A Novel Seduction

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CHAPTER ONE

Offices of Vanity Place magazine, Manhattan

“Cripes, Axel,” Kate, the photography editor, said. “You look like you slept in the street.”

Sleep? Now, there was a novel prospect. Axel Mackenzie scratched the bristle on his cheek, then stretched his aching neck. Did the floor of an abandoned warehouse count? He was getting too old for this kind of life. What would really hit the spot was an ice-cold Hard Hat beer. For a number of reasons, including the fact that even the most liberal-minded New York City bar didn’t open for a good three hours, the idea was a nonstarter. He took a sip of the magazine’s thick, strong coffee and made a noncommittal noise.

Kate shook her head, frowned at a missing button on his thoroughly wrinkled shirt and looked down at her own scuffed Nikes. “And it’s not exactly like we set the bar real high around here, either.” She scanned his proofs as he stuffed his shirt into his jeans. “Lucky for you, you’re good.”

“Ah, if I had a dollar for every time an editor’s said that to me.”

“I notice you didn’t say ‘woman.’ ”

“I notice you didn’t say ‘great.’ ”

Buhl Martin Black, Vanity Place’s Humpty Dumpty– esque publisher, burst into view at the far end of the office-lined hallway, gripping the latest issue of his magazine, cheeks puffed in fury. With his body angled toward his destination like some sort of fleshy road sign and his short legs pumping furiously to keep up with his head, he looked like a character in some cartoon.

Axel instinctively tucked himself out of sight against the cubicle wall. On the other hand, Kate, whose desk was directly in the line of fire, clutched the corners like a spectator in one of those fifties atomic bomb films, waiting for the blast.

But Black roared by without a word. He passed his admin, flew into his office and slammed the door.

Two long, terrified beats later, Axel watched as one head after another rose slowly along the wall of cubicles and gazed wordlessly at the others. Yeesh. There were many reasons he preferred freelancing to full-time employment, but avoiding intraoffice hissy fits was definitely one of them.

He had worked with Kate for years, and if there was one thing he knew, it was she was always the professional. She buzzed her wheelchair to life and swung it around her desk. “If you don’t mind, I think I’d better see what’s going on.”

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead.” She disappeared, and Axel grabbed the current issue of Vanity Place. A moment later his phone vibrated. He flipped it open and stood, like the others, to take in the battlefield beyond the low wall.

“Mackenzie here.”

“Dammit, where’s my money?”

Axel kicked himself for not checking the caller ID before he answered. His buddy Brendan was selling his microbrewery, and Axel wanted it. Unfortunately, Axel’s bank account didn’t seem nearly as supportive of the idea as Axel.

“C’mon.” Axel lowered his voice. “You know I’m good for it. I’ve sent you almost all of it.” Kate wheeled not into Black’s office but into the office of Phil Peck, the managing editor and the man most likely to have some insight into his publisher’s dark mood. Phil jumped up to close the door behind her.

“‘Almost,’ Axel. ‘Almost,’ ” Brendan said. “I got a guy here who’s got the whole thing. He’s waving a check at me.”

Brendan had run the microbrewery in Pittsburgh as a hobby. Sadly, the beer had tasted that way. Now Brendan’s ten-year marriage was going bust, and he needed every spare dollar. Axel had liquidated everything he owned to buy his pal out. Microbrewing was his dream.

“C’mon, Brendan. I’m what? Ten short?”

“Ten? Try twenty-three.”

Twenty-three? Axel winced. “Look. Give me another month—”

“A week. I’ll give you a week.”

The sound of something hitting the wall in Black’s office—something large and made of glass—blasted the quiet of the office. Then the lever on the publisher’s door jiggled, and every head, including Axel’s, ducked. But the door remained closed.

“A week?” Axel said under his breath. “This is your college roommate here. Gimme two at least.”

“Not sure you want to harken back to those days, my friend. You wrecked my car, stiffed me on two months’ rent, and I’m still not entirely sure if you made a pass at Tracy the night of our engagement dinner.”

“In retrospect, you’ll admit, probably not a bad thing—”

“A week, Axel.”

The line went dead and so did most of Axel’s hopes. But before he could consider next steps, the greatest set of legs he’d ever seen—as familiar to him as his favorite camera—emerged from a conference room. Ellery Sharpe, the owner of the legs, was talking to some overwhelmed junior editor. Axel could tell the poor schmuck was an underling by the Martha Stewart finger she wagged in his direction as she spoke.

The pair parted, and Ellery bent to get a drink at a fountain. Her dark ponytail shone against the softness of the pale blue sweater, picking up the ebony of her pumps, and he found himself entranced with the way her cream-colored fringed wool skirt made it look as if she were wrapped in a Hudson’s Bay blanket, a situation in which she had been in his bed on more than one occasion. She straightened, unaware he was watching, and started down an adjacent hallway.

“Pssst. Pittsburgh.”

She swung around as if she’d been hit with a spitball.

His doctor would have called it an unconscious death wish—which is what he had called a lot of Axel’s former habits—but God, he’d forgotten the fire that could blaze in those eyes, the same stunning violet as what had once been his favorite recreational drug.

She marched toward him, looking left and right to see if anyone had overheard. “I told you never to call me that.”

“You told me a lot of things. A friendly heads-up: If I were you, I’d consider a long walk to the cafeteria.”

Her gaze narrowed. “Why?”

“Black,” he said. “Something’s up with him. Something bad.”

She shrugged, the thick sable hair flipping over her shoulder like the tail of an irritated cat. “Not my problem. I’m heading to the Art Department to look at layouts. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

He gave a theatrical bow and waved her on, but after two steps, perhaps feeling the prickle of something she didn’t like, she stopped and turned. He dropped his eyes, but it was too late. She’d caught him gazing dreamily at the swaying fringe.

“Hudson’s Bay,” he explained, heat rushing up his neck.

She rolled her eyes. “Canadians.”

With a sigh, he dropped into the chair, returning to the more prosaic parts of his day. A week, Brenden had said, though he might as well have said an hour. Axel had already short-leased his apartment for the month to a visiting couple from Osaka to try to scrape up more cash and was crashing on friends’ couches when he could and warehouse floors when he couldn’t. His leg bounced anxiously. All he had left to hock was his camera, and he wasn’t quite ready for that.

Damn. He would have given his left eye for a smoke, a Seconal and about three quick beers, but he settled for a hard rub through his hair. He picked up the magazine and, as always, flipped immediately to the book review section and scanned the lead story. Vanity Place won the award for the most pretentious thing going. He felt like he needed to apologize for dropping out of grad school whenever he read something in it, and that was often no more than the table of contents. But this review—a beautifully constructed Stinger missile aimed at the recent memoir of Bettina Moore, head of Pierrot Enterprises, the world’s most successful romance novel publishing company, and the darling of the publishing world—carried razor-edged pomposity about as far as it could go.

Moore’s estimation of her impact on American culture is as overstated as her dress on the book’s cover. If romance novels are, as Moore says, “candy conversation hearts that speak to the soul of a woman,” let’s hope future instructive aphorisms include “There’s more plot in the phone book,” “Romance Novels: Publishing’s Answer to Farmville” and “Get a Library Card!”

Axel shook his head. Incisive prose was one of Ellery Sharpe’s gifts. But he hated to see her use it as a weapon of mass destruction. What had happened to that starry-eyed twenty-two-year-old who was going to revolutionize journalism with her own biweekly rag; who had convinced him to work for her for free when he had national offers pouring in; and whose fierce pride in her hometown had caused him in a semidrunken glow to nickname her “Pittsburgh”?

Kate wheeled in behind him. “Sorry, Axel. Bit of a firestorm. Where were we? Oh, right, the photo proofs.” She pulled up to the monitor and hit PAGE DOWN a couple times. “These are fantastic.”

She’d upgraded them from “good.” About time. “Right. What’s next?”

“Hmmm.” She punched up the project list.

“I’m looking for something fast,” he said. “Fast and lucrative.”

She lifted a brow. “How about a shot of Sasquatch?”

“Will it pay twenty-three grand?”

She snorted. “Sure. If you get him having a beer with Jimmy Hoffa. Seriously, though. I’ve got a John Irving shoot I’d love you for.”

“Is it soon? Is there travel?” He thought of the per diems he could pocket in addition to his fee.

“Yes to both. It was supposed to be next month, but his schedule changed and he wants to do it this week. Ellery’s finalizing the date.”

Axel’s dreams of a quick payoff sputtered like a rapidly deflating balloon. “Ellery’s writing the article?”

“She is the head of the literary section here.”

“Yeah, um…” He gave Kate a polite but regretful shake.

She angled her head. “What? You two don’t click?”

He remembered when his relationship with Ellery imploded five years ago, after which he had given up and split for New York, and imagined himself as Sylvester the cat, listening to the click, click, click of the bomb Tweety has slipped into his catnip canary. “Oh, no, we definitely click. It’s like a freakin’ click fest when we’re together. We just, um… do our best work with others.”

“Is that so?”

Kate gave him a piercing look, but he hadn’t spent thirty-six years with four older sisters without developing strong self-preservation strategies. He kept his face blank.

Kate went back to her screen. “Well, other than that I’ve got—”

Black’s muffled voice shook the room. “Yes, Phil,” he shouted, “I mean now! Find her and get her in here!” This was followed by the sound of a phone being slammed into its cradle and perhaps through the desktop.

“I take it,” Axel said, “there’s a problem.”

“Sixth sense of yours?”

“What can I say? Years of experience.”

“Yeah, well, Black’s not too happy about the article Ellery wrote on Bettina Moore,” Katie said.

Axel cast a quick, concerned glance down the corridor, where he’d spotted the legs. Pittsburgh’s grand ambitions would be imperiled. Technically, he should have no interest in what happened to her one way or another, but even after all these years he hated to see her get into trouble. “Why not? Does Black’s wife love romance novels or something?”

“I don’t think Black’s wife loves anything about Bettina Moore.”

“The article was a little harsh, I suppose, but nothing out of the ordinary for this place.” He gave Kate a “Gimme a break” look.

She met his eyes. “‘Publishing’s answer to Farmville’?”

“Okay, okay, it was cruel. But you guys don’t exactly encourage writers to use kid gloves.”

Kate sighed. “Black doesn’t see it that way. Not on this one.”

So Pittsburgh would get a slap on the wrist. She’d live. Black could be quite vindictive if he chose, but it didn’t seem like he had a real beef here.

“Why didn’t he quash the article?” Axel had had more than one project end up dumped in the circular file for no better reason that some suit upstairs didn’t like the story.

“He was out of town when it was turned in.”

Axel scratched his ribs. “You snooze, you lose.”

“Only he wasn’t snoozing.”

Axel stopped. “Oh?”

Kate looked to see if anyone was close and lowered her voice. “Black was supposed to be at a publishing summit in London.”

“‘Plugged In: The Future of Publishing’?” Everyone who was anyone was supposed to be going to that. An old colleague, Barry, had mentioned it to him when they’d run into each other a few weeks ago.

“Nope, that’s later this week. This was a magazine editor summit, but the point is, Phil has it from a very well-placed source that Black was actually spending a long weekend with someone he shouldn’t have been.”

“And this makes our most reverend publisher suddenly sensitive to condescending writing?” Hell, if that’s all it took to get this place to pull its head out of its ass, Axel wished Black had discovered the delights of adultery a long time ago.

“That someone was Bettina Moore.”

Axel leapt to his feet to see if he could stop Ellery, only to spot her waving a cheery hello to Phil Peck as she joined him outside Black’s office, unaware she was waltzing into certain annihilation. “Oh, shit.”

“A conversation heart for the ages.”

© 2011 Gwyn Cready