Drop Dead Gorgeous (17 page)

Maybe. At least he didn't feel like a total ghost anymore.

“
T
HESE ARE THE WORKPLACE
rules you want me to type up?”

“Our sexual harassment protocol.”

Madison held the handwritten document gingerly in her fingers. “T. Larry, I think you might get sued over your rules.”

He cocked his head. “What's wrong with them?”

“They're not well-defined.”

“They're totally self-explanatory.”

“You ought to hire a Human Resource professional to handle this, T. Larry.”

“There's not a thing wrong with that list.”

“No sex in the office,” she read.

Someone, sounding suspiciously like Anthony, snorted on the other side of her cubicle wall.

“Succinct and to the point.”

“You haven't defined sex.”

“Sex is sex. Everyone knows what it means.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “There's foreplay. There's manual manipulation. There's oral—”

He screwed up his face in distaste, at least she thought it was distaste, and held up both hands. “Madison, please.”

The guffaws next door shook the fragile wall.

“The rule stands as written. Anthony, get back to work,” he called over the wall. “Don't you have a client to see?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then get out of here. But be back by eleven.”

“Yes, sir.” But the sputtering went on.

Madison kept reading. “No remarks concerning attire.”

“What's wrong with that one?”

“What if someone accidentally left their zipper undone? How can you tell them if you can't comment on their attire?”

“That's covered in the next rule. No looking at zippers. No looking at breasts. No looking period. You see, no one will even notice then.”

She huffed, skipped number three since he'd already covered it, and moved to rule four. “No remarks concerning body parts.”

“You can't find anything wrong with that one.”

“I'm thinking.”

“Which means there's nothing wrong with it. Type up the list for the eleven o'clock meeting. And I want a laminated copy to be posted on the copy room door and in both restrooms.” He stopped, then added, “Please.”

“What about rule number five?”

“Madison—”

“No dresses or skirts above the knee.”

His shoulders sagged. He shook his head with a pained grimace on his mouth. “That was the hardest one to write.”

Not to mention that the rule was sexist. “But I'll have to buy a whole new wardrobe.”

“I know.” Then he brightened. “But you can still wear yesterday's outfit. That reached to midcalf.”

She shook her head. “T. Larry, are you going to tell us exactly what Harriet's suit is about?”

“No.”

“I'll find out when I type up your letters or whatever.”

“Do I have to get the dictionary to show you the meaning of the word confidentiality?”

“I won't tell anyone.”

He glanced over the row of uniform cubicle walls. “You won't have to.”

She tried a different tact, anything to get rid of that pained, hollow glaze in his eyes. “Is there anything I can do to help you, T. Larry?”

“Stay away from Harriet and make sure your skirts are…” He leaned over her desk and looked at her thighs in her short red skirt. “At least twenty-five inches long.”

“I meant was there anything I can do to help you
personally
through this trying time?”

He went stock-still, staring at her with the most unreadable expression. Then he shook himself, and his gaze cleared. He eyed her red skirt and her tight red-and-white striped sweater. “Don't wear sweaters that are extra small or smaller.”

The phone rang before she could ask why, besides the obvious. “Carpel, Tunnel and Syndrome.”

“Is that you, beautiful?”

Richard. Her heart skipped a beat, and she chanced a look at T. Larry. Oops, that was a mistake. He glowered and knew, just by the fact that she'd looked at him, who it was.

She turned her back, wrapped her hand around the receiver and lowered her voice. “I really can't talk now.”

“But—”

“T. Larry's got something he needs me to do right away.”

“Is he standing there?”

“Yes. He needs me. Gotta go.”

“But—”

“Later. Ba-bye.” And she hung up. It was rude, but T. Larry was upset, and she just couldn't enjoy a phone call from Richard with T. Larry all out of sorts like this. She looked at him. Ooh, mucho big-time glower now. “Ah, you were saying?”

He clasped his hands, squeezed, his knuckles cracking. “I don't trust him, I'm going to watch every move he makes, and I'm not going to let him do a damn thing to you.”

Madison had a feeling T. Larry had more than one meaning.

 

H
ARRIET ENTERED
the conference room ten feet tall in her peacock-blue power suit. Then she sat, her feet barely reaching the floor, and the effect was lost. Still, her shoulders were squared, she had a don't-mess-with-me glint in her eyes, and a Harriet the Militant glare punctuated her face.

The rumors had buzzed in the halls, the bathrooms, the copy room, the file room and through the phone lines. As though the ink had somehow leaked off the pages of Harry Dump's complaint, everyone knew what Harriet claimed occurred in this very conference room.

Poor Harriet. Poor Zachary. Poor, poor T. Larry who would have to clean up the mess.

Mike, Anthony and Bill sat like peas in a pod across from Harriet. ZZ Top sat three chairs down and six inches from the table, eyes front and center, gaze awkwardly avoiding the surface of the conference table. The chairs were filled, the overflow lined the walls. Receptionist Rhonda hovered by the door, for easy escape if Harriet whipped out her Uzi and started blasting.

T. Larry took his usual spot at the head of the table, his back to the window, and his eyes on the door for latecomers. There were none. No one would dare.

Liberally applied drugstore perfume tickled Madison's nose as she passed out T. Larry's new Sexual Harassment Protocol. The odor didn't emanate from Harriet. She exuded an expensive yet subtle scent designed to cloud a man's mind rather than beat him over the head like a club. Madison kept sniffing. Leaning over Zachary to plunk down a copy of the rules on the table in front of him, Madison almost fainted from the strength of his less than manly cologne.

Paper rustled as everyone began reading.

A soft noise. T. Larry's head popped up. “Who said that?”

No one spoke. The noise came again.

A gentle “Oink-oink-oink.”

Someone snickered. Someone else stifled a giggle. Madison realized she should have added another rule. No denigrating pig noises. This was exactly what she'd been trying to tell T. Larry. No list of rules could be specific enough to safeguard Harriet. Somehow every good thing a person tried to do for her backfired.

T. Larry banged his fist on the table. Everyone jumped, the pig grunts evaporated and the laughter faded. “That's enough.”

Oh, she did adore a take-charge man.

“You have the rules. Obey them. Or you're dust.”

He had such a way with a good colloquial expression. Surely Richard effected this same stunned silence in a courtroom.

T. Larry blanketed the group with a laser-sharp, all-inclusive, thunderous scowl. No one uttered a word. “The first infraction earns a verbal warning, the issuance of which shall be documented in your file. The second, I write you up. And the third violation—” again, his gaze blasted the assemblage “—you're fired. Except for rule number one.” He glanced down at his memo, then shot Madison a glower. “I mean number five.”

She'd changed the order, listing them with increasing severity, the most important, in her opinion being T. Larry's first rule,
no sex in the office,
so she'd put it last. Though she couldn't do a thing about his wording. Sex still wasn't defined properly.

“Number five, you're terminated on the spot.” He narrowed his focus on ZZ Top and Harriet.

Goodness, he was tough. She'd never seen him quite so firm. A spark of awareness licked Madison's spine.

“Meeting adjourned.” They all rose like automatons. Harriet's face stony; Zachary's shoulders slumped; Mike, Anthony and Bill with their hands over their mouths. Rhonda scurried out ahead of everyone.

“Zach,” T. Larry barked.

ZZ Top turned, his red face stark next to the peacock-blue of Harriet's jacket.

“In my office. Now.”

Power fit T. Larry like a tailored suit. Madison leaned forward, lips at his shoulder. “Does the T stand for Terminator?”

ZZ and T. Larry disappeared behind closed doors.

Voices buzzed amid the cubicles like a nest of angry hornets.

Harriet stopped at Madison's desk. Her gaze flicked from Madison's short skirt—the one she wasn't allowed to wear after today—to her sweater stretched over her breasts—the sweater she'd have to replace with something blousy—to the four-inch heels on her feet. There'd been nothing about shoes. Wonderful.

“Don't worry. He's not going to fire you no matter what you do, say or wear.” Harriet's venom hit Madison full in the face.

Madison wiped it off as if it were spittle and tried to be supportive. “I'm sorry about everything, Harriet.”

“Sorry? It's because of you.” Harriet could be so pretty when she wasn't sneering like that.

“What do I need to change to make it better?” Madison reached out to touch Harriet's arm, retracting it at the last moment when Harriet tensed.

“You could die, that's what you could do. Eat shit and die.”

Oh my. Harriet was a little angrier than she'd realized. “Maybe I could talk to Zach for you.”

The sudden office hush screamed around them. Harriet's eyes narrowed viciously. “You go near Zach, and I'll—” She stopped, backing off, her face an odd shade of blue as if she'd choked on a chicken bone.

“Harriet, I want to help you.”

“You won't be able to help yourself when I'm done with you.”

Harriet's malevolence chilled her insides. “What have you done, Harriet?”

“Oh, you think it's just T. Larry and Zach in that suit, don't you? Well, you're in there, too. And when I'm finished with you, you won't have your pretty little clothes or your spiky little shoes or your cute little car. You won't even have a dime to perm your hair and paint your nails.”

Talk about in your face, this time Harriet did leave a spray on Madison's cheeks. Then she stalked down the hall, her legs stubby in her flat shoes—goodness, wasn't that a disturbingly catty thought—and slammed through the reception door.

The place erupted, everyone talking at once. Madison ran to the restroom to see if her flesh had been flayed from her body.

 

M
ADISON'S DISCOMFORT
from her earlier run-in with Harriet the Harridan was still apparent by the time their date rolled around.

Her lips were a brilliant red on her pert, but troubled face. Damn. Lipstick. Not a good sign. Her stretchy dress hugged every curve and rode up her thighs no matter how much she pulled it down. Laurence decided then to forget about Dick the Prick's call. After all, Madison cut Dick off pronto. Besides, she was with
him
now, not Dick. Her perfume enveloped him in the confines of his immaculate Camry, overpowering the vanilla deodorizer he'd installed beneath the dash.

“I heard about your conflagration with Harriet.”

Madison made a noncommittal noise.

“Are you okay?” Laurence insisted.

“Mmm.” Committal this time. She was most likely emotionally all right. But was she physically safe from Harriet?

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She turned those emerald eyes on him, now filled with just a hint of hurt. “Does my hair look like it's permed?”

He hadn't a clue, except that he couldn't envision Madison without her bright titian curls. They were as much a part of her as her green eyes and succulent lips. “No, it doesn't look permed. And what does that have to do with Harriet?”

“Nothing.” She tugged down the hem of her dress. It sprang back. He snapped his eyes to the road just in time to slam on his brakes before he hit the car in front. His hand shot to Madison's shoulder, holding her in place as the car rocked forward.

“I really don't think your hand on my chest is going to stop me flying through the windshield.”