sweetie.” Romi came around the table to hug her.
Maddie fought down stress-induced nausea. “I thought he was real.”
“Instead, he turned out to be just another one of the plastic people.” Romi’s tone reflected her own experience with that. “All looks and no substance.”
Maddie choked out a morbid laugh. “Yeah.”
A bugler’s reveille sounded from her smartphone.
With a snicker, Romi moved back to her seat. “Daddy’s PA?”
“I thought it was appropriate.” Maddie clicked into her text messages, unsurprised to see that there were dozens.
While she checked her phone periodically throughout the day, Maddie only had sound alerts set for certain people: Romi, Perry—who was going off the list today—Maddie’s father, his personal assistant. Viktor Beck.
Not that her father’s business heir apparent contacted Maddie these days. But still, if he did...she’d get an audible alert.
Ignoring the numerous messages from friends, acquaintances and the media jackals, Maddie clicked into the one from her father’s PA.
Mtg w Mr. Archer @ 10:45—conf rm 2.
Mr. Archer. Not Mr. A, even though the PA had used text speak for the rest of the message. Not your father. That might have been too personal.
“He wants to meet this morning.” Maddie bit her lip, considering what she’d have to change to make that happen.
Romi nodded. “Are you going to go?”
Maddie considered putting off her morning plans for the meeting with her father.
“No.” It wasn’t as if her showing up when he called was going to make Jeremy any less angry.
She shot a quick text back to the PA offering to come anytime after noon-thirty.
Fifteen minutes later, Romi was gone after a final pep talk when the strains of Michael Bublé’s “Call Me Irresponsible” sounded from Maddie’s smartphone.
Her father was calling her. Personally. Not texting.
Any other time, she would be thrilled. But right now? The crooner’s smooth voice was as ominous as the sepulchre tones of a Halloween horror flick’s sound track.
Maddie put the phone to her ear. “Hello, Father.”
“Ten forty-five, Madison. You will not be late.”
“You know I have a standing morning appointment.” Not that he knew what it was.
Maddie had tried to tell him once, but Jeremy had mocked the very idea of his flighty daughter doing anything worthwhile. Worse, he’d made it clear how useless he thought it was to spend time volunteering at an underfunded public school predominantly populated by the children of poverty-level families.
Since then, Maddie had kept her two lives completely separate. Maddie Grace, nondescript twentysomething who loved children and volunteered a good chunk of her time, had nothing in common—not even hair and eye color—with Madison Archer, notorious socialite and heiress.
“Cancel.” No give. No explanation. Just demand.
Typical.
“It’s important.”
“No. It is not.” His tone was so cold it sent shivers along her extremities.
“It is to me.” She wished she could be as unaffected by his displeasure as he was by hers. “Please.”
“Ten-forty-five, Madison.” Then he hung up.
She knew because the call dropped.
* * *
Wearing the armor of her socialite Madison Archer persona, Maddie got off the elevator at the twenty-ninth floor of her father’s building in San Francisco’s financial district.
None of the nerves wreaking havoc with her insides showed on her smooth face.
Makeup applied to highlight, not compete with, the blue of her eyes and gentle bow of her lips, she’d styled her chin-length red hair in perfectly placed curls around her oval face so like her mother’s. No highlights had ever been necessary for the natural copper tones.
Her three-quarter-length-sleeved Valentino black-and-white suit wasn’t this year’s collection, but it was one of her favorites and fit the image she intended to convey. The wide black banded hem of the straight skirt brushed a proper two inches above her knees and the Jackie-O-style jacket with a statement bow was a galaxy away from slutty.
She’d opted for classic closed-toe black Jimmy Choo pumps that added a mere two inches to her five-foot-six-inch height. Maddie carried a simple leather Chanel bag, her accessories limited to her mother’s favorite Cartier watch and diamond stud earrings.
Maddie didn’t look anything like the woman described by Perry in his “breakup interview” with the press.
She walked into Conference Room Two without knocking, stopping for a strategic pause in the doorway to allow the other occupants a moment to look their fill.
She wasn’t going to scurry in like a mouse trying to avoid the cat’s attention.
The brief moment had the added benefit of allowing her to take her own lay of the land.
Seven people sat around the eight-person conference table. As to be expected, her father occupied one end. Maddie was equal parts relieved and worried to see his media fixer at the other end, but not happy at all to see the man seated to the right of her father.
Romi was right that Maddie had had a crush on the gorgeous Viktor Beck since he started working for Jeremy Archer ten years ago. The unrequited feelings had evolved from schoolgirl infatuation to something more, something that made it impossible for other men to measure up.
That first year, Maddie had still had her mother and Helene would tease Maddie for her blushes in the tycoon-in-the-making’s presence.
Maddie had learned to control her blushes, but not the feelings the handsome third-generation Russian engendered in her.
Having him here to witness her humiliation tightened the knot of tension inside her until she wasn’t sure it would ever come undone.
Less understandable, but not nearly as upsetting, was the presence of two of her father’s other high-level managers in the remaining chairs on that side of the table. Her father’s PA sat to his left, with an empty chair beside her.
The final man at the table had a powerful presence and a familiar face, but in her current state of highly guarded stress, Maddie couldn’t place him.
Everyone had a stack of papers in front of them. It took only the briefest glance to see what they were: printed-out copies of the news stories Maddie had seen earlier on her smartphone. Underneath them
