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For wiggling the hundred dollar bill around. I only wanted to show her they were real.”

  He kissed her head. “I thought you did a great job. If I’d had any doubt, you would’ve persuaded me.”

  “Yeah, but I convinced the three punks, as well.”

  “Ah, so that’s why the old woman gave them back.” He felt better knowing she hadn’t rejected his generosity; rather, she only wished to live another day.

  Carrie hugged his arm. “If they thought for one moment she had two hundred dollars…. Best case, they would have snatched her purse, and worse case, they would have seriously hurt her when she fought to keep it.”

  “So instead she gave the money to you, making you their next target.” He saw the wisdom of his grandmother’s charity advice.

  Carrie’s eyes sparkled with intensity. “Until you scared them off.”

  He held his hand out. “Pass it over. I don’t want anyone else coming after you.”

  “What?”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  Carrie grinned from ear to ear as she slipped her hand into her purse and then into his jacket pocket.

  When he attempted to retrieve the bills, he found nothing.

  She leaned in and whispered, “Miss Claire only pretended to give it back to me.”

  He ran his hands through his hair. “Next time you wish to bait and switch, make me the bait.”

  “I didn’t think they’d go after me with you at my side.”

  “Then why’d you look so pale and frightened after they left.”

  “Because they were ready to take you on. I feared you’d get hurt due to my stupid bill waving.”

  He secured her into his arms. While most people avoided taking blame like the plague, Carrie went out of her way to take responsibility. “This was neither of our faults. The responsibility lay with the kids and the conductor who should have never let them on. I mean what is the point of him standing outside watching people get in the train if he’s not going to shoo away the undesirables?”

  The train came to a halt and everyone but Trent and Carrie stood, many of them smiling at him. God, did these people not understand the concept of pretend privacy?

  Well, he’d ignore them whether they reciprocated or not. He leaned in and kissed her.

  A throat clearing caused Carrie to push away and blush.

  “You need to get off the train,” a stern voice barked.

  Trent glared at the conductor staring at them and then his watch.

  “Unless you want to return to New Jersey, in which case you still have to get off to buy a ticket. Company policy.”

  Trent led her off the train onto a cavernous, yet oddly, claustrophobic, underground platform crammed with people swarming the escalators.

  At the sight of his driver, Trent smiled. His train ride ordeal was over! Soon he would return to his protected space inside his bullet proof limo. Never would he take a train again.

  Sam returned his smile with an irritated scowl. “I’m double parked, and you guys are making out on the train? If we still have a car, I’ll take you to a hotel and you two can go at it like bunnies for all I care.”

  Trent raised a brow. Sam normally pretended to be a respectful driver in Carrie’s presence. “I’m guessing your night didn’t go well.” He’d given his driver the night off to spend with his new girlfriend, something he’d never do again. The train ride had almost killed them and Sam hadn’t even enjoyed his mini-vacation.

  “You’d be right.” Sam stormed off without them.

  “Go save the car. We’ll show up eventually,” Trent yelled at his retreating driver.

  Endless rows of dirty concrete boarding ramps stretched across what looked to be a giant cave carved out of bedrock. On some ramps, people frantically bunched at the escalators, on others, he didn’t see anyone, just silent empty concrete slabs. The place looked like a shot out of an apocalypse movie. Wrapping his arm around Carrie, he strolled beside her, in no hurry to join the mob pushing to escape the dismal place.

  She grimaced and stared up at him. “I’m sorry the morning has been so trying for you.”

  “Stop apologizing. You are not responsible for everything that goes wrong.” He tugged her closer. “Although a great deal that goes right is your doing.”

  With Carrie at his side, ghastly train rides and insubordinate, ill-tempered drivers couldn’t upset him. She was his rock and foundation. She made him a better man.

  Chapter 3

  Carrie and Trent stood on the extra-wide sidewalk outside Penn Station, searching for his black stretch limo in the sea of yellow cabs. Carrie’s focus turned to a tall, slender blonde in a provocative blue suit with a plunging neckline and short skirt, smiling at Trent.

  Evidently not used to being ignored, the young woman laid her hand on his arm. “What you tried to do for the old woman on the train was really nice.”

  Trent lost all interest in searching for his limo and eyed his new admirer up and down as he bestowed his smile-of-charm upon her. “Thank you.”

  Carrie had seen him use the technique to sell chairs to a reluctant executive, but this femme fatale wasn’t shopping for chairs. Probably a pickpocket.

  “And your name is?” he asked.

  The sexpot kitten extended her paw. “Angela Carson.”

  He captured it in both of his. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Trent Lancaster.”

  Her eyes rounded. “Of Lancaster Chairs?”

  He nodded.

  “Wow! What a coincidence. I have a job interview with you today.”

  “For what position?”

  “Human Resource assistant.”

  Carrie moved up beside Trent. She hadn’t liked the young woman flirting with Trent but since she might be a future employee, Carrie needed to make an effort. “I’m Carrie, Trent’s EA.”

  The young woman’s eyes remained on Trent as she wrinkled her brow. “I thought Grant was your EA.”

  Trent shook his head. “Grant?”

  “Wow!” She ran her hand through her shoulder-length blonde hair. “He’s my boyfriend, who received a call late last night telling him he had the job.”

  “As Trent’s EA?” Carrie asked.

  Again the sex kitten ignored her. Instead, she focused on Trent. “This is so embarrassing.”

  Hero to the rescue, he rubbed the woman’s arm. “Not at all. A little confusing, but I’m sure we’ll sort it all out. Carrie’s been my EA for two years. But I promoted her to a different job, so we did interview several young men yesterday, and if your boyfriend Grant got a call from Coco, then he got the job.”