The Last Man on Earth (19 page)

Zack must be responsible, the one who’d sent out revealing signals. Except that made no sense.

Nathalie had mentioned love, and if there was one thing of which Madelyn felt sure, it was that Zack did not love her. He didn’t believe in such a useless, fragile emotion. Love, after all, was for fools. Obviously, Nathalie was a romantic with an overactive imagination, seeing emotions where they did not exist.

Leonelli strolled across the fairway. “Good try, Madelyn. The ball traveled well and you improve with each shot. I think if you keep trying, we make a golfer out of you yet.”

“It’s going to take a lot of trying, Giancarlo, especially now that I’m trapped in the sand.”

“I been in the sand lots of times, but that will be our secret. Lucky for you, I know just the right club to get you out. Come on, we all keep playing.”

The three of them climbed into the golf cart, Zack and Leonelli in front, and drove on. Zack led off next, his form impressive as he set up for his shot. Unlike Madelyn, Zack had a natural affinity for the game, coupled with the wisdom to know how to play well, but not too well. Trouncing the client was not the objective here.

As she stood next to Leonelli to watch and wait, she couldn’t help but notice how splendid Zack looked in golf attire. The way his leaf brown polo shirt displayed each curve and angle of his torso. And the fascinating play in his loose-legged cotton trousers, the beige material tightening and releasing like a lover around his hard thighs and taut buttocks every time he bent or stretched.

Hands on hips, he studied the course, then placed his golf club onto the turf next to the ball, letting it lie in a line between his legs as he squatted to visualize the shot.

Madelyn forced her eyes away. “What did you think of today’s shoot? I thought the rushes looked good. Once the editing is completed, the commercial should have a strong visual impact.”

Leonelli folded his arms over his chest, his eyes on Zack as the other man stood and moved into place to make the play. “I liked it, yes. It should keep people’s attention. And as you mention, once the editing is done and the pretty women are added, it will be, how do you say?
Bellissimo.
”

“Pretty women? I’m not sure what you mean, Giancarlo. The ads for the XJL aren’t slated to have models in them. It’s a completely new product with a totally new campaign, one that showcases the car. There are no women.”

“The ad is good. I tell you I like it. But when a man thinks about a car, especially a Giatta car, he thinks also of a beautiful woman, one he admires and longs to possess. For a man, there are no two things more desirable than to have the car and the woman. That is why we must have women in our ads. It has always been so.”

Seeing Madelyn’s speechless expression, he continued, “Do not worry. All will be as you have planned except in this one matter.”

Zack swung his club up, then down in a clean, powerful stroke, his body forming a line of fluid precision and control. With a loud
thwack
, the ball flew fast and straight, as though borne on wings. Yards distant, it fell to earth and slowed, rolling until it stopped a mere inch or two short of the hole.

“Great shot,” Leonelli called to Zack.

“Giancarlo,” she said, “this is a serious change, one we need to discuss.”

“
Grazie
for your concern, but all of this, it has been taken care of.”

“Taken care of how? I don’t—”

“Zack, he is a man. He understands and has seen to the details. He said not to trouble you with this, so don’t be troubled. All is well.” He selected a three iron from his golf bag. “Now I must make my shot or those behind us will grow annoyed.”

A red mist of rage enveloped her as Leonelli’s words sank in. So Zack was taking care of it, was he? she fumed. Seeing to last-minute details she need know nothing about? Changing her ad campaign, her commercials, interfering with her work without so much as a whisper? Her hands balled into fists at her sides and her neck muscles drew tight.

“Madelyn. It’s your turn.” Zack halted near her elbow.

When had he moved so close? And how could she have failed to notice? As for the game, she’d seen nothing—certainly not Leonelli’s last shot—blinded, apparently, by her anger.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She couldn’t look at him.

She couldn’t speak to him.

If she did, heaven knows what sort of dreadful invective might spew from her mouth. She was tempted to take a swing at him, to plant a fist right in his face. Wouldn’t he be surprised? It might be worth it just to see his shock.

But for now she needed to control herself. Creating a scene in the middle of a public golf course, in the middle of a game, in front of a client, well, that would be unprofessional and juvenile. No matter the provocation, she would not give in to her emotions. At least not here. Grim in her fury, she gave Zack a curt nod then yanked a club out of her bag.

How she made it through the remaining six holes, Madelyn would never know. It took everything she had to keep playing, and what had rated up to that point as a barely adequate performance quickly deteriorated to the level of miserable disaster.

By the final hole, humiliation came in a close second to the anger still churning through her system. Too proud to cry, she donned her best smile and shrugged with the self-deprecating acceptance of a good sport.

Leonelli won.

As well as he’d played, Zack had been forced to take an extra stroke or two on a couple of holes, giving the Italian the advantage, narrowly. Madelyn was sure Zack had been deliberately careless with his putting. Recognizing his skillful duplicity only added fuel to the fire smoldering within her.

Back at the hotel, she politely refused Leonelli’s invitation to dinner. A headache, she told him, an excuse that was fast threatening to become reality as a knot of pain gathered at the base of her skull. Eager for a few moments to herself, she made her way across the tiled width of the lobby.

She punched the button for the elevator and pretended not to notice Zack when he walked up next to her.

She maintained her silence for a full thirty seconds. “Don’t even speak to me,” she hissed, her eyes fixed on the lighted number panel above.

He sighed and folded his arms over his chest.

One of the four available elevators announced its arrival with a tiny
ding
. The illuminated arrow showed it was headed downward to one of the hotel’s lower levels. She and Zack were going up.

A pair of teenagers dressed in bathing suits and flip-flops raced on, elbowing each other in between uncontrollable fits of giggles. The doors closed.

“We’ll discuss it later; don’t think we won’t,” she bit out. “Right now, I just want some peace and quiet.”

Zack leaned over and pressed his finger against the already lighted up button. He said nothing.

“I can’t believe you’d do such a thing.” Madelyn tapped a foot against the floor, still refusing to look at him.

He slipped his hands into his pockets. “Leonelli’s got a big mouth. I should have known he couldn’t keep it closed for more than two minutes straight.”

“It’s a good thing for me he couldn’t. What were you going to do? Order the new ads behind my back, then spring them on me once it was too late to have them redone?”

“I thought you didn’t want to discuss this now.”

She crossed her arms. “I don’t.”

The elevator arrived. He stood aside and waited for her to enter.

Once inside he punched the number for his floor on a panel to the right. She punched the button for her own floor on an identical panel to the left. The doors closed, leaving them alone.

“I was going to talk to you about it, you know,” he declared as soon as the elevator car began to rise.

“Oh, is that why you told Leonelli to keep your little meeting a secret? Because you wanted to surprise me with the changes and not . . . how did he put it . . . trouble me with the details?”

“No, I didn’t want him to mention it I because I knew you wouldn’t like making changes to the ads and—”

“You mean adding bimbos to the ads?” she shot back.

“They aren’t bimbos; they’re actresses.”

“You can call them that if you want. I’ve seen the old Giatta ads. No doubt it takes a great deal of acting talent to get a set of D-cups to jiggle just the right way. In fact, it gives me a great idea for a Fourth of July campaign. We could attach little sparklers to their—”

“Madelyn,”
he cut her off with a warning growl.

She faced him, hands on her hips. “Don’t ‘Madelyn’ me, not after this. Meeting behind my back with my client. Making a deal you had no right to make on one of my accounts. And then having the nerve to tell that client to keep it a secret from me. I knew you could be low, but not this low. Even snakes crawl higher.”

The elevator reached her floor; the doors opened. “Normally, I’d wish you a pleasant evening,” she said, “but under the circumstances even that seems too good for the likes of you.”

He moved, blocking the doors with his shoulder. “We’re not done with this, Madelyn.”

“We are as far as I’m concerned,” she declared, marching past him into the carpeted hallway. “I’ve heard more than enough of your lies and excuses. I don’t need to hear any more.”

His temper flared, and without stopping to think, he charged after her. “What lies? And what excuses? All I’ve been trying to do is explain. If you’d calm down for two seconds and quit overreacting, maybe I could.”

“Overreacting?”
She rounded on him. “Me? Overreacting? You stick your big nose into my business and I’m overreacting? You wouldn’t say that if I were a man.”

“I wouldn’t need to—if you were a man.”

“No, because if I were, we’d be outside right now beating the living daylights out of each other. If I’d done to you what you did to me, you’d be furious. Admit it.”

In another time and another place, he might have conceded her point. But right now, he wasn’t in the mood to admit anything, most especially not to her. He opted instead for silence, giving her a steely-eyed glare and a pugnacious upward thrust of his chin.

She tossed him a disgusted look, flung up her arm and spun away.

He pounded after her. “Look, the XJL ads may have been assigned to you, but Giatta is still my account and Giancarlo is still my client, whether you like it or not. He came to me this morning with his concerns, not to you, and since he wanted them addressed, I addressed them.”

“You had no right to address them. What you should have done was send him to me.”

“And if I had, what would you have done differently? Once Giancarlo gets something in his head, not even a nuclear attack can dislodge it. He’s as bullheaded as they come. He wanted the ads changed and he wasn’t leaving my room until he got that change.”

Madelyn arrived at the door to her room, turning to face him. “Whether I would ultimately have agreed to Leonelli’s stipulation is not the point. The point—the one that you, Zachary Douglas, refuse to see—is that the XJL account is
mine
, not yours. You had no business agreeing to anything concerning it. Not without consulting me. Not without my say-so. I might have expected that sort of cavalier treatment from one of the other men at work, Larry or Mark, but I didn’t expect it from you. No matter what’s passed between us, I thought you had a bit more respect for me as an equal, as a professional. It seems I was mistaken.”

He didn’t like the look of betrayal in her eyes. The hurt she couldn’t entirely hide. More particularly, he didn’t like the way that look, that hurt, made him feel.

Her hand trembled as she shoved the wafer-thin bit of plastic that passed for a key into the electronic lock on her door. She yanked it back out so hard, the key nearly snapped in half.

“Madelyn . . .”

She closed her ears to him and pushed into her room. When he came in after her, she spun around. “How dare you come in here uninvited.
Get out!
”

“I had no idea you’d be this upset. I didn’t mean to hurt you—”

“Hurt me?
Please
,” she scoffed, “you haven’t
hurt
me. To do that, I’d have to feel something for you, and I don’t, not anymore. It’s only your actions that offend me. Including that ruse of yours, coming to me claiming you wanted us to get along. How did the line go? Civil and friendly. That’s right, civil and friendly, when all you really wanted to do was soften me up enough to drop my guard and give you the advantage.”

“And exactly what advantage would that be?” He moved forward, forcing her to take several steps backward.

Defiant, she held her ground, arms planted squarely on her hips. “You know exactly what. Your plan to make my work on this campaign seem unimpressive enough that Fielding will decide to hand the entire account back to you. From the beginning you’ve complained about how I stole Giatta from you. This is your way of getting even.”

“You know, that’s not a bad plan,
if I’d thought of it
. Which I didn’t. You have the most incredibly convoluted mind, twisting motives and coaxing schemes out of thin air. You know what your problem is, Red? You think too much.”

“No, my problem is
you
. You interfering in my life, finding ways to cause me trouble at every turn. I’m tired of it and I’m tired of you. I want you out.
Now.
” She thrust a finger toward the door.

“Or what?” He crowded close, forcing her back, pinning her against the wall. “What will you do? You know, for a woman who claims she feels nothing for me, you’re awfully passionate.” He met her eyes and held them, then stroked a finger over the flushed curve of her cheek.

She trembled, the heat inside her turning from anger to a fire of another sort. “Get out,” she repeated.

“But then you always were passionate,” he breathed. “It’s one of the first things I noticed about you, back when you made it a profession not to notice me. All that pent-up fire, that carefully controlled need, that longing, battling to get free. When you were with me, there wasn’t any need to keep it bottled up anymore, was there? When we were together, you stopped thinking about all the things you’re supposed to want and need and simply existed. Simply felt. What is it you feel now? What is it you want? This?” He skimmed a knuckle over the fullness of her lower lip, his touch nearly a kiss. “Is it this?”