A Novel Seduction (8 page)

She speared a wedge of tomato and growled into her salad.

Axel settled back into his chair. He swore he could feel the liquid coursing through his veins, settling into the tips of his fingers and toes.

“Feeling better?” Ellery said.

“Much.” He slipped the case into his bag. “Where were we? Oh, right. The books. These are the ones I think you might want to…” He considered “read” and settled on “… examine. I have it on good authority that these are, em, highly representational.” As long as he kept the discussion in graduate seminar territory, he figured he was on safe ground.

The word seemed to disarm her. “Of course. You’re right. They’re artifacts, after all—an indication of how women in certain socioeconomic circumstances interact with the world.”

Axel rubbed his chin, flicking his gaze for an instant to Jill, who gave him an amused look. Not what Black had in mind, but far better than the dreadful outcasts-of-society angle she had proposed earlier. Baby steps, he reminded himself. Baby steps that would lead right to a lovely little microbrewery, if he was lucky.

“Yes,” he said. “Absolutely. And do you think it makes sense to cover some of the key locations in the books: Pittsburgh, and, em”—he picked up
Kiltlander
and gazed at the kilted man on the cover—“someplace in Scotland, I presume, and, well”—he picked up the last book, the one with the woman in a shimmering pink gown, flipped through the pages until the words “Covent Garden” popped off the page—“London?”

He held his breath, waiting for her response.

Ellery’s knife and fork hovered over the plate. “I guess.”

Axel tipped the Beck’s and drank.
Step number one.

“How’s that John Irving thing going?” Carlton Purdy, Ellery’s potential new employer asked.

Ellery banged the phone’s headset against her head like a mallet. Why did she insist on answering outside calls?

“Great. Just great. How are things at Lark & Ives?”

“Super-duper. You know, we’re getting to the final paces in our search process.”

She could just see him, vibrating with Carlton Purdy pleasure in his seersucker suit and Dartmouth “Big Green” bow tie. She prayed he was about to offer her the job so she could quit the one she had and put this horrible day behind her. “Glad to hear it.”

“And things are looking quite good for you, missy.”

“Also good to hear.”

“Listen, the board is eating up—I mean, just devouring—everything you’ve written. Your criticism is great, and you really know how to get the big guns to open up to you.”

He probably meant the interview she’d done with Don
DeLillo, which had graced the front of
Vanity Place’s
December issue. She sighed, thinking of that happy accomplishment, then noticed the copy of
Vamp
sitting on her desk and coughed. “I have to admit,” she said, turning the book over, “I’ve gotten a few coups.”

“With Irving in your sights.”

Technically true, though some vampire named Harold, not John Irving, appeared to qualify for the slot marked
NEXT
.

“Tell me, what’s he like?”

“John Irving? Fantastic.”

“Oh, I bet it’s going to be a killer profile.”

Well, the
topic
of John Irving had certainly achieved a lethalness around here. “I hope so.”

“When can I see it?”

She jerked. “Um, well, it’s sort of in process.”

“Next issue?”

“Actually—” She stopped. If she told him it had been tabled for a future issue, he’d want to know what she was working on for the upcoming one. “Probably.”

“Excellent. I’d love to read your take. The
board
would love to read it. Send over what you have. I wanna love me some of that John Irving.”

“You know I will. As soon as it’s ready.”

“Super-duper-ola.”

Ellery hung up and looked at the books, disconsolate.
John Irving would be so much easier to write,
she thought.

“Irving’s fantastic, huh?” Kate had maneuvered herself into Ellery’s office. “You must be something of a telepath, since I know you haven’t sat down with him yet.”

“Gimme a break. I’m doing an examination of romance novels, for God’s sake.”

“An ‘examination.’ My goodness, the issues are going to be flying off the shelves.”

“Hey, it’s the best way to approach a difficult subject. Strip it to the bones and make it beg for mercy.”

“Which difficult subject are we talking about?”

Ellery gave her a piercing look.

“So, exactly what sort of relationship did you and our Mr. Mackenzie share? Holiday party gone awry? Deadline fever? I checked the database: You haven’t worked with him in the last five years.”

“You should have checked back a little further. We worked on a number of pieces together. In Pittsburgh,” she added quickly, as if the mere setting made the notion of it being anything more than a regrettable fling unimaginable. “Before he came here to do his thing and I came to do mine.”

“Ah. And when you two were doing your mutual things,” she paused, giving the last two words as lascivious a sound as possible, “what was that like? I mean, is he the sexiest guy who ever coaxed his zoom into close-up mode or what?”

Ellery shook her head. “The zoom work was fine. I told you, it was the depth of field that was lacking.”

Kate considered this. “Yeah, I guess it sort of makes a difference if you’re in it for more than a few shots.”

“Yeah, it does.”

“But here you are, working together again?”

“Yep.”

“And you say the zoom work was fine?”

Ellery gave her a haughty
hm
.

“What?” Kate lifted up her palms. “It’s not like you’re slapping away the offers. I’m just saying a little tight-in stuff can do wonders for a girl’s portfolio.”

“Who’s working on their portfolio?” Axel draped his forearms over the cubicle wall and smiled amiably.

“Ellery,” Kate said. “I told her she needs to tighten her prose—you know, focus on the really big stuff.”

“You’ve already started writing?” he said to Ellery, surprise on his face.

“No, not yet.” Why did the copper hairs dusting his forearms have to sparkle like a daytime meteor shower?

“Well, perhaps you’ll have some time on the plane. I’ve looked into flights. We kind of have to hightail it around, given the Monday deadline. I thought we’d head to Pittsburgh tomorrow. According to Jill, the Monkey Bar’s the best place to connect with
Vamp
fans.”

“I have an interview to do in London.”

“And I have a friend at a hotel with a connection to a romance readers’ group there. So we’ll head to London the day after tomorrow. Will a day there be enough? I figured we could catch the train to Edinburgh for the sociologist you found, and if there’s anywhere else we need to go for
Kiltlander,
we can head out from there with a rental car. By the way, Kate,” he said, gazing at the novel on Ellery’s desk, “are all vampires cut like a Spartan in
300
?”

“All the ones worthy of my notice.”

“Makes a man feel rather humble.”

Kate smiled. “Probably a novel feeling for you.”

Ellery arched her brows in agreement, though she had seen Axel’s abs and he had no reason to hang his head.
“I think for efficiency’s sake we’d be better off splitting up. You go to Pittsburgh, get the shots you need of the Monkey Bar and whatever else.” She growled internally, thinking of the stupid Monkey Bar. “I’ll head off to London tonight, which would give me an extra day there. We can meet up once you arrive and go on to Scotland from there.”

A flicker of something crossed his face, enough like disappointment to make her heart contract for a second.

“There’s stuff to write about in Pittsburgh,” he said. “You should come there too.”

She knew he was right. Only a lazy writer missed an opportunity to add depth to her story, and Ellery was not a lazy writer. “I-I- I just think if we want to get this done by the deadline—”

The
buzz-buzz
of Kate’s wheelchair interrupted her thoughts.

“—it would be easier if we split up and—”

Buzz-buzz. Buzz-buzz.
Ellery put a hand behind her back, giving Kate a signal of a different nature.

“Ellery,” he said, his eyes turning a fathomless green, “come with me. Please.”

She could feel the familiar pull and felt herself weakening. His earnestness was a trick. She knew that. He was a dating iceberg—the sort of boyfriend who looks great on the surface but has the power to sink any relationship with the dangerously bad behaviors hidden underneath. And she remembered all too clearly that, unlike the
Titanic,
she hadn’t even bothered to try to turn.

The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Six Years Earlier

Ellery watched as Axel adjusted the lens on his camera, the muscles in his forearms rippling as he moved. He’d grown quieter after he’d shown her the picture he’d taken of her and the little girl, his usual sly humor replaced with a sort of tremulousness, and Ellery wondered if it was something she’d said. They had the museum to themselves for another two hours, and this was the time she should have been banging out a first draft of what was to be her paper’s first cover story so she could work on the paid stuff tomorrow, but there was something about the way he set up a shot that made it easy to lose track of her work.

“You need help with that?” she called as he moved the light he was setting up.

He snorted. “If I said yes, would you actually get up?”

“Hey, I’m the one who got you the beer.”

She had dragged an upholstered visitors’ bench from the hall into the center of the room and was lying on her stomach on it, typing on her laptop while the balloons gamboled
around her. There was a way someone moved when they were expert at their craft, with a sort of undivided intensity that was fascinating. It was like watching a very practical ballet. Axel crouched to adjust a cord, his shoulders flexing under his shirt, then stood again and withdrew a light meter from his pocket. She was very lucky he had agreed to do the photos for her. Besides the fact that he was working for free and had arranged to get them in after hours to shoot—the mere fact of having his name associated with her paper—gave it instant credibility.

He lifted the beer to his mouth and drank, the long muscles of his neck moving up and down. He was on his third bottle, and she’d picked up the six-pack only half an hour ago. She’d found herself more and more attracted to him with each assignment, but he inhabited a world far different than hers. He was a grown-up, for one, eight years older than she was, with a real job and a real income and a list of credentials as long as her arm. More important, though, he had a street edge to him that seemed completely out of reach to a girl whose most serious excess was miniature Kit Kat bars.

“I can’t believe you thought this would take an hour,” she said, pulling her eyes back to the screen.

“I can’t believe you thought it would take all night.”

“Typical male point of view.” She gave him an innuendo-filled smile. “Always trying to shortchange the rightful process.”

He didn’t reply. “Did you hear what I said?” she asked.

“If an hour’s not enough to do the job,” he said, turning to meet her eyes, “perhaps you need more competent partners.”

She felt a boom, as if a mortar had just gone off, completely altering the landscape between them, and she was both thrilled and petrified.

“You have a high opinion of your work,” she said dry-mouthed, turning back to the keyboard to hide her unsteadiness.

“I have an impressive résumé.”

And he did. She knew of at least a TV reporter and local artist whom Axel could number among his conquests, although he himself never mentioned them. Her own list was considerably shorter. Two. Her high school boyfriend, even though they had done it so badly it could hardly count, and the French grad student who’d done a full-court press during her junior year in Paris. Ellery’s parents had had a rocky marriage, even before her father cut out entirely, and Ellery had learned to expect, well, if not the worst from men, then at least not the best, which meant she did not give her heart willingly. This had kept her safe—and focused on her writing—but it had also kept her circling the same emotional ground. Although she dated a lot, each relationship always ended up stalling, like a car with a bad fuel pump. She was starting to be afraid she would never feel the thrill of full-on acceleration.