“You have dinner here a lot?” she asked after the waiter had delivered the menus and strolled off.
“Is what you really want to know how often I bring dates here?” Marcus asked as another person showed up to fill their water glasses.
That hadn’t really been what she wanted to know, but his question did clarify the staff stares. If she had known about the reception she was to receive, she would’ve been able to prepare a handout detailing their hook-up and a disclaimer that she was not trying to be the good—aka rich—doctor’s next wife. She only wanted him for one night.
Hmm.
That didn’t sound so great.
But really, she didn’t care what they thought about her. They were complete strangers. The people she was worried about were all those people who had driven her crazy five years ago.
Urgh.
That was so wrong.
Madison looked across the table at Daddy Marcus. Grandpa Marcus.
Stupid Tia. “Do people make jokes about your bedside manner?”
He lifted his eyebrows and offered her a sly smile. “On the first date? Only if I get lucky.”
A musical score buzzed inside Madison’s head. The words? She couldn’t quite make them out, but the imaginary director was waving her off stage. “Exit!” he hissed. “Exit!”
Shit.
The director in her mind, now wearing a plaid vest and puffy knee-length pants, was up on tiptoe and waving his arms like mad. Madison feared that if she didn’t take the cue, the poor man would collapse with frustration.
She pushed her chair back. “Where’s the ladies room?”
“Go back to the entrance, then go left, instead of going right like we did to come into here. Go down the long hall, turn right, and you’ll walk right into it.”
Madison didn’t get away fast enough. Marcus shot to his feet. “Tell you what. The Men’s Bar & Grill is on the way. I’ll walk with you and stop for a drink while you take care of things.”
Being the proper gentleman he was, he took her arm and escorted her back to the entrance, where he led her left, instead of right, then down the long hall, where they were greeted by the low din of men’s voices. As they moved forward, the din turned into a low roar. Marcus stopped her by a dark, narrow doorway. When Madison shifted to take a peek in, he stepped in front of her and pointed to the floor. “Just wait right here when you’re done. I’ll come find you.”
“You’ll come find me?” she echoed.
What the hell does that mean?
Her date had the decency to look uncomfortable, but only for a second. Then his face became a mask of sincerity and righteousness. As though explaining that a Men’s Bar & Grill was only for men was acceptable in the new millennium. “Sure. I’ll keep an eye out for you. I won’t be long.” He nodded to a gold brocade chair across the hall. “You can sit there, if you like.”
With that, he disappeared inside. The only thing left of him was the sound of his voice as he greeted a cluster of bodies leaning on the bar. Madison turned from the all-male sanctuary to the brocade chair. Above the chair was a collection of watercolors featuring sailboats. The people on the boats were enjoying themselves, while the other people, the ones not in the lovely watercolors, had been left on the dock like puppies who weren’t old enough to not pee on the teak decks.
The seat of the pretty chair looked hard, and only wide enough to accommodate a size eight. Maybe a ten if she had a small ass. It was not a chair for men. It was a chair for the puppies that had to wait on the dock. Beside the chair was a tiny table. On the table was a notepad, bearing the yacht club crest, a cup of tiny pencils and a telephone. Madison looked back into the darkness that had claimed her date.
Curiosity got the better of her, so she went over to get a better look at the hall table. The impression Cincy Cab 513-654-9816 was visible on the pad of crisp white paper.
Someone had an idea.
Madison pulled out her phone and was just about to call for a ride when her Skype notification flashed. A message from Drew.
Drew: Thanks for talking to me today. I have a question, call when you can. I’ll probably be up late tonight.
Madison: Sure. In about an hour.
Minutes later, she was seated in the back seat of a Cincy cab, her night with the good doctor now just a memory that would later be spun into a funny story.
* * * *
Once home, she debated changing out of the date clothes then decided not to. Drew needed to know she was out and about, not sitting at home. He wouldn’t think she’d changed clothes just for him, would he? Madison considered the quickness of the first call. That level of observation didn’t seem likely. So no worries that he’d think she changed for him.
After checking the lighting, and resolving to be as efficient and concise as he’d been earlier, she started the call. He answered right away, still wearing the same faded green T-shirt but this time sitting on a couch. This time Madison forced herself to speak first.
“Hi, Drew. How’s it going?”
“You look pretty. You changed your clothes. Been out?”
“I—I—”
He tugged on the fabric of his shirt, drawing her attention to his magnificent fingers. “I’ve just been hanging out at home, watching some Netflix. You know.”
Madison watched the motion of his hand as he moved it to place it on his thigh and swallowed hard. Her gaze went automatically to his mouth. He was smiling, and she realized she was smiling back.
“Did you have a question?” she asked, hoping to cover up her sudden nervousness.
“Just if you had any questions about the list I sent. That’s all.”
Madison picked up her phone and waved it at the screen. “Yep. I got it. Looked it over and um, I don’t think I have any questions.” As soon as she said the words, she realized she was rushing the call. Sure, she’d told herself that was the plan. But that was before he’d said she looked pretty. And before she found out that he would notice if she’d changed clothes. “Anything else you want to tell me? About the list?”
Drew began saying some things about the preferred contacts being marked by asterisks, then he offered some other information about which local printers he’d contacted, but Madison wasn’t listening that closely. Mostly she was watching his mouth and listening to the warm rumble of his voice. If she ran into a question, she could always call him back, right?
His information somehow slipped into some simple questions about what she’d been up to and who she’d seen from their graduating class. The next thing she knew, they were laughing and finishing each other’s sentences and laughing so much they had to repeat themselves. She’d settled back against the wall of her apartment then stretched out and propped her head up on her palm. It wasn’t until her laptop battery sent up a distress signal that she realized how long they’d been online.
She got to her feet and started waving to let Drew know she had to get up to go get her cord. Obviously he already knew what she was about to say because he said, “I know, it is getting kind of late. I should let you go, since you probably have to be at work in the morning.”
“Oh, yeah, right,” she said, suddenly back to stammering.
“Oh. Hey. One thing before you go. Just want to let you know I’m going out of town for a couple weeks. We can pick up wherever we are when I get back. That work for you?”
“Oh sure, no problem,” she called down to her laptop, glad for the first time that she wasn’t looking into the screen. She did not want him to see what was no doubt a sour look on her face. A couple weeks of nothing? After that?
It was almost as though she was all the way right back where she started. Only worse, because now she had a taste of what she wanted, and as a result wanted it even more.
* * * *
“You weren’t right,” Madison said the next morning to Tia as she got out of bed and headed for the kitchen for her caffeine fix. “The doctor didn’t have a bunch of bedside humor jokes to tell me.”
“And…” Tia prompted, lifting her eyebrows and circling with her hand. “Let’s hear the rest.”
Prolonging the agony would be stupid, so she spilled the whole first part of the night, including the sweet granddaughter and the wait-for-me-here gold brocade chair.
Tia summed the whole thing up in two words. “That sucks.”
From her seat on the counter, Madison started rinsing out a mug. “You’re telling me.”
“Now what?”
Madison considered telling Tia about the hours long Skype session with Drew, but decided against it. All she had, really, with him was a bunch of funny stories and some laughs. That wasn’t a solution to her problem. Two weeks was too long to do nothing. “Plan B.”
Tia pursed her lips and waited.
Madison sighed. “I don’t know what Plan B is. Not yet, anyway.”
“What about that two month business plan? It doesn’t include a Plan B?”
The kettle started to whistle. “Hold on a sec.” Madison hopped off the counter, filled the mug with hot water, dropped a teabag in and hopped back up to her favorite spot. . “Yeah. Part of that is to get a job.”
“On the surface that is an excellent idea. Unless you’re hoping to use that as your source for men.”
“What’s wrong with that? I need money. I need a man. Why not accomplish both at the same place?” Madison swirled the teabag around the mug then lifted it out to drop it in the sink.
“Because it’s a bad idea?”
“Oh, hush.”
Chapter Six
Scottie the Dog
Madison swiveled her desk chair and leaned sideways to get a better view of the guy in the next row. Who knew that there were telemarketers who looked like that?
Oh yeah. Stretch this way again, you sexy fucker.
Chiseled features, sweet, curly blond hair that always seemed to be falling in his eyes, thus prompting him to either tilt his head back—usually when he was laughing, which was often—or sweep it way with his hand—usually when he was on a long call. And a long, lanky frame that promised to hit a girl in all the right places.
Madison dropped her pen and bent low, scooted her chair to the left, and finally managed to get a solid, unobstructed look at sexpot Scott.
Until something, or rather someone, caught her eye.
Shit.
That stupid team leader, Kevin, was eyeballing her again. Bastard that he was. Didn’t he have anything better to do than stare at people? Stare at people and carry around those damn printouts and accuse callers of wasting time? Madison resisted the urge to snarl and, like the good worker she wanted everyone in management to believe her to be, rolled herself back into position in front of her monitor and closer to her phone.
“Madison. We need to talk.”
Damn he moved fast. And quietly, too.
Reminding herself that she needed, and wanted, this ‘fantastic career opportunity’ and the ‘huge’ commissions it promised, she lowered her headset, set her hands in her lap and tucked her feet under her boring gray office chair. “Yes, Kevin?” She even smiled and forced her face into an expression of professional interest.
But he didn’t smile back. Kevin didn’t care about anything except the lousy team member printout he was waving in the air. He put himself on the edge of her extra office chair. “You’re taking too much time between calls.” Pointing to some handwritten numbers on the side of the top page, he continued, “Look here. You can see that you’re losing about seven and three-tenths minutes per hour. I’ve talked to tech support about getting your system switched over to forced calls, but, honestly, neither Carly nor I think you’re ready for that.”
The bland professional expression slid off of Madison’s face. The obvious question of ‘who’s Carly’ took a back seat to her more pressing concern. She was, after all, only willing to go so far. “Forced calls?”
“That’s right. At seven and three-tenths minutes lost per hour, over an eight and a half hour shift, minus a half hour for lunch, of course, and two fifteen minute breaks, that’s…” Kevin’s face twisted as he struggled to multiply seven and three-tenths by seven point five.
“About fifty-one minutes?” Madison offered, trying to be helpful.
Kevin snapped out of his unsuccessful mathematical trance and scowled. “I guess.” He considered her with his muddy brown eyes, then looked back at his beloved team member printout. “That’s a lot of time wasted. Isn’t it?”
Madison didn’t have an answer for him, because, yes, it was a lot of time wasted. But he should look at it from her point of view. Considering how much she was getting paid, fifty-one minutes didn’t seem that bad. But he wasn’t interested in her point of view. He was interested in his damn team member printouts.
There was no fighting it. She could see where things were headed. “What exactly are forced calls?”
Probably glad to be back in familiar territory, he brightened. “You won’t initiate the calls. Instead, I’ll program in all your numbers and provide you with a list of names that correspond with the numbers.”
He leaned closer. “There are software programs that are designed to do that for a whole team at once, but Carly and the rest of the management team haven’t approved the budget yet.” He glanced over his shoulder, and continued softly, talking to Madison as if they were two equals discussing something they both had an interest in. “I think that’s going to change soon. I’ve got a plan to get Carly to change her mind,” he finished in a whisper, his eyes taking on a weird sheen. “She’s in for a little surprise.”
For the first time since accepting the great opportunity of becoming a Heritage Mortgage team member, Madison felt a glimmer of interest and even a spark of curiosity.
She followed his lead by scooting forward to whisper, “What kind of surprise?”
“The kind she won’t be expecting.”
“Oh. That kind.”
“Anyway.” He leaned back, weakening their fragile, conspiratorial bond. “We’ll plan on starting the forced calls next week. That means you have three more days to get used to the current software and script.”
Madison got herself used to the idea by forcing a smile and some false enthusiasm. “Okay.”
Kevin got to his feet, glanced at the giant clock posted on the wall in the front of the room, and pointed at Madison’s monitor. “We were talking for about six and a half minutes. You might want to work through your break. To get your numbers up.”
Might want to. But probably not. “Okay.” She flashed a grin bright enough to convince him she was on his side. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Great. I’d say keep up the great job, like I usually do to other people, but, um…you’re not there yet. So…”
With that half-ass statement, he strutted back to his corner cubicle. Only at Heritage Mortgage could a guy like that get away with a strut. No wonder he loved those team member printouts so much. Madison slid on her headset and turned back to her call sheet script, her fingers hovering over the keyboard.
If she could catch young Scottie’s eye and hang on to him long enough to take him to the reunion…
She admired the crisp collar of his shirt, those tan, pressed pants…
Good dresser that he was, he probably wouldn’t even need any clothing management.
“Madison?”
Kevin.
Again?
Madison sat up so fast she bumped her call notebook, sending it sliding to the floor. The nicely organized pages of her bright blue Heritage Mortgage Customer Service Team Member binder slid out and, seeming to delight in their opportunity to be free, flipped around until they were completely integrated. Scrambling, she gathered them into her lap then sat, stupidly, clutching the pages and wishing she’d met Kevin somewhere, say at The Vine,
where she could tell him what she really thought of him, and she and Tia could laugh about it.
But alas, no, she could not. Instead, she had to smile and pretend to be interested in whatever he had on his mind.
“Is there a problem? Did you not understand that your numbers aren’t very good?” Kevin waved his printouts in the air. “Do you need me to show you your call summaries?”
“No, thank you,” she replied prettily.
Kevin was not interested in pretty. He was interested in numbers.
* * * *
And so, things went on like that for the rest of the week. Each time Kevin wandered by, or sat in her guest chair, he reminded her of two things. One, her numbers were not very good at all, and two, she’d better be ready, because starting next week she was going to have forced calls.
Meanwhile, Madison learned an important fact. Carly was Carly Holmes, the boss of everything. And she made her mind up about something. Trying to catch Scott’s eye by dressing cute and staring at him was, to put it gently, a stupid approach. He was obviously used to having girls fall in his lap, therefore, was too clueless to even consider putting any effort into seeking out female possibilities. A swift, direct approach was the only way to go.
Monday morning, when Madison was greeted by the promised computer printout and forced calling system, she shrugged, then went about the business of doing business until her morning shift ended. She spent the first ten minutes of her lunch break watching Scottie, waiting for him to get off a call. Unlike her, he was doing well at Heritage Mortgage. His name never showed up on the ‘let’s cheer these folks on’ chart. Finally, he hung up and, like a well-trained hound, she followed him outside.
He was still shaking his box of Marlboros when she marched up to him and said, “We need to go out. Thursday or Friday?”
After one cigarette slipped out, he set it between his sexy lips and the put the pack back into his pocket. “You mean like go out go out?”
Off the Rails Page 6