Maddy Collated: The Complete Trilogy

BOOK: Maddy Collated: The Complete Trilogy
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Maddy
Collated:

The Complete
Maddy
Trilogy

Ava Lore

 

Copyright 2012 Ava Lore

 

Nook Edition

 

Discover other titles by
Ava Lore at B&N.com

 

Nook Edition, License Notes

 

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, the please return to Barnes and Noble and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

 

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons either living or dead is purely coincidental.

 

This book is a compilation of three previously published works.

 

 

 

Table of Contents

 

Maddy
Takes a Memo

After a long day Madeline Marcos just wants to go home, but when the elevator doors open to reveal Chet Taylor and Sam Lake, the rich, handsome co-founders of the company,
Maddy
finds herself swept up in their heated conversation. The two playboys are charmers, but
Maddy
has a bit of charm of her own, and as one thing leads to another, she finds herself the filling in a billionaire sandwich.

 

Maddy
Calls a Meeting

After their white-hot threesome in the back of their limo, feelings that Chet has long repressed come to the surface, straining his friendship with Sam. Fortunately,
Maddy
has a flair for mediation and is determined to mend the rift between them, using her feminine charms if necessary. Being tied up at the office never felt so
good
!

 

Maddy
Shifts the Paradigm

It's been a week since
Maddy
negotiated the merger between Chet and Sam, and neither of them have called—typical. Then a series of gifts show up on
Maddy's
desk, each with a cryptic note inside. Was her
fling
with the two hot founders of her company a one-time thing, or could Sam and Chet possibly want more?

 

About the Author

 

 

Maddy
Takes a Memo

 

 

Madeline Marcos looked at the clock and groaned. Ten twenty-three.
PM.
On a Thursday.
And she was still stuck at the office, getting paid exactly dick-all for all her extra work. The next time there was a communist revolution, she was going to be on the front lines, and Rick, her team lead, was going to be the first against the wall.

Glancing back at her laptop,
Maddy
groaned again. Twenty minutes before quitting time Rick had cornered her in the break room by the coffee machine and assigned her the task of throwing together what he deemed a 'quick presentation' before tomorrow morning's nine o'clock meeting to assess their current project. What he had neglected to tell her was that he only had about a third of the information she needed to put the presentation together, and that all of it was in unordered sticky notes placed at random around his office. She'd found at least three of them behind his mini fridge. At the time,
Maddy
couldn't figure out why such a shithead as Rick had a mini fridge and she was stuck in a corner that looked at a wall, so she'd stolen a piece of cheesecake she'd found at the back and called it even. Now, at almost eleven o'clock at night, she wished she'd dropped the cheesecake down his
Docker's
.

Cheesecake was a terrible thing to waste, but it would have been an honorable death at least.

Rubbing a hand over her face,
Maddy
tried to focus on the power point presentation in front of her. It was close to being done, but every time she attempted to put the finishing touches on it, she couldn't. She was, quite simply, fried. And she'd missed her favorite TV shows. And she still had to get up and come in to work tomorrow, because that morning Rick had told her they were having yet another one of their endless budget review meetings after his presentation to the higher-ups.
Meetings, meetings, meetings.
She hated meetings. She'd be lucky to get home by seven tomorrow.

Blearily,
Maddy
stared at her screen.
Good thing I don't have a husband or a boyfriend or a dog waiting for me at home,
she thought.
They'd feel pretty neglected right about now.

Actually, come to think of it? That didn't make her feel any better.

Fuck it,
she thought. Abruptly she stood and slammed her laptop closed. She was going home. She'd set her alarm for five and finish the presentation first thing in the morning. Stifling a yawn,
Maddy
gathered her purse and keys and trudged toward the elevators, passing empty cubicles, each flimsily adorned with little personal touches that, in
Maddy's
opinion, just made them even more depressing.

The cube farm maze emptied in front of the elevators and she gave a sigh of relief. Her nylons were riding up and she needed to give them a good tug, but even though she was alone in the office, she wanted to wait for the privacy of the elevator. You never knew when someone else was working late. Adjusting them now was out of the question. Reaching out,
Maddy
pushed the down button and tried not to fall asleep on her feet.

A few seconds later, the elevator
dinged,
and the doors opened.

Inside, Samuel Lake and Chester Taylor, respectively CEO and COO and, together, co-founders of the entire company, stood arguing with each other.
Very loudly.

Maddy
froze.

Fortunately, neither of them seemed to have noticed her standing there, and frankly that was fine with her. Sam Lake and Chet Taylor were two of the most feared and admired men in business, period. They'd been roommates in college and had become best friends immediately—a fact that every investor's magazine profile couldn't resist repeating—and together they had shot into the stratosphere of the business world. Now they were both thirty-five, richer than God, and routinely named two of the sexiest men on earth. They were never seen without some slender blonde woman on their arms.

Not that there was anything wrong with slender blonde women.
Maddy
wished she was one of them herself. But her generous bosom and even more generous ass put her firmly in the realm of “curvy,” and her penchant for cheesecake didn't help. Given the choice,
Maddy
preferred to be ignored rather than assessed. The thought of being in an elevator with a couple of the most sought-after bachelors in the world made her feel slightly queasy.

Just back away slowly,
she thought. If she had to, she'd hide behind the
ficus
in the corner. It wouldn't conceal her, of course, but she was fairly certain no one would be so rude as to point that out.

The elevator doors began to close, and despite her determination to fade quietly into the background,
Maddy
reflexively reached out to catch them. The sound of her hand meeting the door caused Mr. Lake and Mr. Taylor to stop mid-sentence and turn and look at her.

Her heart stopped.

Okay,
she thought.
There is definitely a reason they end up on magazine covers.

Mr. Lake was tall, with messy waves of sandy blond hair and dark brown eyes that twinkled. A little too much sun had left faint, premature laugh lines on his face, and his broad shoulders filled his suit coat in ways that made her heart flutter. Mr. Taylor was even taller and broader and extremely well-muscled. His black hair, severely cut and slicked into place, only highlighted icy blue eyes fringed in coal-black lashes. He had what appeared to be a permanent sexy glower plastered across his face. Where Lake was engaging, Taylor was arresting.

And both of them were staring at her.

Maddy
felt her cheeks begin to heat.

Then Mr. Lake pointed at her and exclaimed, in a tone of utmost delight: “A woman!”

Mr. Taylor gave her a smoldering glare. “Yes,” he agreed.
“A woman.”

“The answer to our problems,” Mr. Lake said.

“For a change,” Mr. Taylor added.

And then Mr. Lake reached out, grabbed her hand, and pulled her into the elevator. The doors closed, and she was trapped inside with two of the hottest men alive.

Adjusting her nylons was
very
out of the question now.

Maddy
stared at them, and they stared back at her, though she was certain her gaze was slightly more filled with terror than theirs. Then Mr. Lake beamed and bent over her the hand he had captured and kissed it.

Shivers raced up her arm, and she smelled the sharp twin scents of strong coffee and scotch.

Ah,
she thought giddily. That explained a lot. They'd both been working late.
And drinking.
Why didn't
she
get to drink when she worked late? This sort of double-standard was exactly why she was going to join the next revolution.
Egalite
,
fraternite
,
Tanqueray
.
Haha
.
That was clever. She should write it down.

One of them was talking, and
Maddy
forced herself to focus through the jangling alarm bells of all her nerves snapping at once.

“My name,” Mr. Lake was saying over the sound of her heart in her ears, “is Sam, and this is my colleague, Chet.”

He seemed to be waiting for her response. She forced her mouth to work. “Um,” she said.
“Yes, sir.
I know. I work for you.”

For a moment Mr. Lake looked surprised, but he recovered almost immediately.
“Not right now, you don't!”
he said. “I am temporarily firing you!”

Maddy's
heart leaped into her mouth. “What?” she gasped. Suddenly the perks of being in the elevator with two handsome men who had the power to end her life as she knew it didn't seem so obvious.

Warm fingers closed over her other hand, and she turned to see Mr. Taylor glaring at his business partner.

“What Sam
means
to say,”
he
said, his voice rumbling in his chest almost menacingly, “is that we are in need of your opinion and we would like you to be honest with us without fear of retaliation.” He turned his icy gaze to hers. “Please, call me Chet. May I have the pleasure of your name?”

“M—Madeline,” she managed to stammer out. “Madeline Marcos.”

“Madeline,” Mr. Taylor murmured, and it sounded like a prayer on his full lips.
“A beautiful name for a beautiful woman.”

Okay,
now
she knew they were fucking with her. As surreptitiously as possible,
Maddy
attempted to disengage her hands from theirs.

Mr. Taylor let go, but Mr. Lake tightened his grip. “Madeline,” he said, and the way
he
said her name was warm and caressing. Like a tongue traveling up her spine...

No,
Maddy
told herself firmly.
No, let's not go there.

She tugged at her hand, and after a few moments, Mr. Lake took the hint. “What can I do for you, sirs?” she asked, attempting to tamp down the blush that she was certain had stained her face.

BOOK: Maddy Collated: The Complete Trilogy
3.44Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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