by Gwyn Cready
“I have to write an ode to romance novels and get it into the next issue,” Ellery said. “It appears our fearless leader is having a little something on the side with Pierrot’s Bettina Moore and has decided that romance novels are our new favorite literary genre here at Vanity Place.”
“Sex does funny things to people,” Axel said, the corners of his mouth curving, and Ellery pretended she hadn’t heard.
Kate, however, had heard, and moved her wheelchair forward and back, eliciting the faint buzz-buzz that had become a signal between her and Ellery: “Wake up” if your lids were drooping in a meeting, “Do it” if she caught Ellery gazing at the box of doughnuts, “Woo-hoo” if the guy from the mailroom with the ass like Colin Farrell walked by—a sort of private double-exclamation point. Nothing like a demure Civil War widow.
“Romance novels, eh?” Kate shook her head. “We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
“Or perhaps the problem is we are in Kansas.”
Ellery’s phone chimed, reminding her she had an unread text. She slid the bar automatically and remembered it was from Axel. EMERGENCY! TRUST ME ON THIS. BE SORRY ABOUT MOORE STORY. BUHL BOFFING BETTINA.
She banged her head with her palm and looked at her erstwhile white knight, who shrugged regretfully.
“It could be worse,” Kate said.
She gazed at Axel’s thick brown locks and ropey arms and thought of those shirtless men on romance covers with their bulging thighs and the way they always seemed to be pressing the heroine into a particularly complicated sexual position. Axel turned toward her, and she jumped. “Worse? How?” she asked, finding her place in the conversation again.
“I thought you were going to get fired,” Kate said. “And just so you know, I happened to be quite a romance reader in my younger days.”
“So were my sisters,” Axel said. “Still are, as a matter of fact.”
Axel was the youngest of five children, and the only boy. His sisters had once hung him upside down in a toilet until he promised to carry their books to school on his bike. Ellery wondered if they’d learned that in a romance.
“Romances taught me everything I needed to know about men,” Kate said happily.
“Gee, and I thought that was Lord of the Flies.” Ellery sniffed.
“Ignore your colleague,” Axel said to Kate. “She hasn’t had a nonliterary book teach her anything since Dick and Jane.”
Ellery said, “Well, if you’re trying to get a handle on the driving male personality trait, Dick would certainly be the place to start.”
Axel waved away Ellery’s cynicism and returned to Kate. “So, what did romances teach you?”
She fiddled with the accelerator knob on her wheelchair, smiling nostalgically. “First, forget money. Forget looks. Without honor, there’s nothing.”
Axel nodded appreciatively. Oh, that’s rich, Ellery thought.
“Second, the only heroine of any worth is one who makes things happen for herself.”
“No argument there.” Axel tipped his coffee in a toast to Kate and Ellery, ignoring Ellery’s rolling eyes. “And?”
“And there’s nothing more fun than an unruly hard-on.”
Ellery whooped. Kate had always been able to make her laugh. Axel unfolded himself and stood. “On that note, I believe I’ll excuse myself.”
“No excuses necessary,” Kate said, cheeks pink with amusement. “We know all about hero envy.”
He pointed to Kate. “Call when you find something, okay?”
“I always do.”
And when he’d sauntered off, Kate turned her sights on Ellery like a double-barreled shotgun. “So, what’s the poop with you and Axel?”
“Poop?” Ellery said innocently. “No poop here. I’m entirely poop-free.”
“So good to hear it. Health Department rules and all. And yet, I’m still getting that funky smell from your side of the divider.”
Ellery arched a brow and returned to her chair, effectively blocking Kate’s view of her face. Undaunted, Kate revved her wheelchair to life, peeled into the corridor and turned into Ellery’s cubicle.
“You’re kidding, right?” Ellery said. “I’m facing the most horrific assignment of my life, and you’re here looking for details?”
Kate flicked the handbrake and laid her BlackBerry neatly on her lap.
“I’m not saying anything.”
“You slept with him?”
Ellery pressed her lips together.
“And exactly how unruly is he?”
“Kate!”
“Cough, sister.”
Ellery sighed. “It was a dark chapter that ended right before I came to New York.”
Kate chewed her lip. “Dark?”
“Dark.”
“Okay, I can see he’s a little edgy for you.”
“I beg your pardon.” Ellery realigned her narrow, hammered Tiffany bangles.
“But he’s so damned charming.”
Ellery threw up her hands. “Oh, Christ. You and everybody else. Of course you think he is. Instead of dependability, he offers charm. Instead of honesty, he offers fun.
Instead of trustworthiness, he offers…” She groped for the word.
“Unruly hard-ons?”
“Gah!”
“Not a bad trade.”
“It was for me. You know how you reach into a box of Whoppers and you think, Oh my God, I can’t wait to eat this perfect round, crunchy ball, and then you bite it and you discover it’s one of those horrible chewy Whopper mistakes? That was Axel: a chewy Whopper mistake. He failed me when I really needed him.”
Kate observed her friend thoughtfully. “You know what you need?”
“What?”
“The opportunity to console yourself for a week with about thirty romance novels.”
“I hate you.”
“I know.”
CHAPTER SIX
Axel hopped into the lift just as the doors were closing and found himself face-to-face with Buhl Martin Black, who twisted his torso like a strand of top-heavy DNA and adjusted something in his trouser pocket.
“Mackenzie.” He nodded a greeting.
“Mr. Black.”
The last time Axel had an interaction with Black, he’d been shooting an exposé of the lawyers who defend the cigarette industry. He hoped Black had long forgotten the lawsuit for trespassing. And the one for assault and battery. And the room service bill.
“So, what are you working on?” Black asked.
No need to appear anything less than indispensable. “Well, I’m working on the John Irving shoot and—”
“Forget it. It’s been canceled.”
“Oh.”
“Didn’t you work with Ellery on that James Frey piece?”
That story had happened years ago, right after things had gone south between him and Pittsburgh, and it had been done for a magazine other than Vanity Place. It had been after Frey’s memoir, A Million Little Pieces, had come out, but before anyone knew he’d lied about nearly every relevant fact in the book.
“I did,” Axel said.
“You thought the approach should be interested skepticism? She wanted to paint him with wings and a halo?”
Christ, what a memory. Black knew the literary landscape as well as he knew the back of the menu at Alain Ducasse. “That’s the one.” Interested skepticism had prevailed with the editor in charge, and Ellery promptly changed her cell phone number and listed everything Axel had left at her apartment on Craigslist.
“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.”<
br />
“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.
CHAPTER SEVEN
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.
