A Novel Seduction (23 page)

“You made assumptions, my dear,” Ginger said. “A dangerous prospect for a reader—or any woman, for that matter.”

The other new arrival said, “Jemmie has a highly developed sense of what’s right and wrong—”

“Oh, I
know,
” Ellery said.

“—and I think he just wanted to wait until he could join with the woman who would be his wife.”

“It’s just so… wonderful.” Ellery sighed. “And he loves her so much. I feel like I don’t want to do anything but read it. I’m Ellery, by the way.”

“Ginger was telling us about you,” said the one who’d been detailing Jemmie’s sense of honor. “I’m Pansy. And this is Madge,” she added, gesturing to a white-haired woman a few years older than Ginger. “I know just how you feel. The first time I read
Kiltlander,
I stopped doing housework, I stopped cooking, I stopped doing anything except reading. I’d run to the attic to hide so my kids couldn’t find me. At one point my son was wandering the upstairs calling for me. I just held my breath, hoping he’d think I’d left for the post office. I felt bad,” she said.
“Well, only a little. But it didn’t matter because I wasn’t going to stop.”

“That’s nothing,” Madge said. “I called off work when I got near the end. Lost thirty-two quid that day. Didn’t dare tell my boyfriend.”

Ellery nodded. “I don’t want to tell mine, either. I mean, not my boyfriend. The photographer.”

Every head turned.

Across the room, Axel was sipping a club soda, gazing absently at the group. Under the gaze of five sets of eyes, he froze.

“Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look,” Ellery whispered. The women’s heads snapped back.

“He’s your photographer?” Madge said. “He sort of looks like Jemmie.”

“What?” Ellery peeked through her fingers. “No.”

“Sure. He’s tall. And scruffy. Remember, Jemmie’s dirk had been taken from him and he couldn’t shave for Cara on their wedding night. And isn’t that a wee bit of red in his hair?”

“I… well…” Ellery narrowed her gaze. There
was
a bit of red there.

“He said he was your boyfriend.”

“That’s not true, Izzy,” Marabel said. “He said he had hopes. You see, he was taking pictures of us while you were gone, and Ginger said her youngest daughter was holding out for a handsome one and would he be interested? He said he was honored but that he was pressing his suit with someone else.”

“He said that?” Since when did Axel talk like someone out of a romance novel?

“Oh, yes,” Marabel said. “And Pansy was the one who asked if the someone else was you: You’d make such a handsome couple, after all.”

“He didn’t answer,” Pansy said, “but his cheeks turned a pretty shade of pink.”

So much for journalistic detachment.

“But why can’t he know about
Kiltlander
?” Isabel said. “He’s working on the story, too, isn’t he?”

“Well, yes, but… It’s sort of hard to explain.”
Not really,
she thought.
You’re a big fat snob and a hypocrite to boot.
Then she fell upon a workable response. “He thinks I should be writing. Our deadline’s Monday. And all I want to do is immerse myself in Jemmie and Cara. Who knew happy endings could be so wonderful?”

The table fell eerily silent.

“Why are you all looking like that?” A nervous shiver went down her spine. “You are not telling me that Jemmie and Cara don’t end up together!”

Their gazes shifted in five different directions.

“No, no,
no
!” Ellery said. “I won’t have it. How could I have chosen the one romance that doesn’t end with a happily ever after?”

Ginger patted Ellery’s shoulder. “We’re not saying it doesn’t end with a happily ever after”—Ellery’s heart soared—“but we’re not saying it does, either. There’s more to a happily ever after than ‘happy,’ and you’re just going to have to get there on your own.”

Ellery thought of Tess of the d’Urbervilles dead on the gallows; Jay Gatsby shot by a jealous husband; and Juliet stabbing herself with a dagger after finding Romeo dead.

“But don’t worry,” Isabel said. “There’s some good stuff
along the way, including several historic battles, cameos by both Voltaire and the king of France—”

“Sex in a moonlit river,” Marabel interrupted, “sex bent over a tree; sex in a boardinghouse where Jemmie is both drunk and more than a little jealous; and,” she added, eyes glittering, “a
very
fine spanking.”

“He
spanks
her?” The cork didn’t just pop, it blew the bottle into a thousand pieces. Ellery squealed, “Are you effing
kidding
me?”

Isabel, clearly irritated at her sister’s interruption, said, “Believe me. It’s not as fun as you’d think.”

Marabel whooped. “Sounds like the voice of experience talking.”

A crimson flush as well as a barely suppressed smile spread across Isabel’s cheeks. Ellery’s jaw dropped. Isabel, a nice but mouse-colored forty-something who could have been the poster child for “unremarkable,” got spanked? Ellery had to admit she was a little envious. The most outrageous thing that had happened in her bed in the last year was when a stink bug had fallen into it from the ceiling.

These women were not at all like she expected romance readers to be. She liked them, which made her feel pretty guilty about the contempt she’d felt.

The women were still laughing when the pub’s door creaked open. Ellery looked over nervously. Six would mean a full contingent of book club members, and Axel would win his bet, but it was a balding man with fogged-up glasses, wearing an easy smile and a slightly shabby rain coat.

“Hello, Roger,” Simon said, and the women attempted to rein in their giggles.

Roger wiped off his glasses and made his way to the
snug. Isabel sat up straighter and gave him a little wave.

“Glad you’re here, Roger,” Ginger said. “We’re a bit stalled on the current topic. Could probably use a switch.” She gave the other women a broad wink on the last word.

“Indeed.” Pansy’s mouth twitched from the strain of trying not to laugh. “You could almost say we’ve hit bottom.”

Roger gazed at the knot of chortling women, confused. He had to be Isabel’s husband. Ellery looked at the clock. Could that much time have passed? Was it already time for the book club to end?

“What is it?” Roger grinned good-naturedly at the guffaws, though he clearly had no idea why the women were laughing. “What?”

Simon appeared with a mug of beer, placed it in his hands and gave him an interested look.

“Izzy told us you like to smack her fanny,” Marabel said quite distinctly.

Roger coughed a little as a wave of red lapped at his jowls. The whole bar was listening now. His smile didn’t falter, but Ellery did notice a vein of pride creep into it.

“Ah. I see. Well, why not? It’s a damned fine fanny, after all, and a little tanning now and then warms us both.” He lifted the mug to cheers from the room, including those of Isabel, who scooted down the bench to give him room.

When the table quieted, Ellery said, “I know you’re almost done here, but I have just a few more questions.”

“We’re not done,” Pansy said, frowning. “We’ve barely begun.”

“Aye, sorry I’m late.” Roger slipped a book out of his coat pocket—the same book the rest of the women had in front of them.

Ellery gulped. Roger
was
number six. She looked to see if Axel had noticed. He had. He put down his glass, spread the fingers of his right hand, added his left thumb and gave her a sparkling look.

Holy crapola.

She turned back to the group.

“You’re a man.” Her voice was shaking a bit from the realization that her evening, like her afternoon, was going to be taking a very surprising turn.

“I am, aye,” Roger said amiably. “Thank you for noticing.”

The women giggled.

“But why are you reading romance?”

He chewed his lip for a moment. “Simple, really. I like the stories. I read my first—when was it, Izzy? About ten years ago. Izzy and I had been married, oh, a good number of years then and, truth be told, had begun to drift apart. Oh, Izzy doesn’t mind me telling this story,” he added, evidently in response to Ellery’s look of concern. “We’ve told it many times. She loved romances, always had them stashed around the house. I knew she was thinking of leaving me. We hadn’t talked about it, but it was clear she was unhappy, and I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I didn’t want to lose her. I picked up a book she’d finished and decided on a whim to hide it, wondering for an instant if someday that might be all I had left of her. I’d always been a big reader. I love mysteries—Sayers, Tey, Christie, Rankin—and historical fiction: I teach history at the local school and, oh, the battles and intrigue! When Hornblower captures the Witch of Endor in Nantes…” His face took on a faraway glow.

Ellery, who knew enough of Horatio Hornblower to
conclude that the
Witch of Endor
was a ship, not a person, smiled. She, too, understood the joy of getting lost in a story.

“I had no plan, really, when I began to read Izzy’s book,” Roger continued. “I just thought that if I did read it, I’d at least have something to talk to her about. As it turned out, it concerned the Battle of Trafalgar, and the hero was a man longing for a woman out of his reach. I thought the action was well done, but what appealed to me more was the battle the hero was fighting for his soul. He loved the woman so much that if he could not conquer her heart, he knew he would die. Which, of course,” he added as tears welled in his eyes, “was how I felt about Izzy.”

Izzy reached out, laid her hand over his and squeezed.

“She found me reading it that night. I think she was as surprised as you.” He smiled at the memory. “But it was the first real conversation we’d had in a long while.”

Izzy’s eyes, which had been filling as he spoke, reached their capacity, and a tear striped each cheek. It was so sweet, Ellery wanted to throw her arms around both of them.

“Something changed that night for us,” Roger said, “and I’m very grateful for it. What surprised me even more is I loved the book. There were still battles and heroes and life-or-death choices, but it added the fight for the inner empire too.” He touched his heart. “I liked that.”

Marabel twitched a brow. “It’s enough to make a man say, ‘Bottoms up,’” The giggling began anew.

Despite Ellery’s burgeoning respect for romances and their readers, this still wasn’t an article she wanted to write—not when Carlton Purdy was holding up the final decision so that the board of Lark & Ives could read her next
Vanity Place
piece. She could just see the look on the
board members’ faces. There was a reason people read romance novels in the bathtub—other than the obvious one, of course—and that was so nobody else saw them doing it.

A hand clasped her shoulder. Axel crouched beside her chair, creating a cozy circle of intimacy with his body. Instantly the chitchat next to her seemed like it was miles away.

“Hey,” he said.

She could see the long muscles running down that forearm and smell the faint scent of beer on his breath. The electricity between them was so strong, the hairs on her arms stood on end. Did he feel it too? Was she the only one susceptible? Or was that the reason he steadied himself with a hand on the chair?

“You doing okay over here?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“Not to work a pun to death, but you must be whipped.”

The gleam in his eye reminded her that the minute she stopped working, a sixty-quid room awaited. “No, I’m okay.”

“Can I bring you something to drink?”

“An actual coffee would be fabulous.”

“Will do. I’ve gotten all the pictures I need, so whenever you’re ready…”

Why did those forearms have to look so damn sexy? “Sure. Give me fifteen minutes more with them and then we can work on the story.”

He made a small snort, unbent and kissed her on the head. “Nice try, Pittsburgh.”

Axel parked himself at the bar, letting the scent of her hair float through his head. Sixty quid. A quick tumble upstairs. Something very fast and very wrong. Then a moonlit walk to the hotel and a long sleep curled up beside her. Life couldn’t be better.

The rain had stopped, and the place was starting to fill. He loved the sound of a bar at full tilt: the clink of glasses, the screech of chairs, the hum of the crowd. Hell, he even liked the heady scent of cigarette smoke, which he only caught when the door opened, for smoking was banned indoors even in England now. There was energy in a place like this, some of it so primed for action, the smallest slight could set off an epic brawl; but, hey, that’s what life was for, right?

“Mackenzie,” a surprised voice said. “I’ll be damned.”

Axel turned. The man was Barry Steinberg, fellow beer aficionado, kick-ass writer and partier extraordinaire. Axel had worked with him on a number of pieces at
GQ
. Steinberg wrote for
Slate
now. They had gone drinking
many times together, but as Axel had begun to shrug off the life of late nights and hard living, he’d found Barry’s company increasingly hard to take.