MADDIE’S TIME IN the lawyer’s office went quickly, though the elderly man did ask if she was sure she knew what she was doing.
Maddie had no doubts.
Vik stood when she came back into the anteroom, no sign he was in any way upset about what she’d been doing. “All finished?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have any plans for the rest of today?”
“No.”
Vik put his hand on the small of her back and walked with her out of the law office. “Good.”
“Why?”
“We have a photo shoot with the magazine photographer this evening. He’ll join us for dinner at your father’s mansion. My grandparents will be there.”
“Playing happy families? Is that really necessary?”
“Yes.”
When they reached the parking garage, he led her to his car, the limo and SUV full of bodyguards nowhere in evidence.
“Conrad is in the limo with a redheaded decoy.” Vik opened the passenger door of the black amethyst Jaguar XJL for Maddie.
She settled into the luxury car. “Better her than me. I would have made a lousy celebrity.”
“You think?” he asked. “Your father thinks you’ve been doing your best to become the next reality TV star.”
“Just Madcap Madison, version two-point-oh.”
Vik’s expression went from smile to grimace, reflecting Maddie’s own conflicting feelings about her mom’s escapades in the light of adulthood. “In many ways Helene Madison Archer was an amazing woman and she raised a strong and impressive daughter, but the way she chose to cope with the things she didn’t like in her life wasn’t healthy. You must see that.”
“I do.” It had taken some time, but Maddie had come to that conclusion a while ago. The Madcap was something Maddie was doing her best to drop from her name. “Believe it, or not, I’ve always been very careful what part of my life I allow the media into.”
“Perry isn’t so choosy.”
Vik was in the driver’s seat, their identity obscured behind the Jaguar’s tinted windows, when she replied. “Perry is an idiot who relied on our friendship to protect him from the consequences of his lies.”
“It is.”
“You think so?” She indulged in an old favorite secret pastime as he drove out of the financial district and through Chinatown toward Van Ness.
Watching Viktor Beck.
Memories of their recent kiss played over in her mind, a mental movie she could not seem to turn off and that caused a visceral reaction in her body. A reaction she wasn’t sure if she should try to suppress, or not.
If they were getting married, reacting to his kiss was a good thing, right?
Thankfully, she didn’t have to answer the disturbing question of whether she would marry him for the sake of her dreams if she wasn’t attracted to him. How much of her father’s ruthlessness colored Maddie’s spirit?
She was sure Jeremy Archer would say the papers she’d just signed answered that question, but that wasn’t how she saw it.
Vik shifted down, his car purring as it climbed the hills of San Francisco’s streets. “You refuse to sue Perry despite his defamation of your character.”
“Our friendship is over.” Ultimately that would cost Perry more than any settlement she might get in court.
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“You sound very certain.” Vik didn’t.
“I am.”
Vik turned onto Highway 101. “Good.”
“And even if for no other reason than that he’ll never get another loan from me, that’s a serious consequence for Perry.” One she really didn’t think the other man had foreseen. He would have counted on her loyalty, but had made the egregious error of not giving her any. “He’ll also never again be able to use being my escort as a way into events his own connections won’t provide entrée.”
“It sounds like it was a pretty one-sided friendship.”
“That’s what Romi always said, but it wasn’t true.”
“Yes?” Vik sounded genuinely curious, if doubtful.
“Letting people in isn’t easy for me.”
The business tycoon who had spurred more fantasies than any teenage heartthrob in her adolescent breast made a disbelieving sound. “You have a huge social network.”
“And a total of two people I called friends, now only one.”
“I think two still.” Vik flicked her a glance with meaning. “Just not the same two.”
Unexpected and not wholly welcome warmth unfurled inside Maddie at the claim. Nevertheless, she admitted, “I’m glad to hear that.”
She just hoped it was true. Chances were good. Viktor Beck might be a bastard in the business world, but he was no liar.
“He made me laugh,” she admitted, falling back on old habits of sharing her uncensored thoughts with Vik.
“You have an infectious laugh,” Vik offered. “I missed it.”
It was weird to think of Vik missing anything about her. “You decided our friendship was over.”
“Not over, just truncated.”
“If you say so.” But six years on, she could maybe share his point of view.
“I thought it for the best.”
It was entirely possible it had been, no matter how much his rejection and subsequent pulling away had hurt. She hadn’t thought so at the time, the combined loss of her mom, then her grandfather, what little attention she’d had from her father and then Vik’s friendship had left Maddie with real intimacy issues. But if she and Vik had maintained their close friendship, she never would have gotten over him.
Nor would she have made her own way in life, building dreams completely independent of AIH.
“Looking back on it, it’s kind of surprising I let Perry get so close.” But then she’d needed a replacement for Vik at least.
“You loaned him money.”
Which had taken their friendship into a different realm, she now realized—a realm where Perry saw Maddie as a resource rather than a friend. “In the interest of accuracy, we’ll have to call them gifts, not loans.”
“And that makes it better?”
She shrugged, though Vik’s attention was on the road as they joined the heavy traffic over the Golden Gate Bridge. “Perry’s business ventures never seemed to work out.”
“Selling this story to the tabloids is pretty stupid as a long-term plan if you were already bankrolling him.”
“I wasn’t. I turned him down the last time he asked for money.” It had been a hard decision, but she’d had her own dreams to bankroll. “I’d come to the conclusion there were better places I could sink my money than down the rabbit hole of another one of Perry’s unlikely business ventures.”
“So, he betrayed you.”
“Yes.” She sighed sadly. “I had no idea my friendship was only worth a few dollars.”
“Fifty