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CHAPTER ONE
MADISON ARCHER SET HER morning coffee down, hot liquid spilling over the rim, as she read her Google alerts with growing horror.
Madcap Madison Looking for New Master?
Archer Heiress into Heavy Kink
San Francisco Bad Boy Dumps Very Bad Girl
The articles made lurid claims about a lifestyle and relationship between Maddie and Perry Timwater. A completely nonexistent relationship.
The fact that Perry was the source caused the coffee to sour in Maddie’s stomach.
His supposed exposé of their fictitious relationship claimed she was a submissive with a serious pain fetish and need for multiple partners. She gritted her teeth on the urge to swear as she read it was her inability to remain faithful that forced Perry to end things between them.
Maddie wouldn’t mind ending Perry right that minute. Betrayal choked her.
How could he have done this?
He was her friend.
They’d met their freshman year at university. He’d made her laugh when she’d thought nothing could. Not after her epic fail trying to get Viktor Beck’s attention. She’d started university with a broken heart and Perry had helped her paste over the cracks with friendship.
She’d helped him pass his accountancy courses. He’d played platonic escort for her and she’d provided him entrée to Jeremy Archer’s world—an echelon above his own.
But never, not once, had their friendship ever taken a turn toward something heavier.
Pounding sounded on her front door. “Maddie! It’s me, don’t freak.” Then barely a second later, the double snick of locks sliding back was followed by the door swinging wide.
Holding a bag from their favorite bakery aloft, her black bob swirling around her pixie face, Romi Grayson kicked the door shut behind her. “I come bearing the panacea for all ills.”
“I’m not sure even chocolate and flaky pastry can make this situation better.” Maddie slumped against the back of her chair.
Eyes the same vibrant blue as Maddie’s glittered with anger. “So, Perry’s lost his mind, right?”
“You saw the articles?”
“Only after reporters woke me from a dead sleep demanding my opinion of my best friend’s darker sexual proclivities.” Romi’s mouth twisted wryly. “Proclivities I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have even if you weren’t still a virgin.”
“You’ve got
that right. I’ve never been able to trust one man enough to have sex, much less multiple partners.”
As ridiculous as that might seem at twenty-four, it wasn’t going to change anytime soon, either.
“If you ask me, it’s got less to do with trust and more to do with the fact you imprinted on Viktor Beck like a baby bird when you were a teenager and you’ve never gotten over him.”
“Romi!” Maddie was in no mood to hash out her unrequited feelings for her father’s dark-haired, dark-eyed, to-die-for-bodied golden boy.
“I’m just saying...”
“Nothing you haven’t said before.” Maddie’s stomach grew queasier by the second.
Along with the rest of the world, Vik would see the articles, but she couldn’t afford to think about that right now, or she really was going to lose it. “Father is going to kill me.”
This new scandal was bound to crack even the San Francisco tycoon’s icy demeanor. And not in the way Maddie had always craved.
He’d sent her away to boarding school months after her mother’s death and Maddie had courted media attention in the hopes of gaining his. It had worked for her mother, Helene Archer, née Madison, the original Madcap Madison, but Maddie had come to realize the strategy had backfired pretty spectacularly for her.
In the nine years since Helene’s death, Jeremy had developed a habit of thinking the worst of his daughter. When he wasn’t ignoring her existence all together.
“If he doesn’t die of a stress-related heart attack first.” Romi put a chocolate-filled croissant in front of Maddie.
“Don’t say that.”
The other woman grimaced. “Sorry. Stuff just comes out. You know what I’m like. Your dad is wound pretty tight, though.”
Maddie couldn’t argue that.
“I think this time, Perry’s diarrhea of the mouth has me beat anyway.” Romi chewed her pastry militantly. “What was he thinking?”
Morose, Maddie stared at her friend. “That he wanted the money the tabloid paid him for the story?”
She’d had no idea that turning down his latest request for a loan would result in her utter humiliation. How could she? Friends didn’t do that to each other.
“Jerk.”
Maddie usually played peacemaker between her two closest friends, but she wasn’t about to stand up for Perry this time. “What am I going to do?”
“You could threaten to sue and demand a retraction.”
“Based on my word against his?”
Romi made a sound very close to a growl. “You two have never even kissed with tongue.”
“But we have kissed, for the cameras.” Perry had always made a joke of it.
He had been Maddie’s go-to escort for years and more than one article speculating on their relationship had been run, often quoting anonymous sources and always accompanied by the joke kissing pictures.
“Do you think he’s done this before?”
“Sold confidential details of your supposed relationship?” Romi asked.
“Yes.”
“You know what I think.”
Maddie sighed. “That he’s a leech.”
“Always has been.”
“He was a good friend.” Maddie couldn’t make herself claim he still was.
Romi just gave Maddie a disbelieving look, no words necessary.
Ignoring it, Maddie said, “I probably can’t prove we never had a relationship, but I can sue them for libel in the details.”
“His word against yours.”
“But he’s lying.”
“This is something new for the tabloids?”
Feeling hopeless, Maddie pushed her croissant away.
“You could always sic your dad’s dogs on Perry. That media fixer of his could be cast in Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.”
“I should.” Even supposing her dad cared enough to assign his media fixer’s precious time to helping Maddie.
Romi’s expression turned knowing. “But you won’t. Perry was your friend.”
Maddie opened her mouth, but Romi put her hand up, forestalling words. “Don’t you dare say he still is.”
“No.” Maddie swallowed back emotion. “No, it’s pretty clear he’s not my friend and maybe he never was.”
“Oh, 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 st
yled 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.
