Drop Dead Gorgeous (2 page)

She didn't seem aware of her mixed metaphor or the profundity of her words. Still, he wasn't worried. His plan wouldn't fail. He'd covered every foreseeable outcome and adjusted for it. This discussion, however, wasn't about him. It was about her.

“What if Mr. Right doesn't fall in love with
you?
” The moment the insensitive words were out of his mouth, Laurence regretted them. An apology lay on the tip of his tongue.

Madison, unoffended, smoothed her splendid yet unruly curls behind her ears and smiled. That smile never failed to knock him senseless.

“Don't you see?” she said. “It's more perfect if he doesn't love me back.”

At that moment, Laurence wasn't sure of his own sanity, let alone hers. “Aren't you missing half the
fun
that way? Love isn't supposed to be one-sided.”

She tapped her temple. “It's all up here. I can believe anything I want to believe. Women are excellent at deluding themselves. If he isn't really in love with me, I won't worry about hurting him, when—” she shrugged “—I die.”

His chest tightened just contemplating that word and Madison in one sentence.

Madison thought her death imminent because her father had died of a stroke when he was twenty-eight. It had been his second, the first striking him when he was in his teens. Just as Madison had had her stroke when she was fifteen. Like father like daughter, that's what Madison believed. Which explained her zest for life. Almost dying when you'd barely begun to live would make anyone view every moment that came after as precious. Madison went further. She'd convinced herself she would suffer her father's fate at twenty-eight, though as far as Laurence knew, there wasn't a shred of medical evidence indicating that outcome.
I just know it, T. Larry.
If he'd heard it once, he'd heard the phrase a thousand times. And she didn't intend to leave behind any motherless children, widowed husbands or tearful lovers. Therefore, in her mind, it was better if her chosen one didn't love her back.

Laurence narrowed his eyes. “Somehow, somewhere, I know there's a fault in your logic.”

Madison grinned, the endearing lopsided quirk a remnant from her brush with death. “Maybe. But you can't find it.”

She was right; he couldn't, so he turned things on her again. “This Richard could be a serial killer looking for a next victim.”

She snorted. On anyone else, it would have been graceless. With Madison, it was as infectious as her laughter. “God already has big plans for how I'm going to die. He wouldn't add a serial killer in there to complicate things.”

“Madison, you've gone crazy this time.” Scheduling a date with a man whose name she didn't know was over the top, even for Madison. And a first, as far as he knew.

“It was just a wrong number, T. Larry, nothing alarming.” She followed that up with a soft, sad smile indicating her immense pity for his suspicious mind.

He couldn't define why this incident bothered him more than a myriad others. Like the time she'd let it slip to Zach, one of his senior accountants, that she'd watched a porn flick. Porn, for God's sake. Laurence didn't think himself a prude, but weren't women genetically programmed to abhor pornography?

She'd never fit in anyone's neat little box, so he pushed the ridiculous. “I suggest you ask your perfect Richard about the Terrible Triad.”

Her eyes widened, question enough.

“Bed-wetting, fire setting and cruelty to animals. It's indicative of a potential serial killer.”

She flashed a smile that had brought lesser men to their knees. “Sometimes I wonder if you have a much bigger sense of humor than you let on.”

“I must have to allow you to keep working here.”

She rose, smoothed her short black skirt over her tummy, then her thighs. Laurence lost his voice.

“Seriously, T. Larry.” With a step forward, she raised her emerald-isle eyes to his. Her voice dropped to an intimate note. “What if he's the one?
The
one, I mean? I have to find out.”

Then she was gone, leaving behind the soft scent of flowery perfume to fog his mind.

“
The
one, my ass,” Laurence whispered to the now-closed front entrance. She'd told some stranger what she looked like and the exact length of her gorgeous red hair, just so he'd recognize her the next night. She'd even told him where she worked. All right, not the firm's name, but the building address. She was crazy. She was a menace to herself.

She was Madison. That said it all.

Voices buzzed beyond the cubicle walls, a burst of laughter, a dampened snort. The sounds always followed Madison. After seven years of the woman, Laurence could no longer be completely shocked.

He turned abruptly and almost smacked into Harriet Hartman.

“T. Larry, I mean Laurence, can I speak to you a minute?”

“Tomorrow, Harriet. I have a meeting.”

Madison had nicknames for all the accountants in the office—even for Harriet. Despite the fact that the young woman was as bad tempered as Madison was good, as negative as Madison was positive. Madison called her Chicken Little—to her face, of course, since Madison never meant anything in a nasty way—because, for Harriet, the sky was always falling. Due to his upcoming budget review, Laurence wasn't equipped to hold up Harriet's sky tonight.

“But, Laurence—”

“Tomorrow. Come see me first thing, and we'll sort out whatever issue you have.” He closed his office door in Harriet's face. Madison would have read him the riot act over that action. An excellent accountant who could find several thousand dollars of tax deductions in a shoe box of coffee-stained receipts, Harriet had a problem with taking no for an answer. Good for his clients most times, not good for Laurence right now.

He had a dinner scheduled at five-thirty with the senior partners, Carp and Alta, to discuss the quarterly budget and the signing of Stephen Tortelli as a client. Alta insisted the man was legit, but Laurence felt him to be, at best, a tax evader, at worst, a Mafia crime boss—and that wasn't because of the Italian-American name. The man was slime. Laurence wanted no dealings with him. The three-week-old argument was becoming heated, but tedious.

Crossing the plush beige carpet, Laurence entered his executive washroom. He'd worked hard for the office with its mahogany desk, black leather sofa and view of San Francisco from his twenty-second-floor window near the end of Market Street. Yet did it all signify Total Financial Security, with Madison's double quotes?

Over the years, she'd labeled him a variety of things, staid and humorless among them. Now she'd implied he was getting too old to attain his marital goals. Too old at thirty-eight?

It was the hair, or rather his lack of it. Laurence put a hand to his bald spot, not actually a spot but the whole top of his head. He always thought it lent him a distinguished air, as any good tax accountant should have. He wasn't too old to attract a wife, to have children.

Was he actually too old for Madison herself? Exhaustion factor aside.

Dear God. He'd lost his mind to even consider it. Madison dating
him?
Her latest and most outrageous act to date had addled his brain. That could be the only explanation for the idea to even occur. It hadn't before. At least not in serious contemplation. After all, he was her boss.

Besides, Madison was light-years beyond him.

He needed to stop thinking about those red lace panties.

 

H
ARRIET STARED
at the closed door.
Goddamn him.
Well, she'd given him his chance. Now T. Larry was going to pay for ignoring her. And Zachary would pay for what
he'd
done, even if T. Larry refused to fire him. Madison was on the list, too, with her sympathetic looks and annoying pity. What did she know about being the office joke? Harriet hated being one of Madison's pity projects, a problem that had to be fixed. As if she were a dog to be neutered. Oh no. When Harriet got done with her, Madison would be the one who needed pity.

Harriet would get her turn. She'd make them all pay.

 

M
ADISON HAD TO FIND
T. Larry a wife. He needed one so badly.

The train, packed to capacity as it left the city, lulled her. She'd nearly ruined her favorite black suede high heels in her dash to make the 5:20, but still managed to snag a window seat next to an elderly lady with painfully swollen legs. Poor dear.

And poor T. Larry. He'd somehow come to the conclusion that he was getting old. It was his baldness. In a way, he was kind of sexy, likeYul Brynner or Director Skinner on the
X-Files,
glasses and all. He had the nicest gray eyes, even when he was yelling at her. She'd find him a nice girl who wanted to settle down, get married and have babies. Someone like herself—except for the marriage and babies part—who knew how to have fun, who'd mess up his routines, teach him the word spontaneity and make him forget all about his silly Plan.

The train car smelled of bubble gum, melting chocolate and overtaxed deodorant. The little girl opposite, on the aisle side, mouth covered with the remains of a Hershey's bar, swung her feet in time to the clack of the train wheels. A cute tyke with Shirley Temple curls and pinafore dress, she couldn't be more than five. Chocolate handprints marred the white material and pink lace.

T. Larry would have been appalled. All the more reason to find him a wife ASAP, before he forgot what little kids were like.

Madison was sure T. Larry's stuffiness problem stemmed from an inability to create nicknames. Take herself, for example. He unerringly, even when pissed as a hornet, called her Madison. Never Maddie, which was okay with her since she sort of hated that rendition. How about Mad? Or there was Madison Square Gardens, President Madison, Madison Avenue. Even Oscar Madison, for her perpetually messy desk.
Anything,
she wasn't picky.

Something caressed the back of her neck. Madison jumped, turned, then realized it was the breeze from the open window behind her. People read books, rustled newspapers as they turned the pages, or cranked up the volume on their iPods, all to pass the time until they reached their stop. No one had touched her. Of course not. Madison's seat companion dozed. The little girl, mother staring out the window beside her, swung her feet in an ever widening arc toward the old woman's legs.

Okay, stuffiness. T. Larry had too much starch in his shorts. He couldn't even buy a car just for fun. He'd purchased the white Camry, which was nothing bad in and of itself. But it was the reason he bought it, claiming white didn't retain heat as much nor show the dirt as easily. How about a black Porsche Boxster, T. Larry? Now
that
was fun.

There. Madison felt it again. Nothing so tangible as a hand on her, more of a sensation, of eyes staring at her. She turned quickly. All the same people with all the same reading material. So why did she get the creepy feeling she was being watched? Darn T. Larry anyway, putting thoughts of serial killers in her head.

Next to Madison, the old woman's eyes snapped open as an oomph burst from her lips. She looked down at her legs, then at the little girl's patent leather shoes which had just kicked her.

“Excuse me.” The lady's voice crackled with age and disuse as she called softly to the mother seated opposite Madison.

No response. Guilt flickered in Madison. She should have seen the child's accident coming and put a stop to it.

“Excuse me,” the elderly lady said again.

This time the mother turned, her lids sleepy and her mouth set in a straight line. One dark chocolate print hardened on the sleeve of her dress. “Yes?”

“I'm sorry, but my legs hurt. Could you please ask your daughter not to kick me?” The old woman's eyes, rheumy and glazed with advancing cataracts, watered.

“I'm sorry, I follow the rule of free discipline. You'll have to ask her yourself. It teaches her to learn on her own.”

“Free discipline?” Madison echoed the old lady. What silly thing was that?

The old lady sighed and turned a kind smile on the girl. “Could you please stop kicking me, dear?”

The child stuck out her tongue. Her mother shrugged and turned back to the buildings flashing by outside her window.

Free discipline obviously meant
no
discipline. Madison turned a sympathetic glance to her seatmate just as another oomph issued from her lips.

Of all the cheeky things. “Knock it off, sweetheart.” Madison added her best stern look.

The brat stuck out her tongue at Madison. T. Larry would have freaked if he'd witnessed the display. Madison crossed her legs, mouth pursed, eyes narrowed, foot swinging.

This was ridiculous.

Madison's foot swung harder, connecting with a whack against the mother's shin bone.

The little bugger stopped swinging her feet, her mouth hanging open. The mother rubbed her shin and stared speechless at Madison.