T. Larry remained motionless and emotionless behind his desk.
“Does this mean I’m not fired?”
“I think it does.”
Madison puffed out a breath of air. “Well, that’s good.”
“I agree. Breaking in a secretary is an overwhelming task.”
“Yeah, it sucks.” She furrowed her brow. “Would you really have let me go, T. Larry?”
“If I thought it was best for you.”
Which didn’t answer the question, but he was playing Mr. Enigmatic, and she was sure she wouldn’t get another answer out of him. “You were bluffing, weren’t you?”
He rubbed the top of his head, saying nothing.
“Does this mean she’s dropping her suit?”
His mouth lifted slightly in one corner. “I guess we’ll have to wait and find out.”
“I guess we will.” She turned to him with the brightest smile she could fit on her face. “Can I still have a cake and lunch anyway? We can say it’s my welcome-back lunch since I was fired for at least five minutes.”
HALLELUJAH, she was staying.
Laurence basked in the afterglow of Madison’s lopsided smile as she exited his office. He hadn’t been bluffing, Harriet had. What made her back down? Madison’s ready acceptance? Guilt? He didn’t care. He’d wanted only one outcome.
The scene would play across Harriet’s mind over and over again until she did indeed call off Harry Dump. And in turn, Harry would call off William Dilly-Dally.
This nonsense with Madison, however, would have to stop. For her own protection. A boss had no right crossing that line with his employee. She would henceforth be off-limits, even in his fantasies.
He could do it.
After all, back in college, he’d once gone without making a plan for an entire six weeks because his girlfriend, Constance, told him he was inflexible. Six weeks, cold turkey. Until he realized the folly of it, sent Constance on her merry, flexible way, and started on the dual Financial-Family Plan.
He’d learned his lesson then. Remain in control. He wasn’t about to repeat the failure with Madison.
MADISON’S FINGERS clicked happily over the keys as she typed time sheets into her hours worksheet. Harriet was gone, running out, purse in hand. The fuss was over. Dear Lord, she even thought she’d heard T. Larry humming in his office.
The reception door banged against the wall. Madison’s fingers skipped across a number of keys and deleted half the cells she’d just entered. Undo didn’t work. Double darn. Who—
Sean’s boots thumped on the carpet in front of her desk.
“What are you doing here?”
“What the hell happened to your clothes?”
Oops. “What were you doing looking in my closet?” She pushed past him to glance outside her cubicle.
Rhonda peeked through the glass separating the reception area. Bill, then Anthony and Mike poked their heads out of the coffee room—didn’t they ever work? ZZ Top turned a corner and stopped smack-dab in the middle of the aisleway. T. Larry appeared at his door.
Madison sat in the proverbial fishbowl, and this time she wasn’t sure she liked it.
“What’s going on here?”
Sean turned to T. Larry. “Your secretary here had her entire wardrobe slashed to bits and didn’t see fit to tell her brothers.”
T. Larry’s cheeks stiffened, and he came to stand shoulder to shoulder with Sean, two big ugly lugs staring down on her.
Time for a lie to save her neck. “I called the police.”
“Liar.” She wasn’t sure whose mouth that came out of.
Okay, so a little lie hadn’t worked. She tried minimization. “I had to get rid of them anyway. All my skirts are too short.”
Sean’s green eyes, a mirror of her own, flashed with an angry conflagration. “Your tires were slashed last week. Now someone breaks into your bloody apartment to slash your clothes. And all you can say is you needed new stuff anyway.”
Now for deflection. She had an arsenal of sneaky weapons. “They didn’t break in. They used the key under the mat.”
Sean bellowed, “How many times do I have to tell you not to leave the key under the mat all the time?”
“How would you get in if I didn’t leave the key?”
Sean narrowed his eyes. “Stop trying to distract me.”
He was distracted. She took another shot—shifting the blame—to throw him off completely. “You didn’t answer my question. What were you doing searching my closet?”
“I was looking for the damn key because I knew I sure as hell hadn’t lost it.” He dipped into his jeans pocket. “And speaking of it, here’s your damn new key for your damn new lock.”
“Thanks, you sweet guy.” Madison slipped the key from the desk and into her drawer. “But you shouldn’t say damn, Sean.”
T. Larry burst in with, “What the hell is going on, Madison?”
She took T. Larry and Sean in with the same glare, straightened to her mighty height of five foot two and jammed her hands on her hips. “There’s just a bit too much swearing going on around here. This a place of business, you know. You should both conduct yourselves accordingly.”
“The tough stuff’s not going to work, little sister.”
T. Larry ignored her huff. “Sean, tell me.”
Sean did, without taking his eyes off Madison. “She tells me I lost the key she leaves under the mat when I have to fix something, and asks me to put on new locks. I thought she lost the key herself.”
T. Larry eyed her. “Sounds like what your sister would do.”
She wanted to take a swat at him, but Sean mowed her over.
“But I left the damn key where I always leave the damn key, and my memory’s a damn sight better than hers.”
Madison wagged her finger. “I’ll tell Ma you were swearing.”
“I figured she set it down somewhere and forgot. So I looked, not searched, and what did I find?” Sean, a handsome guy even if he was her brother, was not handsome with that sneer on his face. “Go ahead, Madison, tell T. Larry what I found.”
She took a moment to wonder if any one of the rubberneckers standing in the hall was wondering how her brother knew T. Larry.
“Madison.”
They were all waiting. Then Sean sniffed. “What’s that smell?”
She’d thrown her meat loaf sandwich in the copy room trash, but the slightly rancid odor lingered in the cubicle. And thank you very much God for finding something to take their minds off her little apartment problem. “It was just my lunch. I think I left the meat loaf in the refrigerator too long.”
Sean wrinkled his nose. “You had that in your refrigerator?”
She rolled her eyes. “At least I didn’t eat it. And I did learn my lesson. You shouldn’t let your meat loaf.”
Much to her dismay, no one laughed. Meat? As in the male organ? Don’t let it loaf around? Well, if she had to explain it, the joke lost its punch.
“Now that we’ve dispensed with your lunch, Madison, why don’t you tell me what your brother found?”
Darn T. Larry. She’d almost had Sean sidetracked. There was still a chance. “Then again, maybe it wasn’t the meat loaf. Maybe it’s the flowers.” They did smell a bit funny, not like any carnations she’d ever whiffed. “Maybe you should throw them in the hall garbage on your way out, Sean.”
“Madison.”
Ooh, everyone was saying her name that way. “All right. Someone cut up all the clothes in my closet. Sean already told you that. Everything was destroyed but this.” She spread the folds of her lacy black skirt. The little bells at her waist tinkled.
T. Larry studied the skirt. “That was left untouched?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that your only long skirt?”
Goodness, he was going right where she didn’t want him to go, to Harriet. Maybe the rest of the truth would deflect him. “And actually, it’s been a bit more than the tires and the clothes.”
“Wha
t?” they growled in identical voices.
She hemmed and hawed, pursed her lips, then said, “I’ve had a few hang up calls.”
Sean gave her a narrow-eyed scowl. “How many?”
“Three or four a night.”
More glares and scowls from everyone, but T. Larry was the one who spoke. “What else?”
Trust T. Larry, with that sharp accounting mind, to know there was more. “Someone stole my hairbrush, and they cleaned up the apartment and left me two roses.”
“I knew Ma hadn’t done that.”
T. Larry picked up something in her tone. “Blood red roses.”
She held her chin high. “Actually, yes.”
“And you didn’t tell anyone?”
“It was all very harmless.”
“Madison, it’s the pattern, not the individual acts themselves.” There he was, on that serial killer kick again. T. Larry watched too many of those detective shows.
“We’re calling the police,” Sean thundered.
“What are they going to do except yell at me for not calling in the first place?”
“We want it on record,” T. Larry said as if he and Sean had one brain and one mouth. Maybe they did, they were men after all.
“The next time something happens, they’ll have to take action.”
“But you just changed the locks, Sean.”
“And you’re not taking the train anymore,” her brother ordered. She could just kick dictatorial brothers.
“I’ll drive her to and from work,” T. Larry added.
And dictatorial bosses.
“But T. Larry, that’s miles out of your way.”
Sean held out his hand. “Give me the phone book. I’m reporting this, then T. Larry’s taking you to the police station.”
“But he’s got appointments all afternoon.”
“Cancel them,” her despotic employer ordered.
Madison was outnumbered, outflanked and outranked.
RYMAN CORNERED Laurence in his office while Madison canceled the appointments he had for the afternoon. “What the hell is going on, Hobbs?”
How many people were going to ask the very same question, himself included? Madison just seemed to bring that out in people. Along with fear and protectiveness and a host of other unmanageable emotions. Why wasn’t she more concerned for her safety? If anything happened to her…
“Madison had a break-in at her house.”
“What has that got to do with us?”
Laurence tilted his head, using his height and his youth to intimidate Ryman, an action which was somehow becoming almost habit now. “She works for me. I’m concerned for her welfare.”
Ryman wasn’t intimidated. Nor did he come close to being human. “It’s personal business. If she keeps bringing her personal business to work, tell her we’ll fire her.”
“Her tires were slashed while her car was parked in the garage we recommend to employees. That’s not personal business.”
Ryman waved a dismissive hand. “One incident has nothing to do with the other. Besides, we didn’t recommend that garage, Hobbs, you did.”
“What are you saying, Ryman?”
“I’m saying you’re stretching your tether a little too far. Remember who the senior partners are. We can terminate you as easily as we can any of the other little peons here.” Ryman wiggled his bushy white eyebrows. “I’m sure there’s some provision of the partnership agreement you’re violating. Now what’s happening with that termagant’s suit? And have you met with Stephen Tortelli the way I told you to?”
Ryman Alta was threatening him. Stephen Tortelli was a mobster. Harry Dump was a blackmailer. Madison’s life was in danger. His day couldn’t get worse. Laurence went for broke.
“For right now, shove the Tortelli account up your ass, Ryman, along with anything else you choose to put up there.”
Laurence didn’t usually conjure such images, let alone say them aloud, but he left Ryman Alta standing in his office, the man’s jaw almost touching the floor.
THEY WERE ALMOST to her apartment building, and Laurence hadn’t let up on her since they’d left the police department.
He was still going strong—and rightfully so—as he negotiated busy rush hour on University Avenue. “Perhaps they’d have been more excited if you’d called them when it happened. And perhaps if you hadn’t put all the clothes away and destroyed all possibility of finding any evidence—”
Madison fluttered her fingers at him. “Perhaps, perhaps. But I didn’t. It’s over now. The police can’t do anything. I missed the window of opportunity. It’s not a big deal.”
“I don’t see how you can be so blithely unconcerned for your safety.”
“Well, I wasn’t hurt. And I got my house cleaned for free. Besides, God doesn’t have a serial killer in his plan for me.”
He punched the brakes too hard as he jerked into a parking space in front of her apartment. Madison slapped her hand against the dashboard to keep herself from slamming into it.
He should have felt repentant. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I think I’ve ever heard you say.”
“Oh,” she said, as if she had nothing to add.
“You should stay with your mother until this thing is over.”
“This thing?” The question implied she didn’t even know what “this thing” was, although they’d gone over it and over it. She simply wouldn’t accept that it could involve someone she knew.
“The Danger.” He said it with a capital D.
She shrugged. “If you’re really all that worried, maybe you should spend the night to protect me.”
He rolled his eyes, then shot her a glare and a scowl. Nothing worked with her.
“I’ll make you dinner,” she cajoled.
“I had enough of your Jell-O Jigglers today.”
“I can cook things besides Jell-O Jigglers.”
“And no meat loaf.”
“I promise.” She held up her fingers in a Boy Scout salute. “So you’re spending the night.”
He stared at her, lips flat so she couldn’t pretend he was anything close to a smile. “I didn’t say that.”
She huffed through slightly parted lips. “Dinner?”
“I didn’t say that, either.”
The sun baked through the windshield. Madison opened her door. “Well, good night then. Thanks for the ride. And thanks for going to the police station with me.”
What the hell? “Where are you going?”
“Up those stairs,” she said, pointing, “and inside my apartment.” She put one leg onto the pavement.
Laurence’s eyes shadowed the movement and glued themselves to her black-clad ankle peeking from beneath the hem of her skirt.
He cleared his throat. “You are not.”
“Then why did you park here?” She skimmed her purse strap up her arm and over her shoulder, then pulled it taut down her cleavage, outlining her breasts.
His vision seemed slightly out of focus. “I’m not sure. I should have taken you directly to your mother’s.”
“My mother couldn’t do a thing to protect me. I’d have to protect her.”
“One of your brothers then.”
“They have too many kids and too few bedrooms to put me up.”
“You could sleep on their couch.”
“You could sleep on my couch.”
He choked, the flesh of his face started to burn and his eyes to bulge. “Not likely.”
“Afraid you wouldn’t be able to stay on the couch?”
“Are you suggesting I couldn’t help but crawl into your bed?” God help him, it was exactly what he was afraid of.
“I’m just trying to figure out why you’re so scared.”
“Scared? Hardly.” His voice broke irritatingly on the words.
“What happened between yesterday in your office and today?”
He wanted to close his eyes and rest his neck on the headrest.
“Didn’t you like touching me?”<
br />
His throat rumbled, his lips fumbled, but no words came out. Was this what they called tongue-tied? He’d never experienced the like in his life. Until Madison. Until this week.
“Don’t you want to touch me again?”
He looked everywhere but at her, his fingers slithering all over the steering wheel as if they were disconnected from his brain commands. Finally he managed to get out, “That’s really not a good idea.”
“Why?”
He did turn to her then, his hands rigid on the wheel so he wouldn’t, couldn’t, touch her, which was all he really wanted to do. “Why do you always ask why? Most people wouldn’t have said anything at all. They would have just dropped the subject.”
“I’m not most people.”
He snorted in agreement. “I’m your boss. It shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”
“But it did. Why did it?”
He executed a series of throat clearings and wheel tappings, and suddenly a light seemed to go out in her eyes.
“Richard made you jealous. Now he’s gone. You’re in control again.” She spread her hands. “So it’s over. Just like that.”
Her eyes shimmered. He felt lower than a garden slug.
“You should have just fired me this morning in front of Harriet. Then the suit would be over. And we could be over.”
“There never was a ‘we,’ Madison. And we can forget about what happened yesterday, go back to the way it was before our little…” What could he call it? Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t little. He tried anyway. “Our little lapse.”
“We can never go back to the way it was.”
Hurt gleamed in her moist eyes, trembled on her lips and sniffled in her nose.
Hell.
She climbed from her open car door.
“You are not staying alone.”
“And I’m not going to my mother or my brothers.”
He wondered if it was a calculated challenge. The brief idea vanished as quickly as it came. Madison didn’t know the meaning of underhanded. “All right, I’ll spend the night.”
A facsimile of her slightly lopsided smile appeared on her lips. “You will?”
“But I’m sleeping on the couch.”
“Of course you are.”
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