A Novel Seduction (5 page)

“I liked how the piece turned out.”

Axel preened. Black had perhaps the industry’s finest feel for this sort of thing. Nice of him to remember.

“How well do you know her?”

The question juked Axel so badly, he nearly lost his train of thought. “Ellery? You know, about what you’d expect.”

Black gave him an assessing look. “That bad, huh? I believe the two of you used to be an item.”

Wow, he
did
know the landscape. “It was pretty bad.”

“I can imagine there might have been some clashes.”

“Leonidas at Thermopylae, sir.”

A bike messenger got on at eight and Black had to step back to give him room. “I’m sorry to hear that, Mackenzie. I was rather hoping you could help me.”

“Help you?” Then it struck Axel. “Hang on. Do you mean the romance novel piece?”

The bike guy smirked. Christ, even the messengers were snobs here.

Black said, “Ellery’s talked to you about it?”

“Well, I heard her mention it.” As she whipped her notebook across her cubicle.

“She’s excited about the assignment?”

“I imagine she is.”

“You’re not a very good liar, Mackenzie.”

“Certainly explains why the poker invitations keep rolling in.”

Black chuckled. “Well, I’m going to need a good photographer on the assignment.”

“I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” A vision of Leonidas butchered on the battlefield filled his head.

“The story’s going to feature
Vamp
.”

“
Vamp
?”

Axel’s confusion must have been obvious for the messenger snickered. Then he got it.
Vamp,
Bettina Moore’s pride and joy. “Oh, of course. That makes sense.”

“And there’s going to be international stuff as well—you know, all those assembly hall dances and strolls along the seawall at Lyme Regis, that sort of thing. Lots of pictures. Lots of color. Lots of reader engagement.”

And lots of money. Hell, the overseas per diems alone would be twice as high. Axel groaned, thinking of the brewery. “I don’t know…”

“Mackenzie, I need a person who carries some persuasive power with Ellery.”

“Wow, you just couldn’t have picked a worse person.”

“The James Frey piece was great. And I want her to write a piece that really makes romance shine.”

Axel held up his palms. “Whoa. That’s where I’m going to have to stop you. I have never had and most certainly never will have any effect on what Ellery Sharpe writes. It’s like trying to derail a locomotive.”

“I thought all that would take is a few pennies.”

“But who wants to get close enough to find out? No, I absolutely do not possess such otherworldly powers.”

“Unless…”

“Unless what?”

The elevator jerked to a stop in the lobby and the door opened, and the messenger hurried out. Like Axel, the knot of employees queued there waited for Black to step forward. But he didn’t, and when the man in front—a guy Axel recognized from the production department—made a move to enter, Black glared so hard, the guy stumbled backward and nearly fell.

Black punched the
UP
button, and when the door closed he said, “Unless you find your persuasive abilities improved by some extra cash.”

Axel blinked.

“I’d be willing to double your fee for the story I want.” It was as if the answer to Axel’s prayers had just floated to earth and landed on the other side of a buzzing high-voltage substation fence. “Mr. Black, I’d love to help you. I would. But there’s absolutely nothing I can guarantee about Ellery Sharpe’s writing except that it will be excellent.”

“You know what, Mackenzie? I’m willing to take my chances. You sign on for your regular fee, and if the story just happens to be as positive as I’d like, I’ll double it.”

The answer to his problem just beyond the reach of his fingers. Did he dare?

“I can’t promise you anything.”

“Understood. But you’ll try?”

Axel sighed. “I’ll try.”

“Remember, I want a story no woman can resist.”

Oh, there’d be at least one woman who’d resist it.

The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Six Years Earlier

“How long you two gonna be here?” the guard said, jingling the coins in his pocket and observing them with curiosity.

The museum was closing in ten minutes, and once they got the place to themselves, Axel knew he could nail the six or eight shots Ellery wanted for her article and still have time to hit Mullen’s Bar & Grill down the street.

“An hour,” Axel replied, unzipping his equipment bag.

“All night,” Ellery said firmly.

Axel allowed himself a private smile. Ellery was a ball of fire, and he could think of a lot worse things than basking in her determined glow for the rest of the night, even if it meant giving up Mullen’s fine dark ale. He gave the guard an affable shrug. “Gotta listen to the lady.”

“That’s fine,” the man said. “I lock up in fifteen, when the place empties out, and don’t come back till eleven. If you leave before then, you’ll trip the alarm.”

“Okay,” she said abstractedly, gazing around the gallery. Axel could tell she was already in that Zen place where
writers found their muse—an impressive skill for a twenty-two-year-old. It had taken him years to develop that sort of focus, and even now—he slipped one of those magic uppers into his mouth—he was known to use some help.

“Will we need to let you back in?” Axel said.

“No. I have a key. You’ll hear me. The system makes a beep. Say, didn’t I see you in the paper?” the guard asked, narrowing his eyes.

“May have.” Axel knew what was coming. “I do a lot of photography.”

“No, no. I mean you yourself. Didn’t you just win a prize or something?”

“I was nominated,” he said carefully, pulling out his Canon. “Didn’t win.”

“It was the
Pulitzer,
” Ellery said, and smiled.

“My dad was a steelworker,” the guard said. “He said that picture really captured it.”

“Thanks.” News and editorial offers had been flooding in since the nomination. He knew it would make sense to relocate to New York, and had actually been planning to, but for some reason forward motion on the effort to leave his adopted hometown had stalled. He couldn’t say why, but he thought he had an idea.

Ellery swung her long black hair over her shoulder and scanned the room. This was their third job together. The first, the job on which they’d met, had been for an article in the local newspaper. The second had been at her invitation, a story in a regional history magazine. And now, at twenty-two, she was breaking out to launch her own literary and arts paper and had convinced him by sheer force of will to donate his work for her launch issue.

She wasn’t classically beautiful, he considered objectively, used as he was to tousled blondes of more classical proportion. But she had ebony hair and bright blue eyes and transformed a pair of jeans into something way more sexy than a string bikini. Occasionally, though, there was a flash of disconcerting wariness on that open face, as if there were a fortress underneath perennially ready to stave off a battalion. It was no doubt the result of losing both parents before she’d finished college. Fortunately, the flashes were rare, and her usual joie de vivre more than made up for it. He watched her eyes shine as she took in each new work of art in the gallery and widen in delight at two circles of blinking neon words. Reflexively, he lifted the camera, clicking off half a dozen frames before she turned.

“This stuff’s amazing,” she said, unleashing a grin enthusiastic enough to have cracked even Warhol’s ironic stare. “I didn’t think it would be my style, but the underlying sense of humor in some of this stuff really surprises me. I know just what I’m going to write and exactly how it’s going to be laid out.”

Axel cocked an impressed brow. “Nice to be in charge of your own paper.”

“In charge?” She laughed. “With only me on staff? I don’t exactly call that ‘in charge.’”

“Hey, don’t forget your trusty photographer.”

“I’m not in charge of you. First, I’m not even paying you. Second, ‘in charge’? Ha! Remember, I’m the one who thought a landscape shot was better.”

He grinned. “You can’t blame yourself for not knowing as much about photography as I do.”

She made a noise reflecting her long suffering and shook her head. Then something caught her eye and her face filled with pleasure. “Oh, Axel! Look!” She hurried toward a smaller room at the end of the main gallery.

He grabbed his bag and caught up with her. He knew what she’d seen. He’d been there before. The high-ceilinged room was filled with silver Mylar balloons the size of king-size pillows that tumbled slowly through the air, fueled by fans attached high on the walls, like some pop-art slumber party. The pillows floated up and down, between guests, twisting and turning, their mirror-like surfaces reflecting the faces of the room’s enchanted observers. One could hardly help but interact, and a little girl of two or three clapped her hands as one of the balloons floated over her head. “Look, Mama! Look!”

Ellery giggled, a stream of tinkling semiquavers, and a plump, gray-haired woman in a lavender pantsuit and what his sister, Annie, would have called “good Winnipegian walking shoes” looked over and smiled.

“Hold on,” the little girl’s mother said wearily, and pulled the girl’s crying baby brother out of a stroller.

Ellery crouched beside the girl and pointed to an oncoming balloon. Axel felt an electric charge go up his arm. Without thinking, he raised the camera to his eye. He didn’t know what was going to happen and he hoped the angle was right, but he knew he wanted to capture it. A balloon floated into the corner of the frame, and he made three deliberate clicks of the shutter.

He wheeled around, out of the light, and with the girl’s laughter rising behind him he pulled up the shots, shading
the screen from the room’s lights with his body. In the first, the little girl eyed Ellery nervously. In the second, she grew more intent. In the third, eyes wider, she watched her reach to bop the incoming balloon. Axel let out his breath. Ellery’s smile lit the frame, and the joy on the little girl’s face was magical. Axel stood transfixed, lost in that instant of shared happiness, but even more so in the breathtaking beauty of Ellery’s face.

He had seen this three or four times in his career—the way a camera could transform a subject, bringing out an allure unapparent to the naked eye—but he had never felt the same incapacitating throb of desire and affection upon seeing it. He felt a schoolboy’s adolescent crush descend over him like a clap of thunder, and tried to shake it away, but couldn’t.

“Axel?”

Ellery touched his arm and he swung around, flushing painfully. He extended the display automatically, hoping she would see it as just another of his shots, not the cause of the bottle rocket that was sending reverberations through his gut. She laughed, too busy swinging the girl now in her arms to notice anything.

“I
love
this place,” she said.

“Yeah.” He nodded. “Me too.”

Offices of
Vanity Place
magazine, Present Day

“The way I’d describe it,” Phil Peck said carefully, “is a partnership.”

“A partnership?” Ellery felt her irritation grow. She had already begun to plan her strategy on this piece, and she didn’t need any upstart partner wasting her time. Partnerships were unwieldy. Partnerships were filled with time-wasting arguments. Partnerships were the reason she had left the world of staff writing and worked hard to become the head of literary criticism. Authoritarianism was efficient.

“According to Black, you and the photographer are to treat this like a photo essay.”

“Oh, God,” Kate whispered under her breath and closed her eyes.

“A photo essay!” Ellery cried. “You might as well tell a writer ‘Just use the stuff the last writer did’ or ‘The thing that sells books is the cover.’ So Black needs the head of literary criticism to write
captions
?”