Drop Dead Gorgeous (19 page)

She flapped a hand. “Dillard, Dullard, same diff. What do you want if you win?”

He took the shortest of pauses. “A kiss.”

Her eyes flared. She swallowed. “Just one?”

“That'll be enough. For now.”

“Excuse me, mister, you done playing this hole?”

Madison made a sound like a small bird cheeping, tripped over the back of her sandals and caught herself on his arm.

Damn the kid. Damn the parents. Damn. “We're done.”

He helped her to the next hole sporting a devil with a swinging pitchfork. He'd lost one advantage, but sought another. “Afraid of losing, Madison?”

She didn't look at him as she squared herself in front of her tee. “Of course not.”

“Then why not take the bet?”

“It's the idea.” Her putter slipped, nicked the ball unintentionally but sent it far enough to qualify as her turn.

Laurence gave her a beatific smile, blinked slowly and set up for his putt. “What's wrong with the idea if you're sure you're not going to lose?”

“Somehow I think you're sure
you're
going to win.”

He straightened, his shot waiting. “I
am
sure.”

She stared at him from two yards away, hands on her hips and eyes narrowed.

He raised an eyebrow. “You aren't afraid of a little kiss, are you? I think you even enjoyed the last one.”

“You took me by surprise.”

“Maybe that's why your mouth just popped open for me. All that surprise.”

“That is not true.”

He gave her his shark smile, one he usually reserved for staff accountants with big egos. “What's not true? That you enjoyed the kiss? Or that you opened your mouth voluntarily?”

“Oh, take your shot,” she snapped. Madison never snapped. He was winning.

“I can't take a shot until we finalize the bet.”

She stamped her foot. Another good sign. Madison wasn't a foot stomper. “All right, you're on.”

He hit the ball, which whizzed past the devil's pitchfork, and sank another hole in one.

M
ADISON WAS WINNING
! She was winning! By a lot. He-he-he. She wouldn't have to kiss him.

T. Larry had scared her the last few days. Madison had scared herself.

The worst part? Mini golf with T. Larry, king of plans, was far more romantic than a dozen champagne picnics.

But if T. Larry was The One, wouldn't she have known it a long time ago?

“I'm so looking forward to not packing a lunch for a week.”

T. Larry eyed her speculatively. “I'm down four strokes. There's one hole left. What do you say, double or nothing?”

“What, two weeks of lunches versus two kisses?”

“Make it a month of lunches. If I win, I get the kiss and another date on Friday.”

She leaned on her putter. “This isn't a date.”

He didn't acknowledge her clarification. “Bet?”

“What if we tie?”

“Then we flip a coin. Heads I win, tails you lose.”

Four strokes ahead of him, how could she lose? She wouldn't have to eat Hamburger Helper leftovers, turkey hotdogs, or bologna sandwiches for a month. On the other hand, she might get fat. “You can't take me to McDonald's all the time. Some have to be places with Chinese chicken salad or vegetable stir fry.”

“I'll take you wherever you want.”

A lesser woman would have thought the Top of the Mark or the Equinox overlooking Alcatraz and the Bay. Madison thought Max's Café and that hole-in-the-wall Chinese place over on Taylor. She loved food. Her mouth watered. “You're on.”

Then she saw the windmill. The wood had been washed clean of its white paint and the red siding faded to brown. She hated the windmill. The space between the wings—what on earth were those long whirling arms called?—always got the best of her.

It wasn't the actual kissing or even the date that bothered her. It was the confusion. She didn't know what T. Larry expected. She didn't know what
she
wanted.

The sun had fallen behind the mountains, and bright incandescent lights shone down on the grubby indoor-outdoor. She lined up her first shot. She wasn't overly optimistic for that first try. She had to warm up. Shuffling her feet, she planted them just right, counted the seconds between the swing of each wing of the windmill, then closed her eyes and putted.

The ball hit a wooden arm with a thunk and rolled back. Stop, stop, stop, she mentally shouted at her ball. The closer her shot got to the windmill, the easier it was to time the turns. Four feet. It seemed like a mile.

“Time the ball, Madison,” T. Larry murmured behind her.

She whirled on him. “I can't concentrate when you're breathing on me. And I do not need you to coach me on this.”

No big deal. She could at least break even with him.

She wiggled into place. T. Larry sighed. She tried to ignore him. The ball went awry anyway and bounced back even farther than before. Perspiration gathered beneath her breasts.

“It's all right, Madison. You still have two more for the win.” He was even closer now, his indefinable male scent messing with her mind.

She elbowed him. “Back off.” But then she moved to the shot too fast after he did. Darn. Muffed it again.

She turned on her heel and pointed. “Stay over there.”

Counting, counting. She tapped the ball because last time she'd whacked it too hard. The ball rolled. Then stopped six inches in front of the windmill.

“You can't lose now,” he called, the tone definitely a taunt meant to rattle her.

He was right. How could she miss from six inches away? A month of lunches with T. Larry. Every day, sitting across from him. Or beside him. Close enough to breathe in his scent.

The putter slipped in her now sweaty palms, her count not exact, and that darn arm hit that darn ball and knocked it clear off to the side.

She raised a hand over her head and scooped her hair back from her face. T. Larry made some strange unintelligible sound. He was probably laughing. But when she looked, there was just a sort of dazed hockey-puck-to-the-head stare.

“I have one more, then we'll tie.”

“Then we'll fli-ip the coin.” His voice cracked oddly.

She was at a bizarre angle, with the ball off to the right of the windmill wing-things. T. Larry had moved closer, eyeing her ball on the green carpeting. She didn't have the concentration to spare to tell him to park his butt elsewhere.

She did four trials, moving her hips back and forth to find the right spot. T. Larry made some weird strangled noise.

Concentrate. Count. Putt. She did.

The ball slipped right in, sucked into mini golf heaven. Madison jumped, hopping, hooting and throwing her arms in the air.

“If I get a hole in one, we tie and resort to the coin toss,” T. Larry said. She didn't trust that smile. He'd tricked her somehow. She just knew it.

“You said you were champion of your senior class.”

He shrugged. “That was twenty years ago.”

“Have you been giving me shots to lull me?”

“I wouldn't dare. I have to see you in the morning.”

She crossed her arms, realized it pulled the hem of her dress almost to her crotch and let her hands fall to her sides.

“Go for it,” she finally said.

He did. Bend. Place. Count. Putt. And the little ball was sucked away along with hers.

Darn. “That was too easy. I'm sure you cheated.”

With a lazy T. Larry shit-eating grin, he said, “I didn't.”

“All right. Let's flip.” She could still win. She dug in her purse for a quarter and couldn't find even a penny.

“Let's do it at the car. These people want to start the last hole.”

She looked for his trick in that, but could find none.

Leaving behind their putters, they stepped into the intimate gloom of the parking lot. Several overhead lamps had burned out, and T. Larry had managed to park right beneath one, beneath a whole slew of them, in fact. His car sat in a pool of darkness.

He held a coin in his hand. “Heads I win, tails you lose.”

She grabbed the coin, turned it over in her fingers to make sure it was a real coin, squinting to see clearly in the lack of good lighting. Heads one side, tails the other. Fifty-fifty chance. “All right.”

Silver spun in the air. T. Larry caught it with practiced ease, then pulled a palm aside. Madison leaned closer to see.

“Tails you lose,” he murmured close to her ear.

That mutant tingle clamored inside her.

“Let me see that.” She pulled him into a touch of moonlight. Tails. Darn. There was only one thing to do.

She closed her eyes, puckered her lips, put her hands behind her back and leaned forward.

“I don't think so.” He pushed her up against the car door.

Her breath got sucked out of her, and her eyes went wide. That car of his certainly didn't retain the heat because she was cold on the backside and hot-hot-hot on the front. Then T. Larry swooped down on her. No prelim, just his tongue along the seam of her lips. His fingers tunneled through her hair, holding her in place, and then that horrible, excruciating, wonderful tingle swamped her.

It rippled in her body like sweet wine. She couldn't help but open her mouth, first to sigh, then to let him in. And her arms—of their own volition they wound round his neck, pulled him closer, forcing him to drop his hands from the back of her head.

His fingertips skimmed her shoulders, trailed the outside of her breasts, his thumbs caressing within a centimeter of her nipples. Oh my. He squeezed her ribs, moved to her waist, then her hips, his body dipping as he diddled with the hem of her too-short dress.

All the while he mesmerized her with his lips, his tongue. Boy, T. Larry could kiss. T. Larry could make her forget who she was, who
he
was. She moaned into his mouth and pulled him deeper.

He plucked at the stretchy material covering her bottom, tugging it up past her butt cheeks. She pried his fingers off, yanked her dress down, her mouth still fastened to his, his still fascinated with hers. He moved to the front, tarrying between her hem and the bare skin of her thigh.

She simply couldn't catch her breath. Then he nipped her lip and backed off an inch or two, resting his forehead against hers while his breath sawed from his chest at an irregular rate.

“Better than Richard?” he murmured against her tingling lips.

“Richard who?” She honestly didn't know.

Until he laughed softly with a hint of smugness.

It didn't matter, not right now. All she wanted was for T. Larry to hypnotize her with his lips again. His fingers traced her collarbone, then the scalloped neck of her dress, finally dipping low against her bosom. She drew in a breath. Her chest swelled against his touch.

A child laughed, footsteps stomped, then a car alarm beeped.

Goodness, she'd forgotten they were in a parking lot. Granted, the dark hid them, but T. Larry had made her lose sight of exactly where they were. And she'd let him hike her dress so that her buns showed. Oh my God.

She pushed, managing to secure several inches of breathing space she sorely needed to yank her dress back down. Afterward, he caught her wrists and placed her hands against his palms.

Then she recalled what he'd whispered against her lips. “Is that what kissing me is all about? Besting Richard? And my lipstick is all over your mouth.”

His gray eyes glittered behind his glasses as if light somehow penetrated their dark corner of the lot. “It's all over you, too. Wipe it off for me.”

The touch of her fingertips against his lips was too terribly intimate. The brush of his against hers short-circuited several brain cells.

“There, all cleaned up,” he whispered. “It's about choices, Madison.”

“What?” She'd lost the bent of the original conversation.

“Richard. He isn't the only one you can choose.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “What are you saying?” She was afraid she already knew.

“If you want to fall in love, you don't need Richard.”

Her head started to spin, and every inch of her flesh prickled where she touched him. “You can't be serious. You're not suggesting…you don't mean…”

“That's exactly what I mean.” With a half step back, hands still imprisoning hers, he bowed at the waist. “I'm at your service for whatever you need.”

She couldn't help it. She laughed. Not at him, or about him, but at the absurdity of the situation. “You're my boss.”

His eyes turned a flat, stormy gray. “The rules you typed up didn't state you couldn't fall in love with your boss.”

“I've known you forever. You're like one of my brothers.”

“If you'd said your father, I'd have to beat you.”

“I just don't feel that way about you, T. Larry.”

His eyes narrowed. “You sure as hell kissed me like you were feeling ‘that way.'”

She had. Twice. And twice she'd forgotten her name the moment he'd touched her. “It would just get too complicated.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Well, you know, when it was over…I'd still be working for you, and things would be all difficult and changed. I don't think I'd like them that way.”

He cocked his head, tugged on her hands and turned his to lace his fingers through hers. “So maybe you think you're not going to die after all. Is that what you're saying?”

“I don't know. I never really did know. But I won't have children or get married just in case I do die. And by the same token, I can't get involved with my boss just in case I don't.”

“You have a very strange sense of logic.”

She grinned, feeling the win despite her captured fingers. “Why, thank you.”

He advanced. She had nowhere to go except up against the car, which had proved to be a very bad idea the first time.

He let go of one hand, took off his glasses and laid them on the roof of the car. “It's not complicated unless you make it that way.”

My, he had extraordinary eyes. She couldn't think of a thing to say in return.

“You fall in love. You get what you want.”

Her throat was awfully dry. “What do you get?”

His hands slid up her arms, bracketing her collarbones. “What do you think?”

Goodness, sex. “You don't really want me like
that,
do you?”

His eyes were dark and intense without the benefit of glasses. “Exactly like that.”

He stole her breath. Those mutant tingles made her knees weak. She would have fallen if he hadn't wedged her between his body and the car.

“I can't think about this now.” She couldn't find the right objection when he stood so close. “Let's talk about it tomorrow.”