The Wedding Favor (32 page)
Authors: Unknown
Huh.
He turned to Jan. A new sparkle lit her eyes.
“You’re a
doctor
?” she said.
He let out a sigh.
S
ix thousand, eight hundred dollars, and ninety-eight cents.
Maddie let the bill flutter to her desk, where it settled like a leaf between her elbows. She dropped her head into her hands.
Lucille, her lovable, irresponsible, artistic sister, wanted to do a semester in Italy, studying the great masters.
Well, hell, who wouldn’t? The problem was, Lucy’s private college tuition was already stretching Maddie to the max. The extra expense of a semester abroad meant dipping into—no, wiping out—her meager emergency fund.
Still, considering all they’d been through, Lucy’s carefree spirit was nothing short of a miracle. If keeping that miracle alive meant slaving more hours at her desk, Maddie would make it work somehow.
Knuckles rapped sharply on her office door—Adrianna Marchand’s signature staccato. Maddie slid a file on top of the bill as Adrianna strode in.
“Madeline. South conference room. Now.” Adrianna scraped an eye over Maddie’s hair and makeup, her sleeveless blouse. “Full armor.”
Maddie shook her head. “Take Randall. I’m due in court in two hours and I’m still not up to speed on this case.” Insurance defense might be the most boring legal work in the world, but it was also complex, and she was buried. She waved an arm at the boxes stacked on her cherry coffee table, the hundred case files that marched the length of her leather sofa. “Remember how you dumped all of Vicky’s cases on me after you
fired her for no reason
?”
Adrianna iced over. “
No one’s
job is guaranteed at this firm.”
Maddie glared, unwilling to show fear. But she was outclassed and she knew it. Adrianna’s stare could freeze the fires of hell, and as one of Marchand, Riley, and White’s founding partners, she could, and would, fire Maddie’s ass if she pushed back too hard.
“Fine, whatever.” Kicking off her fuzzy slippers and shoving her feet into the red Jimmy Choos she kept under her desk, Maddie whipped the jacket of her black silk Armani suit off the back of her chair and punched her fists through the sleeves. Then she spread her arms. “Full armor. Satisfied?”
“Touch up your makeup.”
Rolling her eyes, Maddie dug a compact out of her purse, brushed some color onto her pale cheeks, hit her lips with some gloss. Then she poked her fingers into her caramel hair to give it some lift. She wore it spiked, like her heels, to make herself look taller, but at a petite five feet she was still a shrimp.
Adrianna nodded once, then charged out the door, setting a brisk pace down the carpeted hallway. “Step on it. We’ve kept your new client waiting too long.”
Maddie had to trot to keep up. “
My
new client? Because I don’t have enough work?”
“He requested you specifically. He says you’re acquainted.”
“Well, who is he?”
“He wants to surprise you.” Adrianna’s dry tone made it clear she wasn’t kidding.
Before Maddie could respond to that ridiculous statement, Adrianna tapped politely on the conference room door, then gently pushed it open.
Meant for large meetings with important clients, the room was designed to impress, with Oriental carpets covering the hardwoods, and original landscapes by notable artists gracing the walls. But it was the long cherry table that really set the tone. Polished to a gleam and surrounded by posh leather chairs, it spelled confidence, professionalism, and prosperity.
Bring us your problem
, that table said,
and we will solve it without breaking a sweat.
And if the room and the table weren’t enough to convince a prospective client that Marchand, Riley, and White were all that, then the million-dollar view of the Manhattan skyline through the forty-foot-wide glass wall would drive the point home. Who could argue with that kind of success?
Now Maddie’s new client stood gazing out at that view, his back to the door, one hand in the pocket of his expensively cut trousers, the other holding a sleek cell phone to his ear.
Through that phone, Maddie heard a woman’s tinkling laughter. He responded in rapid Italian. Not that Maddie understood a word of it. Her Italian began and ended with ordering risotto in Little Italy. But she’d had a short fling with a gorgeous Italian waiter, and she recognized the rhythm of the language. It was the sound of sweaty sex.
Clearing her throat to announce their presence earned her a wintry glance from Adrianna. But the man ignored them utterly. Maddie crossed her arms and looked him up and down with an affronted eye.
He was tall, over six feet, and she put his weight at a lean one-ninety. Broad through the shoulders, narrow at the hips, he bore himself like an athlete, graceful and relaxed—as if he wasn’t standing six scant inches from thin air, sixty stories above Fifth Avenue.
Though he claimed to know her, she couldn’t place him by the sliver of his face reflected in the glass, or by the sleek, black hair curling over his collar, too long for Wall Street, not long enough for the Italian soccer team.
Everything about him—his clothes, his bearing, his flagrant arrogance—screamed rich, confident, and entitled.
He must be mistaken about her, she decided, because she honestly didn’t know anyone like him. And given his casual assumption that his time was more important than theirs, she didn’t want to.
She held it together for as long as she could, tapping her foot, biting her tongue, but as the grandfather clock in the corner ticked into the fifth long minute of silent subservience, her patience ran out. She uncrossed her arms and reached for the doorknob. “I don’t have time for this shit.”
Adrianna’s hand shot out and clamped her arm. “Suck it up, Madeline,” she gritted through her teeth.
“Why should I? Why should
you
?” Under normal circumstances, Adrianna had zero tolerance for disrespect, so why was she putting up with this guy’s bullshit?
Flinging a resentful look at the mystery man, she didn’t bother to lower her voice. “This guy doesn’t know me. Because seriously, if he did, he’d know I won’t stand here burning daylight while he talks dirty to his girlfriend.”
“Oh yes you will,” Adrianna hissed. She released Maddie’s arm, but caught her eyes. “You’ll stand on your head if he says so. He could mean
millions
for this firm.”
The man in question chose that moment to end his call. Casually, unhurriedly, he slipped the phone in his pocket. Then he turned to face them.
Maddie’s heart stopped. Her lips went icy.
Adrianna started to speak but he cut her off, his vaguely European accent smoothing the edge from his words. “Thank you, Adrianna. Now give us the room.”
Without a word, Adrianna nodded once and left them alone, closing the door softly behind her.
His complete attention came to rest on Maddie, a laser beam disguised as cool condescension. Her blood, which had gone cold, now boiled up in response, pounding her temples, hammering out a beat called Unresolved Fury, Frustrated Objectives, Justice Denied.
“You son of a bitch,” she snarled. “How dare you claim an acquaintance with me?”
He smiled, a deceptively charming curve of the lips meant to distract the unwary from eyes so intensely blue and so penetratingly sharp that they might otherwise reveal him as the diabolical felon he was.
“Ms. St. Clair.” Her name sounded faintly exotic on his tongue. “Surely you don’t deny that we know each other.”
“Oh, I know you, Adam LeCroix. I know you should be doing ten to fifteen in Leavenworth.”
His lips curved another half inch, past charming, to amused. “And I know you. I know that if you’d taken me to trial, you’d have done an excellent job of it. But”—he shrugged slightly—“both of us know that no jury would have convicted me.”
“Still so cocky,” she simmered. “And so fucking guilty.”
A
dam held back a laugh. Madeline St. Clair might be tiny enough to fit in his pocket, but she had the grit of a two-hundred-pound cage fighter.
When he’d last seen her five years ago, she was a bloodthirsty young prosecutor, spitting nails as her then-boss, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York—who had his eyes on higher office—shook Adam’s hand and apologized for letting the case against him go as far as it had.
Playing magnanimous, Adam had nodded gravely, said all the right things about public servants simply doing their jobs, and with a wave for the news cameras, disappeared into his limousine.
Where he’d cracked a six-thousand-dollar bottle of Dom Perignon and made a solitary toast to a narrow escape from the law.
It had been his own damn fault that he’d come so close to being caught, because he
had
gotten cocky. He’d made a rare mistake, a minute one, but Madeline had used it like a crowbar to pry into his life until she’d damn near nailed him for stealing the
Lady in Red
.
The newly discovered Renoir masterpiece had been sold at Sotheby’s to a Russian arms dealer, a glorified mobster who cynically expected a splashy show of good taste to purge the bloodstains from his billions. Adam couldn’t stomach it, so he’d lifted the painting. Not for gain; he had his own billions. But because great art was sacred, and using it as a dishrag to wipe blood off the hands of a man who sold death was sacrilege.
Adam had simply saved the masterpiece from its unholy purpose.
It wasn’t the first time, or the last, that he’d liberated great art from unclean hands. He told himself that it was his calling, but he couldn’t deny that it was also a hell of a lot of fun. Outsmarting the best security systems money could buy taxed his brain in ways that managing his companies simply couldn’t. Training for the physical demands kept him in Navy SEAL condition. And the adrenaline rush, well, that couldn’t be duplicated. Not even by sex. No woman had ever thrilled him that intensely or challenged him so completely on every level.
But now the shoe was on the other foot. One of his own paintings—his favorite Monet—had been heisted clean off the wall of his Portofino villa.
Just the thought made his teeth grind.
Oh, he’d find it eventually; he had no doubt of that. He had the resources, both money and manpower. He was patient. He was relentless. And when he got his hands on the bastard who’d infiltrated his home—his sanctuary—he’d make him pay for his hubris.
But in the meantime, he had a more immediate concern. The insurance company, Hawthorne Mutual, was dragging its feet, balking at paying him the forty-four million dollars the Monet was insured for.
Forty-four million was a lot of money, even to a man like him. But it was the company’s excuse for holding it up that really pissed him off. They needed to investigate the theft, they claimed, because Adam had once been a “person of interest” in the theft of the Renoir.
In short, Hawthorne’s foot-dragging could be laid at Madeline’s door. She’d damaged Adam’s reputation, impugned his integrity. Cast a shadow of doubt over one of the richest men in the world.
Never mind that she’d been right about him.
Because she was visibly chomping at the bit, he moved as if he had all day, strolling to the far end of the room, where a leather sofa and club chairs clustered around a coordinating coffee table. This would be where clients chummied up with the partners after meetings, rubbing elbows over scotch and cigars while the lowly associates—like Madeline—scuttled back to their offices to do the actual work.
He poured himself an inch of scotch from the Waterford decanter on the table, then relaxed into the sofa, stretching one arm along the back, letting the other drape carelessly over the side, whiskey glass dangling from his fingers.
Her steel gray eyes narrowed to slits. “What do you want, LeCroix? Why are you here?”
Lazily, he sipped his scotch, enjoying the angry flush that burned her cheeks. In the prosecutor’s office, they’d called her the Pitbull. He was glad to see she’d lost none of her fire.
Watching her simmer, he remembered how her intensity had appealed to him. How much
she’d
appealed to him. Which was surprising, really. As a rule, he liked a solid armful of woman, and Madeline was barely there.
At the time, he’d told himself it was because she’d damn near taken him down. Naturally, he had to admire that.
But now he felt it again, that tug of attraction. Something about those suspicious eyes, that spring-loaded body, went straight to his groin. An image of her astride him, nails gouging his chest, eyes blazing with passion, flashed through his mind. Was she as hot-blooded in bed as she was in the courtroom?
Regrettably, he’d never find out. Because he was about to piss her off for life.
He crossed his legs with studied nonchalance while all five-foot nothing of her bristled with temper.
“Hawthorne Mutual is holding up payment on the Monet,” he said. He didn’t bother to describe the painting; she’d remember it. Five years ago she’d subpoenaed an inventory of his art collection. He’d complied—at least as to his
legal
collection.
“Someone stole the Monet?” For the first time, she smiled, a wicked grin.
He flicked imaginary lint from his knee. “Apparently, even
my
security isn’t unbreachable.” And wasn’t that a sore spot?
She barked out a laugh. “What goes around, comes around, LeCroix. With your history, Hawthorne will never pay—what was the insured value? Forty-four million?” She sneered, clearly enjoying the irony. “They’ll keep you in court for years.”
He let her savor her last taste of victory. Then he hit her where it hurt.
“Not me,” he said, succinctly. “Us. They’ll keep
us
in court. Because you’re representing me. For as long as it takes, whatever it takes.”
Her chin actually jerked as she took the blow. Then he finished her off with a short jab to the kisser.
“From now on, Madeline, you work for me.”
M
addie slammed her door so hard that her diploma jumped off the wall, glass splintering as it hit the floor.
She didn’t spare it a glance, just threw herself into her desk chair and glared at the door, waiting.