Take another week. Then get on a plane. There’s a big shoot in Milan in two weeks. We’ll do it together.”
“No can do.”
“Why not? What are you going to do buried down there?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure yet.”
“Okay. I won’t press you.” Ryan paused. “So, tell me, are the women down there as beautiful as you remembered?”
Dan smiled. Before he’d packed up and moved back to Texas Dan had bragged that Texan women were the most beautiful in the world. And he’d meant it. He couldn’t think of another group of women anywhere in the world who invested the kind of time and effort in themselves that Texan women did. Young or old, fat or skinny, it was as though they had an innate understanding of their worth.
Except Maddie.
Five feet and eleven inches—four inches of badger hair not withstanding—Maddie didn’t seem to have that Texas confidence. If anything, she undervalued herself.
Instead of carrying her commanding height with pride, she rolled her shoulders forward as if trying to shrink from sight. He couldn’t tell if she had a figure: no body, no matter how bad, deserved to be draped in the long, flowy black thing she’d been wearing today. It looked more like a bad slipcover than a dress. The meager attention she gave her hair and makeup said she didn’t see the point in trying. She felt she was hopeless.
Dan’s practiced eye told him nothing could be farther from the truth. If you could get past the thick black eyebrows that were separated by a scant half inch of flesh, Maddie had an excellent forehead, well-defined cheekbones, and a strong but feminine nose. She had a mile-wide smile with straight white teeth and the full lower lip that women were willing to suffer collagen injections to achieve.
The memory of Maddie’s mouth made his mouth water. How many times had he forced his focus away from her lips so he could concentrate on what she was saying?
Maddie had all the right stuff. And so much more.
Years of working with the world’s most acclaimed beauties had taught him that good physical attributes rarely added up to true beauty. More often they equaled cold hauteur and empty vanity, women who would cheerfully spend an evening with only a mirror for company.
He’d gotten to the point recently, when looking through the camera lens, that he couldn’t find the shot he wanted because he couldn’t find the beauty. His last shoot ran a record nine hours. The fault hadn’t been a temperamental model. It had been him.
He’d become cynical and he knew it. And when the cynicism became debilitating he’d packed up his camera and walked away. He was tired of looking for beauty where it didn’t exist. So he’d come home.
Funny that his first glimpse of beauty should be in the most unlikely person. In the short time he’d spent with Maddie he’d seen something he’d begun to doubt existed. A beauty that transcended good bones.
Of course, first impressions could be deceiving. Beneath her refreshing openness could be an empty shell like that he’d seen in so many others.
Maddie Sinclair intrigued him. He’d just have to get a second impression to find out.
“Are they as beautiful as I remembered?” Dan said, repeating his friend’s question. “Let me get back to you on that.”
Chapter Three
Maddie picked up her yellow legal pad and freshly sharpened pencil and walked to the door of her office. She’d left it slightly ajar so she could see when Colton started down the hall for the Monday morning staff meeting.
She assured her troublesome conscience that she was not stalking the man—she simply wanted to be handy if he needed reassurance during the first difficult days of his new job. Not that she honestly believed he’d ever suffered even a moment of self-doubt in his gorgeous life. Whereas mere mortals were composed of ninety-something percent water, Colton Hartley was pure unadulterated confidence.
Maddie knew her own confidence level frequently dipped into the non-existent range. That’s probably one of the myriad reasons she found Colton Hartley so attractive. He was everything she was not.
She had hoped to serve as his guide over the next few days, but unfortunately he’d made it very clear last Friday afternoon when she’d walked him out to his car at the end of the day that he no longer required her services. His exact words were, “You’ve done a great job of showing me around, Maddie, but I can handle it from here.”
Despite her protests, he was determined to go it alone. Though deprived of a valid excuse to stick by his side, she was pleased he’d finally remembered her name.
And though he was determined to stand on his own two feet, she was equally determined to stand by his side. And anyone who knew Maddie at all knew that what she lacked in self-confidence she more than made up for in sheer determination.
So here she was, lurking in the doorway, eye pressed to the crack so he couldn’t slip by. Lucky for her his office was on the opposite side of the hall: if she stood at just the right angle to the opening she could see his office door.
Moving shadows alerted her that he was finally coming out. When she saw his broad shoulders fill his doorway she counted three seconds before swinging open her door and stepping out into the hall. She knew immediately the delay had been a mistake. Even as she moved in on his retreating form, people were popping out of their offices like cuckoos from a clock just as Colton passed by.
Coincidence? Maddie doubted it. She began to suspect hers had not been the only eye pressed to a door crack that morning.
She hurried, trying to catch up with Colton’s long-legged stride, but it was no use. Her female colleagues had already closed in on him.
She resisted the temptation to gnash her teeth. There would be other times.
Maddie filed into the conference room with the others. The seats around the long mahogany table were already taken so she settled into one of the chairs set up in the back of the room.
Less than five minutes later Jack Benson, owner of Cue Communications, called the meeting to order. Jack and Maddie’s late father had started Cue Communications thirty years ago. At the time, they’d had one client and no prospects. The only thing the two young men had had in abundance was ambition.
Through grit and perseverance they’d built the advertising agency into a well-respected firm billing millions in revenue annually. The staff had grown to eighteen full-time employees and their client list read like a Who’s Who of the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
As a little girl, Maddie’s heart’s desire had been to work side by side with her father at Cue. When he’d died unexpectedly before she’d graduated from college, Jack had assured her she’d always have a place at the agency. A year after her dad had died, her mother sold Jack their half of the agency, preferring the lucrative cash settlement to the messy details of owning a business. Though Maddie no longer held physical ownership of the company, in her heart it would always be hers and her dad’s.
She’d hired on a year ago, after earning her MBA, with the nebulous title of Jack’s assistant. She didn’t have the experience
