Drop Dead Gorgeous

by Jennifer Skully

  “God, Madison Avenue. Jesus.” The words nothing more than a groan on his exhale.

  She put her hands to his cheeks. “What did you call me?”

  “I…” Eyes the color of smoke, he stared as if for a moment he couldn’t remember who she was, who he was.

  “You called me Madison Avenue. You gave me a nickname.”

  Jumbled words croaked from his lips. He swallowed, then tried again. “I did?” He blinked, a little of the muddle fading. “I mean, yes, I did.”

  “Oh, T. Larry. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.” It meant he wasn’t immune. It meant he didn’t think yesterday was a mistake after all. She kissed him full on the lips, leaving behind a red smear, then climbed off his lap.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To my desk. If I stay on your lap, we’re definitely going to violate rule number five all the way.”

  He spluttered.

  “Besides, I didn’t bring any protection.”

  He choked and turned an apoplectic shade.

  She peeked in the bathroom, rolled her lips to smooth her lipstick. “You better wipe my lipstick off your mouth before anyone sees it.” She blew him a kiss. “And if you want, you can drive me home tonight and we can discuss it some more.”

  LAURENCE’S MOUTH still hung open two minutes after she’d closed the door. Maybe it was longer, maybe less, he couldn’t think enough to be sure.

  She was forward. She was outrageous. Those characteristics had never bothered him. He’d never been her victim before.

  There was no way on God’s green earth he was driving Madison Avenue home. Why had he called her that anyway? Because he’d been dreaming about her last night, and he’d called her quite a few things, Madison Avenue being only one of them.

  His intercom chirped.

  “Did you take care of that…problem yet?”

  Her voice managed to scramble his brains again. “What?”

  “My lipstick on your dipstick. I mean, mouth.”

  Ah God, that image. He scrubbed at his lips. “Why?”

  “Harry Dump’s here to see you.”

  “Christ. Why didn’t you tell me we had an appointment?”

  “You didn’t. He just showed up.”

  Not now. His mind was not in functioning order. “Then tell him I’m not here.”

  “T. Larry, you better see him.” He didn’t like the sound of her voice. She lowered it to a whisper. “He’s not alone.”

  “Who’s with him?”

  She didn’t answer for at least ten seconds. “Mr. Dilly-Dally.”

  Laurence sighed. Did the timing really matter? He’d have to face Dump at some point. What was Zach doing with that Appeasing Harriet Plan? And why the hell wasn’t Laurence himself putting this problem down as his number one priority instead of getting up Madison’s skirt?

  Who the hell was Dilly-Dally anyway?

  “Give me five minutes.” He rolled from his chair like a man twice his age and dragged himself into the bathroom.

  Madison was all over him, from the red lipstick on his mouth, to the sexual flush on the top of his head, down to the noticeable bulge in his trousers. She’d been right about one thing; if she hadn’t climbed from his lap when she did, he’d have abandoned every rule in the management handbook.

  Laurence wiped her off as best he could, but her flowery scent clung to his clothes.

  He opened his office door.

  Mr. Dilly-Dally was as tall as Harry Dump was short and as thin as the lawyer was wide. The cut and quality of his pin-striped suit was far above that of Harry’s. A diamond pinkie ring in the shape of a horseshoe winked on his finger. His cologne reeked of an expensive department store. Harry was drugstore bought and paid for from the cardboard belt to the two-dollar spice of his aftershave. So what were two such disparate characters doing in his office?

  Harry Dump’s hand, when Laurence shook it, left his palm coated with a slime of perspiration.

  “Mr. Dilly-Dally.”

  In sharp contrast, the other man’s grip was dry and cool, his voice cultured, a hint of Brit. “It’s William Daily, sir.” Looking down his long angular nose, he perused his palm, then wiped his hands together as if to erase the bit of Harry’s DNA that had transferred in Laurence’s handshake.

  “Please excuse the mistake. Madison’s hard of hearing.”

  “Perhaps that would explain it.” A hint of distaste still populated his tone.

  “Won’t you both sit down?” He started to raise his hand to the two chairs opposite his desk, then remembered Harry’s bulk and pointed to the couch instead.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Harry perspired his way to the sofa, and sank down, with slow side-to-side movements, into the corner.

  The same corner seat where Laurence had held Madison just yesterday. Harry Dump, through no fault of his own, defiled it.

  Laurence had done all the defiling himself, to his everlasting shame.

  Daily took the matching chair, forcing Laurence to sit on the couch at the opposite end to Harry. Neither carried a briefcase, standard lawyer garb. Harry’s eyes danced. Around his chin, the flesh bubbled with excitement.

  Laurence had a very bad feeling, and it wasn’t indigestion. “What can I do for you, gentlemen?”

  Daily, after hiking his pants and crossing his legs at the knees, let Harry do the talking.

  “We’ve come to suggest a settlement.”

  Laurence stretched his arm along the back of the sofa to appear relaxed, cool and calm. “Then you should have made an appointment so that my lawyer could attend.”

  “Oh, I don’t think we need your lawyer for this, Larry.”

  “The name is Laurence, and I don’t make deals without my legal advisors.”

  Harry’s lips twitched. “Perhaps you’ll want to think about making this one after you hear what Mr. Daily has to say.” He extended a plump hand to the other man.

  Daily retrieved a small notebook and a pair of gold reading glasses from his expensively tailored suit pocket. He made a production of perching the glasses on the tip of his nose, opening the notebook and finding just the right page.

  “At approximately two o’clock yesterday afternoon, as I was eating my cheese and tomato sandwich—” he raised his eyes to meet Laurence’s “—thin-sliced wheat bread, of course—” then lowered his gaze once more to the page “—I happened to glance out my window on the twenty-second floor to the neighboring building.”

  The feeling that suddenly gripped Laurence certainly wasn’t indigestion. A mixture of fear, anger and disbelief overcame him, a need to do violence to someone, anyone, yet a strange immobilization of his muscles. As if his body hoped and prayed his ears wouldn’t hear what his mind knew was coming.

  “I observed a couple rather flagrantly displayed on a black leather chesterfield—” he glanced at the sofa beneath Laurence’s buttocks “—quite similar to this one, I believe.” His mustached lip twitched like a mouse’s whiskers. “It appeared to me they were involved in some sort of sexual congress as the man’s hand was up the young lady’s—”

  “That’s enough.” Laurence stood. How the hell had the man seen? The angle of the sun had been all wrong, the—did it matter? The real question was how the hell he and Harry Dump had found each other in less than twenty-four hours. “What is it you want, Dump?”

  “It’s Doomp.”

  Laurence leveled him with a malevolent gaze. “I repeat, what do you want?”

  “Five hundred thousand dollars in settlement of Miss Hartman’s suit—”

  “Of which you get two-thirds.”

  “One-third.” Harry struggled forward until his feet firmly found the floor. “It will cost you far more in legal fees and embarrassment, not to mention the…uh…young lady involved.”

  Monday, he’d liked the man and admired his empathy for Harriet. Today, he’d have gladly wrung the wretch’s neck.

  “Get out of my office.”

  “We can pinpoint the e
xact location of the activity described, and after meeting your secretary, Mr. Daily is prepared to testify as to the identity of the female participant.”

  Laurence battled the urge to throttle the man. His chest tightened, the air he dragged in unsatisfactory.

  “I know it’ll take time to get the money.” Harry struggled to his feet, the top of his comb-over not reaching farther than Laurence’s biceps. “I’ll give you seventy-two hours.”

  “I suggest that if you don’t want the police breathing down your neck for blackmail, you both get out of my office now.”

  “Seventy-two hours or Mr. Daily gives me a deposition attesting to everything he saw going on,” he said, patting the leather, “on this cushy little piece of office furniture.”

  Laurence bared his teeth. “Get. Out.”

  “Seventy-two hours, Larry.” Harry waddled to the door, Daily gliding on his heels. “We’ll show ourselves out.”

  Laurence congratulated himself on his ability to close the door gently behind them. He was not a violent man, but he wanted to slam his fist through something, most especially Harry Dump’s head. He wasn’t a sex-in-the-office type. Madison drove him to things he’d never contemplated.

  Christ. Admit it, Laurence, you lost control and inflicted irreversible damage. Nothing had been Madison’s fault.

  He recognized her tentative knock. “Come in.”

  “What did they want?”

  He couldn’t trust himself to speak. The veins at his temples throbbed, and his face burned with a rush of blood to the surface of his skin. His eyes bathed the office in angry shades of red. It picked up the fire and gold in her hair.

  She put out a hand, but at whatever she saw in his eyes, stopped just short of touching. “T. Larry, you look like my father did the day he had his stroke.”

  “You weren’t more than a few weeks old when he died.”

  “It’s some sort of universal knowledge I share with my brothers and mother.”

  He couldn’t deal with her craziness, not now, not when he had to figure out how to protect her from his incredibly stupid folly. “Get Harriet.”

  She opened her mouth to ask yet another inane question.

  “Now, Madison!”

  She rushed to do his bidding as if he’d lit a fire under her bottom.

  What had he brought down on their heads? What had he been doing for the entire last week? Where was his usual command of the situation, all his plans?

  Standing in the doorway, Harriet looked like hell. Laurence motioned her to a seat, closed the door and sat facing her across the wide expanse of his desk.

  Harriet, except for the shade of her dyed hair, had always taken care with her appearance. Today her hair hung in strings. The makeup smudged beneath her eyes looked suspiciously like yesterday’s application.

  Laurence couldn’t afford to feel sorry for her, baby her or wait her out. “Call off your lawyer, Harriet.”

  He knew it was the inflammatory thing to say, had when he’d planned his speech in the spare moments it took Madison to get Harriet into his office. Harriet wanted Mr. Nice Guy. Laurence was done playing the game her way.

  She pulled at her knee-length skirt, which at least conformed to the new company standard, and her narrowed eyes took on that Harriet the Harridan glare. “I have every right to—”

  “You will not disrupt this company with your romantic problems. If you want Zach, fight for him. Lie, cheat, make him jealous, anything, I don’t care. But don’t involve this firm.” Laurence realized he could take some of his own advice. “You’ll never recover from this debacle. It will follow you to every job you take. If you can get a job. Accounting is a small world.”

  “Are you threatening to sabotage my career?”

  “You’ve already done that yourself, Harriet.” He leaned forward, his arms on his desk. “But it’s not public yet. You can still save yourself.”

  “I think you want me to save you.”

  He wanted to save Madison. And he did not have five hundred thousand dollars to pay off Dump and Dilly-Dally. “Save us both. Talk to Zach the way you should have eight months ago. Air your problems with him, but take it outside company time and property, the way you should have in the first place.”

  “My problem is with you, not Zachary.”

  “Then find another job.”

  “You are threatening me.”

  “I’m suggesting a more palatable method of dealing with it than destroying this company with a frivolous lawsuit.”

  She smiled then, a cunning, mean smile. “So, I am having the desired effect.”

  There was no sense in denying his total failure. “You are. And you might revel in it now, but two, five, nine months from now you’re going to wish to God you’d made a different choice.” Laurence was wishing he had, too, like taking Madison home and spending days with her in his bed rather than expose her, literally, to the world. “What is it you really want, Harriet? Money? An apology?”

  “I don’t want anything from you.”

  “You do, Harriet. Or you wouldn’t bring this suit.” He sat back, folding his hands over his stomach. “Tell me what you want.”

  Her chin went up defiantly, her trembling lip mitigating the effect, until she spoke. “I want you to fire Madison.”

  Fire Madison? He couldn’t imagine Carp, Alta and Hobbs without her. Why, there’d be nothing to look forward to, no reason to hurry in every day, no reason to come in at all. No Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in a drawer, no special coffee brewing, no hair bleach in his bathroom, no appointments out of place, no impediments to his plans, no candy necklaces, no flirting, no teasing. No joy.

  “I’ll drop the suit if you get rid of her,” Harriet repeated.

  And maybe no choice if he wanted to protect Madison from the consequences of his reprehensible action yesterday afternoon.

  He punched the intercom button. “Madison, come in here.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “PLEASE SHUT THE DOOR and have a seat, Madison.”

  T. Larry kept his eyes on hers. Not on her breasts or her lips, not even her hair. He’d erased all emotion from his features, muting even the expression in his gaze.

  Harriet stared at her hands.

  Madison began to get worried.

  T. Larry cleared his throat. “Harriet says she’ll drop the suit if I fire you.”

  Her heart skipped her stomach and plunged right down to her toes. She loved Carp, Alta and Hobbs. She loved the people she worked with. She loved her job. She loved T. Larry.

  Some of her shock must have shown on her face. T. Larry looked to the corner of the ceiling, then back at her. “I won’t do it unless you agree.”

  “Agree to be fired?” Somehow that seemed an oxymoron.

  “Agree to pack your things and go.” How could he say that with so little emotion? “Of course, I’ll give you severance pay and a reference.”

  Harriet shifted in her seat, the leather chair creaking. Her fingers plucked at cat hairs on her dress.

  “I have a lint roller at my desk you can get that stuff off with,” Madison offered.

  Harriet’s fingers stilled, but her gaze didn’t rise. “I’ve got one, thank you.”

  The room fell silent. T. Larry leaned his elbows on his desk, steepled his fingers and rested his chin on the top. Harriet fidgeted, swinging her legs an inch short of the carpet, chewing the inside of her cheek.

  They were like schoolgirls sitting in front of the headmaster. Backlit by the windows, T. Larry’s bald head gleamed, his gaze now focused on Harriet. The tick of the clock on the wall exploded in the silence. Traffic commotion slipped through the double-pane windows. Madison had never realized you could hear it. The sound of the phones ringing, the chunking of the copier and voices drifted beneath T. Larry’s closed door.

  Had anyone heard her cries yesterday afternoon? No, T. Larry’s mouth had taken care of them.

  Give up Carp, Alta and Hobbs? Could she? What about T. Larry? Her leaving di
dn’t mean she wouldn’t have a chance to fall in love with him. T. Larry always had another plan. She was only sorry she wouldn’t be there to protect Harriet from Bill, Anthony and Mike. But, if she’d done a proper job of that in the first place, none of this would have happened. She should have dumped Bill’s coffee on him years ago.

  “For the sake of the company…” And for T. Larry. Especially T. Larry. “I’ll do it.”

  Harriet gasped, abandoned her perusal of her hands and stared at Madison. T. Larry’s eyes clouded, his jaw clenched, then he closed his lids for the briefest of moments.

  “Will three months severance do?”

  “Three months?” Her birthday was a little over a week away. She didn’t have three months. She wouldn’t need to find a job or make new friends. But T. Larry had a plan gleaming behind his glasses, and she’d play along in any way he wanted. “Do you think it’ll take me that long to find a job?”

  He glanced at Harriet, the smoke in his eyes now a true flame. “I’m sure you’ll have one by tomorrow. But you’ll still get three months severance.”

  “Wow.” Except for Harriet, she would have asked him if they were still on for their date on Friday. He couldn’t have a single objection now. He wasn’t her boss anymore. She rose. “Okay, well, I guess I’ll pack up my stuff.” Her plants, her photos, her cards, her daily calendar with the cats on it. “Do you want me to leave the Reese’s cups?”

  “Yes.” No inflection and no play of muscle around his mouth. Maybe he was seeing all the possibilities, too.

  She got halfway to the door. “Do I get a going-away cake and a lunch?” She glanced at her watch. “It’s too late for today, but I can drive in tomorrow.”

  T. Larry stared hard at Harriet, but all Madison could see was the back of her bent head. “Tomorrow’ll be fine Madison. Where do you want to go?”

  “How about…” She tapped her finger on her lips.

  Harriet jumped up before Madison could think of the best place in all of San Francisco for her going-away lunch.

  Her gaze darted between the two of them. “I’ve changed my mind. Just forget it, okay? I—” Harriet put her hand to her mouth, edged toward the door, then suddenly turned and fled.