Erica Orloff - The Golden Girl

“And what about this guy?” He held up the paper.

“Please? Come in, and I’ll explain.”

John shook her off his arm, but he did follow her into the apartment. This was worse than the most vicious board meeting, Madison decided. She was used to fighting people through her lawyers, through her public-relations team. She was used to veiled digs and slights on the social ladder. She was even used to blind items in Rubi Cho’s column. But this was a man who wore his fury right out there. Given what they’d shared in bed, Madison told herself she should have assumed he’d fight just as passionately.

She watched as his eyes registered her apartment. “Renovations?” he sneered, apparently recalling why she said her place was off-limits. “You just didn’t want me parking a Harley outside your lobby.”

“That’s not it. Sit down,” she urged.

He sat on the couch, but leaned forward, as if he was most definitely not going to get comfortable. He tossed the paper on the coffee table, right next to a Fabergé egg. Then he clasped his hands together tightly.

Maddie remained standing, and she started pacing, trying to gather her thoughts.

“When I started working at the charter school, I wanted to just be me. Not some heiress…I wanted to be in the classroom, interacting with kids, not being treated with kid gloves myself. Mr. Hayes, the principal, he agreed to honor that and was very supportive. I was also able to fund computers and do all sorts of amazing things through the Pruitt Family Trust, and I got to do it basically anonymously. At school, I was Ms. Taylor, not Pruitt. I wasn’t there to elevate myself, John. I was there to make a difference. Quietly.”

He wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at some unseen spot on the oriental rug, his eyes intense.

She rushed on, headlong, into her story. “Then I met you. It was the highlight of my week—every week. But I felt like I had the Maddie who worked with the kids and you, and the Maddie who was running Pruitt & Pruitt’s real-estate division. And they were two parts that would never meet, so why bother telling you all about my ‘poor little rich girl’ life.”

She took a breath, then continued. “The more you told me about your upbringing, the less I felt like I could tell you about mine. It was hopelessly lonely, and I was raised by nannies and shuttled off to boarding schools with other lonely kids. But it wasn’t about gangs and life and death on the streets. In my own way, I admired you…and was embarrassed by some of the excesses of my life. I mean, I won’t pretend that I don’t love going to Sotheby’s and bidding on a painting or spending the weekend in Paris, but I just couldn’t face your scorn.”

“Scorn?” He looked up with hurt and anger registering in his eyes. “Why would I treat you with scorn, Madison? Why would I judge you like that? I don’t like to be judged for my Harley or my tattoos, so why would I judge someone else?”

Madison looked at him pleadingly. “I don’t know. I just couldn’t imagine you accepting that I live in this life and run a huge conglomerate, and you live your quieter life of meaning. I figured you would either be intimidated or would hate me for being rich.”

“Or maybe you thought I’d just be after your money.”

“I never once thought that!” Her own anger flared.

“Don’t give me that,” he snapped. “I’m sure it ran through your mind.”

“Never once! Damn you! Never once.”

“Well, then what about being embarrassed by me? Maybe you just don’t think I’m good enough to be seen out with you. I mean, you kept me away from your apartment, your life, the restaurants and places where you’re seen…you would come to Harlem to avoid being seen with me.”

“That’s just not true. I would never be embarrassed by you. Ever. But you were so…gallant. I mean, you wanted to pay for my cabs…how could I take you somewhere I usually go and ask you to pay for a sixty-dollar Blue Pearl martini? I could just imagine what would run through your mind. That I was spoiled. And that sixty dollars could buy a whole lot of school supplies.”

She watched his face and saw a slight softening. She regarded that as an opening, much as she watched opponents at the negotiating table for signs their position might be weakening.

“I don’t know what to think, Maddie. I mean, you lied to me.”

She went to him and knelt down between his legs. She loosened his hands from each other with her own, then slipped her hands into his palms. “I just wanted what I had with you to be real. If you only knew what I faced every day—the backstabbing, the vicious negotiations. The social climbing. And I could have faced telling you about my world, but I guess I wanted to wait until we felt solid, without having to raise the ugly issues.”

“What ugly issues?”

“Let’s say we go on from here…I still go to your place. Will you come here?”

He hesitated. “I guess.”

“Fine. And when I have to go to a black-tie function, will you come with me? Will it bother you that we travel by limo and I’m whipping out a black American Express card, and that I have to fly away on business on a moment’s notice?”

“Look, Madison, I hadn’t thought that far.”

“Exactly. But would it bother your pride if I could give us some amazing things—different things from your life. I mean, John, no one ever cooked for me my whole life—other than our family chef. You gave me that gift. I loved that date. And I can give us other things, but I know in terms of what you might think, in terms of ego, or…you know at these functions, you’ll meet people who will act appalled that you’re a teacher. That you’re not ‘one of us.’ I didn’t want to subject you to that right away. I wanted us to have a real shot, John. I don’t know if I thought that at first. I only knew that when I would go to your school on Mondays, I felt like some schoolgirl with a crush. And when you’re someone who routinely closes deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, that’s not a very comfortable feeling.”

He finally looked her in the eye. “No more lying?”

She took her finger and crossed her left breast. “Cross my heart.”

Without warning, he grabbed her and pulled her to his chest, almost lifting her to him, and kissed her. “I was sick riding over here, Madison. I can’t get you out from under my skin. I’m crazy for you.”

Yet again, she was amazed at the ferocity of their connection. She kissed him back, straddling his lap and putting a hand on each side of his face. Hurriedly, he pulled off her top, kissing first one breast then the other.

“Let’s go to bed,” Madison said huskily. She slid off his lap and led him by the hand to her bedroom. They each undressed and climbed under the chilly sheets. She hadn’t opened the blinds that morning, so they were cocooned in the semidark coolness of the room.

She pushed up against him and then lifted her thigh over the top of him, sliding up so she was on top. She pulled the ponytail band out of her hair and let it cascade down, leaning over and tickling his chest with the ends of her hair.

He pushed her back a bit, staring up at her face. “You’re my angel, you know.”

She nodded and looked down at him. He was so extraordinarily masculine, so powerful. “You’re mine.”

She slid farther back, then took him and slid him inside her. Both of them moaned at once. He grabbed her wrists and pulled her down so he could breathe in her ear, letting her hear how much she drove him wild. At the sounds of his building orgasm, she grew more turned on until she swore it was as if they had shut out the rest of the entire world and were lost in this sexual space that was unlike any she’d experienced before.