Drop Dead Gorgeous (27 page)

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.

 

R
YMAN 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.

 

T
HEY 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?”

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.”

He shook a finger at her. “And there will be no sex.”

She graced him with the full wattage of her smile. “Of course there won't be any sex.”

Laurence had the sense he'd set himself up for total failure.

T
HEY WOULDN'T HAVE SEX
. They'd be making love.

Steam from her bath rose to mist the mirror. A bath ball fizzed in the water, the scent of tangerines filling the moist air. She sipped a glass of sweet German wine. Liebfraumilch. She couldn't say the word, but the taste garnered a sigh and a lick of her lips. She'd given T. Larry a glass of wine, too.

She'd made T. Larry dinner. Not Jigglers or meat loaf, but Hamburger Helper. She didn't tell him that, though. Men didn't understand that Hamburger Helper was like making from scratch, without the hassle. T. Larry had eaten it and asked for seconds.

Thank goodness there'd been no hang up calls, which would have made T. Larry only more jittery. And Sean must have cleaned up any mess the police technicians made dusting for fingerprints or whatever it was they did. One wouldn't have even known they'd been there. She knew she should be more worried. A normal girl would be. But…she had T. Larry to protect her. And her brothers. Besides, as she'd told T. Larry, God simply wouldn't follow through on a threat of bodily harm when he'd given her a stroke at fifteen and just might give her another at twenty-eight. See, that wouldn't make sense in a cosmic sort of way.

Okay, so that explanation was a lot more agreeable than actually thinking that some Jack the Ripper was going to rip her. She shivered despite the steamy water.

Enough. She was scaring herself. Much better to think about T. Larry. She only had eight days until her birthday. Well, seven, since today was almost over.

The last few drops of wine trickled down her throat. Her flesh had sizzled long enough in the slightly too-hot tub. She rose, water sluicing down her limbs. She had such plans for T. Larry. She towel dried, wiped condensation from the mirror and surveyed her pink cheeks. She'd scrubbed her makeup off and decided against applying any more. Pulling her nightie over her head, she tugged it down to midthigh. Maybe blue sheep weren't the thing for seducing a man, but she loved her sheep. T. Larry wouldn't want her to be anything other than what she was.

Adding just a touch of gloss to her lips, she opened the bathroom door, steamy, humid air rushing out and filling the apartment with a light tangerine scent. She found extra sheets, a pillow and a light blanket for him in the hall closet, and armed with her offering, she entered the living room.

“We can make up the couch with these.”

T. Larry stared at her bare thighs, then his gaze trailed her legs down to her feet and back up again to the center of her chest. “What are you wearing?”

“My jammies.”

He'd been standing. He flopped down heavily on the sofa without another word.

She flashed him a brilliant smile. “Do you want me to tuck you in and kiss you goodnight?”

“No kissing.”

She pursed her lips. He was being very difficult. “It was just a joke. My mother always used to tuck me in.” She plopped the bedding down next to him and opened her mouth.

“And I'm not tucking you in, either,” he said before she could get a word out.

“I was going to ask if you wanted me to put the sheets on?”

He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “I can handle it,” then belatedly added, “thanks.”

She put her hands behind her back and rocked heel to toe. “Do you want me to wake you up at a certain time in the morning?”

“I'm sure I'll wake up on my own.”

“Do you want to take a shower here?”

“I'll take one after my workout.”

“Are we going to stop at your house for a change of clothes?”

He eyed her as if she'd suggested they have a little nookie in his bed at the same time. “I've got a change in my locker at the gym.” Again, that belated, “Thanks.”

This wasn't going the way she planned. Not that she'd had a real plan, not like one of T. Larry's meticulous-down-to-the-last-detail plans. She'd thought the sight of her in her jammies might drive him wild with desire. Had the sheep been a mistake?

“All right, well, umm, good night.” She backed up, waiting for him to say something, waiting for him to beg her to stay.

He didn't. All he said was, “Good night.”

She was forced to go down the hall to her bedroom. Before slipping beneath the covers, she'd left the door open a few scant inches. The sound of his movements drifted through the cracked door, the snap of sheets, the pounding of a pillow, the soft snick of the bathroom door. She'd left an extra toothbrush out for him. The door opened, a zipper rasped. Her cheeks heated, imagining him undressing. He'd fold his slacks just so and hang his shirt over a chair to keep it from wrinkling. T. Larry wouldn't sleep naked.

Well, what to do now? Madison didn't like to give up. She closed her eyes, hovered on the edge of sleep despite herself, until he groaned and punched his pillow.

The solution came to her as if it had been there all the time. What she needed was a nightmare, one that would bring him rushing to her bed like a hero in a romance novel.

 

S
HE'D DRIVEN HIM CRAZY
with that bath. The citrus scent hung in the humid air. Laurence had salivated over every slosh of water, every sigh, every chink of her wineglass against the porcelain tub. He'd imagined her naked in bubbles, the tips of her breasts peeking through. He'd imagined licking the water from her thighs.

Then she'd come out to say good-night in her terrifyingly short blue-and-white nightie, her legs bare, her nipples perked.

He couldn't sleep for the life of him. He'd tried counting sheep, but then he saw her nightie instead, and began stripping it off in his mind. Sheep definitely did not work.

Laurence tossed. He turned. Listened to the occasional drone of a car engine as it passed, the tick of the kitchen clock, the high-pitched bark of a dog. A soft sleepy moan from her room.

Oh God.

Not a moan. More like a cry. A frightened cry. The sound galvanized him. He threw off the blanket and sheet, grabbed his glasses from the coffee table, rushed down the hall, and pushed her door open. Her head twisted on the pillow, and she made another distressed little noise.

“Madison?”

She didn't answer, continuing to thrash beneath the covers. One hand swatted at something he couldn't see. She was dreaming.

He whispered into the night, loath to cross the threshold. “Hey, Madison Avenue, wake up. You're having a nightmare.”

Her citrus scent called to him, as did her frantic motions. Christ. She was probably dreaming about the person who'd broken into her apartment, endlessly running from the perpetrator.

He took three steps into the room, called her name again and realized he was clad only in briefs and a T-shirt. Moonlight fell in through the window. Her hair, spread across the pillow, begged to be touched. A soft sigh and her still stepped-from-the-bath fragrance seeped inside his head. His groin tightened impossibly.

“T. Larry?” Her voice quavered as if the nightmare hadn't quite receded despite the fact that he'd managed to wake her. Had she heard the nickname?

“It's me.” God, he wanted to climb beneath those covers, lift that little nightie, touch…taste…stroke.

“Thank goodness. I was having a bad dream. I thought someone was in my room.” Her voice was tiny and weak.

“It's over now. You can go back to sleep.” Not that he'd be able to.

“I'm scared, T. Larry. Could you sit with me for a while?”

He wanted so much more. Looking around, he found the only seat was a round stool in front of her dresser. He skirted the bed to sit, hiding his erection in case she should look.

“That's too far away. It doesn't help.” She patted the bed. “Come here.”

Inside her skin was the closest he could get. His fingers clenched, but his legs moved despite the screaming protest from his brain. Setting his glasses on the bedside table, then nestling down on the covers next to her, he itched all over to crawl beneath.

She turned on the pillow, her eyes reflecting moonlight.

He searched for anything to take his mind out of his shorts. “What was the dream about?”

She shrugged, hair rustling against cotton. “Don't remember.”

Of its own accord, his hand reached for the silky tresses. His fingers tangled in the locks. It was just hair, he could touch his fill and no harm done.

She murmured deep in her throat, as if she had nerve endings in the strands. “That's nice.”

So many nice things he could do to her. She'd pushed the bedspread down to her waist. His touch followed the length of one long curl, the backs of his fingers lingering against the swell of her breast.

“My mother used to stroke my hair.”

The things he thought of doing weren't the slightest bit motherly. She purred like a cat under his ministrations.

“I think my bath was too hot. I'm burning up.”

He was burning up.

Then she flipped back the spread and clambered out to lie beside him.

His heart stopped, his fingers slid to the flesh at her throat, and his gonads snapped. She sighed, and he felt it to the tip of his penis.

“There, that's better.” She closed her eyes as if she hadn't a clue what she was doing to him.

Lying flat, her nightshirt drifted down against her full breasts, outlining her peaked nipples. The hem rode up to the tops of her thighs, seducing him.

“I'm not sleepy anymore,” she said, letting him play with her hair and his fantasies. “Are you?”

Sleep? It was the furthest thing from his mind. “What are you wearing under that?”

“Under this?” Her fingers plucked at the flannel material covering her hip.

He nodded, incapable of speech.

“Nothing.”

He shut his eyes and clamped down on a groan. Her fruity perfume made stars dance before his closed lids.

“I never wear anything. Is that bad?”

Run, a voice shrieked inside. His muscles neither listened nor obeyed. Instead his fingertips trailed between her breasts, followed the slope of her abdomen and twitched above her hip bone.

“Madison.” His voice rasped in his parched throat. He hadn't even kissed her, but gone straight for the goodies like an eager schoolboy.

“It's all right, T. Larry.”

What was all right? “I want to kiss you,” he managed, dragging his eyes to her face.

She smiled. Then, oddly, the smile faded. “T. Larry, I just can't do it.”

Something began to pound behind his eyeballs, inside his chest. “What do you mean?”

“I lied to you.”

“It doesn't matter.” Nothing mattered but touching her.

“But I tricked you. And it wouldn't be fair.”

“Of course, it's fair.” What? He didn't care about
what.

“I can't make love with you when I lied.”

He wanted to cry, but shut his eyes once more and drew in a deep breath of her. “Tell me about the lie.”

“I didn't have a bad dream.”

“That's good.” What the hell dream was she talking about?

“I just pretended to have a nightmare so you'd come in here.”

Oh, that dream. He was beyond anger. “That's okay.”

“But it was such a childish thing to do. I don't know what came over me.”

He opened his eyes to find hers seriously gazing at him. “You shouldn't have done it,” he said to placate her. “Now kiss me.”

“But it isn't right.”

He cupped her head, pulled her against him, then took her lips. Oh, the taste. Sweet wine, toothpaste and Madison. She parted her lips, took his tongue, then glued her body to his, arms wrapped around his neck. Her nipples were hard little nubs against his chest, her leg smooth as it curled around his. His hand slid down her back to tug at the flannel until soft flesh sizzled beneath his fingers.

God, if this was having sex, he wanted it as he never had before. If this was making love, then he didn't think he could live without it. He pulled his lips from hers, trailed his mouth down the side of her neck, licked, suckled.

“Do you forgive me, T. Larry?” she whispered next to his ear.

“I'll get mad at you in the morning.” He'd think about his control failure tomorrow. Then he pulled her nightshirt over her head and pushed her to her back.

God, he'd never seen such beautiful skin, soft, delicate. And her breasts, round, beckoning. He sucked the plump flesh, then pulled a nipple into his mouth.

She gasped, put her hands to both sides of his head and held him there, one smooth leg caressing his.

“Do you like that?” he murmured after a swipe of his tongue.

“Yes.”

He heard her swallow, felt her chest move beneath his mouth. He switched to her other nipple. She tasted like oranges. She arched against him, moaned. It drove him crazy. So many spots he wanted to taste, to touch, but his body called him to that place between her legs. He tested with his finger, felt her spasm and her wetness.