Too Damn Rich Read online

  Her eyes were wide. "I'll say it is!" She kissed him and ran her hands through his rumpled thick tangly black hair which, despite his droopy Sam Elliott of a mustache, gave him a sheepish, almost boyish look.

  For a while they lay quietly, still joined. Then suddenly her eyes widened in horror. She had spied the alarm clock.

  "Shit!" she exclaimed, and shoved him away. He rolled off her, his limp penis slipping out.

  "Now what the hell's the matter?" he demanded.

  "The damn alarm didn't go off!" she shouted, yanking fistfuls of her hair in frustration.

  "I know." Stretching out, he laced his hands behind his head and smiled smugly. "I shut it off."

  "You—you ... what?" She stared at him.

  "I told you. I shut it off so it wouldn't disturb us."

  "You shithead! You pig! You ... you ..." She grabbed a pillow and began beating him over the head with it.

  He raised his arms to protect himself. "Hey!" he shouted. "Hey, relax! I've got the day off."

  "Well, I haven't! God, now I'm going to be late."

  The worst of her fury vented, she tossed the pillow aside, launched herself out of bed, and made a mad dash for the bathroom.

  "What are you so worried about, anyway?" he called after her. "Can't you phone in sick?"

  Her head popped around from behind the bathroom door. "Have you forgotten, or is your brain between your legs? This morning marks the first official day under new management!"

  He looked at her dumbly.

  "Gawd!" She rolled her eyes in exasperation. "The corporate takeover I told you about? With the new major shareholder? Well, today's the day the SEC granted approval for it to take effect, you Dummkopf!"

  She glared at him.

  "Well? Don't just lie there like God's gift to women! Get moving, man! Put on some caffeine! And hurry!" She clapped her hands briskly.

  Crossing his arms behind his head, he stretched out lazily and wiggled his toes. "Aw, come on, Kenz. You know I'm no good in the kitchen."

  "Well, ex-cuuuuuse me!" She rolled her eyes again, growling, "Cops!" in disgust. "Guess I'm doomed to grab a cup on the run. Why, oh why," she demanded beseechingly of the world in general, "did I have to fall for a too-macho-to-even-make-a-cup-of-coffee Italian cop? Would someone please give me the answer to that?"

  "Maybe because I'm so good in bed?" he suggested with a leer.

  "Too bad you aren't as useful around the house." She eyed him suspiciously. "Say, don't you have somewhere you've got to be? Work you've got to catch up on or something?"

  "Naw. No work until tomorrow, sweetums, when I hitch up with my counterpart from Interpol. I told you how I'll be working with him in the art theft squad—"

  But she didn't hear. She'd already slammed the door and started the shower, and water was crashing down full blast.

  Chapter 2

  High above Fifth Avenue, Dina Goldsmith awoke with the feeling that something had changed overnight, and momentarily wondered what it might be. Lying in her extravagantly draped fantasy of a Venetian bed, she frowned up at the Fortuny canopy while trying to shake off the foggy remnants of sleep. What had changed? she wondered.

  Then it hit her.

  Sitting bolt upright, she stretched luxuriously. What a beautiful day this was! How could she have forgotten? Overnight, she had become the Queen of Manhattan Island! That's what had changed!

  Was it really, truly possible? Perhaps if she pinched herself . . .

  She would have tweaked her arm were it not for the thick, cumbersome mittens she wore to bed—to protect the antique lace sheets and keep her hands slathered with moisturizing lotion.

  Amazingly, last night she had gone to bed the same Dina Goldsmith as usual—the beautiful, Dutch-born wife of Robert A. Goldsmith, billionaire owner of GoldMart, Inc., the second-largest chain of (loathesome to her) discount department stores in the nation.

  But now, eight short hours later, she had awakened a different Dina Goldsmith—the glorious wife of the new owner (or, at least, the single-largest shareholder and chairman) of Burghley's, Inc., the world's oldest, greatest, and undeniably most important purveyor of world-class art, furnishings, jewelry, postage stamps, porcelains, carpets—not to mention God only knows what other staggering treasures.

  Burghley's! The very name galvanized, imbued every item that passed through its venerated doors with instant value, provenance, and prestige.

  Burghley's! Where every auction during the late great eighties had broken one world record after another—whether for the most expensive Picasso or van Gogh ever sold, to the highest-priced Meissen dinner service or Ansel Adams photograph.

  Burghley's! With its three-hundred-year-old headquarters in Bond Street in London, its own block-long palace right here on Madison Avenue, plus twenty-three smaller satellite galleries scattered throughout the world.

  Burghley's! Which ranked right up there alongside Christie's and Sotheby's, and whose board of directors and advisory board read like a veritable Who's Who of the filthy rich and the titled, many of whom had, until now, looked down their patrician noses at her, Dina Goldsmith, dismissing her out-of-hand as the wife of a mere five-and-dime peddler!

  Well ...

  Her lips curved into a scimitar of a steel-bladed smile. Things had certainly changed—and overnight at that!

  Now it was time to act the part.

  "Darlene!" she screamed.

  Her flustered maid, who had been waiting right outside her bedroom, came rushing in at once. One look at the trembling woman, and Dina could tell that even the servants had gotten the news.

  "Run my bath," she ordered imperiously. "And see that the water's precisely twenty-six degrees. That's Celsius," she ordered.

  "Yes, ma'am!" Chin down, Darlene scuttled off to the ensuite marble bathroom.

  "But before you do that, get a bowl of hot water, untie my mitts, and wash this goddamn goop off my hands!"

  "Yes, ma'am!" Darlene was back in a jiffy, with soap, a steaming bowl of water, a box of Kleenex, and stacks of washcloths.

  Dina held out both hands, arms extended, like a surgeon. She waited impatiently while Darlene untied the thick terry-cloth mittens and used Kleenex, soap, and water. When her hands were finally clean, Dina said, "Now go run my bath."

  "Yes, ma'am!" Darlene vanished, along with the debris of Kleenex, water, and washcloths.

  Dina activated her bedside speakerphone—not the one with the eight outside lines, but the intra-apartment model. Hearing the dial tone, she stabbed one of the twenty-four preprogrammed numbers.

  The majordomo answered on the first ring. "Yes, madame?" His amplified voice came out hollow and tinny-sounding.

  "Tell Cook I'll be breakfasting in exactly one hour," she commanded. "I want hot fresh decaf. Half a cup of plain, no-fat yogurt. And a single slice of low-cal toast. On the light side. No butter."

  "I'll relay your instruc—"

  "Is my husband still here?" she interrupted.

  "I regret that he—"

  She broke the connection, then immediately reactivated the speaker and called her private secretary down the hall.

  One ring ... two ... three ...

  "Yeah, yeah?" rasped a gravelly female voice.

  "Gaby, have my car and driver waiting downstairs in exactly an hour and a half. And call Burghley's. I want the three highest ranking executives waiting at the front entrance to give us the grand tour."

  "Guess that means I'm coming along," came the sour reply.

  "You guess correctly."

  "I'll get on it." Gabriella Morton's voice echoed weary resignation. "By the way. Don't forget you have a two o'clock appointment at Kenneth's."

  "Not anymore I don't," Dina said grandly. "Call Kenneth. Tell him that from now on he can come here if he wants to do my hair." Then, severing the connection, she flung aside the covers and popped out of bed.

  Stretching luxuriously, she took a few moments to savor her new position. Then, humming cheerfully to her
self, she slipped into a salmon pink silk robe trimmed with ostrich feathers and wiggled her feet into fuzzy little salmon pink heels. Thus clad, she swept imperiously off to the bathroom.

  For once, she did not dally to admire the van Gogh portrait above the marble mantel, the Degas Racehorses over the gilt console, or her treasured trio of sweet little Renoirs. This was one morning that Dina Goldsmith did not need the tangibles of priceless art and antiques to validate her position. Today she knew exactly who she was—and where she stood in this town.

  All in all, she had to admit that little Dina Van Vliet of Gouda, the cheese capital of Holland, had not done so badly for herself. She had come a long way in her twenty-nine years—a long, long way.

  Further than anyone imagined ...

  Dina Goldsmith's earliest memories were of cheese, which was why she refused to touch it now—and woe be to anyone who put so much as an ounce of it in the refrigerator!

  Like Proust's petite madeleine, the very smell, indeed the mere thought of cheese, was enough to set off remembrances of things past. Which wasn't surprising, considering the fact that her father had worked in one of Gouda's famed cheese factories.

  Trouble was, that's what she remembered best about him. The smell of cheese which surrounded him like a miasma. Clinging to his clothes. His hair. His skin. Somehow, no matter how much he bathed, the stench never quite washed out. Even now, after all these years, she still couldn't seem to get it out of her nostrils.

  But life, always rich in ironies, had used cheese to provide her the ticket out of Gouda.

  Dina Van Vliet was a classic Nordic golden girl. Five feet, nine inches tall, she had hair like cornsilk, sharply etched cheekbones, and wide-set aquamarine eyes. Besides her looks and a knockout body, she possessed legs that made her a showstopper—enough so that she won the title of Miss Gouda.

  From there, it was a hop to Amsterdam, where she garnered the crown of Miss Netherlands, and then a skip and a jump to the Miss Universe pageant in Caracas, Venezuela.

  Alas, Miss Netherlands never made it to the semifinals. But no matter. Dina Van Vliet was a realist. No one needed to tell her what her most valuable assets were. She knew that better than anyone.

  She also knew she wasn't about to return to the land of windmills, wooden shoes, and cheese. So she packed up her consolation prizes, took the nine thousand dollars her maternal grandmother had left her, and moved to the mogul-rich canyons of New York City, where she shared a rent-controlled apartment on the fashionable Upper East Side.

  More important, she invested in one very good, very expensive, and very revealing multifunctional black evening dress and a passable string of cultured pearls.

  Thus armed, and shamelessly using her pageant title to gain entree, she plunged into the Manhattan social circuit like a cruising shark. Cocktail parties, dinners, opening nights, and charity benefits—Dina worked them all, in the process turning down countless offers for hops in the sack, and just as many marriage proposals, all from some of Manhattan's dreamiest and most handsome young men.

  But Dina had no use for trust-fund babies. She knew what she wanted, and was determined to get it.

  And lo and behold! Before you could say "Cheese!", she had found her Moneybags in Robert A. Goldsmith, the recently widowed founder and chairman of GoldMart, Inc.

  So it wasn't exactly love at first sight.

  So he was overweight, unattractive, balding, and fiftysomething.

  So he was a little rough and rusty around the edges.

  So he wore the same abominable, off-the-rack polyester suits he sold in his nationwide discount department store chain.

  And so his West Side penthouse was furnished with cut-rate furniture, orange wall-to-wall shag, artificial plants, and framed prints of clowns, cats, and children with big eyes—GoldMart products all.

  So what?

  He was ripe for the picking, and that was all that mattered. That, plus the fact that he had moolah coming out of his ears.

  Equally as important, Robert A. Goldsmith had no ex-wives or children to dispute his estate if and when the time came—she'd checked that out discreetly but thoroughly.

  As far as his shortcomings went, Dina was convinced that none were unconquerable. After all, manners could be taught. A strict diet prescribed. His abominable wardrobe changed. And the hideous penthouse on Central Park West redecorated.

  Marriage soon followed, and Dina Van Vliet no longer existed. Dina Goldsmith did—and with a vengeance.

  Now that she had become an official member of that most elite of all clubs—the wives of the one hundred richest men in the world—she threw herself into the social arena with the same calculation and coldbloodedness with which she'd set out to capture herself a husband of incalculable wealth.

  Her life suddenly became a whirlwind of activity.

  There were the daily lunches with fellow socialites at La Grenouille and Le Cirque, where the court bouillon with lobster paled beside the real entrees—juicy gossip and whispered scandals.

  The evenings of cocktail parties followed by formal dinners. The opening nights on Broadway. Plus the traditional Monday "dress" nights at the Metropolitan Opera, the requisite charity balls, and the weekend commutes to the Hamptons in the summer and Palm Beach or the Caribbean in the winter.

  Anyone would have thought that Dina Goldsmith had it made.

  But soon she discovered the truth.

  While socializing with certain people was a matter of course, Mr. and Mrs. Goldsmith weren't accepted everywhere. At least, not where it really counted. The old guard in New York, Newport, the Hamptons, and Palm Beach snubbed them, and all because Robert was a self-made man, and as such, his money was new money and hadn't gained the patina of respectability which can only be acquired over several generations.

  Except when it came to charity fund-raisers, at which any donors were welcome, Old Money locked its doors to them.

  Once again, just as she had done at Caracas, Dina took stock of the situation and decided that some major changes were due. First, she and Robert would have to move: to the East Side, no less, and Fifth Avenue at that. She was determined that only a palatial Wasp stronghold along Central Park would do.

  Money being no object, she soon found the perfect thirty-four-room duplex, complete with sweeping marble staircase, greenhouse, and no less than two wraparound terraces. She hired the socially correct decorator, a seventy-two-year-old dragon of impeccable Wasp pedigree.

  But if Dina thought moving to the right Fifth Avenue address and having the right decorator would magically open all the closed doors, she was dead wrong. And the continued ostracism was driving her crazy.

  And now, eight long years later—Hallelujah! Her prayers had been answered! Her husband's successful takeover of Burghley's would succeed where all else had failed—for no one needed to tell Dina that his majority stake in Burghley's had suddenly made her the hottest social item in town. And overnight, yet!

  After all this time, she had been catapulted to the top! To the very, very pinnacle of Manhattan society!

  And now ...

  Ah! Now there were debts to be repaid in kind ... snobs she would snub ... an entire vanquished society just waiting to lick the soles of her Maud Frizons!

  Oh, yes! She would revel in every last minute of it! For was there anything, anything on earth quite as deliciously satisfying as giving tit for tat?

  The scented water in the marble Jacuzzi bubbled and boiled as Dina slid down into the huge pink oval tub. Closing her eyes, she rested her head on a pink scallop-shell cushion, her fertile mind doing quantum leaps.

  A knock on the door intruded on her pleasant thoughts, and her eyes snapped open as Gaby marched right in. Dina scowled up at her, but Gaby couldn't care less. She was a bossy squirt of a tweedy woman, with gray iron wires for hair, glasses hanging from a chain around her neck, and a voice like James Earl Jones's. Approaching the tub, she smacked the button and shut off the noisy whirlpool mechanism. "There's a call for yo
u," she announced gruffly. "Wanna take it?"

  Dina slapped the button to turn the whirlpool back on. "That all depends on who it is," she sniffed.

  "Someone named Berg. Sandra Berg." Gaby shrugged.

  Frowning to herself, Dina reached for a giant loofah. Sandra Berg? Was she supposed to know whoever that might—? And then a lightbulb glowed. Of course! Gaby must mean Zandra!

  Zandra, who she hadn't heard from in ages!

  "Hand me the telephone," Dina commanded loftily.

  "Pick it up yourself," Gaby snapped, and marched right back out, shutting the door behind her.

  Bitch! Dina wanted to shout, but settled for throwing the loofah at the closing door. Then she reached for the remote phone on the tub- side table.

  "Zandra?" she squealed happily, sliding back down into the gurgling cauldron.

  "Dina?" The British-accented voice came faintly across the wires amid a cacophony of background noises.

  Dina could barely hear and shut off the Jacuzzi. "Zandra? Where in heaven are you?"

  "Thank God, Dina! Darling, if I couldn't have reached you, I don't know who I would have called!" Zandra's voice—equal measures of clipped upper-class boarding school, Belgravia slur, and Oxfordshire country-house throwaways—for once sounded uncharacteristically panicked.

  Alarmed, Dina sat up straight, water sluicing down her bony clavicles. "Zandra! What on earth is it?"

  "Oh, there isn't time to go into all the sordid details now, Dina. I mean, I've had an absolutely beastly time. Would it ..." Her voice turned hesitant. "... would it be all right if I came and stayed with you for a few days?"

  "Why, you know you're always welcome. And I long to see you." Dina paused, a frown flitting across her smooth features. "Zandra, are you in any sort of ... difficulties?"

  "Gosh, Dina, that would take the whole of forever to explain . . . I'm in a pay phone and—well, I fear it'll just have to wait. I've just put down at Kennedy, you see, and if the traffic's horrendous it might take me a while to get into the city ... anyway, you're positive it's all right? I mean, I know it's awfully short notice and the most horrible breach of etiquette to blatantly invite oneself ... besides which, I really wouldn't want to impose—"