Beautiful Stranger (31 page)

She paused and I closed my eyes, remembering her face when she came for the last time.

“How was your flight?”

“Good. Long,” I said, standing and walking as far as the
phone cord would allow. I looked out the window, down to where people scurried about on the sidewalks below, completely lost in their own little worlds. “I miss you.”

I heard her stand and a door close before she sat again. “Me, too.”

“Did you get any sleep after I left?”

“A little.” She laughed. “Someone wore me out.”

“Lucky bastard, that one.”

She hummed and I tried to picture what she was doing, what she was wearing. I decided she was wearing a skirt, nothing under, and had on her black knee-high boots.

Bad move, Max. You’re across the country and ready to go now.

“You’re gone for the week?” she asked.

“Yeah. I get back Friday afternoon. Spend the night with me?”

“Absolutely.”

I took a deep breath, reminding myself I didn’t have any reason to be worried. Most likely the thief would wipe my phone and laptop and just sell them. “So, my bag was stolen at the airport.”

“What?” she gasped. “That’s awful. Who does that?”

“Arseholes.”

“Which bag was it? Your clothes?”

“No, my carry-on.” I took a deep breath. “My laptop, my phone. I’ve already had the passwords changed for anything
work related, but Sara . . . the SD card I used last night was in there and I haven’t cleared all of it yet. My phone, too.”

“Okay,” she said on an exhale. “Okay.” I heard the sound of leather creaking and could imagine her standing from her desk chair again and pacing the room. “I’m assuming the thief wasn’t caught.”

“No . . . Just a couple of shithead kids from what I gather.”

A few beats of silence filled the line and I remembered why I sucked at phone calls. I wanted to see her, to read her expression and gauge whether she looked worried or relieved.

“Well, odds are that they were just out for a quick buck, right?” she said finally. “They’ll probably pawn the laptop and phone and toss the SD drive. For all we know they’ve cleared the laptop and the card’s already sitting in the trash somewhere.”

I pressed my forehead to the window and exhaled, my breath forming a cloud of condensation on the glass. “Christ, I love you. I was very fucking stressed-out about how you’d take this news.”

“Just come back so we can get some new pictures, okay?”

I smiled into the phone. “Deal.”

The art show Saturday night and the conference on Sunday were complete insanity. I met several people in person I’d
spoken with on the phone for months, and had agreed to a few meetings in New York later on to hammer out possible investments. The pace of the weekend allowed me to keep my mind off the fact that I had no pictures of naked Sara for distraction.

Monday I woke to a sky full of fog and croissant-and-coffee room service. As strange as it was to admit, I quite relished the forced unplugging I had to endure now that I’d lost my bag. I’d be able to pick up a new phone that morning and could make do without a laptop for the rest of the week, but aside from missing my photos, it had been nice to disengage a little from the constant work calls.

And then I noticed that, beside the bed, the light on my room phone was blinking red. Had I missed a call?

Checking the side of it, I realized the ringer had been turned off. I lifted the receiver and hit the voice mail button.

Will’s no-nonsense voice snapped through the line: “Max. Check the
Post
then call me ASAP. We have fires to put out back home.”

Monday came crashing in with another summer storm and a sky so greenish blue it felt like the ocean was filling up the air. I ran beneath my umbrella to the subway station and barely made my 7:32 train.

For once, there was a seat open and I dropped into it, wrapping up my umbrella and closing my eyes to think about everything I had to get done today. Some pricing research, a wall of meetings before lunch, and then a meeting with my staff.

When I looked up and glanced at the paper the lady next to me was reading, every one of those plans fell away.

Staring at me from the middle of Page Six was a picture of Max next to the headline, M
AD
M
AX’S
M
ANY
M
ISTRESSES.

“What?”
I shot out involuntarily, leaning forward and not even caring that I was one hundred percent into the personal space of the girl reading the paper.

“Can I see this?” I asked forcefully, and the woman handed the paper over like she thought I might be nuts.

I quickly skimmed the story.

Max Stella loves art and beautiful women. It’s no surprise to any of us that his (worst-kept) secret is his penchant for combining hobbies: photographing himself with his flavors of the week. Caught only a week ago with a stunning blonde in a bar, new pictures have leaked of Max devouring an equally delicious brunette. While most of the shots were, let’s just say,
very
too NSFW to reprint here, one face shot clearly identifies the venture capitalist’s “getting the business” partner as the Spanish starlet Maria de la Cruz, only days ago as the time stamp has it.

Come on, Max. Can’t we just see a sex tape and get it over with?

As I finished reading the story for probably the tenth time, the train pulled up to a stop and I shot up, stumbling from the subway car and wandering in a daze out to the street.

After walking the last dozen blocks to our building, I wasn’t even a little surprised to find Chloe standing inside my office, waiting for me.

With shaking hands, I held up the paper. “I need
you to explain what I’m seeing here. Is this just gossip? Who is this woman?”

She stepped closer, handing me her phone. She had the browser open to Celebritini, which apparently had broken the story. At the top of the page was a picture I’d seen weeks ago, on the rooftop with Max. It was a picture of my hip, with his hand spread across my skin.

Beside the picture of my obviously naked body was a picture of a woman’s face. She had dark hair and I would have no way of knowing what color her eyes were because her head was thrown back, eyes closed. At the bottom of the photo was a hint of hair of the man whose face was pressed against her neck.

She was very obviously having an
orgasm.

“This photo was on his phone.” I scanned the story that outlined just how many women Max had pictures of. “Apparently there were a lot of pictures of other women.”

Chloe reached for the pair of scissors on my desk. “I’ll be back later; seems I have an appendage to remove.”

“He’s out of town.”

She paused, taking a deep breath. “Well, at least that will save me from prison.”

“What did Bennett say?”

Chloe flopped down on my couch. “He said we should try to be circumspect. That we didn’t know the entire story. That there is a lot of bullshit in the press. He reminded me I thought he was sleeping with everyone in the office before we hooked up.”

I pointed to the picture of his
Spanish Starlet
. “This story says this was the most recent of his photos leaked and that there were many others. And the one of me, the other one, was taken earlier this summer. So he’s been with her since then.”

She didn’t respond. I stared at the wall, considered putting my fist through it, and then almost laughed at the image. Max could put a fist through a wall. I wouldn’t even leave a mark, and would probably end up with a broken hand.

“I’m tired of feeling like an idiot.”

“So don’t be. Kick his ass.”

“This is exactly why I didn’t want to get involved with anyone. Because I want to see the best in someone, and am totally shattered when I’m wrong.”

Chloe still didn’t say anything, just watched me from across the room. Max didn’t even have a phone or a laptop. I couldn’t call to find out anything.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I picked up my phone and powered it off.

“What do we have on the calendar today?” I hit the spacebar on my computer to wake up the screen, and
glanced through my appointments. I looked up at my friend.

She reached over and turned off my monitor. “Nothing pressing. George! Cancel everything and then get your stuff. We’re getting day-drunk.”

By noon I was hammered, thrilled that the seedy bar we hit up in Queens had a jukebox, and even more thrilled that the proprietor seemed to love eighties hair bands as much as I did. It was my mom’s guilty pleasure music and playing Twisted Sister over and over strangely made me feel like I was home.

“He was brilliant in bed,” I mumbled into my glass. “Well,” I corrected, holding up a heavy hand, “that one night we actually did it in a bed. My bed. And in that bed he was
brilliant
. I think we had sex like seven thousand times that night.”

“You only did it in a bed once?” George asked, standing next to the table and leaning on a pool stick for support.

Chloe sighed heavily and ignored him, popping another few highly suspect peanuts into her mouth. “I hate that you feel like you have to give that up. Nothing keeps a relationship together better than amazing sex. Oh, and honesty. I mean, that’s important too.” She scratched her cheek, adding, “And just, like, having
fun together. I mean, sex, honesty, and fun. Secret of success right there.”

“We had the sex and the fun.”

Chloe looked like she was headed into the nap zone. “BB is fucking stellar in bed, too,” she mumbled.

“My complete lack of a sex life is also fantastic,” George groaned. “Thanks for asking. Do women really sit around talking about sex all the time?”

Chloe said, “Yes,” just as I said, “Not really.”

Then I changed my mind and said, “Kind of,” right when she said, “I guess not.”

We fell into each other giggling, but my laughter quickly dissolved when a tall shadow stepped into the bar. I sat up, heart pounding. He had broad shoulders, the same light brown hair . . .

But it wasn’t Max.

My chest felt like it was too small for everything inside it.

“Ouch,” I moaned, rubbing over my heart. “Last time I was so far beyond feeling sad I was just mad. This just
hurts
.”

Chloe threw an arm around me. “Men suck.”

Her phone rang and she answered it after barely one ring. “I’m at a bar.” She paused, listening, then said, “Yeah, we’re getting day-drunk . . . She’s sad and I want to castrate him . . . I know. I will . . . I promise
I won’t throw up all over the new carpet, settle down. I’ll see you later.” She ended the call and gave the phone the finger. “Such a bossy ass.”

And then she slumped against me. “You deserve a guy like Bennett.”

George bent down, inspecting us and shaking his head. “You two are a mess. Tomorrow night we’re doing Buck Up Sara Time the gay way.”

Tuesday night, George took us to a gay bar, packed wall-to-wall with people, pounding with music. It was exactly the kind of place I wanted to go with him in happier times, but now it only reminded me of how miserable I was. And the truth was, I didn’t really want to go out and party. I didn’t want to be in the middle of a fifteen-man grindfest. I wanted to find a way to just skip time, and get to that point where Max didn’t matter anymore.