“So, Madison, I want to discuss a competing job offer with you,” a warm, familiar baritone voice said.
Alexander had found me.
41
Alexander
Madison stared at me in shock. I hadn’t meant to sneak up on her, but I guess she didn’t hear the screen door slam behind her. Her big hazel eyes looked brown and overwhelmed in the low light of the Ellis’ back porch. She was still bending over at the waist, possibly trying to fight off the nausea induced by the hug I’d seen Angelica giving her a moment ago.
When she didn’t respond, I began to get worried. Maybe she was seriously ill? Prolonged contact with Angelica could do that to a person. It was a miracle Angelica’s ancient husband hadn’t died already from the exposure.
“Are you ok?” I asked, moving a few steps closer to her and inspecting her face.
“Yes, yes, sorry, I’m fine,” she said, shaking her head and straightening up, “I’m just a little overwhelmed.”
“I can imagine. My father loves to put people on the spot like that. Congratulations on the job offer from Durant Industries,” I said, smiling at her. I was feeling a bit guilty for chasing her out here. She seemed upset, and while I didn’t want to make it worse, I was going to, at least in the short term. It would be worth it.
“Uh, thanks,” Madison replied, looking at me oddly, “I definitely didn’t expect that to happen right now.”
“Well, it makes sense,” I said to her, “after all, my Dad has been looking for a new General Counsel since his last one retired a couple of years back. He tried to recruit your dad, but he wouldn’t give up his firm partnership. You would do a great job.”
“Hmm…yeah,” Madison said. She sat down on the steps leading down from the porch to the backyard. “Durant Industries. Wow.”
“You don’t really sound very excited,” I ventured, sitting down next to her and taking her tiny hand in mine, “I guess you aren’t sure you want to leave LifeBuild to help my dad keep raping the natural world’s resources for fun and profit?”
She snorted a very unladylike little snort that was so adorable I couldn’t help but grin. I didn’t necessarily see Durant Industries quite that way, in fact, pretty much the opposite, but I figured that Madison would. By the look on her face, I was right.
“Well,” she began as if trying to convince herself, “one of the things I could do would be to try and mitigate some of that. I could advocate for a more moderate development path and better environmental controls internally. I could run a strong compliance and ethics program. Plus, the business does a lot of charitable outreach…” she trailed off, looking confused.
“That’s all true,” I admitted, “but I’m not sure you would like working for my dad. He’s a grade-A asshole. He believes that hazing for new employees is essential for building team cohesion. He still doesn’t do any paid maternity or paternity leave. He wouldn’t do paid sick leave or allow gay couples to get insurance coverage if he could get around it. He says his employees are part of his family, which is true because he treats his own family like crap. Remember, he’s the guy who wouldn’t even bail me out of jail so he could score a few political points.”
Madison looked over at me then. I guess the bitterness in my voice was still really obvious after all these years. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she said, “it must have been really scary. But you shouldn’t have beaten that guy up, even though he deserved it.”
I nodded. “I know,” I told her, “I was stupid. I wasn’t thinking clearly that night. You see, I had just met this girl. The most gorgeous, most amazing girl. I’d just met you. And I couldn’t have you because you were way too young and way too good for me. Still, I shouldn’t have beat up Andrew.”
Madison looked at me with an expression of disbelief, hope, and confusion. I kissed her and she leaned into me with the sweetest gentle urgency, her mouth taking mine and demanding more and more with a bossy insistence. When I pulled away, she looked annoyed and a little line formed between her eyebrows. I kissed her on the forehead, ignoring her frown.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me that it was you that bailed me out Madison?” I asked her before she could say anything else, “All these years and I didn’t know until just now when Clara told me it was you.”
Madison’s mouth had dropped open in surprise and she flushed a deep pink. She looked away, searching for answers in the hydrangea flowers to our left. We sat there for a long moment in silence.
“I can’t believe Clara ratted me out!” Madison finally blurted out, burying her head in her hands in frustration and using her hair to hide her face. She looked embarrassed.
“She didn’t,” I replied seriously, “don’t be mad at Clara. She just corrected me when I tried to thank her tonight. I bribed the guy that bailed me out that day to tell me who paid him. You didn’t leave your name but the description he gave of the car made me think it was Clara, and that made sense to me on some level. But it wasn’t Clara, was it? It was you.”
Madison nodded mutely, still blushing and looking uncomfortable.
“Why did you do it?” I asked again.
“Because I…” Madison started, swallowed hard, and started again in a small voice just above a whisper, “because I was in love with you.”
I regained possession of her hand and held it tighter in mine. I resisted the temptation to get too excited yet, but my heart had begun to beat my rapid pulse audibly within my eardrums. I’d figured it out for myself after talking to Clara. After seeing Madison’s expression when I caught her eye during my dad’s speech, I was sure.
“You were? Does that mean you don’t feel that way anymore?” I followed up. I knew I was pushing Madison out of her comfort zone, but we needed to have this conversation before it was too late. I needed to know.
Madison stood up and turned to stand in front of me. With her standing on the ground and me sitting on the top step, we were at eye level with each other. She looked frustrated, angry, and sad, but she’d also never looked more beautiful to me. Madison took a deep breath.
“What do you want me to say, Alexander? That I’m in love with you and always have been? That all the other guys that I’ve been with haven’t remotely measured up? That I was just biding my time and trying to convince myself I’d be happy without you? Fine. It’s all true. I loved you then and I love you more now. Are you happy now? Because I’m not. Tomorrow I’m going home to Brooklyn and I have to keep going with my life alone.”
“What if I went with you?” I asked her. The sadness and anger disappeared off Madison’s face, leaving only the confusion. She blinked at me.
“What? You can’t. You live in Dubai. Don’t you have a big project there?”
I took a deep breath. Now it was my turn to put myself on the line emotionally. I hated making myself vulnerable, but for Madison it was worth it. High risk, high reward. It worked in business. Maybe it would work in love.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said, “just hear me out. What if we decided that we wanted to make a serious go of things together? I’ve been trying to figure this out all day, and I’ve come up with a solution. It’s a compromise of sorts. The idea is this: we form a new charitable foundation. You and me. An NGO that I endow, and you run. We can name it the Madison Clark Foundation if you want. Anyway, we form this new nonprofit and then we use it to make the world a better place and you can do exactly the work that makes you happy. I can find something to build pretty much anywhere. I’ll just follow you around wherever you want to go and build stuff.”
Madison stood in front of me with a look of total disbelief on her face.
“Follow me around and build stuff?” She repeated, a smirk beginning to tease the corners of her mouth upward.
“Yes. I’ll follow you around and build stuff,” I confirmed as if that was a reasonable business plan. I’d already run the numbers and talked to my COO who thought it was incredibly stupid and irresponsible. But not impossible. It would be harder t
han cherry picking profitable projects, but with my capital reserves and experience, I was relatively convinced that I could find opportunities wherever we went. And if it wasn’t easy to do that, well, there were planes and phones and computers. I could work remotely. Dubai was almost finished anyway. The hard part was done.
“Alexander,” Madison said seriously, “the work I do is really, really expensive. I’m not sure you’ve thought this all the way through. We don’t make money in the nonprofit world; we just spend it. A lot of it. I rely on a reliable group of really committed donors to keep the influx of cash positive, and even then, we never have enough money. I’m not sure you realize how much money it costs to do relief work.”
I nodded.
“You’re right. Or you were. I didn’t know. It was way more than I expected. I was surprised when I started going through the financial statements of the top fifty NGO’s. But the good news is that I’m really, really rich. And the numbers got less terrifying when I got further down the list of NGO’s a bit. Tell me, how much yearly funding do you think a brand new organization would need in order to be sure it could do the work you want to do in Haiti. LifeBuild, how much money do they need?”
Madison raised her eyebrows at me. She had the same challenging look on her face that she’d worn at the silent auction. Her eyes narrowed dangerously and I took another deep breath and steeled myself for financial ruin. Whatever it was, I’d figure out a way to deal with it.
“LifeBuild is chronically underfunded at seven million dollars a year. If I were the director of a new organization that did similar work I’d say I’d need at least fifteen million dollars a year. Easy. Maybe twenty until the organization was established and cash flows from other donors became reliable.”
I exhaled in relief. I was beyond pleased that my estimates hadn’t been too far off. Doctors without Borders went through two hundred million a year, and they were fairly lean compared to some charities. I’m rich, but I’m not Jeff Bezos rich. I halfway suspected that some of these organizations must be literally burning the money to go through it so fast, although the financial statements seemed to suggest that it was actually just good old fashioned financial mismanagement and greed. Some of the executives paid themselves exorbitant salaries, made bad investments, or overspent massively on advertising. I doubted I’d have those issues with Madison. She was way too smart.
“Twenty. Done,” I replied happily. In actuality, I’d budgeted for almost three times that much. I was getting off relatively light. Well not light, but it was all tax deductible. And it was for a good cause (Madison’s happiness). And charity. That was important too, and also a greater good, I supposed.
Madison was looking at me like she expected me to suddenly laugh and tell her I’d been pulling her leg. I smiled at her instead and just continued to watch her. After about fifteen seconds her lips parted in surprise.
“You’re serious,” she said in wonder, her eyes getting rounder as it sunk in, “you’re actually serious.”
“I told you. I’m going to follow you around and build stuff. I love you. You love me. What do you think? Want to give it a try?”
Madison put a hand out and grabbed the stair railing for support. She looked like she might faint.
“Madison?” I asked, reaching out to push her hair over her shoulder and out of her face. She still hadn’t answered. She just continued to stare at me in disbelief.
When I tried to withdraw my hand back from her hair, she grabbed it and held it to her cheek.
“Is this really happening?” She asked me, her eyes shining brightly in the low light with unshed tears. I hoped they were happy tears.
I nodded, and she came to sit down on the step beneath me, resting her head against my leg and looking up at me.
“What if you get tired of following me around and building things?” She asked me in a small voice, still not answering my question.
I resisted begging for an answer and thought about what she’d asked.
“Well then I’ll stop building things, I guess. I’ll figure something else out. I’ve always liked building things though, it hasn’t gotten old for me yet.”
“That wasn’t what I meant,” she said, smiling for a second before it vanished, and a more serious expression took its place, “what if you get tired of following me around?”
I laughed at that.
“Hardly. Have you seen your ass? I’ll never get tired of following you around,” I told Madison and she just rolled her eyes, “but seriously, I love you. I fell in love with you that night at the party, but I didn’t realize it for a long time. I’m not going to make any stupid mistakes this time. We both came really close to losing our lives this week. I can’t imagine losing you.”
“You really want to do this? Are you sure?” she asked me, clearly unwilling to answer me until she believed I was truly serious.
“Yes,” I told her, stroking the soft skin of her cheek that was still pressed against the outside of my leg, “I really want to. I’m really sure. I love you. So? What do you say?”
“I say yes, Alexander,” she answered at last, gazing up at me with an expression that stole my breath and made me feel weak and strong simultaneously, “I love you.”
42
Madison
I refused to go back into the party. I was exhausted from shaking so many hands, and just done with being in a crowd. There was no way. On a basic level, I’m an introvert. Once I reach my limit on social situations, I’m just done. No one can make me change my mind.
I did, however, reluctantly agree to let Alexander drive me back to his house on the motorcycle—a decision which made him irrationally happy. I’d just run out of reasons not to try it. We were both incredibly stubborn people. We’d just have to get used to that.
While I was more than happy to commit the social sin of an Irish goodbye, Alexander said he had one more piece of business inside. After walking me around the house rather than through it, he headed back inside to face his father.
As I waited for Alexander to re-emerge and take me away, I texted Clara that I was outside, and she came to meet me. She bounded out the door to get the latest news.
“Well, are you moving to Dubai?” She asked, grinning like she’d personally engineered my relationship success.
“No, I’m not,” I said to her, and her face fell instantly, “he’s going to, and I quote, ‘follow me around and build stuff’.”
“Even better!” she cried, throwing her arms around my neck. We both giggled like schoolgirls.
“You totally ratted me out to Alexander,” I scolded her with mock seriousness once I was free from her bone-crushing embrace.
Clara shook her head innocently.
“I most certainly did not,” she replied defensively, “I was going to, but then I didn’t. It’s not my fault Alexander thanked me for something I didn’t do. What, did you want me to lie to him?”
I rolled my eyes at her. Only Clara could find a way to tell on me without telling on me. Her sweet and innocent thing wasn’t all an act, but sometimes it was. In a family full of schemers, Clara was pretty good at getting what she wanted.
“I’m not really mad,” I told her, grinning, “I think it was time he knew anyway.”
“So, what you’re saying is that I was right, and you were wrong, huh?” Clara replied.
I laughed.
“Ok fine. This one time you were right, and I was wrong. Don’t let it go to your head.”
Clara hugged me again. Before we were able to turn our conversation to other topics, such as the new foundation that I urgently wanted to tell her about, Angelica exited the front door to glare at us. How she knew I was still here is anyone’s guess.
“Can I help you?” I asked her snidely. I was pretty much fed up with Angelica’s shit.
Clara took one look at each of us and got out of the way.
“I just want you to know that you’re making a big mistake,” Angelica said, her voice dripping with condescens
ion, “Alexander is going to get tired of you in a few weeks.”
I rolled by eyes at her. “Excuse me?” I asked, more to get the conversation over with than to hear the answer.
She looked down her expert rhinoplasty at me with pity. If I hadn’t known her before the surgery I wouldn’t even be able to tell she’d changed it. Her original nose had been attractive too, but maybe it looked too human. Now she looked like one of those computer generated composite pictures where they combine five pretty blonde actresses to make one ‘perfect’ one.
“I’m only trying to be honest with you Madison,” Angelica continued, “You aren’t good enough for him. You’re not nearly pretty enough, and you don’t have the money or class to keep up. It’s obvious to everyone but you.”
“Cool. Thanks for that. Have a great life Angelica,” I replied dismissively. I’d been insulted enough over the years by Angelica to know that I must be making her really jealous at this moment. That was the only reason she would deign to speak to me.
“I just feel really bad for you, Madison. You’re going to be so embarrassed when he leaves you for someone that deserves him.”
“Oh, don’t bother feeling bad for me, Angelica,” I crowed, “I am sorry for your loss, though, it seemed like you and Frank were quite, um, close.’
Angelica huffed, looking annoyed rather than ashamed.
“Oh Frank,” she replied sadly, shaking her head, “I put a lot of effort into that, you know? Months and months of texts and stuff. I can’t believe you just went and made him kill himself.”
Something was seriously wrong with Angelica’s brain. The man she’d been ‘grooming’ to take her husband’s place had killed himself over his infidelity and she was blaming me? I’d been a hostage! I wanted to throttle her, but there was no point in arguing.
Bleeding Heart (Scions of Sin Book 1) Page 23
