The Wedding Favor (33 page)
Authors: Unknown
Five seconds later, Adrianna barged in, loaded for bear. Planting her fists on the desk, she fired both barrels. “Get your ass back in that conference room and unmake whatever mess you just made. Adam LeCroix is the most important client who’s ever walked into this office.”
“He’s a criminal,” Maddie lashed back. “He should be in an eight-foot cell, not strutting around Manhattan thinking he can buy anybody he wants. Thinking he can buy me!” She jabbed a finger in his general direction. “He can go fuck himself. I’d rather starve than work for him.”
“Then you’ll starve,” Adrianna shot back. She drew herself up, breathed in, breathed out. “You’re fired.”
“Good!” Maddie snapped open her briefcase and dumped out the legal pads. In went her personal things. A photo of Lucy in her cap and gown, smile brightening the cloudy day. Another of Lucy on her first day at college, waving from her dorm window. Lucy again, at her small gallery showing, face alight with wonder and promise.
Maddie stilled. Her eyes dropped to the bill poking out from under
Johnson v. Jones
. No job meant no semester in Italy for Lucy. Hell, it meant no semester of any kind for Lucy, unless the poor kid took on the same crippling school loans that still hamstrung Maddie. That kind of debt took away your choices, killed your dreams. Left you at the mercy of people like Adrianna Marchand . . . and Adam LeCroix.
She had no choice but to give in. Cornered like a rabbit, she lifted her eyes to Adrianna. Who smiled her evil she-wolf smile.
“I knew you’d see reason,” said the she-wolf. Then she reached across Maddie’s desk, hit the intercom button. “Randall, get in here.”
“Yes, ma’am!” He snapped out a verbal salute, sped into the office in record time. Cursed with red hair and freckles, he blushed like a virgin when Adrianna turned her carnivorous gaze upon him.
“Take this.” She scraped
Johnson v. Jones
into a pile and thrust it into his arms. “Judge Bernam’s expecting you in his chambers in two hours for a settlement conference. Don’t disappoint me.”
Randall went pale. “But—”
Adrianna stared him silent.
“Don’t worry,” Maddie cut in, mercifully, “it’s
pro forma
. The plaintiff’s not ready to settle.”
Randall’s momentary relief died as Adrianna pointed at the boxes on the coffee table, the files on the couch. “Those are yours too. Get them out of here.”
As a brand new hire, Randall had the lightest caseload of any associate. Naively, he still believed that evenings and weekends were his own. His dawning horror would have evoked Maddie’s pity if she hadn’t had her own horror to reckon with: Adam LeCroix, billionaire businessman, international playboy. Art thief extraordinaire.
She swallowed hard, tasting her bitterest defeat.
Five years ago she’d almost nailed him. A circumstantial case, but if only she’d been allowed to take it to trial, she could’ve made it stick. She could’ve convinced the jury that LeCroix was not only the mastermind who outwitted Sotheby’s state-of-the-art computerized security, but also the Spider-Man who scaled walls, ghosted past armed guards and, in under four minutes, poofed with the
Lady in Red
rolled up in a three-foot tube.
But her boss was too chicken to take LeCroix on. With his eyes on a senatorial bid, he wasn’t willing to risk having a high-profile defeat splashed across the front page of the
New York Times.
So Maddie had watched LeCroix waltz out of her office, wave to the media whores who worshipped him like a celebrity, and cruise away in his black stretch limo.
That had been bad. But this . . . this was a nightmare. She was at the man’s mercy. There was no way she could walk away from her job at Marchand, Riley, and White and into another that paid as well. Not in this economy.
She suppressed a shiver. Not since she’d left her father’s house had she felt so vulnerable to a man. She’d sworn never to let one control her again, but now LeCroix had her by the proverbial balls. And he was diabolical. If he learned about her childhood, he’d use her personal demons to turn the screws tighter still.
She couldn’t—and wouldn’t—hide her revulsion at working for him, but she could never let him know how much it cost her.
A
dam ended another phone call, checked his watch. Six minutes. By now, Madeline would have capitulated and she’d be processing her defeat. Girding her loins—that image made him smile—for the short walk to this conference room and the crow-eating apology the Marchand vixen would expect her to deliver.
His smile grew to a grin. That would be the day. He might have Madeline’s back to the wall, but he knew better than to expect an apology out of her. And he didn’t want one.
What he wanted was his forty-four million dollars, and to see Hawthorne’s high-and-mighty CEO—Jonathan Edward Kennedy Hawthorne IV—blanch when Adam showed up with his former prosecutor in his corner.
Hawthorne mistakenly believed that because his great-whatever-grandfather came over on the
Mayflower
and started what was now the oldest, most hide-bound, hoity-toity insurance company in America, he could jam Adam up. That he’d quail at veiled threats to dredge up old rumors about the
Lady in Red
.
Not likely. If Hawthorne’s smarmy lawyers had done their homework, they’d know Adam didn’t give a damn about bad publicity. He didn’t give a damn about the press or the public or the next story about him on Page Six of the
Post.
What he cared about was not getting screwed over by
anybody
. Most assuredly not by some blueblood who thought his money was better than Adam’s simply because it had more age on it.
Well, Hawthorne had a big surprise coming. Never in a million years would he expect Madeline to join forces with Adam, when the whole world knew she’d done everything in her power to convict him. Why, the press had made hay with it across the globe, sensationalizing the story of the upstart prosecutor’s tenacious pursuit of the self-made billionaire, dubbing it the Pitbull versus the Piranha.
For that reason alone, her mere presence on his payroll would neutralize any once-a-thief, always-a-thief argument Hawthorne could make about the Monet. And if he cooked up some other reason to deny Adam his money, then he’d turn her loose on him. Hawthorne wouldn’t have a chance against the Pitbull.
His grin widened. The icing on the cake was that Madeline would hate every minute of it. He couldn’t have dreamed up a sweeter revenge if he’d tried.
When the idea had first come to him a week ago, he’d wondered how he could rope her in. The woman had more integrity than anyone he’d ever met. But a quick and dirty investigation into her finances turned up her Achilles’ heel—her sister Lucille. Sixty percent of Madeline’s income went to cover the girl’s expenses. Room, board, clothes, travel, and the killer—tuition at the Rhode Island School of Design. The kid got some meager financial aid, but she took no loans at all. Madeline covered every penny of it.
She literally couldn’t afford to lose her job.
After that, all it took were some vague promises of future business to her shrew of a boss, hinging, of course, on Madeline’s cooperation, and he had her right where he wanted her.
The door to the conference room opened and the Pitbull herself strode in. She snarled over her shoulder at whoever remained in the hallway, then slapped the door shut and stalked the length of the room, a short stick of dynamite, ready to explode.
He couldn’t suppress another smile. He’d always loved to blow things up.
She pulled up in front of him, close enough that even from her unimpressive height she was looking down at him. She snapped out one word.
“Why?”
He let his brows rise a centimeter. Gave her not one inch of ground.
“Why what?”
“Why me? It’s stupid to expect me to help you with the Monet. One thing you’re not is stupid.” She crossed her arms. “That means you’re dragging me into this for revenge. Since it’s been five years, and the only price you ever paid for stealing the
Lady in Red
was to get more attention from your fans in the press, why risk a forty-four-million-dollar recovery by putting me in the middle of it? Why not find someone who might
actually believe
you didn’t steal your own Monet, and leave me the fuck alone?”
Adam swirled his scotch. When he’d envisioned this inevitable moment, he’d imagined responding to her attack with a swift accounting of her precarious financial condition, followed by a hard boot in the ass to bring her into line. Now that the time had come, he didn’t want to do either of those things. He liked her this way, with fire in her eyes.
The truth was—and this surprised him—he wasn’t quite comfortable using her sister as a sword to force her to her knees. Maybe he had a soft spot for sibling affection—he wouldn’t have guessed it, having none of his own. But more likely it was his business sense kicking in. After all, her feistiness would be an asset in his battle with Hawthorne. It wouldn’t behoove him to break her spirit.
But he did have to show her who was boss.
“Do sit down,” he said in an even tone that neither challenged nor gave ground. Then he dropped his gaze to the chair, a clear signal that if she wanted to meet his eyes, she’d have to park herself in it.
After five deliberate seconds plainly meant to show that she was sitting because she
wanted
to, not because he commanded it, she let one cheek touch leather. It hardly made a dent; she couldn’t weigh more than ninety pounds soaking wet.
She’d left her jacket in her office, and her sleeveless top stretched over breasts that fit her proportions exactly. Not that he was looking; he kept his eyes on her face, but his peripheral vision caught the action as they swelled up and out with each annoyed breath.
“Listen, LeCroix—”
“Adam,” he cut in. “My top advisors go by given names. I find they speak more freely that way.” He smiled slightly. “Although you don’t seem to have a problem speaking your mind to the boss.”
“You’re not my boss. I work for Marchand, Riley, and White. You’re my client. I’m ”—here she choked on her words—“your attorney. You don’t pay me. The firm does. I don’t report to you. I represent you. That’s all.”
He tilted his head, did a sympathetic smile this time. “Perhaps Adrianna wasn’t clear. It’s true that you aren’t
directly
on my payroll. But make no mistake. You work
for me
. You report
to me
. I am your
only
client, and my whim is your command.”
She shot out of her chair and he almost laughed. He
had
gone a bit far with that last part. But really, she was asking for it.
“You can take your
whim
—” she snarled, but he cut her off again.
“I’m sure you have many fascinating and original ideas about what I can do with my whim,” he said, “but that’s not what I’m paying for. I’m paying for your time, your efforts, and your undivided attention. And by undivided I mean twenty-four seven.”
Her eyes bugged. “I have a
life
, you know.”
“Do you?” Insulting.
Her cheeks went up in flames.
He could have told her what he knew right then and there, that not only were her finances in the crapper, her love life was circling the bowl along with them. But why let her know that his private investigators had turned her life inside out? He’d save that bombshell for another day.
Still, her lack of romantic involvements—past and present—surprised him. His investigators had checked as far back as her undergraduate days at Boston University and found no relationships lasting longer than a three-day weekend. Granted, it would take a brave man to bare his junk to her—he’d find himself short a nut if he looked at her crosswise—but even so, there’d been no shortage of interest through the years. It was Madeline who refused to get serious.
Her flushed face told Adam that there was a story there. In time, he’d find out what it was. For the moment, though, he had all the leverage he needed.
“Get your things,” he said, “I’ll take you home.”
She bristled. “I can get home on my own, when I’m good and ready to go.”
Ignoring her, he set his glass on the table, pulled out his phone. “Fredo, bring the car around. We’ll be down in five.”
“I’m not riding with you!”
He dropped the phone in his pocket. Rose to his full six-foot-two, and watched her head tip back to hold him in her furious glare.
He curved his lips, part smile, all menace. “Five minutes, Madeline. With your things, or without them. That much is up to you.”
And he walked past her and out the door.
CARA CONNELLY is an award-winning author of contemporary romances. Her smart and sexy stories have won high praise, earning Cara several awards, including the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart, the Valley Forge Romance Writers’ Sheila, and the Music City Romance Writers’ Melody of Love. Cara, who lives in rural upstate New York, works as an appellate court attorney when she’s not crafting steamy novels of love and romance.
www.caraconnelly.com
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