A Novel Seduction (4 page)

Black switched the phone to his other ear and daubed his forehead. He sometimes wished his Wittle Sprout were more “ho-ho-ho” and less poisonous nightshade.

“She’ll be writing an article.”

“An
article
? That’s not much of a punishment.”

Moisture poured down his back like condensation down the side of a Palm Beach gin and tonic. What had she expected? That he’d have Ellery put before a firing squad?

“Yes, an article. For next month’s issue.”

“On what?”

He could hear the disapproval seeping into her voice. Disapproval would mean no more of that glorious hand wrenching him into a nirvana so profound, it made his thirty-year-old marital bed look like a bowl of off-brand cornflakes. “On romance novels, of course. Their impact on women.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” she cried, all horticultural tendencies gone. “She’ll eviscerate us!”

“She won’t,” he said firmly. “She has her marching orders. She doesn’t like them, but she knows it’s either fall in line or fall out—permanently.”

Bettina made a sprouty sniff. “I’m not sure I like it. How will it fix what she’s done to me? She was very mean about my memoir.”

“By building awareness of the inspiration romance novels bring to women’s lives,
Vanity Place
will open the flood gates.” He thought of the inspiration those warm, confident fingers had brought him under the table that night, and—like a bear roused from a long winter’s hibernation—his pecker slowly stretched to life.

“What are you saying? That every woman will want to get their hands on one?”

“God, I hope so,” he said, closing his eyes and remembering. “It would certainly make American men happy.”

“Hm.”

She was softening, unlike Martin, who would now have to cancel his nine o’clock meeting with the women’s health editor or risk another HR complaint.

“The only problem is,” Bettina said, “a story like that would help every romance novel publisher.”

“You’re sixty percent of the market, my dear. It might help every publisher, but you’ll be carrying the biggest bag of money to the bank. Just think of what it could do for
Vamp
.” He held his breath.
Vamp,
the love story of a vampirette who worked in a Pittsburgh steel mill during the day but danced at night to win the heart of an ancient vampire, had been the biggest book by far ever put out by Pierrot. The book had been a huge crossover hit, drawing in women readers of all ages and reading preferences, and had been sitting atop the best-seller list for months.

“She’ll write about
Vamp
?” Bettina said in a small, hopeful voice.

“Of course. Highlight of the story.”

“Will there be pictures?”

Black had been thinking more of a puff piece than a photo spread, but what the hell? “You bet.”

“And are you absolutely certain she doesn’t want to do it?”

“Yes, but you don’t need to worry. I’m
making
her.”

Bettina made an “Mmm-mmm” of such length and satisfaction, Martin felt his balls begin to tingle.

“Then it sounds
perfect,
” she said.

Ellery walked into her cube and threw her notebook against the wall, furious. “Shit.”

“You okay?” Kate called lightly over the divider.

“If you call writing a story about something you hate okay, then yes,” Ellery said, sinking into her chair.

“There’s a reason they call it work, right? Say, I didn’t know you knew Axel Mackenzie.”

Ellery’s heart leapt into her throat. “Oh, jeez, what did he tell you? I made him promise he’d never tell anyone—”

“About the threesome?” Axel appeared over Kate’s divider, and Ellery winced. She’d thought he had left.

“Blame Brad Pitt, not me,” he said. “That man does not know how to keep a secret.” He gave her a sympathetic look. “Tough meeting?”

She growled.

“What do you have to write about?” he asked.

She wished she hadn’t said anything. “Romance.” “That shouldn’t be hard. I’m sure you know a lot about it.”

The sound of Kate’s laughter floated up from her cube, and Ellery stuck out her tongue so that only Axel could see. She also moved closer to the divider because it was clear he wasn’t going to end the conversation and she was sensitive to the fact that Kate would be at a conversational disadvantage if she couldn’t see Ellery’s face. Unfortunately, Kate could sniff out a story better than any reporter when it came to Ellery’s love life, and since she was coming over to dinner, Ellery had better play it cool or the questions would be as thick as gunpowder smoke at the Civil War reenactments Kate participated in. Ellery thought she made a striking war widow, with her black dress, neatly pinned red hair and period-perfect wheelchair.

The faint apple scent of Axel’s hair sparked memories that hit Ellery like a wallop. His clothes might be rumpled, but the man himself had always looked and smelled great.

“I have to write an ode to romance novels and get it into the next issue,” Ellery said. “It appears our fearless leader is having a little something on the side with Pierrot’s Bettina Moore and has decided that romance novels are our new favorite literary genre here at
Vanity Place
.”

“Sex does funny things to people,” Axel said, the corners of his mouth curving, and Ellery pretended she hadn’t heard.

Kate, however,
had
heard, and moved her wheelchair forward and back, eliciting the faint
buzz-buzz
that had become a signal between her and Ellery: “Wake up” if your lids were drooping in a meeting, “Do it” if she caught Ellery gazing at the box of doughnuts, “Woo-hoo” if the guy from the mailroom with the ass like Colin
Farrell walked by—a sort of private double-exclamation point. Nothing like a demure Civil War widow.

“Romance novels, eh?” Kate shook her head. “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”

“Or perhaps the problem is we
are
in Kansas.”

Ellery’s phone chimed, reminding her she had an unread text. She slid the bar automatically and remembered it was from Axel. E
MERGENCY
! T
RUST ME ON THIS
. B
E SORRY ABOUT MOORE STORY
. B
UHL BOFFING BETTINA
.

She banged her head with her palm and looked at her erstwhile white knight, who shrugged regretfully.

“It could be worse,” Kate said.

She gazed at Axel’s thick brown locks and ropey arms and thought of those shirtless men on romance covers with their bulging thighs and the way they always seemed to be pressing the heroine into a particularly complicated sexual position. Axel turned toward her, and she jumped. “Worse? How?” she asked, finding her place in the conversation again.

“I thought you were going to get fired,” Kate said. “And just so you know, I happened to be quite a romance reader in my younger days.”

“So were my sisters,” Axel said. “Still are, as a matter of fact.”

Axel was the youngest of five children, and the only boy. His sisters had once hung him upside down in a toilet until he promised to carry their books to school on his bike. Ellery wondered if they’d learned that in a romance.

“Romances taught me everything I needed to know about men,” Kate said happily.

“Gee, and I thought that was
Lord of the Flies
.” Ellery sniffed.

“Ignore your colleague,” Axel said to Kate. “She hasn’t had a nonliterary book teach her anything since
Dick and Jane
.”

Ellery said, “Well, if you’re trying to get a handle on the driving male personality trait, Dick would certainly be the place to start.”

Axel waved away Ellery’s cynicism and returned to Kate. “So, what did romances teach you?”

She fiddled with the accelerator knob on her wheelchair, smiling nostalgically. “First, forget money. Forget looks. Without honor, there’s nothing.”

Axel nodded appreciatively.
Oh, that’s rich,
Ellery thought.

“Second, the only heroine of any worth is one who makes things happen for herself.”

“No argument there.” Axel tipped his coffee in a toast to Kate and Ellery, ignoring Ellery’s rolling eyes. “And?”

“And there’s nothing more fun than an unruly hard-on.”

Ellery whooped. Kate had always been able to make her laugh. Axel unfolded himself and stood. “On that note, I believe I’ll excuse myself.”

“No excuses necessary,” Kate said, cheeks pink with amusement. “We know all about hero envy.”

He pointed to Kate. “Call when you find something, okay?”

“I always do.”

And when he’d sauntered off, Kate turned her sights on Ellery like a double-barreled shotgun. “So, what’s the poop with you and Axel?”

“Poop?” Ellery said innocently. “No poop here. I’m entirely poop-free.”

“So good to hear it. Health Department rules and all. And yet, I’m still getting that funky smell from your side of the divider.”

Ellery arched a brow and returned to her chair, effectively blocking Kate’s view of her face. Undaunted, Kate revved her wheelchair to life, peeled into the corridor and turned into Ellery’s cubicle.

“You’re kidding, right?” Ellery said. “I’m facing the most horrific assignment of my life, and you’re here looking for details?”

Kate flicked the handbrake and laid her BlackBerry neatly on her lap.

“I’m not saying anything.”

“You slept with him?”

Ellery pressed her lips together.

“And exactly how unruly is he?”

“Kate!”

“Cough, sister.”

Ellery sighed. “It was a dark chapter that ended right before I came to New York.”

Kate chewed her lip. “Dark?”

“Dark.”

“Okay, I can see he’s a little edgy for you.”

“I beg your pardon.” Ellery realigned her narrow, hammered Tiffany bangles.

“But he’s so damned charming.”

Ellery threw up her hands. “Oh,
Christ
. You and everybody else. Of course you think he is. Instead of dependability, he offers charm. Instead of honesty, he offers fun.

Instead of trustworthiness, he offers…” She groped for the word.

“Unruly hard-ons?”

“Gah!”

“Not a bad trade.”

“It was for me. You know how you reach into a box of Whoppers and you think,
Oh my God, I can’t wait to eat this perfect round, crunchy ball,
and then you bite it and you discover it’s one of those horrible chewy Whopper mistakes? That was Axel: a chewy Whopper mistake. He failed me when I really needed him.”

Kate observed her friend thoughtfully. “You know what you need?”

“What?”

“The opportunity to console yourself for a week with about thirty romance novels.”

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

Axel hopped into the lift just as the doors were closing and found himself face-to-face with Buhl Martin Black, who twisted his torso like a strand of top-heavy DNA and adjusted something in his trouser pocket.

“Mackenzie.” He nodded a greeting.

“Mr. Black.”

The last time Axel had an interaction with Black, he’d been shooting an exposé of the lawyers who defend the cigarette industry. He hoped Black had long forgotten the lawsuit for trespassing. And the one for assault and battery. And the room service bill.

“So, what are you working on?” Black asked.

No need to appear anything less than indispensable. “Well, I’m working on the John Irving shoot and—”

“Forget it. It’s been canceled.”

“Oh.”

“Didn’t you work with Ellery on that James Frey piece?”

That story had happened years ago, right after things
had gone south between him and Pittsburgh, and it had been done for a magazine other than
Vanity Place
. It had been after Frey’s memoir,
A Million Little Pieces,
had come out, but before anyone knew he’d lied about nearly every relevant fact in the book.

“I did,” Axel said.

“You thought the approach should be interested skepticism? She wanted to paint him with wings and a halo?”

Christ, what a memory. Black knew the literary landscape as well as he knew the back of the menu at Alain Ducasse. “That’s the one.” Interested skepticism had prevailed with the editor in charge, and Ellery promptly changed her cell phone number and listed everything Axel had left at her apartment on Craigslist.