threw the dead bolt and a second later there was a double tap on the door. Vik’s goodbye.
Using the pay-as-you-go cell phone she’d bought to provide Maddie Grace, volunteer, with a contact number, she called the school and let them know she wouldn’t be in for at least a couple of days. She couldn’t risk being caught in her Maddie Grace persona and having the best part of her life exposed to the media furor.
The next call she made was to Romi, who started cursing in French when Maddie told her friend that Jeremy Archer was using Perrygate to try to push Maddie into an approved marriage.
Maddie didn’t tell Romi about the threat to her own father’s company or Maddie’s response to it. Romi would demand her friend not sign the papers.
“Are you going to do it? Are you going to marry the man you’ve been crushing on for the last ten years?”
“That was a schoolgirl crush. I’m twenty-four years old now.”
“And still a virgin. Still avoiding relationships.”
“I’m not exactly alone in that.”
Romi’s silence was as good as a verbal acknowledgment.
“Besides, I could marry one of the others.”
“Right.”
“Maxwell Black offered a marriage of convenience with children by artificial insemination.” She couldn’t help a small smile at the memory of her father’s reaction to that offer.
She knew Romi would get a kick out of it as well.
“Max was part of your father’s deal?” Romi demanded in a tone a couple of registers above her normal one.
All of Maddie’s humor fled. “You know Maxwell.”
Silence. “A little.”
“More than a little if you call him Max.”
“We went out a few times.”
“You never told me.”
“It’s no big deal.” But, threaded with vulnerability, Romi’s tone said otherwise.
Maddie warned, “I think he found Perry’s claims about our supposed sex life intriguing.”
“I know.”
“You what?” Maddie practically screeched, her own problems forgotten for the moment. “How do you know that?”
“Do you really need me to spell it out for you?”
“You’re still a virgin.”
Romi had said so and the woman might be a hyperactive, borderline political anarchist and more than a little eclectic in her dress style, but she never lied.
“Technically, that is true.”
“Technically?” Maddie drew the word out.
“Look, Maddie, I don’t want to talk about it.” Vulnerability now saturated Romi’s voice, defenselessness that Maddie could not ignore.
“Okay, sweetie. But I’m here for you. You know that, right?”
“Always. SBC.”
“SBC.” Sisters by choice.
Maddie’s mom had called them that the first time when she was explaining to the elementary school principal why the girls would do better with the same kindergarten teacher.
He’d refused to change their assignments and Helene Archer had called in the big guns.
It was the only time Maddie could remember her father stepping foot in her grade school. Mr. Grayson had come down, too, threatening to withdraw his company’s support from the prestigious private school.
Romi and Maddie had never been assigned different classrooms again.
They had shared everything, including their grief at the loss of the only mother either girl had ever known when Helene Archer’s speedboat had crashed into rocks invisible under the moonless sky.
Maddie hadn’t gotten her propensity for risky behavior from nowhere.
She understood now that her mother’s increasingly erratic behavior had been Helene’s way of crying out for help. Help neither Maddie, nor her father, realized Helene needed.
It was a failure Maddie was still coming to terms with.
* * *
Vik’s text came in at ten minutes to three.
He was on a conference call he could not reschedule, but two bodyguards would be at her door in a few minutes. They had AIH indigo-level security IDs and she was not to open the door unless she saw the familiar badges through her peephole.
Specially trained for protecting people rather than corporate property and secrets, the indigo team was her father’s personal security detail. It used to be hers, too. Wanting to live as normal a life as possible, Maddie had refused to be assigned bodyguards when she moved out of the family mansion.
Her father had argued, but ultimately given in.
She didn’t think Vik would be as easily swayed. If he thought Maddie needed a bodyguard for her security, she’d have one.
The same way the company’s on-site security system had been upgraded because Vik deemed it necessary. Her father had been all for it, though.
Nothing was too good for Archer International Holdings.
The limo was waiting in front of the elevator bank in the parking garage. Thankfully, no enterprising reporter had managed to keep vigil. Which probably had less to do with the parking garage guards than the two additional indigo-badge bodyguards standing at attention on either side of the elevator doors.
One of them stepped forward to open the door to the limo and she stepped inside, only then realizing that Vik had taken the conference call on his mobile.
Every dark hair perfectly in place, his designer suit immaculate, he nodded at her while carrying on a conversation in Japanese.
His words did not falter, his Japanese smooth and unhesitating, and yet she felt the weight of his full regard. Like his attention was fully on her.
Like she mattered.
Succumbing to the desire to sit beside him, Maddie settled onto the smooth leather seat across from AIH’s media fixer. Relieved that none of the bodyguards had instructions to join them in the back of the limo, she was still grateful the other occupant gave her an excuse to give in to the irresistible urge.
The need to be near Vik was verging on ungovernable, just like it had been six years ago.
Maddie wanted to chalk it up to the exceptional circumstances. She just wasn’t sure she could.
Which
