Crazy Thing Called Love by Molly O'Keefe Read Free Book Online Page A

negative emotions like they were leeches.
    The emotions belonged to the old her, stupid Maddy Baumgarten, the fool. The idiot who’d cared about Billy Wilkins despite his casual cruelty. Who had given him everything, only to be repaid in regret and embarrassment.
    You are not that girl
, she reminded herself. She’d shed that persona like a too tight skin. Lost all that irrelevant guilt and concern and worry, just like the twenty extra pounds she’d sweated off since divorcing Billy.
    Losing the girl she’d been for twenty years hadn’t been easy, but it had been necessary.
    “Jerome?” she said, without looking up. She wasn’t sure she could, her muscles felt frozen. Her entire body chilled to the marrow of her bones. “You get what you need?”
    “Actually, I’d like to shoot a few more with the yellow backdrop.”
    Good. Great. Work would keep her focused. Work would remind her of who she was and, more importantly, who she wasn’t. Work had pulled her from the black hole her divorce had sent her into, it had given her a new identity that had nothing to do with Billy Wilkins. With that useless girl she’d been.
    As she stepped back under the lights, the blue of her dress glowed.
    Every morning in this city people woke up needing weather and traffic and morning banter. Women sat down with their coffee, looking for a distraction from their screaming children. The population of Dallas was hungry to learn how to redecorate on a budget, find a pediatrician or make the perfect summer cocktail.
    And they looked to Madelyn Cornish for all of that.
    The girl outside that hotel room door fourteen years ago didn’t exist anymore.
    Thursday morning Madelyn was Patton, leading her morning show troops into battle. Joe the Cameraman’s segment about racing through a local Target trying to get all the stuff for a spring break trip was funny and sweet. Every time the man opened his mouth, the female studio audience audibly sighed.
    Bringing him up in front of the cameras had been one of their finer ideas.
    Even the snake segment went better than expected. A reptile company was going to be touring local schools next week and
AM Dallas
had brought them in to air their highlights. The owner was so engaging and exciting that Madelyn didn’t have to pretend to be scared, or get pooped on, just to make it interesting.
    “Nice show,” Joe said when the lights went cold.
    “Thanks, Joe, and thanks for taking one for the team with that shopping segment.”
    “I’m not kidding, Madelyn, I’m too old for that shit.” Tough as his words were, he grinned while he said them, his soft white face creasing into likeable wrinkles. “If it weren’t getting me laid—”
    She covered her ears with her hands. “No no no no, I can’t hear you, Joe.”
    On the run, Madelyn grabbed her post-show water from Ramon. She guzzled it as she headed toward her office. There had been a snake around her neck for the last twenty minutes and she wanted to shower, change, and re-do her makeup. Before meeting with her ex-husband in half an hour.
    “Good show,” Ruth said as Madelyn turned the corner from the studio, toward the offices.
    Screw you, Ruth
. “Thanks.”
    “Meeting in—”
    “I know.” She glared over her shoulder as she rounded the filing cabinets and cubicles. “I’ll be there for your meeting.”
    Ruth didn’t even have the good grace to appear chagrined. She looked self-righteous, standing there in her three-year-old black wrap dress and boots.
    We’ll see
, Madelyn thought, pushing open the door to her office with her butt.
We’ll see who’s self-righteous after this meeting
.
    She turned in to her office, slamming the door shut behind her, and for a long and confusing moment her brain sent panicked messages to her body to run.
    Dressed in an ill-fitting sport coat and a red golf shirt, Billy stood in the middle of her tiny office, not two feet away from her, taking up too much space and air. Space and air she