Drop Dead Gorgeous

by Jennifer Skully

  Laurence suddenly liked him, and his respect jumped a notch.

  That didn’t mean the case had any real validity. Harriet had chosen to wear the “garb” despite knowing the reaction she might garner. It certainly wasn’t Madison’s fault or Madison’s doing.

  “And Zach? What is her complaint against him?” The latest dress comment, of course. Laurence wanted to hear Harriet’s version expounded upon in Harry’s words.

  “Ms. Hartman states that due to your lack of understanding concerning the hostile work environment, she was unable to get reparation through you after she was accosted by Mr. Zenker.”

  “Accosted?” he parroted, not quite sure how Harriet could skew complimenting into accosting.

  “The night of last October fourteenth, while working excessively late, Mr. Zenker coerced Ms. Hartman into having sex on the table in Conference Room B.” Pause, smile. “Which, I believe, is two doors down from your office.”

  ZZ Top? On top of Harriet the Harridan? In his conference room?

  Absurdly, his next thought was of Madison perched on the conference table, index finger beckoning him closer as he locked the door.

  What was happening to his heretofore normal, hardworking flock? What was happening to him?

  God Almighty. Were salacious fantasies and scandalous behavior contagious?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SOMETHING WAS VERY WRONG, Madison thought. T. Larry didn’t smile as he escorted Harry Dump out of the suite. He didn’t smile when he came back, either. Passing his own open office, he stopped two doors down at Conference Room B. There wasn’t an accompanying Conference Room A. Jeremiah Carp had converted it into his own office two years ago.

  Madison, following close on T. Larry’s heels, almost rear-ended his back when he stopped just inside the door.

  All talk ceased in the surrounding cubicles, the incessant click of computer keys hushed. Pens and mechanical pencils snapped down onto desks. A phone rang, followed by a slam of the receiver to shut it up.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  T. Larry stared at the twelve-man oak table, then shook it. Solid as a rock, it didn’t move. It didn’t even shudder. He rubbed his forehead, then his hand slid down to cover his eyes.

  “Are you all right?” He’d given himself a concussion from all that head banging, she was sure.

  With a deep breath and a long exhale, he turned. His eyes, almost blue like a sunset sky, moved from her lips to her breasts to her shoes. If it was anyone else, she’d have said sexual thoughts paraded through his mind.

  This was T. Larry. Though he’d kissed her thoroughly, T. Larry just wouldn’t have sexual thoughts about her. He couldn’t. He was her boss.

  What about how he’d felt against her? The physical evidence?

  Madison lobbed that thought aside and had the good sense to move out of the way as T. Larry headed back out the door and down to his own office. She made it in before he slammed the door in her face.

  “What did Mr. Dump want?”

  One hand stroking his chin, T. Larry ignored her question. “How long have you worked for me?”

  Maybe he was having a midlife crisis. He was a little young, but…“Seven years.”

  “How often have you worked late in all those seven years?”

  “Umm…there was that time…but no, I still got out by five.” She chewed her lip. “Oh, I know…but no, I had to catch the train so I couldn’t stay.”

  Another of his deep belly breaths, a long exhale, then his glance flashed down her body. “You need to do more overtime.”

  “Harriet’s suing you over my not doing equal overtime?”

  “No.” That’s all he said. He didn’t deny that there was a suit, but he offered no explanation.

  Poor T. Larry. She stepped forward and, without thought, put a hand to his forehead. Her palm cool, his skin hot. Heat radiated off his body. “Are you sick or something, T. Larry?”

  “Or something.” He looked at her with that steely gaze. She’d never quite noticed how expressive his eye color was—maybe it was the glasses. He regarded her with a definitely stormy gaze. She dropped her hand and half stepped back.

  His eyes shot to something way over her head. “I’m going to work out.”

  “But it’s—” she glanced at her watch “—two o’clock. You never work out in the afternoon.”

  Something was terribly wrong. She had no idea how to help.

  He countered her half step with a full one of his own. He felt tall. She’d never quite noticed that, either, how tall he was, how imposing, how broad.

  “Someone made me miss my morning workout.”

  A queer sensation filled the bottom of her tummy, and warmth streaked to her fingers and toes. She backed up, then backed up again. “You’ve still never made up for it in the afternoon.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Ah, Madison. I have a lot to make up for. And starting this afternoon would be just fine.”

  He advanced. Her back hit the door. Heat was everywhere, her cheeks, her ears and parts unmentionable in front of T. Larry, even in thought.

  “Okay. I’ll tell anyone who asks that you’re working out.”

  He reached out, fingers flexing, closing on the doorknob just to the right of her hip. Blue flecked his gray eyes like the hottest part of a flame. He smelled like man, a hint of cologne, but something more, something that turned her knees to rubber.

  She sucked in a breath.

  Then he backed off, just like that, heading toward his workout bag down by the side of his leather sofa. She couldn’t be sure he’d been that close at all. Except for his oddly enticing scent still lingering in her head.

  “It’s two. Find Zach and tell him to meet me in the steam room at three.”

  “You want to see him in the steam room?”

  His lips flattened. “Most important business is conducted in the steam room,” he said as if she didn’t get it. “Then set up an appointment with Jeremiah and Ryman at four-thirty. Tell them I’ll brief them, and that there’s no problem I can’t handle. After that, call a company meeting for eleven tomorrow in Conference Room B. Mandatory. Even if they have to drive in from a client. I have a memo to distribute. New workplace rules. I’ll write the text tonight. You can type it up in the morning.”

  Now this was the T. Larry she knew, with the added bonus that she’d finally gotten him to break out of a routine by doing his workout in the afternoon. Which was kind of a contrary thought, but…Punching a fist in the air, she cheered him on. “Go T. Rex.”

  Then she opened the door for him.

  “Tomorrow we’ll talk about your overtime. Plan on staying late some evenings. Very late.”

  Hmm, he still needed her help with this whole Harriet thing. She just had to figure out a way to fix it. It didn’t, however, seem that overtime was the answer.

  OVERTIME. YES. On that big table in Conference Room B. Laurence would start with her bared throat above that lacy black vest. She’d forget all about Dick with his perfect hair.

  Steam hot enough to sear his lungs pumped into the small room. Sweat covered the top of his head and dripped down his face. His muscles ached with the aggressiveness of his workout. With the faint scent of eucalyptus in his nostrils, Laurence should have felt relaxed and pleasantly exhausted. Close to physical nirvana. Instead, the small white towel failed to hide the erection he hadn’t managed to get rid of.

  He should have locked himself in his office with her when the urge gripped him.

  Christ. He was losing control of himself. He’d long since lost control of his staff. He was being sued. He’d probably be excommunicated from the company when Jeremiah and Ryman found out. Harry Dump had the temerity to ask him if he needed any legal work done. He might even be forced to fire Zach, who had the makings of a damn fine accountant. And, he’d succumbed to Secretary Lust, the dread disease he’d hitherto managed to avoid. Right now, Laurence should have been worrying about the deterioration of his Financial Plan, which t
hen put his Family Plan in jeopardy. The specter of failure loomed on the horizon. He should plan damage control. He should apologize to Madison for his disrespectful thoughts.

  Instead he imagined her on the sturdy table in Conference Room B.

  That’s what worried him the most. He wasn’t a sex-in-the-office man. Especially not when the ceiling-high twenty-second-floor windows faced other twenty-second-floor windows. And never with an employee. He maintained a professional demeanor. He liked sex simple and quick, no hot sweaty bodies, no muss, no fuss. In and out, so to speak, fresh sheets, a comfortable mattress.

  He had the terrible notion making love to Madison would be very messy. The idea raised the tented towel another notch.

  The door opened with a rush of escaping steam just as Laurence was enjoying the memory of her strawberry taste.

  Zachary Zenker, a towel held snug around his narrow hips, stood in the open doorway.

  “Don’t let all the steam out.” At least the vapor might hide the embarrassing fact that Laurence was stiff as a post. Not that Zach was likely to look. The Steam Room Code imitated the Men’s Room Code. Gaze on the wall or eye level at all times except when zipping, and then you only looked at your own zipper.

  The boy was thin, his muscles unworked and his flesh overly white, not a hint of tan, as if he spent too many hours over a ledger. Actually not a boy, Zach was over thirty, but his very paleness, his shyness, made him seem a boy to Laurence. Which made it harder to understand why he’d turned to Harriet, of all people. What had possessed the boy?

  Zach sat on the bench three feet from Laurence.

  Laurence closed his eyes again. “I suppose you think my invitation is a bit unusual.” More than an invitation, it had been an edict.

  “Yes, sir.”

  He used to be Laurence, or T. Larry when Zach sometimes forgot. Now he was a sir. Someone had warned the boy. “Harriet’s hired a lawyer. She’s suing us for sexual harassment.”

  “I apologized for the dress comment, like you told me, sir.”

  “It isn’t the dress comment, Zach. It’s what happened when you were working on the AMI account back in October.” Laurence had pulled both their files to check the reported goings-on for the night in question.

  He opened one eye to see what little color Zach did own drain from his face. “The AMI account?” The boy’s voice cracked.

  Laurence settled himself again, clasping his hands over his stomach. The steam room had been a perfect idea. The eucalyptus vapors were doing the trick, filling him with an agreeable lassitude. Even on the lower half of his body.

  “Don’t stall, Zach. You know what we’re talking about.”

  Zach cleared his throat, but words failed him.

  “You had sex with Harriet in the office.” Laurence’s mouth tightened as he fought an unbidden image of Madison.

  “Sir, I didn’t—”

  “Harriet says you did.” He paused for dramatic effect. “I believe her.”

  Something changed in the boy’s voice. An infinitesimal amount of backbone crept in. “I wasn’t going to deny it, sir. I was going to say that I didn’t mean for it to happen. At least, not where it did.”

  “Did you do the deed during work hours?”

  “It was after everyone left. It just sort of happened.”

  “Did you bill the client for the time?”

  Zach hesitated.

  “Don’t make me check the billing hours to verify.”

  “No. We finished the return at ten. It was after that.”

  “Thank God you didn’t do it at a client’s.” Laurence leaned forward and cracked one eye open again. “Have you done it again?” He held his hand up when Zach wanted to jump. “I mean have you done it at the office or during work hours? The rest is your business.”

  “No, sir, we haven’t.”

  “Was it consensual?”

  “Yes, sir, I believed it was. I still do.”

  “She said you coerced her.”

  “Harriet’s angry.”

  Laurence raised a brow.

  “I…we…we haven’t discussed it again, and…”

  Laurence filled in the rest. “You ignored her.”

  Zach hung his head, nodding slightly.

  That explained it. Harriet’s anger was understandable. A man couldn’t play with a coworker’s feelings for one night, then walk away. Harriet was sensitive. Women were sensitive. Which was why Laurence needed to be careful with Madison’s feelings in carrying out his own plans to save her from Dick.

  Still, one thing wasn’t clear. “Why is Harriet suing eight months later?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Laurence gave Zach the eye again.

  “I really don’t know what happened to make her so upset right now. I complimented her dress, and she went postal.”

  The steam valve shut off. Laurence reached down to turn it back on. Deep breath again. Ah, calming eucalyptus.

  “She’s suing, Zach, claiming that you coerced her and that I didn’t provide an adequate environment to stop it or a shoulder for her to cry on. What are we going to do about it?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “That’s one too many I-don’t-knows.”

  “I tried to talk to her, but she just got more angry.”

  “Why is she so angry?” Laurence had already drawn his obvious conclusion, but he wanted to hear it from Zach. “And ‘I don’t know’ isn’t going to cut it.”

  Zach took so long answering that another thought surfaced in Laurence’s Madison-drugged mind. Harriet was angry, Harriet was suing, Madison’s tires had been slashed. His blood chilled. He admired Harriet for a variety of reasons. Though he couldn’t go so far as to say he liked her, he’d never considered her capable of something so vicious. He couldn’t believe it of her now. Shades of Madison, with her blinders on. Yet even Madison had said she didn’t want to cause trouble for Harriet, so obviously the ugly possibility had crossed her mind. If there was the slightest chance she was a physical threat to Madison, he’d watch Harriet as he watched the bottom line, focused, no-nonsense. For now, he had to solve the Harriet-Zach problem.

  So, Laurence pushed. “I’m waiting, Zach.”

  “I think she expected something more.”

  Laurence slapped his hand to his forehead. “My God. Do you really think so?”

  The corner of Zach’s mouth lifted. “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “You don’t have relations once with a coworker, then run and hide, Zach.”

  “No, sir, I didn’t want it to be just once.”

  Laurence opened his mouth to speak.

  “Don’t knock her.” Aggression entered Zach’s tone before he added another Sir. “That’s how all this trouble started.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of disparaging her.”

  “She’s a very generous and caring person,” Zach went on.

  Laurence wondered if the boy had moved from healthy respect and desire into delusion, but quashed the uncharitable thought. “Then where did everything go wrong?”

  “I didn’t want to be part of the office gossip mill, but I don’t think Harriet wanted to keep it a secret.”

  They hadn’t actually talked about it, Laurence surmised. Another part of the problem. “You were embarrassed?”

  Zach shook his head vehemently. “No, no, that wasn’t it.”

  Laurence sighed. “Then what kept you silent?”

  “All right. That was part of it. The guys would have made my life miserable. You know how they are.”

  Laurence knew. Did “the guys” look at Madison’s legs, eye her breasts and drool over her pretty little derriere when Laurence wasn’t watching them? He’d damn well put a stop to it.

  Perhaps a dress code change was needed. Harriet had specifically cited Madison’s attire, which translated to short skirts and tight sweaters. A change of dress code would bring office harmony.

  Yet a policy change would require Madison to purchase an entire wardrobe. That would
constitute a hardship. He couldn’t, in good conscience, tell Madison what she could or couldn’t wear. Even if his career went down in flames.

  Which it most certainly would now that he’d contracted Secretary Lust.

  And that was the gist of his quandary. Secretary Lust. His own predilection was the basis for not instituting an office apparel policy. He wanted Madison in short skirts and tight sweaters, but his desire to see her in them was demeaning to her as well as Harriet. He admitted to himself that he was the worst of a bad lot.

  Madison’s attire in the workplace had to change. He’d have to add “garb” to the memo he planned to write tonight concerning office conduct.

  That difficult decision made, Laurence turned back to Zach’s problem with Harriet. “Do you want a relationship with her?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that for eight months, and I’m still not sure.” Zach chewed on the inside of his lip. “She’s a lot of work.”

  “But do you care about her?”

  “I guess I do. I can’t seem to get her out of my mind.”

  “If you feel that way about her, you’ll just have to be a man, Zach, and take the heat from the guys.”

  Zach nodded. “But I’ve screwed up things so badly now, I don’t think there’s any hope.”

  Laurence smiled the smile of experience. “Let me tell you what you’re going to do to fix this mess.”

  “WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME you tried on my wedding dress?”

  Madison rolled her eyes, glad her mother, being on the other end of the phone, couldn’t see.

  “When I get married, Ma—” which would be never, though she avoided saying anything like that flat out to her mother who frowned on Madison’s self-diagnosis of her condition “—I want to pick out my own wedding dress.” Sentimentality was great, but Madison’s mother got married in the late sixties, and the dress she’d worn looked as if it would go with one of Jackie Kennedy’s pillbox hats.

  T. Larry had closeted himself with Jeremiah and Alta. He had to get out of there before five. He just had to. Because she had to know how things went with Zach. She’d chewed the lipstick from her lips and bitten her nails to the quick, or would have, if her manicure hadn’t cost so much.