the opposite of them. I don’t want sex with you…instead I want to know you. I want to be something to you. Not your employer. Not your project of the hour.”
“I can’t. I simply can’t ever do that again.”
“Not even friends? Friends, Madeleine. Two grown-up people who can make that choice. This job is only going to last what…a couple of more weeks? Then you won’t be working for me. No rules would be broken. And if you wanted to we could maybe stay in touch. A call every once in a while. A visit here and there. Friends.”
“Friends?” She couldn’t help herself. She was suspicious of his motives. Why did this man need her as a friend?
“I’m lonely, Madeleine,” he said as if he’d read her mind. “I have my work and I love it but lately it feels like something is missing. Maybe I’m tired of the endless Charlenes. I think I would rather be able to sit down and have a drink and talk.”
She was tempted. So tempted. Because she was lonely, too. This evening, as strange as it had been, had also been nice.
“Think about it. We’re still working together so take that time to get to know me. The real me. And let me get to know you. The real you.”
“This is the real me. Everything you see is everything I am.” Or at least all she would let herself be as far as he was concerned.
He smiled a little sadly. “I don’t think so, Madeleine. I think you’re hiding behind your business suits. I’m only asking you to undo a couple of buttons.”
The thought of him undressing her sent a little shiver through her body. This was why she’d fought so hard to keep him at arm’s length. The brutal truth was she was attracted to him. The first man in more than seven years to interest her and once again she was working for him.
Life could seriously be unfair.
“I can’t think about…anything between us. Not until the job is over. It has to be that way for me.”
“Okay. Then work quick and turn me into someone respectable.”
“How about we shoot for less unrespectable.” They both laughed and the tension between them dissipated.
He dropped her hand and she realized he had been holding it all this time.
“I’ll leave you tonight but can we do breakfast tomorrow morning? I’ll pick you up here.”
“That’s fine. We’ll eat here in the room, though.”
He opened his mouth as if to say something but stopped.
“Tomorrow,” he told her. “Thanks for the drink and the company.”
“Your dime.”
With that, Madeleine watched him leave and heard the door close behind him. Michael Langdon wanted to be her friend. Crazy enough, she wanted his friendship, too.
* * *
HEWASSORRYhe had lied to her. Deception in any form could kill a relationship, but Michael didn’t see any other way around it. She was too closed off. He needed some way to get over the walls she’d spent the past seven years shoring up.
He hit the button between the elevators and waited for the ding to announce one had arrived. Stepping inside, he reassured himself that it would only be another ten hours until he saw her again. But that felt like too much time apart.
Whatever this was, it was crazy. He’d never felt like this before. Never dreamed he would. Yet as he stepped off the elevator and headed for the lobby doors he knew that this thing between them was important. He had nothing to offer a woman like her except a whole lot of baggage, but stubbornly he couldn’t drag himself away from what he wanted.
Michael handed the valet his stub and started pacing along the sidewalk as he waited for his car.
Yeah, he probably shouldn’t have lied about the friends thing. Of course he wanted that but he also wanted something more. Maybe this was his chance to have a grown-up relationship with a woman. Something different. Something he’d never really had. He hadn’t lied when he’d said he was tired of Charlene and others like her. He also hadn’t lied when he’d said he didn’t want Madeleine for sex. She was more important than that.
He didn’t have a word for what he and Madeleine were going to be to one another, but he knew he needed her.
She was changing him. Not just his reputation, but changing him from the inside. He was starting to want things he’d never thought were important. Like companionship and having someone in the universe care how his day went. He had thought he didn’t need those things, but maybe he’d been wrong. His vision of the future was suddenly shifting—the life he had thought he was going to have and the life he just might have were different. As long as Madeleine was with him.
He would lie, cheat and steal all over again to hold on to her.
Poor Madeleine. She didn’t know who she was dealing with.
CHAPTER FIVE
“MADDY!”
Madeleine ducked her head a bit and adjusted her sunglasses, confident they covered most of her face as she approached the sidewalk café on Rodeo Drive. Her old friend and coworker was the only person she would ever let get away with calling her by the old nickname.
“You channeling Jackie O or what?”
“Peg,” Madeleine said as she reached the table and kissed her friend on the cheek. “One might hope for a little discretion.”
“From me? Then it has been too long since we’ve seen each other. Sit down. I’ve ordered you an appletini. You’re going to love it.”
She was going to hate it. She preferred wine to hard alcohol but there would be no convincing Peg. Since she was here to ask a favor, she made the politically correct decision to play along.
“Look at you.” Peg ran her finger up and down to indicate Madeleine’s choice of ensemble. “Very southern California chic.”
“At home I’m always in business suits and I’m never recognized. I didn’t think I would see a lot of those out here so I wanted to blend.”
Madeleine wore an expensive solid-blue top matched with white capris and flat sandals that really cost too much for anyone to justify but she did, anyway. When she’d bought them she’d felt slightly wicked. She paired the ensemble with a patterned scarf around her hair. And the big sunglasses made her feel sufficiently camouflaged.
“You look good. Real good. More relaxed. I would never say this to your face before…wait, actually, I would but I never got the chance to say it…you looked like hell back in the day. Too much pressure and too much stress is not good for the complexion.”
“Back in the day” was code for the campaign trail. When Madeleine had been molding a man to be president and Peg had been working with the press to get the message out. After winning the election Peg stayed on for two more years as junior press secretary. She left when she was given the opportunity to be a producer on television’s more popular
