Combining Riches (Riches to Rags Book 2) Read online

  Combining Riches

  By Mairsile

  Combining Riches

  © 2015 by Mairsile. All Rights Reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form, without written permission from the author.

  Editor: Tracy Seybold

  Cover Design: Mairsile

  www.Mairsile.com

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  Acknowledgements

  A special heartfelt thanks to the readers who made Riches to Rags a best seller. This is the second book in the Blackie and Chris series. Visit me on Facebook or Twitter for the latest news and updates, or you can find me on www.Mairsile.com.

  I cannot say it enough, many thanks to Joyce, my best friend, for her unfailing support and ass saving skills.

  As always, a million thanks to my best friend, L.Fox. Without his help my novel would still be in my head.

  And last, but never least, may the glory go to God.

  Mairsile

  Prologue

  I’m going to die, I thought, as the young thug poked his knife in my ribs.

  He shouted, “Give me that, you stinking bum.”

  I could see it in his face, and I knew that I was going to die, which meant that I had nothing to lose. “I beg your pardon. I may stink, but I am not a bum. I am a movie star. Perhaps you’ve heard of me, Richard Burke?”

  “Are you creeping me, mister? Give me that damn thing or I’ll kill ya.”

  I had lived on the streets of Memphis for more years than I can remember, and usually I was too drunk or hung over to comprehend what was going on around me, but unfortunately for my throbbing head, and fortunately for my life, on this day I was sober, and my mind was sharp. I cared that this young man was about to kill me, but I cared more about what he wanted in exchange for my life.

  The saints must have had mercy on me, for in the distance, we heard a siren that grew louder with every moment, and the boy absconded empty handed, fearing he would be arrested. I made a hasty retreat as well, back to my sanctuary, where I looked around to make sure no one was watching, and then I secured my treasure back inside the wall and replaced the lose brick. I shouldn’t have taken it out in the first place, but I just wanted to see it again while I was sober, because that’s just about the only time I remember it’s there.

  I turned to leave when two young, very pretty girls, walked my way. I lowered my head, hoping not to be accosted again, when I heard one of them call my name. I thought I recognized her, but even sober, my mind couldn’t pick the memory from my brain. She wore all black, with black hair and even black eyes. I felt a sudden trepidation. Had Johnny Cash been reincarnated or was I having hallucinations again?

  I held out my hand to her. “Please, Mr. Cash, help an old man out with a few dollars.”

  The two women looked at each other, and the pretty blond laughed, “That’s hysterical. He thinks you’re Johnny Cash, Melinda.”

  The dark one shrugged, “Yeah, not like I hadn’t heard that one before, Chris.”

  “Here, Richard, here’s some food for you,” the blonde one said.

  “I’d rather have whiskey, lady,” I said, not caring how she knew my name.

  “No, sorry, just these sandwiches,” the blond replied.

  “Uh, thank you kindly, Miss.” I snatched the sandwiches from her hands and hurried down the alley, hoping they wouldn’t follow me. Usually do-gooders only give you something so they can bore you to tears with their preaching. I watched to make sure they didn’t become curious and find my treasure. The only noble thing I had ever done in my life was to be willing to fight to the death to keep anyone from taking her Oscar from me.

  Chapter One

  Bad Dreams — Melinda aka Blackie Blackstone

  I’m a billionaire. I was born with the proverbial silver spoon in my mouth, as were my mother, and her father, and his father, and on down the line, too far for me to count. My parents were too busy adding to our opulence to have more children, so I am the sole inheritor of the great Blackstone fortune. I’m also a twenty-seven-year-old lesbian who knows how to spend that fortune on parties, fast women, fast cars, a plane, a yacht, and so many more toys of that nature.

  I use to brag that I knew how not to get entangled in the drama of love. For me, it was all about the orgies and the booze. Now it’s all about the beautiful woman lying beside me. How did that happen?

  It happened when I accepted a challenge that had me giving up all my money and living in squalor. It was the best, hardest, most life-affirming thing I had ever done. And it was this ravishing woman sleeping sweetly in my arms who issued the challenge. Thank God I had the good sense to accept it. She worked at a restaurant as a waitress, where, in a matter of minutes, I had gotten her fired. The surprising part is that I felt bad about it afterward. When money didn’t sway her, I used my charm, which was more fun, but took much longer than the money would have with most chicks.

  And now, that gorgeous woman named Chris Livingston and I are looking for a house here in Memphis, Tennessee. Born and raised all over the world, my family never had a permanent home in the South, so I have a slight learning curve, especially remembering that y’all means you all. And some of that greasy fried food plays havoc on my stomach, but that hasn’t stopped me from enjoying it every chance I get. I must say that the sex seems to be much better here in Memphis. Or is that because I’m in love? Whatever the reason, I’m not complaining.

  I must have drifted off to sleep, because my thoughts scattered on the breeze, and I found myself walking up a pebbled path toward a castle sitting on a mountain. I didn’t recognize the castle, nor the path I was walking. Yet something was pulling me towards it, as if I had no will of my own.

  The closer I came to the castle, the darker the clouds behind it became. Huge, black clouds that threatened to unleash a storm at any second. The castle was also dark and foreboding, with black vines growing along its stone walls, encircling the keep. As I stepped onto the footbridge, I was momentarily startled at the loud sound of chains clanking against each other. Then I saw the drawbridge slowly lowering down. Okay, it’s time to wake up now, Blackie. Against my better judgment, I kept walking toward the arched gateway and began to see movement on the parapet walk above me.

  My attention was drawn to the heavy wooden gates swinging open. Two men wearing helmets, breastplates, gauntlets, placards – the whole knight in shining armor ensemble – walked out and took up positions on either side of the entryway. They each carried a lance made of wood, with a metal head sharpened to a deadly point. Somewhere inside the castle, I heard dogs snarling, as if they were chomping at the bit to impale their fangs into my throat. In spite of my almost paralyzing fear, I was still being pulled inside. I walked into the courtyard and saw archers surrounding me from the battlement. I quickly looked away for fear they might let loose their arrows. I kept walking. It seemed that I was being led by the knights, who opened doors for me as I approached, until finally, they opened the door to the throne room where the king and queen held court.

  What the hell? It was my father, sitting on a throne of velvet red, a huge crown on his small head, and a plush red robe around his broad shoulders. If he had not looked so sad, I would have laughed out loud. Of all the things to dream about, why was my father in this one?

  He motioned for me to follow him, and even if I didn�
�t want to, it seemed that I had no choice in the matter. He walked to a side door and the guard instantly snapped to attention and opened it for him. We walked down a damp, narrow stone staircase, where our path was illuminated only by a single torch on the wall, midway down the stairs.

  Finally we reached the bottom of the circular stairwell and walked into a cold, austere room, devoid of furniture or decoration. In the middle of the room, my mother sat on the floor, dressed in a velvet red robe, with a crown on her head. Her back was to me, but I could tell she was crying. I walked over to her to see what was wrong and saw a pile of gold coins in front of her. She was counting them as she stacked them into neat little columns beside her. She looked up at me and suddenly began to wail, knocking the coins over. I wasn’t sure what was wrong, so I knelt down to help her stack them up again. I asked her what had happened to make her so sad, but before she could answer, my father grabbed my elbow and yanked me up.

  He pulled me over to the drab gray wall and showed me a dark line high above my head, running horizontal across it. I didn’t understand what he was trying to show me, and he became angry with me, and before my eyes, his hair turned gray, his face wrinkled, and his shoulders sagged. I looked over to my mother, and the same thing had happened to her. What did it mean, that they were suddenly old and penniless?

  Suddenly we were outside, where it had begun to rain. A hard, driving rain that was black as ice. My father, back to his normal self, walked out the gate and across the drawbridge, and I had to take long strides just to keep up with him.

  By the time we walked past the footbridge, the moat and the stockade, the storm let loose its fury. I was drenched and shivering in the cold. My father however, was dry as a bone. Was I supposed to understand the meaning behind the parting of the clouds that my father was enjoying? And why was my mother crying over a few coins in the treasury room, when we have plenty more where those came from? Wait, she was in the treasury room, with no treasure?

  Abruptly, just as lightning flashed across the sky, we were transported from medieval times to twenty-first century Las Vegas, inside my condo which was full of beautiful women doing bad things to their bodies. And just as suddenly, we were on the strip outside my condo, but there was no traffic and the sidewalks were empty. In front of me sat my expensive cars, airplane, and my submarine and yacht, which sat erect as if they were in dry dock.

  My father, now dressed in his expensive business suit, waved his hand over all that I possessed and gray smoke hid them from my view. When the wisps of smoke evaporated, there was nothing left, save for a small pile of gold coins, some of them stacked neatly in a row. What the hell? Where’d it all go? And more importantly, when would I get it all back?

  My father looked at me angrily, and pulled the inside of his pants pockets out, showing me that he also had nothing. When I looked back up to meet his eyes, I noticed he was dressed as a pauper, holding his hand out for spare change.

  “Holy shit!” I shouted, and sprang up in my bed, gasping for air, my heart pounding wildly in my ears. “What the hell?”

  “What is it, Melinda?” Chris sat up beside me and rubbed my back in a comforting way that helped to calm my breathing, and eased my heart. “Was it a bad dream?”

  “More like a nightmare from hell,” I said emphatically.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  I did, but I looked at the clock and saw how late it was. We had a lot to do in the morning, so it was best that we got a good night’s sleep. That is, if I could go back to sleep.

  “Go back to sleep, Chris. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”

  “All right, but you go back to sleep, too,” she cajoled.

  She tugged on my shirt, and I laid down on my side, my head resting on her soft breast. I could feel the rise and fall of her breathing, and it lulled me into a sense of security, and the warmth of her body soothed me to sleep again.

  Bad Dreams — Christine aka Chris Livingston

  I’m a millionaire. Thanks to my father who made his millions by investing wisely and was soon hired by Memphis Investment Funds, to make millions for others. I have no doubt that he will end up owning the company someday soon. That is, if he wants to. He gives me a very generous stipend and I give most of it back to him to invest for me. I have more money than I could ever spend, now that I’m sober and cautious. There was a time when I had nothing but my liquor bottle to call my own. Thanks to my parents’ tough love, I pulled myself up out of that gutter, and again have money to burn. Instead, I plan to give most of it away.

  As I floated between thoughts and dreams, I wondered what had caused Melinda’s bad dream. Probably the pizza and peppers she had before we went to bed. Though that may have been the catalyst, what was she dreaming about that caused her to scream like that?

  When I first met her she was screaming. At me. She has this thing about wanting over-easy eggs, but not the gooey egg whites that she refers to as egg snot. The look on her face when I stood up to her as if she was a nobody, still makes me smile, when I think about it. Mostly because it’s what brought us together. She pursued me, promising me all kinds of things if I’d only tell her how I came to be living in a dump, working as a waitress, and still say no to a billionaire. To test her sincerity in wanting to change, to stop drinking, as I had done, I dared her to live in the slums for one month. To my shock and great pride, the ugly worm known as Blackie emerged from her self-imposed cocoon as Melinda, the beautiful woman I fell in love with.

  Melinda had fallen back asleep, and apparently so had I because I found myself skipping across a field covered with sunflowers.

  The sunflowers’ stems were as tall as a redwood forest, and their petals were so many that they blocked out the sun. I felt a strange prickle on the back of my neck, warning me something wasn’t quite right about this forest of sunflowers. I heard a noise behind me and turned in time to see the sunflowers chain themselves together, creating an impenetrable fence against my escape. Now the prickle of nerves ran down my spine as panic surged up from the pit of my stomach.

  I could only go forward, so I turned back and began walking through the flowers again. I came upon a small stemmed sunflower that only came up to my thigh, and then another flower slightly taller, and another, taller still. I realized they were forming a set of stairs for me to climb, and when I looked up, I could see the blue sky at the end of the stairs. They were offering me a way out. Should I be gullible and take the first opening presented to me? I could climb the steps leading to the scary unknown, blue skies notwithstanding, but something held me back. I decided to forego my curiosity and keep my feet firmly on the ground, where I could run away if need be. I walked a little further up a slight incline and when I crested the hill, I could see nothing but a shimmering cloud of blackness. Okay, stairs it is then. When I turned to go back, Melinda stood in front of me. But it wasn’t Melinda, it was Blackie, the billionaire playgirl alter ego of Melinda, and she was holding out a whiskey bottle. She took my hand and led me back to the staircase. As I started to climb them, Blackie took a drink. I panicked and jumped down.

  I ran head-long into the blackness, fearing more for what I was leaving behind me, than the unknown I was running toward. The blackness was so dense that I could not see my hand in front of my face. My knees trembled so badly they threatened to give out beneath me. I stopped, frozen in fear, afraid to go forward, terrified to go back.

  All of a sudden, I was in a dimly lit room full of floor mirrors. At every turn, my reflection looked back at me. As I walked around, looking for the exit, the reflections in the mirrors changed. One mirror showed me as a child, carefree, playing with my best friend, Bonnie. Another showed me as a teenager, smoking one of my father’s cigars and drinking from one of my mother’s prized wine collections. The next mirror showed me passed out in a back alley, laying across a man who was also unconscious. At first glimpse, I thought it was the drunkard I remembered waking up next to. But it wasn’t him. It was a man in shorts and a T-s
hirt.

  I leaned closer to the mirror and, to my horror, saw a wheelchair sitting beside the man. My reflection had a whiskey bottle in her hand, and she sat up, her eyes piercing through my soul. It was the man I had hit while driving my car. I was inebriated at the time, but I still remember the sound of his body breaking across my fender. Now I could hear that sound getting louder and louder in the room, echoing from mirror to mirror.

  I screamed and covered my ears, trying to block it out. I tried to run away, only to bump into another mirror and then another. All the mirrors now reflected a wheelchair and a whiskey bottle, and they came closer and closer to me, until they formed a wall where there was no way out.

  “No, please!” My scream woke me up and my eyes darted back and forth until I recognized that I was safe and sober in my bed. I buried my head in my hands and cried.

  Melinda sat up and pulled me into her arms. “Did you have a nightmare too?”

  I nodded. She held me closer and I continued to cry until no more tears came.

  Live-in Dream Interpreter — Norma Shelby, Melinda Blackstone, and Chris Livingston

  I’m an old lady. My name is Norma Shelby, and I have lived many lifetimes in my eighty-eight years, and none of those were ever dull. Occasionally, there were dreary times, and once or twice, completely melancholy times, but even those weren’t dull. My given name is Sarah Norma Smith, but I was actually named for the great actress, Norma Shearer, because my mother had loved her so. I changed my name to Norma Shelby when I entered the business of acting, keeping Norma’s first name for good luck. And I did have some luck making movies in Hollywood, including winning an Academy Award for best supporting actress. But my favorite movie, which was also my first movie, Invaders from Pluto, was the one where I met the love of my life, Richard Burke. He was a roguishly handsome young man who filled the void between husbands. But over the decades, one lifetime fades away to make room for a new life, with a new purpose. Friends fall away, even roguishly handsome ones, but new ones take their place.