Chapter 3 #2
He looked down at her with what for him was a look of sincerity. “Madelyn, I fear I may have acted precipita . . . precipita—”
She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. Big words were not Bentley’s strong suit. “Precipitously,” she supplied. “In stealing my room? Yes, you did. Now, let go of me so I can get some breakfast.”
His chin quivered. It was his Your-Honor-this-story-is-almost-too-painful-for-me-to-tell look. Heaven only knew what he was up to now, but it would no doubt entail her doing something she wouldn’t like.
“I wasn’t speaking about the accommodations,” Bentley said, his eyes glowing with sincerity. “I was talking about my precipitous decision regarding us—”
“Ha,” she said. “If you think I’m interested in any of your heartfelt confessions, think again.”
She managed to escape his octopuslike embrace and sit herself down at the table. Unfortunately, Bentley sat right next to her. Suddenly she had the unsettling vision of an entire two weeks passed with Bentley sitting right next to her. “Need to pee,” she blurted out, leaping to her feet.
She thought fast as she sprinted down the hallway.
If her car wasn’t safe, maybe her room wasn’t either, because no matter his protestations, she knew Bentley had swiped her stuff.
Not only was he truly in touch with his own reality and ready to lie to convince others of its validity, he taught off-site classes to the junior partners of DiLoretto, Delaney, and Pugh on how to lie and enjoy it.
Her clothes were probably stashed in the back of his trunk for easy transportation to an unsuspecting Dumpster.
She paused at her room, gathered her notebook and everything else of value in her utilitarian black tote, shoved her violin under the bed, then made for the bathroom. She quickly put her hair up in her best business chignon to give herself courage, then continued with her plan.
The bathroom, as luck would have it, sported a much bigger window than her bedroom.
She made full use of it, sneaked around the side of the house, and eased her way into her car.
It made loud crunching sounds as she peeled out of Roddy’s parking lot, but that couldn’t be helped.
By the time Bentley realized what she was up to, took the time to douse himself in more Eternal Riches, then secure his hair in place with handfuls of mousse, she would be long gone in a direction he wouldn’t anticipate.
While he relied on the itinerary she had so lovingly and painstakingly crafted, she would venture off to parts unknown.
Once she felt she could safely pull over and give her direction thought, she stopped and reached for her notebook.
Since she’d planned to use Roddy’s as a base for her first week’s travel, most of her scheduled destinations were in the general area of the inn, or easily reached with a minor bit of travel.
She looked at her carefully laid plans and swore.
Damn Bentley anyway. She’d plotted her sights to be seen with meticulous care, taking into consideration what to see in what order to best take advantage of the time allotted her.
That she should have to abandon such carefully laid plans because of counselor Taylor was almost more than she could take.
It almost killed her to do it, but she knew she had no choice.
She closed her eyes and jabbed her map with her finger.
Inverness? Well, she’d planned to see the sights thereabouts on her way back to Edinburgh, but it was certainly a place Bentley wouldn’t look for her today.
She forced herself to peel her fingers away from her itinerary and turn to her maps.
She determined her route, reminded herself to drive on the left, and headed out for the first day of her dream come true.
It wasn’t much later that she found herself with a shiny black Range Rover trying to insert itself into her trunk.
She glared at the sight of it in her rearview mirror.
What was it with these guys up in the Highlands anyway?
Fast black cars and no road manners—and she’d always heard what polite drivers the Brits were.
Then again, maybe all the Highlanders left after all their years of troubles didn’t truly consider themselves Brits, and the road rules, therefore, didn’t apply.
The guy flashed his lights, then gunned his SUV around her. She would have flipped him off if she hadn’t needed both hands to clutch the steering wheel to avoid being swept off the road by his jetwash.
His taillights disappeared into the distance.
Madelyn dismissed him, then settled down to serious driving, keeping the occasional lookout for Bentley in her rearview mirror.
Surely he wouldn’t be equal to the task of determining where she was going.
He was, after all, the very stuff that bad lawyer jokes were made from.
He was cunning, he was ruthless, but sometimes he just wasn’t all that bright, especially when it came to ascertaining the intelligence of the fairer sex.
Nope, she was safe.
Unfortunately, not having to keep her eyes peeled for one annoying lawyer left her far too much time for idle thoughts and irritating observations.
The first thing that leaped—or crept, as it were—to her attention was her hose.
They eased upward every time she shifted as if they, being her final pair, couldn’t resist giving her a final pantyhose wedgie.
It wasn’t as if she could take them off.
How would she look in her Cole Haan flats and obscenely expensive black silk business suit without nylons?
She’d look like an out-of-work lawyer, that’s how she’d look.
She gritted her teeth and said a foul word.
Better that than crying. And with the mess she’d left behind in the States, crying was looking pretty darn appealing.
She let the countryside roll by as she reexamined the mess, on the off chance that she might have missed something positive in the rubble.
Employment? No, she had no job, even after having invested countless hours and thousands of dollars in a Juris Doctor—at Harvard, no less—then sacrificing more untold hours studying for and passing the bar.
No money, thanks to the wardrobe she’d been convinced she needed to have to make the perfect partner, clothes that required all manner of uncomfortable undergarments to pull off properly.
She’d blown all her savings on them, flush with the rosy glow of a new engagement and the promise of partnerdom within a couple of paychecks.
No money also thanks to all the times Bentley hadn’t seemed to have had his wallet on him—most often after they had enjoyed a very expensive meal. Amazing that the man could drive so often sans his credit cards and identification. Maybe he just kept his driver’s license in a vestigial skin pouch.
And as if all that weren’t bad enough, the bum had tried to bum a fast twenty off her on his way out the door for the last time.
There was no ray of sunshine so far.
Her parents had been prevailed upon to cover her student loans for a couple of months—but that had come with the hefty price tag of having to listen to lectures on the perils of pursuing a career outside academia.
The tortures wouldn’t end when she returned to the States because she would have no choice but to continue to crash with her parents while she looked for work.
Unfortunately, she knew that while she was looking for a job, she would also be listening to her parents argue any number of linguistic arguments in a dozen different languages and suffer more indignities as they required her to answer in those languages so they could point out where she was misconjugating the verb to work.
That would no doubt be followed by more lectures on the necessity of her going back to school so she could follow in their footsteps and find herself a full professor of some obscure linguistic specialty so she could in turn find herself arguing their ridiculous arguments from morning until night.
It was no wonder she’d left home as soon as possible to pursue filthy lucre—their term, not hers—by defending low-lifes and high-lifes living a low life.
Her other alternative was to cast herself upon the mercy of her sister, but Sunshine Phillips was far too granola for her taste.
Herbs, massage, holistic mumbo jumbo, and food that hadn’t seen the north side of a frying pan.
A stay with her would no doubt include some sort of herb for restoring Madelyn’s good sense where men were involved.
On second thought, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
She shook her head. She could endure her parents’ couch for a few more days until she got her life together. At least her mother believed in ice cream and hot-fudge sauce. Madelyn suspected she would be partaking of both quite often as she tried to sort out the mess of her life.
But for now she would leave her job prospects, astronomical loan debt, and lack of housing and decent wardrobe behind her—
Wardrobe? Damn. Most of her wardrobe had been in that suitcase. She’d had to consign everything else just to get enough money to pay for food on her trip.
Which meant she had, basically, nothing but what she had on.
Could her life worsen?
She suspected it could and there was no use in dwelling on that.
Such pondering invariably led to all cosmic retributional forces honing in on the hapless ponderer and rendering him quite unfit for anything but crawling into bed and pulling the covers over his head.
Sunny said so. Sunny, being Sunny, would know.
Madelyn smoothed her hand over her black suit with renewed appreciation and continued on her way.