Strokes of Midnight

by Tarr, Hope

  The waitress returned to clear the table and pick up the check. She glanced over at Becky’s untouched lunch. “You want a box for that?”

  “No, thanks.” Becky felt certain the smell of lime vinaigrette and grilled shrimp would forever be paired in her memory with the gut-wrenching feeling of failure.

  Handing over the salad, she caught herself studying the girl’s fresh face, mane of shiny, straight, blond hair and model svelte body—and felt the sinking sense of insecurity she’d spent the past year and a small fortune in self-help books trying to get over.

  Shoving the vinyl folder into her change apron, the server asked, “Can I get you anything else?”

  Becky hesitated. She did want something else, and in this case it wasn’t a cellulite-free ass, straight blond hair or even the extra vertical inches that made it okay to wear sensible flats instead of nosebleed-high heels. If faced with a similar state of emergency, her fictional heroine, Angelina Talbot wouldn’t hesitate to soothe herself with her signature cocktail.

  “As a matter of fact, I’d like a double Bombay Sapphire martini, straight up with an olive, not a twist. Oh, and make it shaken, not stirred.”

  She might not be a British bombshell sniffing out kidnappers and murderous foreign agents, but it had turned out to be one roller-coaster ride of a day.

  * * *

  “Teaming me with a romance writer is your idea of a career jump start? You’ve got to be joking.” Adam Maxwell—Max—stared at his editor, her latest editorial “suggestion” spearing the space between them like a stingray’s barbed whiptail.

  “It’s no joke, Max.” Seated across from him in the Hotel Chelsea’s Serena Bar and Lounge, Pat reached for her drink, the Serena specialty cocktail known as the Pink Bitch. Under the circumstances, the beverage struck Max as remarkably apropos. “My instincts are telling me that pairing your Drake Dundee with Rebecca St. Claire’s Angelina Talbot may just be the marketing move that takes both your careers to the next level.”

  Glancing at the glass in his hand, Max half wondered if the single sip of Macallan single-malt Scotch he’d taken might have aversely affected his hearing. “Sometimes the next level is down.”

  Pat leaned over and picked at the appetizer plate of hummus, pita bread triangles and spiced olives sitting on the circular chrome cocktail table between them. Popping an olive into her mouth, she said, “I want you to do this book with Rebecca St. Claire. Think of it as a creative experiment. One book is all I’m asking.”

  Max shook his head. “I don’t care if it’s one book or a hundred and one books, the answer is still no. There’s a reason I’ve never had a writing partner—I’ve never wanted one. I’m a solo act—period.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. When Elaina was alive and still reasonably well, they’d sit up nights over an open bottle of wine or freshly brewed pot of coffee and brainstorm. Playing the “what if” game, she’d called it. Trust his wife to turn plotting a book into recreation rather than work.

  He’d lost her to cancer the year before on New Year’s Day, and he still hadn’t gotten used to cooking dinner for one or sleeping alone or coming home to an empty house. If it wasn’t for writing, he wasn’t sure how he would have gotten through the past twelve months. Creating a fictional universe of colorful, noisy characters made it easier to block out the deafening silence. Once he’d forced himself to start working again, he’d quickly finished the book he’d set aside and then fired off two more in rapid succession. His adventuring Aussie hero, Drake Dundee, was too busy blazing new trails and tracking new treasure to stop long enough to feel much beyond an explorer’s thrill of discovery. Bringing a fictional love interest—and a real-life romance writer—into the picture promised to seriously mess with Max’s formula, not to mention his head.

  Pat leaned back in her seat, the lifting of one pencil-shaded brow bringing to mind Cruella De Vil. “A sixty-percent sell-through would be considered respectable for a first book, but for a veteran author, it’s pretty disappointing. Either we come up with a plan to bring your sales back up or you can expect to see your print run on the next book slashed to smithereens, and the marketing budget right along with it.”

  So Pat wanted to play hardball, did she? The prospect of losing control over both Drake’s destiny, as well as the real life he’d spent the past year pulling back together had him lashing out.

  “I’ve worked too damned hard building up the Adam Maxwell brand to blow it because the sales numbers for one book came in on the low end.”

  Drake had started off his adventures married to a tall, lovely Greek-American cryptologist, Isabel. The character was a thinly veiled version of Elaina. After her death, Max had killed off Isabel. A curare-laced arrow hit her in the left breast, the spot where Elaina’s first cancerous lump was found. Giving Drake a new love interest would be a betrayal of his wife’s memory. It was out of the question.

  Pat picked up a pita point and dipped it in the hummus. Nibbling the edge, she said, “The Angelina Talbot books are genre benders, a blending of romantic erotica and mystery. Folding the romance and mystery elements into an action-adventure scenario could boost sales for both series. Who knows what the commercial potential might be? And I’m not just talking books. It’s not unheard of for a movie screenplay to be based on a blockbuster novel.”

  Pat must be under some big-time pressure from her boss to sign him up because she was really putting on the razzle-dazzle. Feeling as though he was on the receiving end of an exploded bag of New Year’s confetti—annoying, unnecessary and damned messy to clean up—Max shook his head. “Being a novelist and writing the best damned book I possibly can has always been a big enough dream for me.”

  Sticking a liver-spotted hand inside her suitcase-size pink purse, Pat pulled out a mass market paperback and handed it over. “Before you decide, give Beck—give Rebecca’s work a read. This is her latest. It’s gotten rave reviews, including Publishers Weekly and a nice write-up in the Chicago Tribune, too.”

  Max glanced at the book, not bothering to hide his distaste. The campy cover featured a slender, dark-haired female wearing a low-cut black dress, her perfect breasts standing out in silhouette along with the smoking pistol she pointed. A cone of light framed in rifle crosshairs suggested an unseen target. Talk about clichéd.

  “I don’t care if the woman’s books are the best goddamned things to come off the printing press since Gutenberg invented it, my answer of no still stands.”

  Pat frowned. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. You have a multibook contract with us and, as you may or may not recall, the final book of that contract is written as ‘blind,’ meaning it’s anything we want it to be—and we want it to be this.”

  Like the fictional Drake, in real life Max didn’t take kindly to threats, veiled or otherwise. “I won’t do the cowrite. If that means we part our professional ways, then so be it. Yours isn’t the only publishing house in New York and ever since 9/11, action-adventure is a huge share of the fiction market. If need be, I’ll take my chances.”

  “We have a contract, Max, a legally binding document. Maybe you should have a talk with your agent before you burn any bridges.”

  Max slammed the paperback on the table and shot to his feet. He shoved a hand into his wallet and threw a wad of money down on the table. Pissed off as he was, he wasn’t about to stick a woman with the bar tab even if that woman did represent the global publishing enterprise hell-bent on destroying his brand and his career.

  Pat stood, as well. “Max, don’t leave like this. We need to talk things over.”

  Max had had just about all the talking he could stomach for one afternoon. It was high time he tore a page from Drake’s book, or rather his books, and took action instead.

  “I’m going to have that little talk with my agent you recommended. You can expect to hear from him by close of business today—along with my lawyer.”

  * * *

  Halfway through her martini, Becky was beginning to feel a l
ittle maudlin, as well as a little numb. Some fabulous start to the new year—not! Just that morning she’d felt as though she was standing on top of the world and now she felt as though she’d plummeted to, if not exactly rock bottom then certainly some substrata of inner earth.

  Maybe I have bad restaurant karma. The final episode with Elliot had taken place in a restaurant, too. She and Sharon were sitting down to dinner at Coppi Vignorelli in Becky’s Northwest, D.C. neighborhood of Woodley Park. Within steps of Becky’s apartment, the Italian bistro was her and Elliot’s special place when he came into town. They’d just started in on their pasta when Elliot had strolled into the dining room, the distinctive metal studding on his deconstructed Mark Nason Italian “strummer” loafers catching Becky’s eye like a lighthouse beacon.

  Her heart leapt and then landed, the thrill of seeing him clashing with confusion over why he hadn’t told her he was coming into town. She was pretty sure he was supposed to be in L.A. that week and New York the next. Given his bicoastal lifestyle, they only saw each other once a month, but Becky was too head over heels to press for more, especially now that he’d started talking about her moving in with him. In the picture he painted, she’d spend her days lounging poolside with her laptop in L.A. or soaking up the artistic vibe of some hip Manhattan coffee bar. He’d even urged her to quit her regular nine-to-five job. She’d hesitated at first, but he’d seemed so sincere that she’d finally set aside her misgivings and given her notice. Evaluating federally funded literacy programs was a paycheck, not a dream job, the kind of steady career that justified her master’s degree and the thousands of dollars she’d racked up in student loans. For Elliot, though, money obviously wasn’t a consideration. Other than his running shoes she’d never seen him wear anything actually manufactured in America.

  Ignoring the uneasy feeling settling into her stomach, she nudged Sharon. “Hey, that’s Elliot, the guy I’ve been telling you about. I can’t believe he’s here. He must have missed seeing me when he walked in. Come on, I’ll introduce you.” She started up from the seat.

  Sharon’s hand clamped over hers, anchoring her to the booth. Face wearing a funny look, she leaned in and whispered, “Becky, don’t look over there right now but he’s…he’s with someone.”

  Becky sank back into her seat, the few bites of rigatoni she’d taken threatening to come up. Following Sharon’s nod, she saw his dinner date bounce over to their table, all white-toothed smile and sun-bronzed skin and long, shiny blond hair. Wearing a tight black tank top and a pair of skinny jeans with zippers at the ankles, she looked twenty-two, twenty-three tops.

  But even worse than seeing her lover with a woman almost young enough to be his daughter—forget the almost, he was pushing forty-five—was the moment when Becky looked over and caught his eye. Instead of sending her an apologetic smile or a guilty wave, some recognition that she was alive, that she was there, he met her gaze head-on—and looked straight through her. Straight through her as if she didn’t exist, as if she were made of see-through glass, with no more sentience than the wooden booths or the framed photographs lining the walls.

  She reached beneath the table and found Sharon’s hand. “Oh…God…this hurts. This really hurts.” She squeezed as hard and tight as she could, as though Sharon was her anchor to everything that could still be counted on to be honest and safe and real.

  Sharon squeezed back, whispering commiserating words—“Oh, Becky, I’m so sorry,” and, “This is brutal, the worst,” and finally, “I’m getting the check and getting you the hell out of here.”

  Feeling frantic, Becky shook her head. “No, we can’t. I mean, I can’t. I’m not going to give him the satisfaction.”

  And she hadn’t. For the next thirty minutes or so she’d sat pushing pasta around on her plate and keeping up a show of cheerful chatter while bit by bit her heart withered and shriveled and finally died on the vine of her happily-ever-after dreams.

  On the bright side, the Dark Night of the Soul had sparked a career epiphany. The next morning when she’d crawled out of bed, dredging up an evening’s worth of Oreo cookie crumbs and wadded-up tissues, she knew she couldn’t stomach writing period pieces about twentysomething heroines any longer. She’d called Pat and told her she had an idea kicking around in her brain for a contemporary novel that pushed the boundaries of traditional romance fiction. By the time she’d finished pitching the proposal her editor had given her a verbal green light and sworn that if the draft was even half as good as the pitch, there’d be a contract coming her way for a whole series.

  Enter her alter ego, Angelina Talbot. Unlike Becky, Angelina could eat chocolate trifle without getting fat and knock back double martinis without getting toasted—and have sex with men without falling in love. Sales for the launch book had been brisk, the word-of-mouth buzz spreading like a California brush fire. Even with Elliot out of the picture, that first fat royalty check made quitting her job seem like an okay decision after all. But more than financial security, it was having created a thirtysomething heroine readers obviously loved that had helped her shake off the bad vibe from the Elliot episode—sort of.

  She’d based the character of Falco, Angelina’s nemesis and former lover, almost entirely on Elliot. Forget “entirely,” Falco was Elliot down to his wavy silver hair, sexy full mouth and lean, hard, to-die-for body. She kept promising herself she’d kill him off soon but two books into the series she still hadn’t been able to let him go.

  But cluttering her head with a fictional character who was the alter ego of her ex was a small problem compared to the decision looming. Did she team with the publishing industry’s answer to Bill O’Reilly and sign herself up for months of literary head butting or did she turn down the deal and hope another publisher would pick her up before she maxed out her credit cards and drained her small savings?

  Torn, Becky reached for her drink, then realized the tip of her nose had gone numb. She popped the last fat green olive into her mouth and slid the glass away. For sure, sitting around in an empty restaurant moping over her martini wasn’t bringing her any closer to those “fresh starts” and “dazzling opportunities” her horoscope had forecast, let alone to an answer to her Big Decision. Before she sank any lower into the self-pity slough, she needed to channel the Zen of her personal happy place—and in Becky’s case, that meant Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue

  shopping corridor.

  She slipped on her coat, shouldered her tote and rose from the restaurant seat. Spending money was the very last thing a potentially out-of-work writer should do but then again they didn’t call it retail therapy for nothing. This was no time to scrimp. Her career and her character’s very existence were in danger of fading away. If she and Angelina couldn’t go out in a blaze of glory, at least they could go out in a splash of high style.

  Chapter 2

  Drake’s Code: Never turn your back on a friend. Never turn your back on an enemy. Never take shit from either.

  After leaving Pat in the bar, Max stopped in at his rooftop suite to pick up his winter coat. Slow elevator notwithstanding, he still made it from his hotel to Harry Goldblatt’s midtown Manhattan office in record time. Hot as he was around the collar from his meeting with Pat, the windy walk down the Avenue of the Americas did little to cool him off. Harry had represented him since pulling his first novel out of the slush. If Max could count on anyone to cover his back, it was his agent.

  The first suspicion that something was wrong hit him when the purple-haired receptionist didn’t seem at all surprised to see him. Like an off-Broadway actress stumbling through badly memorized lines, she looked up from her People and suggested he take a seat until Mr. Goldblatt got off from “a very important call.” The fifteen-minute wait along with the “very important call” cinched it in Max’s mind. He was being set up. While he sat sipping canned soda and gnashing his teeth, Harry was inside his office selling Max out.

  He slammed the can on the glass-topped coffee table, blew by the receptionist’s
desk, and stormed into his agent’s corner office without knocking. “Goddamn it Harry, I don’t know what you’re up to, but I need to talk to you—now.”

  The receptionist hurried inside after him. Tugging her leather miniskirt down over chunky thighs, she faced the slope-shouldered sixtysomething seated behind the big chrome desk. “Mr. Goldblatt, I’m so sorry. I told him you were on the phone but—”

  Covering the receiver with his hand, Harry gestured for her to go. “That’s all right, Janice, I can handle this.” One eye on Max, he returned to his call. “Yes, Patricia, he’s here. I’ll have to call you back. Ciao, baby.” Replacing the cordless in its cradle, he smiled and said, “Why, Maxie, this is a surprise.”

  Eyeing the copy of the St. Claire woman’s book lying on Harry’s desk blotter, Max exploded. “Like hell it is. I don’t know what scheme you and Pat have cooked up, but I’ve spent too damned many years building my brand to let some smut writer come in as coauthor.”

  Harry fingered his few threads of silvered hair. He’d given up the comb-over a few years back and since seeing Jack Nicholson’s cue-ball head on the televised Oscars, he’d been seriously considering shaving the whole damn thing. “Max, I’m sensing some anger on your part. Have a seat and let’s discuss this like rational human beings.” He gestured to the pair of leather chairs set before the desk.

  “There’s nothing to discuss. It’s not happening, do you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear, Maxie, but I’m starting to ask myself if maybe all the listening isn’t going one-way. All Patricia is asking is that you give the coauthorship a chance. One book with Rebecca St. Claire—is that really so much to ask?”

  Max didn’t hesitate. “Hell, yes! My readers are predominantly men. Men are visual. If we want raunch, we rent a movie or buy a magazine, but never a novel. Besides, Drake isn’t some pretty-boy cover model with a waxed chest and a spray-on tan. He’s a real guy, a man’s man.”