Read Online Hot Wheels and High Heels by Jane Graves - Free Book Online Page B

the time he divorced his wife of twenty years.
    But it wasn’t until he and Darcy had been married for several months that she realized the extent of his midlife crisis. Sometimes she’d see him looking in the mirror when he thought he was alone, checking out the hairline and the wrinkles and the love handles, and an aura of quiet desperation would fill the air around him. Warren always seemed to have the sense that time wasn’t just marching on but was running wildly around him in ever-tightening circles, closing in on him until escape was impossible.
    Ironically, right now Darcy was feeling the same way. Was that why he had left? Because she wasn’t the fresh young woman he’d married? Because she was no longer enough compensation for the way he felt about himself?
    And if that was true, would any other man be interested in her?
    As that sickening feeling took hold, Darcy let herself entertain the fantasy that one of her mother’s theories was actually true. Maybe Warren really did have that brain tumor. It had made him go a little crazy, but in a few days he would find his way home, they’d get him a little chemo, and everything would be right with the world again. When she arrived at her parents’ house five minutes later, though, a sense of impending doom overcame her.
    A police car was parked at the curb.
    She pulled Gertie up behind it and killed the engine, then went into the house. Her mother was talking to a detective from the Plano Police Department.
    “Mom? What’s wrong?”
    Lyla grabbed Darcy’s arm, her face ghost-white. “Brace yourself, Darcy. Something terrible’s happened. It’s . . . it’s Warren.”
    It’s true. The brain tumor finally caught up to him, and they’ve found his body.
    But the detective quickly relieved her of that crazy scenario by offering her an even crazier one. As it turned out, not only had Warren cashed in everything he and Darcy had, an IRS audit at Sybersense Systems revealed that a few days before Darcy had returned from Mexico, he’d embezzled three hundred thousand dollars.
    And now he’d skipped the country.
     
    Chapter 5
    D arcy already knew her husband was a no-good, deserting, asset-grabbing jerk. But the last thing she’d expected was that he’d turn out to be a criminal.
    The detective questioned her at length, trying to find out if she might have any idea where Warren was, but his questions only muddled her mind and made the situation seem even more surreal. They’d discovered that Warren had substantial gambling debts, which gave him all kinds of motive to embezzle. Worst of all, as a chief financial officer of a major corporation, he had the knowledge to successfully hide any money that hadn’t gone to loan sharks, which meant that Darcy would probably never see a dime of it again.
    At least she had her answer now. Put quite simply, Warren was a lousy gambler who amassed a huge amount of debt and was reluctant to have his knees broken. But she had news for him. If she ever saw him again, his knees would be the least of what she’d break.
    Darcy spent the rest of the day with her head in a murky cloud of disbelief. As evening approached, she was ready to dive headfirst into a glass of alcohol. She thought about opening the bottle of Shiraz Tony had rescued from her car, but now the wine she might have once had with Chinese takeout seemed more valuable than gold.
    Instead she chugged some Wild Turkey with her mother, then sat like a zombie in front of a NASCAR race with her father while her mother did the
TV Guide
crossword puzzle. At ten o’clock, Darcy stumbled to bed in a haze of lower-class mediocrity.
    The next morning she was shaken from sleep by late-morning sunlight bursting through the window, the kind that turns pupils into pinpoints and aggravates the hell out of a tears-and-bourbon headache. Pepé was standing on her stomach, staring down at her like a child whose alcoholic mother has been tipping the bottle again. She pulled him down