Mad Love

Mad Love Chapter Nine

Vote, vote, vote!  You know you want to! 

Thank you so, so much to all the new (and old, lol) fans!  Every single comment on here makes my day.  I was seriously logging in at work, acting like a complete nutjob smiling and giggling, while my coworkers thought I had lost my mind.  So thanks!  You all rock!  And we're still in the What's Hot list, which makes my brain fall out of my head. 

Hope you enjoy, and if you do, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!!!

------------------------------

I sat in my father's rolling chair at his house, rifling through the papers scattered across his desk. Dad had asked me to stop by on the way to his office to pick up a file for him. Unfortunately, I couldn't find them anywhere. Some papers were folded, some crumpled, but they were all strewn across the table like leaves in Autumn.

"Oh, come on," I groaned, rummaging through desk drawers for the third time. Dad didn't keep anything in order in his home office. I became increasingly frustrated, my brow wrinkling. Where the hell did he keep them? Looking through a spare file cabinet I had to have checked twice already, I found the papers. "Aha!" I exclaimed.

A chuckle came from the open doorway. I looked up, startled, and found myself immediately frowning.

"What in the hell are you doing here?" I growled.

"I stopped by on my way to Houston, thought I'd pop in to say hi to Julie and Rob," he informed me, dark brown eyes glittering with laughter.

"Lovely. And I couldn't care less. But what the hell are you doing here," I said, indicating the house.

"I thought Gabe would be here, but I should have known better," Jamie said. His voice deep, amusement apparent in his every word. He enjoyed vexing me. "Fridays are his golfing days, now. But when I saw someone parked in the driveway, I just assumed he was home."

"Yeah, well you know what they say about those that assume," I said. It wasn't my best comeback, but his presence has stunned me. We had only seen each other a handful of times over the years, and each encounter, we began to hate one another even more. The last time I had seen Jamie had been at the company Thanksgiving, nearly a year ago. I had been on break from school, and he had come back from the San Antonio office. That night I had started a rumor in the ladies' restroom that Jamie was gay.

"C'mon Maddy, I told you years ago that I would still like to be friends. Just because of what happened, it doesn't have to affect our social encounters."

Jamie had seen me a year after breaking up. Just to lay eyes on him hurt. And pissed me off to no end. I saw red whenever looking at him. Three years ago, he had been incongruently amiable - a complete opposite of the young man that broke my heart. He had taken me aside and told me that he still wanted to be part of my life - as a friend. What an ass.

"Yeah, and I believe I told you that you could go fuck yourself," I hissed.

His friendly expression was replaced with a grimace. His eyes darkened dangerously. "Does your father know you talk like that?" he asked mockingly.

"That depends, does your uncle know that you sleep with all the office sluts?" I asked innocently, pursing my lips. I grabbed the file from the desk, moving in front of it in a defensive stance. He was not going to push me around and make me concede to a truce.

Jamie 'tsk'ed, shaking his head at me. "I thought by now that you would be more... mature," he said, the slanted look he gave my figure told me he didn't just mean my attitude. His deliberate jab at my small curves worked, and I crossed my arms.