Drop Dead Gorgeous

by Jennifer Skully

  Hopefully no one else was wearing their glasses, either. The thought had never even crossed his mind. More aptly, his mind hadn’t been capable of thought. Now, he simply didn’t care.

  “We just broke your rule number five. No sex in the office.”

  Actually, it had been rule number one before she’d changed the order of things. “That wasn’t sex, Madison.”

  She waved a hand in the air, whether with agitation or carelessness, he couldn’t tell. “Right. I forgot. It’s not sex if there’s no genital to genital contact.”

  He winced. That was not what he’d meant.

  She inched closer, tipping her head to look down at him. “I’m not mad at you, T. Larry.”

  The words had been mad, but the tone something indefinable. “You should be. My carelessness is unforgivable.”

  She closed the remaining distance between them, until he could see her face clearly.

  “Well, I’m not mad or sorry.” Her eyes glowed that special brilliant emerald. “No one’s ever made me feel what you made me feel.”

  His right ventricle burst.

  “It was kind of scary. A good scary.” She bit her lip. “And I liked it. A lot. I liked especially that you didn’t make me do anything for it. Like it was a gift just for me.”

  His left ventricle went the way of the first, and he was surprised to find he still had a pulse beating at his temple. “Make you do what?”

  Her smile grew on the lopsided half. “You know…the same thing…” She spread her fingers. “Or something else.”

  He knew exactly. Her hands. Her mouth. Even the whole nine yards. He was still hard. She’d just made him harder.

  “I’d better unlock the door before anyone realizes it’s locked.” Then she leaned down, one knee on the sofa beside his leg, and kissed him with lips and tongue. “Thank you, T. Larry.”

  Jesus H. Christ.

  Heart thudding, he watched her sashay to the bathroom, gather her makeup and stuff it all in a miniscule case. When she left, she closed the door behind her. He stayed on the couch, not reaching for his glasses, not moving a muscle, just feeling, enjoying the weight in his groin and the lightness in his head.

  MADISON MADE the decision somewhere between the dazed look on T. Larry’s face and the door. She wasn’t a virgin, but she wasn’t loose, either. After what she’d let T. Larry do, she couldn’t, in all conscience, go off with Richard as if nothing had happened.

  She could have called him, but she wasn’t a Dear Richard kind of girl. She let a man down face-to-face. He deserved that, at least. She’d meet him tonight as she’d said, but she’d tell him before the surprise he’d promised her.

  She wasn’t dazed like T. Larry. In fact, she saw more clearly than she ever had.

  Jeremiah Carp commented on the smile she wore. “You look like a contented pussycat.”

  She surely did.

  Anthony and Mike for once not in tow, Bill offered to buy her a triple white chocolate mocha from the espresso bar in the building’s lobby. “You need something to slow you down.”

  Rhonda asked if she’d overdosed on happy pills.

  Overdosed? Oh no, she hadn’t gotten anywhere near enough of T. Larry. Waiting for the clock to hit five, she typed three memos, two lengthy letters, answered fifteen e-mails and watched T. Larry open his door twice. He looked at her, glasses now firmly set on his nose, shook his head, then went back inside.

  Madison smiled. T. Larry, her Frog Prince. She’d kissed him, and before her eyes, he’d changed into a prince. A perfect candidate for The One. He turned her insides squishy. He made her tingle. And she couldn’t forget the exploding stars.

  T. Larry was the best choice. He’d rebound nicely when it was all over—however it ended. He’d return to his Financial Plan and his Family Plan, create a Madison-is-gone Plan, and he’d be fine. What a load off her mind. She’d worried about the mental fortitude of her prince once she…passed on.

  Three…two…one. Five o’clock. T. Larry didn’t pop his head out to mentally punch her time clock the way he usually did. Still stunned, she assumed. Or he’d looked out his window and realized they’d been on display like Fourth of July fireworks.

  Actually, she’d been the one displayed. It had been worth every second. Not that she intended to keep exposing herself. There were T. Larry’s rules, after all. T. Rex. Mr. T. She smiled, gathered her purse, forewent the makeup check and stepped into the lobby five minutes later.

  She paused a moment to admire the view. Eager beaver Richard waited by the espresso bar, which was doing as brisk a business in the late afternoon as it did in the morning. Hand in his pocket, jacket pushed aside to reveal a crisp white shirt and fashionable suspenders, Richard nursed a coffee and surveyed the throng buzzing about the faux marble floor. His head slightly down, a lock of dark hair fell agreeably across his forehead.

  He watched shoes, women’s high-heeled shoes especially, his gaze following the wearer, ear tilted slightly to the tap-tap on the tile. When the door revolved them out, he found another. Watch-watch, tap-tap.

  He turned at the sound of her heels on marble and said her name before his eyes rose the length of her body to her face.

  “You’re early,” he said, face bland, eyes remote. Did he know what she was going to tell him? Then the look vanished, replaced with an expectant gleam. He switched his coffee from his left to his right and held out his hand. She took it, finding his skin still warm from the cup.

  “You had your hair done.”

  “Yes.” She didn’t ask if he liked it.

  He complimented her anyway. “It’s gorgeous.”

  “Thank you.” She was starting to feel lower than low.

  “Ready for your surprise?”

  Was he ready for hers? She didn’t know how to bring it up.

  Richard didn’t let go of her hand as he threw his coffee away and tucked her hand through his arm.

  “You didn’t have to toss it. I’d have waited for you to finish.”

  “I was done.”

  He’d been drinking a large, which meant he’d been waiting longer than five minutes. Her heart sank at his enthusiasm. He didn’t have any idea. She hated hurting people. She hated scenes. Maybe there was a little white lie she could tell that would save them both. She had pancreatic cancer with less than a month to live. Sort of close to the truth.

  No, she had to be honest. Well, honest while preserving his feelings as best she could.

  He dragged her into the revolving door. She stepped on his heel, tripped, but picked herself up before the door mowed her down. When they exited onto the sidewalk, her breath came in little pants.

  “You okay, Madison?”

  “I’m fine.” She put her sunglasses on against the glare of the overcast sky. Tell him. The right words just wouldn’t come. She opted for buttering him up first. “Richard, I really can’t let you go to such an expense like you did with your last wonderful surprise.”

  Her heels click-clacked as he pulled her along. “Is this some feminist thing?”

  “No.” It was the lower-than-dirt-because-I’m-dumping-you thing. “I like my doors opened for me. I like flowers on my desk. I like four-inch spiked pumps, too.” She paused for a breath and a reaction, then rushed on. “But sometimes I like to treat a man the way he deserves to be treated.”

  Richard stopped smack-dab in the middle of the sidewalk, grumpy businesspeople buffeting Madison from left to right. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

  About the shoes or the treat? Richard hadn’t specified. She patted his cheek. “You’re a nice man.”

  His face beamed. A golden flame danced in each of his beautiful browns. He squeezed her hand. And she couldn’t wait, not another minute. It was too cruel.

  “Richard, we have to talk.” She tugged him through the danger zone of rushing commuters into a sheltered doorway.

  A flicker of fear doused the flames in his eyes. “About what?”

  She clutched
his hand in hers. Be firm, be straight, be unequivocal. “I can’t see you anymore.”

  A taxi driver laid on his horn and shook his fist in the air, screaming obscenities no one bothered to listen to.

  Richard leaned closer. “What? I didn’t hear you.”

  She sucked in a breath carrying his very ordinary scent, which was nothing like T. Larry’s musky, heady, mesmerizing aroma. “I said I can’t see you anymore.”

  He stiffened, squeezed her fingers almost painfully and pinned his very puppylike eyes on her. “Why?”

  Time for the little white lie. She didn’t go for the cancer thing. “Remember when I called you Matthew on the phone.”

  “No.”

  Shoot. She’d been going for the least amount of explanation. “He was the guy I used to date?”

  His head tilted like that selfsame puppy. “Yeah?”

  “I realized I’m not over him.” She bit her lip and decided to lay it on a little thicker for the sake of Richard’s feelings. “If only I’d met you first…” She cut herself off almost wistfully. “But I didn’t.”

  He stared at her a moment, something brimming in the depths of his gaze. “It’s your boss, isn’t it?”

  Busted. “Of course not.”

  He dropped her hand to grip her shoulders. “I can take care of you better than he can. I know I can if you’ll let me.”

  “I don’t need to be taken care of, Richard.”

  “But I can be there for you, Madison, whenever you need me. I can massage your feet when you’re tired. I can cook for you. I’m a great cook, did I tell you that? I can clean house and I do yard work. I even retiled my own bathroom.”

  “I’m not looking for a maid or a handyman, Richard.”

  “Please.”

  She almost broke down, he looked so desperate, so lost.

  But T. Larry had touched her, and when he did, he seemed to touch far more than her body. She needed to know why, what it meant, what he meant. And how she felt about it. She sacrificed Richard to her need to know.

  “I can’t.”

  His fingers flexed, tightened, then he whispered, “Madison.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  His Adam’s apple shot up and down. His lips thinned to a white line, and his eyes glossed. Then he let go. The sound of street traffic, voices and the steady cascade of feet against concrete separated them. “If it doesn’t work out, call me.”

  “Thank you.” She wouldn’t. For a lot of reasons, the least of which was fairness.

  He took three steps back, pushing against the stream of passers-by. They flowed around him, grabbed him and dragged him away in their midst.

  Gee, that hadn’t felt good. In fact, it felt kind of crappy. Tears pricked her eyes. While she wouldn’t take back what she’d done, not any of it from the moment Richard called, she wished she could recall the hurt. She even wished she could erase that dazed look from T. Larry’s face.

  He would still be up there, still secreted in his office. She wanted to run back up there, tell him what she’d done and ask him to hold her.

  What kept her from doing it was the fear he’d tell her he’d changed his mind.

  This afternoon’s elation died a nasty death in the fading light. Harriet had ripped her to pieces with her knife-sharp words. While her own instrument of destruction had been blunt, Madison had nevertheless dealt Richard’s heart a blow. And T. Larry? He hadn’t popped his head out of his office to say good-night. It sounded silly to be bothered by the omission, but this was T. Larry, creature of habit. She knew, just knew, if she went to him now, he’d tell her he’d made a big mistake.

  She melted back into the tide of walking traffic, her heels tap-tap-tapping on the concrete as she returned to her car in the garage to head home.

  LAURENCE IMAGINED Madison down there on the street, one of the dots, scurrying to meet her Richard. He hadn’t asked her not to, after that first outburst which really didn’t count. She hadn’t offered not to, even the two times he’d opened his door and stood waiting for her to state her intentions.

  Dusk was falling, muted oranges and reds streaking across the sky above the building opposite. Lights now on in many of the offices clearly delineated tables, computers, chairs, people, even individual books on shelves, though certainly not their titles.

  He’d exposed Madison to that, prying eyes, a voyeuristic populace. True, he’d turned his lights off when he’d left for lunch, and Madison hadn’t turned them back on except in the bathroom where BeeBee had done her hair. Visibility in the other offices had grown exponentially only with the waning sun in the over three hours he’d been staring at them through his window.

  It didn’t matter. He’d lost control. He’d taken advantage of her. He hadn’t thought. He’d only wanted. That wasn’t like him.

  Until Madison.

  He was in over his head.

  He’d lost sight of the goal, couldn’t remember what it had been in the first place. He still trembled with the memory of her going off in his arms. More, he wanted more. Where would it end?

  She didn’t want love, she wanted fantasy. She didn’t want a man, she wanted an emotion, an illusion, a delusion. She thought of the moment, not the future. She was like a tornado he couldn’t avert. She’d pick him up in her whirlwind, toss him around, then spit him out like a broken bit of furniture.

  What he’d thought was a mere case of Secretary Lust was turning out to be life-threatening.

  Laurence had fallen in love.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  HARRIET SORTED her basket of laundry into two piles, one light, one dark. She’d survived another day in that hellhole. Harry Dump had called to say in his overexerted voice that he was enthusiastic about the results of the case. When she’d pressed him for those results, he’d tsk-tsked and said he wanted all his ducks in a row before he shot them.

  The muted scents of fresh detergent and dryer sheets tickled her nose. She usually did her laundry on Friday and Saturday nights when the machines were the least in demand. Still, it was Wednesday dinnertime for most, and she was quite happily alone in the laundry room. Pumping in quarters, she poured liquid soap, let the water run three inches deep, then loaded her whites.

  Harriet was proud of herself. She’d done her work. She’d taken the stares, the whispers and the muffled laughter with little more emotion than she would an IRS seminar on 1031 exchanges. She’d made herself a fluffy omelet with red peppers, diced tomato and spinach. She’d savored it, every bite, every swallow.

  Perhaps her mellow mood stemmed from her ability to make Madison cry. The girl had closeted herself in T. Larry’s office during lunch. When he’d arrived back, he’d sequestered himself in there with her. Hand raised ready to knock, Harriet was sure she heard Madison crying on the other side of the door.

  Harriet knew she shouldn’t feel happy about it. It was a low-down, dirty rotten thing to feel. She smiled to herself anyway as the bubbles in the washer rose to the top and she closed the lid, the swish-swish of the agitator soothing. Madison’s tears afforded her a small measure of vindication. The girl had given her an apology, Harriet had given her tears.

  Harriet didn’t like to give in easily. She was used to fighting. But maybe Madison’s misery could be enough to appease her. Maybe it was time to forgive and forget.

  Footsteps sounded on the linoleum along the hall outside. Quiet time was over. Putting the pile of darks in her basket, she hefted it to her hip.

  Zachary appeared in the door as if her thoughts had conjured him. His appearance wasn’t unexpected. T. Larry was bound to send him on another mission. “Harriet, we’re going to talk whether you like it or not.”

  Such a commanding tone. His suit jacket lay open, the knot of his tie loosened. Her pulse tripped over itself. “How did you know I was down here?”

  “Your neighbor came out when I was banging on your door.”

  Mrs. Murphy had smiled at her in the hall on her way down. “You’ll get me evicted if you keep botheri
ng me like this.”

  But he was here, for the third time in less than a week, with or without T. Larry’s intervention. That fact sang through her heart. Madison. And now this.

  “Hear me out. Then I’ll go away.”

  She didn’t like that, the going away part. For a moment, she’d hoped…but he was simply here for another bribe or a threat. “Tell it to my lawyer.”

  She tried to push past. He blocked her. “I’ll say it to you.”

  She dropped her basket and childishly stuck her fingers in her ears.

  “Stop it.”

  She started humming. His mouth moved. She missed the words. Then he shouted. Switching to a cadence of la-la-la, she closed her eyes. Then, in her chest, she felt the slam of the door. His hands clapped over hers and pulled them from her ears.

  “Damn, Harriet, I’m tired of this. You will listen to me.”

  The domination in his voice sent a thrill through her. “Nothing you say will change a thing.” Unless it was what she wanted him to say.

  “I didn’t tell anyone about what happened that night because it was too special to let them—”

  She cut him off, couldn’t bear to hear him say what he’d been afraid of, easier to say it all herself. “To what? To let them make fun of you? You could have just told them to go fuck themselves. Or maybe it was just me you fucked.”

  He shook her by the shoulders. “I did not fuck you.”

  She wanted to curl up in the corner and die, wished to God she’d never brought the damn suit because she couldn’t go through this again. Her mouth wouldn’t shut up. “Then what did you do?”

  “I made love to you.”

  She rolled her eyes, part sarcasm, part desperate attempt to stem the tears. “Oh right, that’s why you never asked me out, why you didn’t tell anyone, and why you didn’t try to do it again. Because we made love.” She twisted the words with her voice.

  “I tried, Harriet. I took you out to lunch, I—”

  “Those were work lunches, not dates.”

  “I asked you to the Christmas party.”