Drop Dead Gorgeous

by Jennifer Skully

  Her eyes widened, question enough.

  “Bed-wetting, fire setting and cruelty to animals. It’s indicative of a potential serial killer.”

  She flashed a smile that had brought lesser men to their knees. “Sometimes I wonder if you have a much bigger sense of humor than you let on.”

  “I must have to allow you to keep working here.”

  She rose, smoothed her short black skirt over her tummy, then her thighs. Laurence lost his voice.

  “Seriously, T. Larry.” With a step forward, she raised her emerald-isle eyes to his. Her voice dropped to an intimate note. “What if he’s the one? The one, I mean? I have to find out.”

  Then she was gone, leaving behind the soft scent of flowery perfume to fog his mind.

  “The one, my ass,” Laurence whispered to the now-closed front entrance. She’d told some stranger what she looked like and the exact length of her gorgeous red hair, just so he’d recognize her the next night. She’d even told him where she worked. All right, not the firm’s name, but the building address. She was crazy. She was a menace to herself.

  She was Madison. That said it all.

  Voices buzzed beyond the cubicle walls, a burst of laughter, a dampened snort. The sounds always followed Madison. After seven years of the woman, Laurence could no longer be completely shocked.

  He turned abruptly and almost smacked into Harriet Hartman.

  “T. Larry, I mean Laurence, can I speak to you a minute?”

  “Tomorrow, Harriet. I have a meeting.”

  Madison had nicknames for all the accountants in the office—even for Harriet. Despite the fact that the young woman was as bad tempered as Madison was good, as negative as Madison was positive. Madison called her Chicken Little—to her face, of course, since Madison never meant anything in a nasty way—because, for Harriet, the sky was always falling. Due to his upcoming budget review, Laurence wasn’t equipped to hold up Harriet’s sky tonight.

  “But, Laurence—”

  “Tomorrow. Come see me first thing, and we’ll sort out whatever issue you have.” He closed his office door in Harriet’s face. Madison would have read him the riot act over that action. An excellent accountant who could find several thousand dollars of tax deductions in a shoe box of coffee-stained receipts, Harriet had a problem with taking no for an answer. Good for his clients most times, not good for Laurence right now.

  He had a dinner scheduled at five-thirty with the senior partners, Carp and Alta, to discuss the quarterly budget and the signing of Stephen Tortelli as a client. Alta insisted the man was legit, but Laurence felt him to be, at best, a tax evader, at worst, a Mafia crime boss—and that wasn’t because of the Italian-American name. The man was slime. Laurence wanted no dealings with him. The three-week-old argument was becoming heated, but tedious.

  Crossing the plush beige carpet, Laurence entered his executive washroom. He’d worked hard for the office with its mahogany desk, black leather sofa and view of San Francisco from his twenty-second-floor window near the end of Market Street. Yet did it all signify Total Financial Security, with Madison’s double quotes?

  Over the years, she’d labeled him a variety of things, staid and humorless among them. Now she’d implied he was getting too old to attain his marital goals. Too old at thirty-eight?

  It was the hair, or rather his lack of it. Laurence put a hand to his bald spot, not actually a spot but the whole top of his head. He always thought it lent him a distinguished air, as any good tax accountant should have. He wasn’t too old to attract a wife, to have children.

  Was he actually too old for Madison herself? Exhaustion factor aside.

  Dear God. He’d lost his mind to even consider it. Madison dating him? Her latest and most outrageous act to date had addled his brain. That could be the only explanation for the idea to even occur. It hadn’t before. At least not in serious contemplation. After all, he was her boss.

  Besides, Madison was light-years beyond him.

  He needed to stop thinking about those red lace panties.

  HARRIET STARED at the closed door. Goddamn him. Well, she’d given him his chance. Now T. Larry was going to pay for ignoring her. And Zachary would pay for what he’d done, even if T. Larry refused to fire him. Madison was on the list, too, with her sympathetic looks and annoying pity. What did she know about being the office joke? Harriet hated being one of Madison’s pity projects, a problem that had to be fixed. As if she were a dog to be neutered. Oh no. When Harriet got done with her, Madison would be the one who needed pity.

  Harriet would get her turn. She’d make them all pay.

  MADISON HAD TO FIND T. Larry a wife. He needed one so badly.

  The train, packed to capacity as it left the city, lulled her. She’d nearly ruined her favorite black suede high heels in her dash to make the 5:20, but still managed to snag a window seat next to an elderly lady with painfully swollen legs. Poor dear.

  And poor T. Larry. He’d somehow come to the conclusion that he was getting old. It was his baldness. In a way, he was kind of sexy, likeYul Brynner or Director Skinner on the X-Files, glasses and all. He had the nicest gray eyes, even when he was yelling at her. She’d find him a nice girl who wanted to settle down, get married and have babies. Someone like herself—except for the marriage and babies part—who knew how to have fun, who’d mess up his routines, teach him the word spontaneity and make him forget all about his silly Plan.

  The train car smelled of bubble gum, melting chocolate and overtaxed deodorant. The little girl opposite, on the aisle side, mouth covered with the remains of a Hershey’s bar, swung her feet in time to the clack of the train wheels. A cute tyke with Shirley Temple curls and pinafore dress, she couldn’t be more than five. Chocolate handprints marred the white material and pink lace.

  T. Larry would have been appalled. All the more reason to find him a wife ASAP, before he forgot what little kids were like.

  Madison was sure T. Larry’s stuffiness problem stemmed from an inability to create nicknames. Take herself, for example. He unerringly, even when pissed as a hornet, called her Madison. Never Maddie, which was okay with her since she sort of hated that rendition. How about Mad? Or there was Madison Square Gardens, President Madison, Madison Avenue. Even Oscar Madison, for her perpetually messy desk. Anything, she wasn’t picky.

  Something caressed the back of her neck. Madison jumped, turned, then realized it was the breeze from the open window behind her. People read books, rustled newspapers as they turned the pages, or cranked up the volume on their iPods, all to pass the time until they reached their stop. No one had touched her. Of course not. Madison’s seat companion dozed. The little girl, mother staring out the window beside her, swung her feet in an ever widening arc toward the old woman’s legs.

  Okay, stuffiness. T. Larry had too much starch in his shorts. He couldn’t even buy a car just for fun. He’d purchased the white Camry, which was nothing bad in and of itself. But it was the reason he bought it, claiming white didn’t retain heat as much nor show the dirt as easily. How about a black Porsche Boxster, T. Larry? Now that was fun.

  There. Madison felt it again. Nothing so tangible as a hand on her, more of a sensation, of eyes staring at her. She turned quickly. All the same people with all the same reading material. So why did she get the creepy feeling she was being watched? Darn T. Larry anyway, putting thoughts of serial killers in her head.

  Next to Madison, the old woman’s eyes snapped open as an oomph burst from her lips. She looked down at her legs, then at the little girl’s patent leather shoes which had just kicked her.

  “Excuse me.” The lady’s voice crackled with age and disuse as she called softly to the mother seated opposite Madison.

  No response. Guilt flickered in Madison. She should have seen the child’s accident coming and put a stop to it.

  “Excuse me,” the elderly lady said again.

  This time the mother turned, her lids sleepy and her mouth set in a straight line. One dark chocolate p
rint hardened on the sleeve of her dress. “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry, but my legs hurt. Could you please ask your daughter not to kick me?” The old woman’s eyes, rheumy and glazed with advancing cataracts, watered.

  “I’m sorry, I follow the rule of free discipline. You’ll have to ask her yourself. It teaches her to learn on her own.”

  “Free discipline?” Madison echoed the old lady. What silly thing was that?

  The old lady sighed and turned a kind smile on the girl. “Could you please stop kicking me, dear?”

  The child stuck out her tongue. Her mother shrugged and turned back to the buildings flashing by outside her window.

  Free discipline obviously meant no discipline. Madison turned a sympathetic glance to her seatmate just as another oomph issued from her lips.

  Of all the cheeky things. “Knock it off, sweetheart.” Madison added her best stern look.

  The brat stuck out her tongue at Madison. T. Larry would have freaked if he’d witnessed the display. Madison crossed her legs, mouth pursed, eyes narrowed, foot swinging.

  This was ridiculous.

  Madison’s foot swung harder, connecting with a whack against the mother’s shin bone.

  The little bugger stopped swinging her feet, her mouth hanging open. The mother rubbed her shin and stared speechless at Madison.

  “Why’d you kick my mommy?”

  Her gaze fixed on the mother, Madison explained. “Because my mother believed in free discipline, and consequently, I learned extremely bad manners.” She then turned to the child, who remained wide-eyed but immobile in her seat. “Keep your feet to yourself.”

  If she’d only imagined it before, eyes were certainly on her now. The old lady’s, mother’s and child’s, an elegantly suited woman’s seated behind the girl, two men’s standing in the aisle, their knees bending in rhythm with the movement of the train.

  The old woman’s hand crept across the seat and settled on Madison’s, giving it a squeeze.

  She wondered if T. Larry would approve of her unconventional yet effective strategy. Nope. He’d cross her off his list, as he’d crossed off Alison. Not that Madison would make his list in the first place. Not even if she were the last woman on earth of childbearing age.

  Busy cataloging her friends for potential T. Larry material, by the time the train arrived at her station, Madison forgot all about that strange sensation of being watched.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “T. LARRY, ARE YOU DONE checking yourself out in the bathroom mirror?” Madison’s voice jumped through the speaker phone, interrupting Laurence’s routine.

  Laurence rolled his eyes. It had never been Madison’s way to give a normal morning greeting. “What is it, Madison?”

  “I’ve penned in Amy Kermit for seven-thirty on Monday.”

  He moved to the side of his desk so he didn’t have to shout. “Madison, I don’t finish my workout until eight.”

  “I said penned in, T. Rex. It can’t be changed.”

  She’d thought up a new name. God save him. “And it’s Miss Kermeth, not Kermit.”

  “Oh.” A pause. He was sure she was laughing. “She always answers to Kermit. Maybe you’re wrong.”

  “Madison—”

  “Gotta run,” she cut him off. “By the way, does the T stand for Tax Crusader?”

  She was forever trying to figure out his first name. He enjoyed the game too much to tell her. She sweet talked, he never relented. A subtle battle of the sexes.

  “And Harriet wants to see you.”

  Harriet Hartman. Damn, he’d forgotten. As hard as Harriet was to forget.

  “She’s mad.” Madison’s voice dropped. “As mad as the time I accidentally flushed her diamond ring down the toilet.”

  “That wasn’t an accident.”

  “I wanted her to see what a toad that guy was.”

  Harriet had. The hard way. When her fiancé demanded she reimburse him for the lost ring, he took her to small claims court because she refused.

  Sometimes Madison’s meddling took a circuitous route to eventually working out for the best. Harriet had finally recognized the man for the toad he was. Though in the ensuing three years she’d never had another fiancé, either, as far as Laurence knew.

  Laurence opened his office door just as Harriet beat on it with her fist. The blow landed on his chest, and damn if it didn’t almost knock him off his feet with its unexpectedness.

  She’d moved beyond Chicken Little and wore her Harriet the Harridan face. He was sure Madison hadn’t used that name within earshot. Then again, Madison hadn’t been the one to make it up.

  “I demand an apology.” Harriet stormed past him like a hurricane and threw herself into the chair opposite his desk. Anger rose off her shoulders like heat off summer concrete. Laurence closed the door.

  “What did I do?” he asked solicitously.

  “It’s not you.”

  Laurence half turned the black leather chair that matched his couch and sat beside her. “Then who?”

  “Zachary.” A bead of spittle spoiled her bottom lip.

  Harriet Hartman had blue eyes and an abundance of blond hair. At least she had until she’d dyed it a ghastly shade of red a few months ago. She also had a pretty face and quite an attractive smile. When she did smile. Which was rare.

  Unfortunately, in her own mind, Harriet had four strikes against her. She was a professional woman in a workplace dominated by men, she was five-foot-one, twenty pounds overweight, and she was three years past the age of thirty. Harriet hated being thirty-something and didn’t take her weight, her height, her age or her gender with cheer. She took it out on everyone, especially Zachary Zenker.

  Zach, on the other hand, had only one strike against him, if you didn’t count his initials, which Madison had transformed to ZZ Top. Zach was excessively shy. He was also tall, well over Laurence’s own six-foot-one, reasonably good-looking in an ordinary way and of moderately good build though on the thin side. He had all his brown hair, too, a fact Laurence had never held against him. He kept the length short, his shirts neatly pressed and all in all gave the impression of a good solid accountant. Even if he did stoop a bit to compensate for his height.

  Harriet despised Zach, for reasons Laurence had never understood and thus didn’t know how to combat.

  “What did Zach do this time?”

  “He said my dress was pretty.”

  Laurence couldn’t help it. He looked her up and down. The dress in question was neon pink and two inches too short for the workplace. Neon pink was probably not her best color.

  “Not this one.” Two dots of spittle now clung to Harriet’s lower lip.

  “Oh.” Laurence didn’t have an intelligent word to say.

  “It was yesterday.”

  For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what she’d been wearing the day before and therefore couldn’t reassure her. Morning sun slanted across a quarter of his office. Damn, it was getting hot in here, but he contained the desire to run his finger around the inside of his collar.

  “Hmm. Yes. Well.” Words this time, but certainly nothing intelligent. Finally, he managed to get to his point. “I’m not sure I see the problem with that. If I’m not mistaken, it sounds almost like…yes, I’m sure it sounds just like…a compliment.”

  Her lips pinched into a perfect round O which thinned her cheeks unflatteringly. Harriet was not a happy person, not now, and unfortunately, maybe not ever.

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  Laurence held out his hands. “No, no, no.” He searched for a way to handle this volatile situation.

  “Zachary was making fun of me. That’s why he did it. In front of Mike, Anthony and Bill.”

  Mike, Anthony and Bill. That explained everything. They didn’t like Harriet, and, Laurence suspected, made her life miserable on a job, despite the fact that she was the senior and they were only staff accountants. As Senior, Harriet had had the dubious honor of supervising them. A macho-thinking
bunch, they didn’t appreciate a woman being smarter than they were. And Harriet could be—what was the least derogatory word?—snippy if she caught the same mistake twice.

  “I’m sure Zach didn’t mean any harm.”

  “They snickered. All of them.”

  Why couldn’t he remember what she’d been wearing? He was sure there was a clue there.

  “I want an apology,” Harriet went on when Laurence failed to provide an immediate response. “It’s sexual harassment.”

  For Christ’s sake. “He said he liked your dress.”

  “He made a personal comment concerning my attire, and I was intimidated.”

  Harriet intimidated? By ZZ Top? “You’ve got to be joking.”

  Her eyes narrowed like the harridan she’d been nicknamed for. He’d said the wrong thing. He was a tax accountant. He knew numbers, rules and regulations. He hadn’t the faintest idea how to defuse the situation. However, he did know she’d judged Zach unfairly. If Mike, Anthony or Bill had said her dress was pretty, then yes, the so-called compliment might well have been demeaning. Zach Zenker was a completely different page in the ledger, and Laurence felt honor-bound to stick up for him. God knew Zach wouldn’t do it for himself.

  Laurence stood, then launched into his unrehearsed speech. “He said your dress was pretty, Harridan, I mean, Harriet.” Damn. Bad slipup, he knew by the flare of her nostrils, but he forged on stoically. “He didn’t ask you to go to bed with him. It was a compliment. You should thank Zach. You should be glad—” A little too much said. Christ, a lot too much said, nor did it come across in the benign way he’d meant it. He needed to be beaten upside the head.

  Harriet rose, the top of her hair reaching to the second button of his shirt, but the flames in her eyes leaped six inches above his head.

  His goose was cooked.

  Harriet the Militant Feminist stomped from his office.

  Laurence opened the door Harriet had just slammed, crooked his finger at Madison, then moved to sit behind his desk.