Off the Rails (8 page)

Drew began saying some things about the preferred contacts being marked by asterisks, then he offered some other information about which local printers he’d contacted, but Madison wasn’t listening that closely. Mostly she was watching his mouth and listening to the warm rumble of his voice. If she ran into a question, she could always
call him back
, right?

His information somehow slipped into some simple questions about what she’d been up to and who she’d seen from their graduating class. The next thing she knew, they were laughing and finishing each other’s sentences and laughing so much they had to repeat themselves. She’d settled back against the wall of her apartment then stretched out and propped her head up on her palm. It wasn’t until her laptop battery sent up a distress signal that she realized how long they’d been online.

She got to her feet and started waving to let Drew know she had to get up to go get her cord. Obviously he already knew what she was about to say because he said, “I know, it is getting kind of late. I should let you go, since you probably have to be at work in the morning.”

“Oh, yeah, right,” she said, suddenly back to stammering.

“Oh. Hey. One thing before you go. Just want to let you know I’m going out of town for a couple weeks. We can pick up wherever we are when I get back. That work for you?”

“Oh sure, no problem,” she called down to her laptop, glad for the first time that she wasn’t looking into the screen. She did not want him to see what was no doubt a sour look on her face. A
couple weeks
of nothing? After
that
?

It was almost as though she was all the way right back where she started. Only worse, because now she had a taste of what she wanted, and as a result wanted it even more.

* * * *

“You weren’t right,” Madison said the next morning to Tia as she got out of bed and headed for the kitchen for her caffeine fix. “The doctor didn’t have a bunch of bedside humor jokes to tell me.”

While Tia was silent and presumably thoughtful, Madison dug through her cupboard. No coffee. The caffeine fix would have to come in the form of tea. She put the kettle on and climbed up onto the counter.

“And…” Tia prompted, lifting her eyebrows and circling with her hand. “Let’s hear the rest.”

Prolonging the agony would be stupid, so she spilled the whole first part of the night, including the sweet granddaughter and the wait-for-me-here gold brocade chair.

Tia summed the whole thing up in two words. “That sucks.”

From her seat on the counter, Madison started rinsing out a mug. “You’re telling me.”

“Now what?”

Madison considered telling Tia about the hours long Skype session with Drew, but decided against it. All she had, really, with him was a bunch of funny stories and some laughs. That wasn’t a solution to her problem. Two weeks was too long to do nothing. “Plan B.”

Tia pursed her lips and waited.

Madison sighed. “I don’t know what Plan B is. Not yet, anyway.”

“What about that two month business plan? It doesn’t include a Plan B?”

The kettle started to whistle. “Hold on a sec.” Madison hopped off the counter, filled the mug with hot water, dropped a teabag in and hopped back up to her favorite spot. . “Yeah. Part of that is to get a job.”

“On the surface that is an excellent idea. Unless you’re hoping to use that as your source for men.”

“What’s wrong with that? I need money. I need a man. Why not accomplish both at the same place?” Madison swirled the teabag around the mug then lifted it out to drop it in the sink.

“Because it’s a bad idea?”

“Oh, hush.”

Chapter Six

Scottie the Dog

Madison swiveled her desk chair and leaned sideways to get a better view of the guy in the next row. Who knew that there were telemarketers who looked like that?

Oh yeah. Stretch this way again, you sexy fucker.

Chiseled features, sweet, curly blond hair that always seemed to be falling in his eyes, thus prompting him to either tilt his head back—usually when he was laughing, which was often—or sweep it way with his hand—usually when he was on a long call. And a long, lanky frame that promised to hit a girl in all the right places.

Madison dropped her pen and bent low, scooted her chair to the left, and finally managed to get a solid, unobstructed look at sexpot Scott.

Until something, or rather someone, caught her eye.

Shit
.

That stupid team leader, Kevin, was eyeballing her again. Bastard that he was. Didn’t he have anything better to do than stare at people? Stare at people and carry around those damn printouts and accuse callers of wasting time? Madison resisted the urge to snarl and, like the good worker she wanted everyone in management to believe her to be, rolled herself back into position in front of her monitor and closer to her phone.

“Madison. We need to talk.”

Damn he moved fast. And quietly, too.

Reminding herself that she needed, and wanted, this ‘fantastic career opportunity’ and the ‘huge’ commissions it promised, she lowered her headset, set her hands in her lap and tucked her feet under her boring gray office chair. “Yes, Kevin?” She even smiled and forced her face into an expression of professional interest.

But he didn’t smile back. Kevin didn’t care about anything except the lousy team member printout he was waving in the air. He put himself on the edge of her extra office chair. “You’re taking too much time between calls.” Pointing to some handwritten numbers on the side of the top page, he continued, “Look here. You can see that you’re losing about seven and three-tenths minutes per hour. I’ve talked to tech support about getting your system switched over to forced calls, but, honestly, neither Carly nor I think you’re ready for that.”

The bland professional expression slid off of Madison’s face. The obvious question of ‘who’s Carly’ took a back seat to her more pressing concern. She was, after all, only willing to go so far. “
Forced
calls?”

“That’s right. At seven and three-tenths minutes lost per hour, over an eight and a half hour shift, minus a half hour for lunch, of course, and two fifteen minute breaks, that’s…” Kevin’s face twisted as he struggled to multiply seven and three-tenths by seven point five.

“About fifty-one minutes?” Madison offered, trying to be helpful.

Kevin snapped out of his unsuccessful mathematical trance and scowled. “I guess.” He considered her with his muddy brown eyes, then looked back at his beloved team member printout. “That’s a lot of time wasted. Isn’t it?”

Madison didn’t have an answer for him, because, yes, it was a lot of time wasted. But he should look at it from her point of view. Considering how much she was getting paid, fifty-one minutes didn’t seem that bad. But he wasn’t interested in her point of view. He was interested in his damn team member printouts.

There was no fighting it. She could see where things were headed. “What exactly are forced calls?”

Probably glad to be back in familiar territory, he brightened. “You won’t initiate the calls. Instead, I’ll program in all your numbers and provide you with a list of names that correspond with the numbers.”

He leaned closer. “There are software programs that are designed to do that for a whole team at once, but Carly and the rest of the management team haven’t approved the budget yet.” He glanced over his shoulder, and continued softly, talking to Madison as if they were two equals discussing something they both had an interest in. “I think that’s going to change soon. I’ve got a plan to get Carly to change her mind,” he finished in a whisper, his eyes taking on a weird sheen. “She’s in for a little surprise.”

For the first time since accepting the great opportunity of becoming a Heritage Mortgage team member, Madison felt a glimmer of interest and even a spark of curiosity.

She followed his lead by scooting forward to whisper, “What kind of surprise?”

“The kind she won’t be expecting.”

“Oh. That kind.”

“Anyway.” He leaned back, weakening their fragile, conspiratorial bond. “We’ll plan on starting the forced calls next week. That means you have three more days to get used to the current software and script.”

Madison got herself used to the idea by forcing a smile and some false enthusiasm. “Okay.”

Kevin got to his feet, glanced at the giant clock posted on the wall in the front of the room, and pointed at Madison’s monitor. “We were talking for about six and a half minutes. You might want to work through your break. To get your numbers up.”

Might
want to. But probably not. “Okay.” She flashed a grin bright enough to convince him she was on his side. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Great. I’d say keep up the great job, like I usually do to other people, but, um…you’re not there yet. So…”

With that half-ass statement, he strutted back to his corner cubicle. Only at Heritage Mortgage could a guy like that get away with a strut. No wonder he loved those team member printouts so much. Madison slid on her headset and turned back to her call sheet script, her fingers hovering over the keyboard.

If she could catch young Scottie’s eye and hang on to him long enough to take him to the reunion…

She admired the crisp collar of his shirt, those tan, pressed pants…

Good dresser that he was, he probably wouldn’t even need any clothing management.

“Madison?”

Kevin.

Again?

Madison sat up so fast she bumped her call notebook, sending it sliding to the floor. The nicely organized pages of her bright blue Heritage Mortgage Customer Service Team Member binder slid out and, seeming to delight in their opportunity to be free, flipped around until they were completely integrated. Scrambling, she gathered them into her lap then sat, stupidly, clutching the pages and wishing she’d met Kevin somewhere, say at The Vine, where she could tell him what she really thought of him, and she and Tia could laugh about it.

But alas, no, she could not. Instead, she had to smile and pretend to be interested in whatever he had on his mind.

“Is there a problem? Did you not understand that your numbers aren’t very good?” Kevin waved his printouts in the air. “Do you need me to show you your call summaries?”

“No, thank you,” she replied prettily.

Kevin was not interested in pretty. He was interested in numbers.

* * * *

And so, things went on like that for the rest of the week. Each time Kevin wandered by, or sat in her guest chair, he reminded her of two things. One, her numbers were not very good
at all
,
and two, she’d better be ready, because starting next week she was going to have forced calls.

Meanwhile, Madison learned an important fact. Carly was Carly Holmes, the boss of everything. And she made her mind up about something. Trying to catch Scott’s eye by dressing cute and staring at him was, to put it gently, a stupid approach. He was obviously used to having girls fall in his lap, therefore, was too clueless to even consider putting any effort into seeking out female possibilities. A swift, direct approach was the only way to go.

Monday morning, when Madison was greeted by the promised computer printout and forced calling system, she shrugged, then went about the business of doing business until her morning shift ended. She spent the first ten minutes of her lunch break watching Scottie, waiting for him to get off a call. Unlike her, he was doing well at Heritage Mortgage. His name never showed up on the ‘let’s cheer these folks on’ chart. Finally, he hung up and, like a well-trained hound, she followed him outside.

He was still shaking his box of Marlboros when she marched up to him and said, “We need to go out. Thursday or Friday?”

After one cigarette slipped out, he set it between his sexy lips and the put the pack back into his pocket. “You mean like
go out
go out?”

Oddly enough, Madison wasn’t nervous or anxious, only slightly irritated that she had to be the one to set the wheels in motion. “Yeah. You and me.”

He flicked his lighter and took a puff. “Thursday. Nine o’clock okay?” He took another puff. “Okay if we meet instead of drive together?”

Weird.

But she was getting what she wanted.

He brushed his hair out of his eyes. “I have to work late.”

With a face like that, who cared?

Madison nodded, like she understood what it was like to be so important you had to work late. “You like Otto’s? In Clifton?”

“Yeah.” He took a long drag, then nodded back. “Thursday at nine. It’ll be fun.”

Madison nodded. Again. If they had anything to talk about, she would’ve stuck around, but since they didn’t, she flashed him an until-then smile and scurried back inside.

Unfortunately, she didn’t get very far before running smack into Kevin.

“Why were you talking to Scott?”

Amazingly, Kevin’s hands were free of printouts. No clipboard in sight.

“What did you say to him?” He stepped closer. “Did you tell him what I told you?”

Being so close to Kevin outside of the relative predictability of the workspace cubicle was unsettling, to say the least. Madison took two steps back. “What are you talking about?”

“That thing with Carly,” he said, taking two steps forward and speaking with so much force that Madison noticed his breath smelled like Cheetos.

She took a step to the side. “Why would he care about that?”

He didn’t move his feet, but leaned over to say in a hissing whisper, “How stupid are you?”

“Name calling?” She mock frowned. She’d figured out that a real, sincere, you’re-hurting-my-feelings-frown had no effect on Kevin. “That’s rude even for you.”

Kevin sighed and backed off. “Obviously, you don’t get that Scott is Carly’s boy toy.”

Boy toy?

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. I don’t care what you do with him, but you better not tell him what I told you.” He straightened, leaned back toward her and flashed his teeth in an unimaginative snarl. “Okay?”

“Trust me.” This time she moved toward him. “I have no interest in talking about work with him.”