“Now I know why McCabe assigned me to the day shift,” Cynthia said, her voice wry. “It’s the one where nothing ever happens.”
“You say that like that’s a bad thing,” said a familiar drawling voice from the doorway. Still standing behind her desk, Maddie glanced up in surprise to see McCabe walk into her office with Wynne behind him and Louise, looking a little flustered, behind them. The rush of pleasure she felt at seeing McCabe caught her by surprise, and the smile with which she greeted him was big and spontaneous.
“Guess it’s okay for them to come in then,” Louise said to no one in particular, apparently in response to Maddie’s expression, and retreated. Maddie barely noticed. With the best will in the world for it not to be so, she was focused almost exclusively on McCabe.
“Hey,” he said, meeting her gaze and smiling slowly back at her so that his eyes crinkled and his dimples showed. Her heart beat faster and she suffered an instant flashback to that mind-blowing kiss. Feeling her face—and other, more private places—start to heat, she forced the memory from her mind. It therefore took her a few seconds to realize that he was clean-shaven and clad in gray dress slacks, a white shirt, a navy patterned tie, and navy sport coat. Everything was slightly rumpled—Jon’s crown as king of the dandies was definitely not in jeopardy—but McCabe actually looked like a bona fide FBI agent for once. With his black hair and swarthy skin and athlete’s powerful build, he was always second-glance-worthy, but now that he was all gussied up, he looked so handsome that Maddie was momentarily bedazzled. Wynne, too, was Bureau-worthy in a jacket, tie, and khakis. Although his bedazzlement quotient did not quite equal McCabe’s, the look was a big improvement on his usual.
“Whoa, aren’t we looking spiffy?” Cynthia looked the pair of them up and down. “What—or rather who—is this for?”
McCabe shot her a quelling look.
“We had to go into the field office here to have a chat with Tom Finster, who’s the acting agent-in-charge while Needleman’s on vacation,” McCabe said. “He was wanting to pull his guys off the case.”
“So did you persuade him?” Cynthia asked.
“Finster ended up telling him to get the hell out of his office.” Wynne’s voice was dry. He was, Maddie noticed, once again chewing gum.
“Chalk up one more victory for those people skills of yours,” Cynthia said, grinning at McCabe.
“Hey, I got him to let us keep Gomez and Hendricks, and to agree to provide backup on an as-needed basis, so it wasn’t a dead loss,” McCabe said. “We’re just a little leaner and meaner than I consider optimal, is all.” His gaze met Maddie’s. “We got you covered, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried,” she said, truthfully as far as it went. About his ability to keep her safe, she wasn’t worried at all. It was the rest of the sorry mess that was concerning her.
“They’re out in the parking lot now, sweeping your car. We’re here to escort you from the building whenever you’re ready to go.” He grinned at her. “So, are you ready to go?”
It was only then that Maddie glanced at the clock and realized, to her surprise, that it was five minutes until five. Although five o’clock was the company’s official quitting time, Maddie—and the others, too, when necessary—often stayed until six or later.
Before Maddie could answer, Jon appeared in the doorway. An hour before, he’d been looking dapper. Now the jacket to his charcoal suit was missing, his shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, and his tie was askew. His gaze swept the room and it was clear from the flicker in his eyes that he registered the newcomers’ presence. It was an indication of the magnitude of the stress he was apparently laboring under that he didn’t acknowledge them at all. He spoke directly to Maddie.
“I just got off the phone with Susan Allen,” he said. “Houston, we’ve got a problem.”
SEVENTEEN
Maddie felt her stomach tighten as she stared at Jon. “What sort of problem?”
“She’s on her way here.” Jon walked toward her, making a helpless gesture with his hands, clearly agitated. “Susan. With the dog. I tried to tell her that we didn’t have things quite set up yet, but she wouldn’t listen. She said that Mrs. Brehmer wanted us to get started right away. Like tomorrow. If we can’t, they’re going to be taking their business elsewhere.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Maddie’s heart lurched, and she folded her arms over her chest. Shaking his head, Jon planted both hands on the opposite side of her desk and leaned toward her as they looked at each other in mutual consternation.
“I wish I was,” Jon said. “Crap, Maddie, what are we going to do?”
“Oh my goodness,” Louise said from the doorway, having apparently followed Jon down the hall and overheard. “I knew us landing a ten-million-dollar account was too good to be true. And I’ve already sent out the press releases. Oh my goodness.”
Maddie looked at Louise, who was standing in the doorway, wringing her hands. Her plump body was clad in polyester pants—today’s were pale blue—and a matching floral blouse. An open cardigan, pale blue like the pants, hung from her shoulders. Giant clip-on daisies hugged her ears. Her curls looked iron-gray rather than silver in the unforgiving fluorescent light, and her soft, round face sagged with dismay. Her gentle blue eyes were wide behind her spectacles, and, just like Jon’s, they were fastened on Maddie. For a moment, Maddie felt like closing her eyes and throwing up her hands and yelling I give up at the top of her lungs. Capricious clients, on top of predatory hit men and prowling FBI agents and the balancing act she was having to do just to survive, were almost more than she could deal with at the moment. Then she remembered: She owned the company. If it was Creative Partners’ problem, it was her problem. She had to deal with it.
Maddie Fitzgerald, this is your life.
She took a deep breath.
“So, Susan Allen is on her way to St. Louis with Zelda,” Maddie said carefully, striving for calm in the face of crisis. “Now?”
Jon nodded. “She said they would be leaving for the airport right after she and I finished speaking.”
“She surely won’t be able to get a flight at such short notice.” Maddie was thinking furiously, seeking any loop-hole to the looming disaster that she could find. “Especially with a dog.”
“We’re not talking commercial airlines here. You forget, we’re playing in a whole new league with them. They’re flying in in Mrs. Brehmer’s private plane. Susan said they’d be landing in St. Louis about ten tonight. She wanted to know if we could have someone meet them at the airport. Of course I said yes.” Jon straightened and tugged compulsively on his tie, which subsequently hung crooked on the left instead of on the right. “What else could I have said?”
“Nothing else. You did the right thing.” Maddie moved around behind her chair and gripped its padded back hard. “We knew going in that this wasn’t going to be totally smooth sailing. Mrs. Brehmer has a reputation for being difficult, and this is probably just the first manifestation of it. But we can handle it. We will handle it. You say Susan’s bringing Zelda? Fine. Let’s do the easiest thing first. We’ll set up a shoot for some photos we can use for their new logo. Zelda in cute outfits, that kind of thing. You go try to line up a photographer, and I’ll start contacting stylists.” She rolled her eyes. “Do they even have dog stylists? Who the heck knows?”
“Maybe you want a groomer,” Louise suggested. “Dogs have groomers. My JoJo goes to the groomer when his hair gets in a tangle.”
Maddie remembered Mrs. Brehmer complaining about Zelda’s groomer. And JoJo was Louise’s elderly shih tzu, so Louise, as a dog owner, would presumably know about such things.
“Okay, groomer,” she said. “And costumes. We need doggie costumes. Where do people get those, anyway?”
“If you want, I could start calling costume rental shops,” Louise offered. “And I can get you the number of JoJo’s groomer.”
“Good thought,” Maddie said. Pulling the chair out again, she sat down
and reached for the phone. “Okay, people, we’ve got a plan. Let’s get it done.”
Louise nodded and bustled off.
“I’ll meet them at the airport at ten.” Jon, looking heartened, smoothed his tie until it hung almost straight again. “I’ll call Susan back and let her know.”
“Tell her that we can’t wait to get started,” Maddie instructed with her hand on the phone. “And I’ll go with you to the airport.”
Nodding, Jon started toward the door, stopped abruptly, and turned back to frown at her.
“Uh, Maddie—what about them?” He looked significantly at the three FBI agents, who had been listening to this exchange with varying degrees of bemusement on their faces.
Maddie looked at them, too. Wynne looked stoic. Cynthia made a face and waggled her fingers at them.
“They’ll just have to come with us,” she said, her eyes meeting McCabe’s to see if this worked for him.
“Whither thou goest ...” McCabe said with the smallest of smiles.
“Maybe we shouldn’t tell Susan they’re FBI agents,” Jon suggested. “Knowing that they’re following you around because they think some wacko wants to kill you is probably not going to give her a real good feeling about being associated with Creative Partners.”
“Good point,” Maddie said, and looked at McCabe again.
“You won’t even see us,” McCabe promised. “Unless you need us, that is.”
“Great.” Refusing to allow the chilling implications of that to even enter her mind, Maddie rolled her eyes. “Is this turning into a three-ring circus or what?”
“It’s the Brehmer account,” Jon, who was already on his way out the door again, reminded her over his shoulder. “Think ten million dollars a year in advertising.”
“There’s that,” Maddie said, and sat down at her desk again. For an account that size, she could jump through a few hoops.
BY NINE-TWENTY, everything was in place. Limp with exhaustion, Maddie leaned back in her chair and let her hands dangle toward the floor. Cynthia and Wynne had gone, although Wynne was expected to return at any minute. McCabe was sitting in one of the two black-leather-and-chrome chairs in front of her desk. Having walked into her office just minutes before, Jon perched on the edge of her desk, outlining the arrangements he’d made. Louise, who’d followed Jon in, sat in the other leather-and-chrome chair, taking notes. As Jon continued, McCabe rose and crossed to the windows, which took up the whole of the north wall. Maddie’s eyes followed him even as she listened to Jon. McCabe had shed his jacket several hours before. For a long time afterward, every time she’d looked at him all she’d been able to see was the very businesslike gun in the shoulder holster slung across the left side of his chest. Now, with his back turned to her, her gaze instinctively shifted lower: His gray slacks hugged a trim waist and an athlete’s high, tight butt. Maddie admired both, then let her gaze slide up to watch as he lifted an arm to pull the chain at one side of the windows that closed the vertical blinds. The white dress shirt he was wearing tightened across his broad shoulders. Sexy, she thought, then, annoyed at herself, immediately sought a distraction. She glanced past him, out the window, as the blinds slid shut, and saw that it was darker outside than it should have been. Nine-twenty on an August evening in St. Louis was usually a gorgeous, golden time, with long shadows falling across the ground and the sun just beginning to sink beneath the horizon in a burst of oranges and purples. But heavy gray clouds had rolled in during the past few hours to cover the sky, so that now it looked almost like full night outside. It occurred to Maddie then that McCabe had pulled the blinds to keep anyone who might be in a position to do so—from an office inside the skyscraper across the street, say, or on the roof of the smaller building next door to the skyscraper—from seeing in, or worse. In the crush of setting things up for the morrow, she’d almost forgotten the reason McCabe was lounging in her office in the first place. But now, as he turned away from the window and her eyes met his, she remembered, and gave an involuntary little shiver. They were on the sixth floor, true, and the chances that a bullet would come crashing through the window seemed remote. But she didn’t think she would ever get over the trauma of knowing that it was possible.
“So it’s all set,” Jon concluded. Maddie’s gaze switched from McCabe back to him, and she nodded. Jon was looking a little less pumped up than when he had entered her office five minutes before, she noticed as she met his gaze, and there was a faint tightness around his mouth and eyes that was new. But his tie was once again firmly in place, his collar was buttoned, and he looked altogether more calm and collected than he had when the news had hit that Susan Allen and Zelda were on their way. In other words, he looked spiffy as usual, which, she concluded, was a sign that all was once again right in his world.
“You done good,” she said, smiling at him. Glancing over at Louise, she included her in the smile. “We done good.” She pushed back from the desk and stood up. “Now, let’s go kick some difficult client butt.”
Jon slid off the corner of her desk. “You want to ride with me to the airport?”
Maddie’s eyes slipped to McCabe, who was still standing over by the windows but was facing her now. He shook his head slightly at her.
She looked back at Jon. “Uh—I think I’ll go in my own car, thanks.”
“Fine,” Jon said, a little shortly. “I’ll just go get my jacket.”
Was it her imagination, or did his mouth look noticeably thinner as he left the room? Before Maddie had time to decide, Louise spoke up.
“Do you want me to come to the airport, too, Maddie?”
“No thanks, Louise. You can go on home. I appreciate you staying so late.”
“Oh, I’m glad to. I’m just so pleased things are going so well for us.” Louise beamed at her. “Whoever would have thought where we’d be right now, when you took over from Mr. Owens? It’s just a dream come true for all of us.” Her smile faltered, and she glanced a little uncertainly at McCabe, then looked back at Maddie again. “You sure you don’t need me? I’d be glad to come along with you. I could even come over and spend the night if you want me to. Or you could spend the night at my house.”
Her meaning was clear: in case Maddie was afraid. And Maddie was pretty sure that Louise was including McCabe in her mental list of things that Maddie might reasonably fear.
Maddie shook her head. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me, my babysitter is actually very efficient. See you in the morning.”
“Well, if you’re sure.”
With another doubtful glance at McCabe, who gave her a small ironic smile, Louise left the room.
“Do you have to look quite so menacing?” Maddie asked McCabe as she came around her desk to head for the door. “You’re scaring Louise.”
“Actually, I thought I was projecting hungry and tired more than menacing.” He snagged his jacket from the back of the chair he’d been sitting in, shrugged it on, and said something into the two-way radio he extracted from his pocket as he followed her into the hall. She turned off the light to her office as she went. “If I’d known you were meaning to put in another half-day’s work when I got here at five, I would have grabbed something to eat on the way in.”
“I’m hungry, too,” Maddie admitted, opening the door to the hall closet where everyone’s coats were kept and extracting her jacket. “There’s salad in the refrigerator at home.”
It struck her that it felt good to say “at home” to him, and know that he would be sharing the apartment—and the contents of her refrigerator—with her. She had never realized it before, but maybe, just maybe, she’d been living alone too long. Maybe she’d been lonely.
If so, she reminded herself grimly, McCabe was certainly not the remedy of choice.
“Yippee.” McCabe sounded less than enthused. “Forget salad. What I need is a steak.”
“Sorry, fresh out.”
Louise was walking through the suite, turning off lights, and now only Jon’s office and t
he reception room were lit. Maddie started to put on her jacket.
“Hang on a minute.” McCabe came up behind her and reached past her into the closet. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
He pulled out the bulletproof vest, dangling it in front of her. Maddie looked at it, looked at him, and sighed.
“This is a giant pain in my posterior, you know.”
He smiled. “Better than a giant pain elsewhere.”
“True.” He took her jacket from her, and she slipped the vest on. When she had trouble getting the zipper engaged, he watched for a couple tries, made an impatient sound under his breath, brushed her hands aside, and said, “Here, let me.”
He engaged the clasp with just a little difficulty, then zipped her up with brisk efficiency. Meanwhile, Maddie found herself studying the flicker of his eyelashes against his bronze cheeks as he looked down to watch his hands at work; the slight twist to his mouth as he struggled to get the clasp into position; and the five o’clock shadow that was back in all its glory, darkening the hard angles of his jaw. When he had the ends of the zipper together at last and glanced up to meet her gaze as he pulled it up, she realized that her heart was beating way faster than it should have been, and her breathing was just a little erratic. He must have seen something of what was going on with her in her eyes, because for a moment after the zipper was fastened, he kept hold of the tab and held her gaze without moving or saying anything at all. The memory of that sizzling kiss suddenly seemed to scorch the air between them.
I want him.
“Ready?” Jon asked, emerging from his office. He paused in the doorway, one hand reaching behind him to grope for his light switch, and frowned at them. His gaze flickered from Maddie’s face to McCabe. From where Jon stood, of course, all he could see of the other man was his back. Only Maddie could see the heat in McCabe’s eyes.
McCabe let go of the zipper tab and stepped back. For a moment longer, their eyes held. His had darkened, she thought. In the uncertain light, they looked almost black.
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