A Novel Seduction

by Gwyn Cready

“Trouble?” Axel asked with what she would have sworn was a twinkle in his eye.

  “No,” she said, placing her arms squarely on the bar.

  Simon placed two sloshing glass mugs in front of them. Axel lifted the lighter-colored of the two and sniffed it inquisitively. Then he tilted it toward her.

  “To a great story.”

  She lifted hers reluctantly. “It’s not hot,” she said, looking at the contents.

  He frowned. “It’s not supposed to be.”

  She sipped and nearly gagged. “It’s not coffee!”

  He looked horrified. “Did you want actual coffee?”

  “I ordered coffee.”

  “Well, we were talking about stout. I’m pretty sure Simon thought you meant coffee stout.”

  “Coffee in beer?”

  “You betcha.”

  “Jeez, is there anything you people won’t put into it?”

  He scratched his cheek, considering. “Peppermint. Tried it once in a holiday stout. It’s not as merry as you might think.”

  Ellery, whose need for caffeine was stronger than her desire for a more traditional delivery method, took another swallow. She could feel Axel looking at her.

  “You sure you’re okay?” he said.

  She nodded, unwilling to meet his eyes. She looked instead at his lean wrist and the dusting of russet hairs along his taut, tan arm and the way his first two fingers lifted and lowered slowly over the counter. He was on the precipice of asking more, and she threw out an invisible wall of unapproachability to keep him from doing it.

  His fingers stilled and, with a sigh from their owner, tightened around the handle of his mug and disappeared from her sight.

  “I have to hit the men’s room.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Nothing.” There was no point in arguing about it.

  When he disappeared, she asked Simon for a menu. He cocked his head toward the chalkboard on the wall next to the framed picture of the Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. “Game Pie, Ploughman’s Lunch, Fish and Chips,” the board read, as well as something referred to mysteriously as “Whelks.”

  “How are the whelks today?” she asked.

  “Garlicky.”

  “Darn. I’ll have the fish and chips.” At least that was readily identifiable. “Side salad?”

  He shook his head.

  Of course not. Perhaps if she asked for a lettuce stout.

  Her phone rang. It was a work number. She took another draft of her beer abomination and answered.

  “Ellery Sharpe.”

  “I heard you were naked in Pittsburgh.” It was Kate.

  “Half naked. Please tell me you’re not in a pitch meeting.”

  “Manicure. Which half?”

  “My left half. Jesus, can the manicurist understand English?”

  “I think so. It’s Jill. We met in the park for lunch.”

  “Hiya, sis!” Jill called in the background. “Nice boob action!”

  “Yeah,” Kate said. “Great for the résumé.”

  “Nobody knew who I was,” Ellery said. “And the only pictures were Axel’s and he took those after I had the T-shirt on.”

  “Yeah, after he picked his jaw off the floor. Pardon?” Kate added, obviously talking to Jill. Then to Ellery: “Oh, no. Jill assures me there are plenty of pictures of you online looking, well, positively empowered.”

  “Pictures!” She sat up so hard, she nearly fell off the stool.

  “Pictures?” said Axel, who had just returned.

  Kate said, “Oh, yeah. Apparently you need only go to Twitter and search for ‘Ynez army’ and you’ll find links to tons of ’em. Oh, hang on.…” Kate was listening to Jill again. “I’m told ‘boob empowerment’ works too.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Is that Kate?” Axel said, hearing her tinny voice coming out of Ellery’s earpiece. “Is there an issue with the pictures? Tell her I have a bunch if she wants to look them over early.”

  “Soooooo,” Kate said. “The million dollar question is: How empowered did you get with Axel?”

  “The photos are looking great.” Ellery hugged the phone tighter to her ear. “Axel can send you what he has if you want to look them over now.”

  Kate laughed. “Ask him if he’s been on Twitter lately.”

  “No, no, it’s no problem. He says he’d be happy to share them.”

  “I’ll bet he would. Maybe you two should get yourselves into a dark room and see what develops, you lover, you.”

  “Did she say ‘cover’?” Axel edged closer, any vestige of manners gone. “God, I’d love a cover. Who would we shoot? Bettina Moore? Or maybe that woman who wrote Vamp?”

  Ellery said, “I know who I’d choose to shoot,” and Kate giggled.

  “Yes, I promise he’ll send what he has. Gotta run. Bye.” Ellery hit the END button.

  “A cover would be great,” Axel said.

  Oh, Jesus. The only thing worse than writing the damn article would be seeing it make the cover of Vanity Place. She’d be laughed out of New York.

  “Kate sounded eager for details,” he said.

  “‘Eager’ doesn’t begin to describe it. Better send her what you have tonight.”

  Simon put the fish in front of Ellery. Axel motioned for a similar order for himself and grabbed one of her chips. “God, I love this stuff.”

  “They’re yours. I’m only going to have a couple.”

  He found the malt vinegar bottle and made himself a puddle at one end of the plate and followed that with an artery-tightening snowstorm of salt.

  “How are you feeling about whelks?”

  The chip stopped before it reached his mouth and his eyebrows rose in happy arches. “They have whelks?”

  “God, what is it with you British Empire people?”

  “Technically, Canada is not part of the British Empire—not anymore, at least.”

  “You still have the queen’s picture on your money.”

  “Think of it as plaid pants. If you don’t wear plaid pants at a country club, no one will know you belong.”

  “Is that how it is?” She knew for a fact Axel wouldn’t be caught dead in plaid pants or at a country club.

  “Yes. And Americans are like the slightly vulgar out-of-town guests you bring who shout to the caddy from the patio of the tea shop.”

  “Slightly vulgar independent guests, you mean. We fought for it, you know. Didn’t wait for it to be handed to us along with the lyrics to ‘O Canada’ and a box of Tim Hortons doughnuts.”

  “Mmmm,” he said happily through the chip he was eating. “Doughnuts.”

  The sky had turned a dark gray on their walk from Covent Garden, and Ellery was not surprised to hear the clap of lightning followed by the immediate rumble of rain.

  “Great.” She gazed at the empty snug. The pub itself was nearly empty. “First the London College woman cancels and now I just know the book ladies are not going to show.”

  “They’ll show,” Simon said, returning with Axel’s dinner. At this point Axel had moved Ellery’s plate in front of him and was digging into her fish. The pub man paused for a moment, then slid the new plate in front of Ellery. “The Rosemary Readers never miss.”

  “Hm.”

  Simon ducked under the bar to attend to the fire in the room’s small hearth when a crashing jolt of thunder heralded an even harder downpour.

  “This day’s going to be a total waste,” Ellery grumbled, and immediately regretted it when she saw the look that came over Axel’s face. “I meant as far as the article is concerned.”

  “Ah.” He sucked a stray bit of fried batter off his finger. “You need to think more positively.”

  “That was positive. Otherwise, I’d have said our careers are finished and we’re doomed to walk the cheerless halls of the unemployment office, begging for jobs taking school pictures and writing obituaries.”

  “There’s the Ellery I know. You’re not going t
o eat my fish, are you?”

  She paused, fork in the air, and gave him a look. Then with a flourish she bit into the firm, white plank and let the steamy, oily, salty morsel melt on her tongue.

  “Pretty good, eh?” he said.

  “Fantastic.”

  “So at least the night’s not going to be a total wash?”

  His eyes glittered when he said it, and she hid her flush in a quick slug of coffee-beer. “Except for the fact that the women aren’t going to make it. Nobody comes out on a night like this if they don’t have to.”

  “They’ll come.”

  A man opened the door, shook off his rain slicker and said, “Anybody own the Ford Estate Wagon parked on the corner? The storm drains have overflowed. Looks like it might be carried off with the rain.”

  “Wanna bet?” she said to Axel.

  “That depends.” He gazed at her from a bent elbow, liquid eyes alight with mischief. “How interesting do you want to make it?”

  When she found her breath, she said, “Ten bucks.”

  He shook his head. “Not even close to interesting.”

  She could feel the warmth rising on her cheeks. “Twenty?”

  “Simon,” he called, not breaking her gaze. “How much are the rooms upstairs?”

  “Sixty quid.”

  “How does sixty quid sound?”

  She shifted. “Pricey.”

  “What does it matter? You’re going to win, right? If they don’t show, you win. But if they do…”

  She wasn’t quite sure what she was agreeing to, but she had a sudden keen interest in the weather. She finished the fish, leaving the chips for Axel, and munched on the single leaf of lettuce that had come on her plate. “So, ah, how close to seven o’clock are we?”

  Axel checked his cell phone. “Forty minutes. I’m going to get set up.”

  “And I’m going to sit by the fire and put together an outline for the piece.”

  “Speaking of that,” he said, his posture changing subtly, “where do you stand?”

  “Stand?”

  “On the piece.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I think you know where I stand.”

  “I meant in regards to writing it.”

  “It’s in process.”

  She hiked her backpack onto her shoulder and was about to step away, when he added, “Can I see it, do you think?”

  “What? The draft?”

  “Yeah. You know I always enjoy reading your stuff.”

  She shrugged. Not much of a risk, she considered, since I haven’t written a single word.“Sure.”

  The truth was, she still wasn’t sure what she was going to write. Harold, Ynez and Peter, not to mention that conniving bitch Britta, had certainly engaged her—far more than they should have, she thought uncomfortably. But it had been a false engagement. A borrowed interest related to sex and love and honor, topics generally not tackled in real books, or if they were, they were done in a drier, most distant way, when the stuff at risk wasn’t so bloody heart-stopping and you weren’t sitting on the edge of your seat wondering what, if anything, Peter was going to do once he found out his heroine intended to write a tell-all biography of him and—

  She unzipped the backpack and reached inside for the book. Dammit, it was Kiltlander. She must have left the one with Peter Lely in it in the hotel room.

  She was about to return Kiltlander to her backpack when a phrase on the back caught her eye: “Can their fragile love survive the blow?”

  Hm.

  She didn’t think they meant a hurricane or the act one so often associated with romances, though the barechested Highlander did look particularly rubber-legged. Settling into the chair, she read the book’s description. It seemed Jemmie, he of the wobbly knees, had had his eighteenth-century world upended with the unexpected arrival of a smart, determined and apparently shocked woman named Cara who’d accidentally traveled to his time from the twentieth century. Time travel? Well, there’s a plot you don’t find too often in nominee lists of the National Book Awards. She put it right up there with superheroes, talking dead people and giant crabs that attack New York. Nonetheless, nothing in the description explained what sort of blow their fragile love had taken.

  She bit her lip, looking from the notebook in which she should be outlining to the book. Reading was part of the work she needed to accomplish in order to write the piece, she reminded herself.

  She opened the book and turned to the first page.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Axel had finished setting up his camera in the corner of the empty snug. He would do some standard shots with the tripod, but he thought he might try some free lensing too. With the darkness of the bar behind the women, he’d be able to catch a real sense of liveliness and movement—that is, if any of them were willing to brave the downpour.

  He was glad he had eaten. Not only had the fish been fantastic, but he’d been feeling a tad lightheaded. He’d probably dosed himself too high, which had made his blood sugar drop like a lead weight and could have sent him into a potentially life-threatening insulin shock if he hadn’t eaten.

  He looked over at the hearth. The chair wings obscured his view of her, but he knew what he would find: the focus in her eyes, the slim, self-assured line of her back as she wrote, the curl of her leg beneath her.

  He was glad to think she was writing. And since it sounded like she was willing to let him look at her draft, he wouldn’t have to tax Black’s patience much longer. Axel might be leaving New York, but he wasn’t leaving photography, and those who defied Buhl Martin Black could find themselves on the outs in the magazine world.

  He considered the incident at St. Paul’s, remembering with a niggling guilt the pleasure he’d felt holding her even though he had no idea why she’d been crying. Women were a confusing lot, and Ellery more than most. Trying to understand one was like trying to catch a piece of shell in a bowl of raw eggs: The more you tried, the more it slithered away. At least, that’s what Jemmie had said, and Axel certainly agreed.

  As for the rest of Ellery’s mixed signals…

  He didn’t know what this afternoon in the hotel room had meant to her, but that had always been the trouble with the two of them. There was magic in those haughty blue eyes, but too often they hid more than they revealed.

  He grabbed a camera and focused on the chair. He liked the contrast between her poised arm and the foot moving unconsciously to find the warmth of the fire. He got off six or seven shots; then, catching Simon’s eye, he held up his empty mug and made his way to the hearth.

  “Eeee!” she shrieked, startled.

  “Sorry, I was just—” He saw the book in her hand. “I thought you were outlining.”

  The door opened. A portly woman of about fifty with orange-red hair, a cheery smile and flushed cheeks entered. She had a book in her hand.

  Axel met Ellery’s eyes.

  “That’s not all of them,” Ellery said.

  “All of them, is it?” He accepted a new mug from Simon and nodded his thanks. “I didn’t realize that was part of our bet. How many readers are we expecting tonight, Simon?”

  “Six. Here’s two more now.”

  Axel chuckled at the look on Ellery’s face, unfolded himself and clapped her on the shoulder.

  “Let’s get to work.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  The two new arrivals turned out to be sisters, Marabel and Isabel. And fortunately both they and Ginger, the older woman, had already read and loved Kiltlander.

  “But wait,” Ellery said under her breath, stealing a glance at Axel to ensure he was out of earshot. “Cara’s married back in the twentieth century, right? To a decent guy?”

  “Yes, she is, lass,” Ginger said, grinning.

  “But she’s being forced to marry Jemmie in his time.”

  “Indeed.” Marabel giggled.

  “So she’ll be married to both of them?”

  “I could imagine worse,” Ginger said. “Especially if you had a
husband who only put the boots to you the odd nights Fulham wins.”

  The women laughed and Ellery blinked. She’d never been pulled into a story like this. She couldn’t believe Cara was going to sleep with another man while she was married to someone else. In Philip Roth, sure. But a romance? Part of her was shocked, part of her was turned on and all of her wanted to see the scene when Jemmie took off that kilt. She knew she should be asking questions like “When did you start reading romances” and “What do you think romances do for women,” but first she had to satisfy her desperate need for information on Jemmie and Cara.

  “What exactly is Cara going to do about it?” Ellery demanded.

  “What can she do?” Ginger said. “If she doesn’t marry him, both of them will be put to death. It’s her only choice.”

  “But is she going to sleep with both of them?” Cara had fallen back in time after climbing the hill of an ancient burial mound in Scotland called Cairnpapple, and Ellery could imagine—she could hardly stop imagining—that although Cara was being held prisoner in the past, she could conceivably figure out how to get back to her own time, and then where would that kilt scene be?

  “You’re going to have to read it,” Isabel said. “More happens after the wedding night.”

  “Then there is a wedding night?”

  The women met each other’s eyes, sharing a secret so heady they looked like they’d each swallowed a Roman candle.

  “What?” Ellery said. “What?”

  “It’s a good scene,” Ginger said enigmatically. “One of the best.”

  “Ever,” Marabel added.

  Ellery felt a strange electricity racing from her heart to the tips of her fingers, like she wanted to grab the book and run to the ladies’ room. She could hear the people in the bar talking around her, but she wasn’t processing the words. Her ears were buzzing, and she wondered if this was what Axel felt when he’d taken some amazing drug.

  “But I have to know. I mean, is it like”—Axel appeared at the edge of Ellery’s vision, fiddling with his lens—“other forms of genre writing? Does romance do something different for you than, say, mysteries do for mystery readers?”

  Isabel, clearly the older and more reserved of the sisters, frowned, confused at the sudden change in topic, but said, “Well, mysteries seem to be about serving justice and—”