A Novel Seduction

by Gwyn Cready

  “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.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Well, actually, yes.” Ellery allowed an ironic smile to rise at the corner of her mouth and gazed curiously at the shards of what she hoped was imitation eighteenth-century French porcelain scattered across the floor. “I thought parts of it were quite funny.”

  She knew Black shared her wicked sense of humor. In fact, there were even some parts of the article—the line about romantic novels doing for adverbs what Lady Gaga did for hat wear popped to mind—she’d written specifically for him. She leaned forward to give him a broad collegial smile, though why it looked as if he were choking on his tie, she didn’t know. She hoped he hadn’t taken to ordering the salami breakfast burritos in the cafeteria again.

  “You have to admit, you took some cheap shots,” Phil said carefully from his perch on the edge of the adjacent visitor’s chair.

  “Yeah,” she said, laughing, “I did. I especially liked ‘the literary equivalent of word-search puzzles’ line.” Her phone vibrated and she stole a quick glance at the screen. A text from Axel? EMERGENCY! TRUST ME ON THIS, it began, and she clicked the phone off automatically. The last time he used that line, she’d ended up with sixteen tubs of something that looked like rabbit pellets and smelled like the floor of a bar stacked in her entry hall for six months. Life with a Canadian had not been easy. They seem to have beer in their blood.

  “But it isn’t the books themselves,” she went on, “it’s that woman and the way—”

  Phil cleared his throat.

  “—she insists on seeing her achievement as something more than having figured out how to build the biggest crap-shoveling machine in the history of publishing.”

  Phil made an even louder noise and began waving his hand back and forth below the edge of Black’s desk.

  “It would be like the head of BP writing a book on harnessing the power of the ocean,” she said, “or the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates on squeezing profits out of a sports team. I mean, they have the credentials, but who would want to read it? And, my God, the outfits she wears—”

  Black slammed his fist so hard on his desk, Ellery jumped. “I think,” he said slowly, “it’s time for a little fair balance.”

  Ellery looked at Phil. He looked as if he’d been laid out sitting up. All he needed was coins over his eyes and a bugler playing “Taps.”

  “Fair balance?” she repeated.

  “Yes,” Black said. “I’m curious as to why so many women love those books, aren’t you?”

  She flicked her eyes to Phil, like a runner looking for a sign, but got nothing but the faint whiff of embalming fluid. This was like some weird, otherworldly experience. Buhl Martin Black wondering why women liked romance novels? The man who could give you the name and theme of every short story that had been published in the New Yorker since 1972 and who had cried when John Updike died? “Well, I mean, I guess.”

  “Good,” Black said. “Because I want you to write a piece on it.”

  “Me?” She felt the world shifting under her feet. “I don’t know the slightest thing about them.”

  His eyes shone like round, hard nuggets of coal. “Really? You seemed to have formed quite a clear opinion.”

  “But—”

  “I want three thousand words,” he said. “A real ode to the subject. Why don’t we try for the upcoming issue?”

  She blinked. They had moved from the absurd to the impossible. “The issue being put to bed next Monday, as in ‘one week from today’?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Three thousand words? On a topic she neither understood nor could tolerate? “In Vanity Place?”

  “Are you under the impression, Miss Sharpe, that understanding what makes women tick is somehow beneath our notice? As far as I know, they still make up half our readers, though I am only the publisher, so perhaps I’ve been misinformed.”

  This from a man who had nearly drummed her out of the editorial room for once professing a small liking for Bridget Jones’s Diary? “But—”

  “But nothing. I want the article to be in essay form. Your personal journey, discovering the marvelous world of romance novels.”

  “I—”

  “You will be th
e literary critic who convinces the non-romance-reading public they’ve been wrong all along. You will be credited with the Great Awakening. You will go down in history as the Pied Piper of Romance.”

  She supposed it wasn’t the best time to remind Black that, at least in the story she read, the people the piper cast his spell over followed him into a river and drowned. She cleared her throat. “You know I was supposed to be doing the John Irving interview.”

  “Does John Irving have something to do with why women like romance novels?”

  She shook her head slowly. “Not as far as I know.”

  “Then Irving can roll up his wrestling mat and pound salt.”

  At this, Phil emerged from the dead and hopped to his feet. “We’ll make it happen.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “He said ‘an ode,’ Phil—an effing ode!” Ellery rubbed her temples and wondered whether a jump from her managing editor’s third-story window would be enough to kill her.

  “I know it seems like a challenge—”

  “A challenge! An undercover piece on Colombian drug trafficking would be a challenge. A first-person report on sexual discrimination aboard the Space Station would be a challenge. This is…”

  “A chance to really show your range?”

  “An intellectual impossibility. What the hell was going on in there?”

  Phil made a slightly embarrassed cough. “I’m not definitively sure, but a good guess is that Black is bedding Bettina Moore.”

  “Oh, crap.” Now her head really started to ring. Why did sex have to get in the way of good writing? “Really? Bettina Moore?” A vision of Jack Sprat and his wife sprang into her head and—thankfully—raced out again. “I can’t think of two people less suited for one another.”

  Peck shrugged.

  Eight years of increasingly challenging roles in the magazine world. Two years of strong work as literary editor at Vanity Place. Ellery’s goal, to run her own literary-themed monthly by age thirty, was within reach, and in fact she knew she was one of two candidates being considered for just such a role with Lark & Ives Publishing, one of Buhl Martin Black’s biggest competitors—big in the bottom-line sense, for of course no one could outdo Black in the girth department. Lark & Ives was the most literary-minded magazine publisher around, and all that remained was for them to review each candidate’s body of work and get final approval from the board, an effort they said they would finish in a matter of weeks—just long enough for an article on romance novels to sink her helium-fueled dreams like a shot from Cupid’s BB gun.

  “My reputation’s on the line here.”

  Peck inclined his head sadly toward Black’s office. “So might your job.”

  She weighed her choices: potential unemployment versus a potential job offer. Peck had been a great boss and had taught her a lot. She owed him the truth. She got up, closed the door, and turned to face him. “There’s something I should tell you.”

  He gazed at her over his reading glasses. “You’re in line to launch your own magazine at Lark & Ives?” He smiled.

  “But—”

  “Don’t be surprised. Who do you think they called after you interviewed. You’ll be great, and you’re ready.”

  “Thank you.” His approval meant everything to her.

  “Who are you up against?”

  “Barry Steinberg.”

  Peck made a quiet whistle. “Tough one.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “But you’re better.”

  “Phil, this article will sink me. John Irving was going to be my blaze of glory.”

  “I know. It’s a bad time to have gotten your foot caught in a clandestine affair.”

  Getting any part of her body caught in a clandestine affair would have been a nice change of pace, had the affair been hers. Too bad the only spank she’d be getting out of this one was to her professional ego. The whole thing was infuriating. She bit her lip. “I’m not sure I can write that article, Phil—at least, not the way Black wants me to. The last thing I want to do is go down in history as the Pied Piper of Romance.”

  He nodded. “I know. Write it the best way you can. I’ll fight for you.”

  She hoped she wouldn’t be congratulating herself on her impeccable principles in the unemployment line.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Bettina answered after the first ring. “Buhl,” she said in her pouty British voice, setting his heart to race, “your Wittle Sprout is very unhappy. I hope you have some good news for her.”

  Bettina had christened herself Wittle Sprout after their first fevered dinner—as she’d said, the natural complement to the delightful giant she’d found nestled in his green boxers after she’d unzipped his trousers during the raspberry flan.

  “Yes,” he said under his breath, not trusting his locked office door or the disposable cell phone. It was hard keeping a lover happy. Especially one an ocean away. “I’ve taken care of it.”

  “Taken care of it? How? Your Wittle Sprout wants to know.”

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

  “Then it sounds perfect,” she said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  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.