by Tarr, Hope
More than thirty countries—hadn’t Max said almost the same when they’d been sitting downstairs at the Serena? It was a further sign that taking the coauthorship was the right decision for her. Now all she had to do was get Maxwell to agree.
The bio’s mention of the New Hampshire White Mountains was the equivalent of striking pay dirt. Another search yielded a list of the forty or so towns comprising the region. A little more digging via the Web sites of several local newspapers narrowed it down to the tiny town of Hadley. She couldn’t get an address listing but no matter. In a small, rural town, a Big Famous Author like Adam Maxwell couldn’t possibly fly under the radar screen.
It was time to reach inside herself for the moxy, balls and persistence her editor had touted as star author qualities at lunch yesterday. She zipped the laptop back in its case.
Adam Maxwell, you have no idea who you’re dealing with. MAX STEPPED inside the foyer to his house. Though he was glad to be done with the drive, he still braced himself before entering all that emptiness. Fortunately his golden retriever, Scout, greeted him at the door, tail wagging. Pushing eleven, the dog was getting white around the muzzle but then, so was he.
“Good boy. I missed you, too. That pet sitter treat you okay? Yeah, I know. There’s no substitute for the real thing, huh?”
Parking his luggage inside the door, he bent down to pet the dog. As he did, something—Rebecca St. Claire’s paperback romance—fell out of his coat pocket onto the floor. Damn, he’d meant to leave it behind for the hotel maid but had been distracted by a certain brown-eyed, brown-haired, shoe-loving temptress in his bed.
He picked up the book and tossed it onto the marble-topped foyer table next to his stacked mail, thinking his housekeeper might want to read it. He wasn’t going to and by now there shouldn’t be any need. Harry had had plenty of time to work his behind-the-scenes magic and find a way to break the contract, though the drive home from New York had been ominously quiet. Not only had Harry not called but no one else had, either. Taking out his cell, he saw the reason for the unusual stretch of silence. He’d been so busy that morning coming up with corny notes and pilfered roses he’d forgotten to turn his phone back on.
He turned it on now. With any luck, there’d be a message waiting from Harry to confirm the good news about the broken contract. Despite the agent’s hemming and hawing, he was an ace deal maker—and Max reasoned that the flip side of that was he must also be an ace deal breaker.
Seven messages waited. Unlike his alter ego, Drake, Max wasn’t a fan of surprises. He thumbed through the roster of recent calls. There was only one Manhattan number on the list, and it was Pat’s, not Harry’s. There was a message from his mother, no big surprise there, and five more messages, the latter all made from the same unfamiliar number, a 202 Washington, D.C., exchange. That was weird. Offhand he didn’t think he knew anyone in D.C., except for his pretty Cinderella, and like a dolt, he hadn’t written his number on the note he’d left behind.
He punched in the security code and put the phone on speaker, letting the new messages play through. “Max, it’s Pat. Look, Rebecca St. Claire just called to accept the coauthorship. I know you’re still not crazy about the idea, but I’m asking you one last time to reconsider. You’ve been with us a long time, Max. Keeping the lawyers out of this is to everybody’s benefit. Call me or better yet, have Harry call me. Ciao.”
If Pat thought the mention of lawyers would bring him to heel, she apparently didn’t know him all that well. He saved the message and moved on.
“Mr. Maxwell, this is Becky Stone calling. Rebecca St. Claire, I suppose I should say. I wanted to let you know I’ve accepted the coauthorship deal our publisher offered. I’d like to set up a time for us to chat about next steps. I know it’s a holiday but please call me back at this number. I look forward to hearing from you and, er…to working with you. Thanks—and Happy New Year.”
By the time message four rolled around, she sounded a lot less breezy. “Hello, Mr. Maxwell. It’s Rebecca St. Claire again. Per my previous message, please call me to discuss the book—our book.”
By the fifth and final message, she was obviously pissed off and taking no pains to hide it. “Maxwell, this is Rebecca St. Claire—again. I appreciate that you’re busy, and obviously screening your calls, but really, your time is no more valuable than anyone else’s. Surely you can find five minutes, and the basic courtesy, to call me back—today!”
Jesus, what a pest. Max deleted her messages and clicked off the cell. More than pissed off, she sounded really desperate. Desperate or not, there was no way he was going to saddle himself with a writing partner. If she was pissed off at him, let her join the club.
But something more than simple annoyance tugged at him. Her slightly husky voice sounded familiar, as though it belonged to someone he’d talked to not all that long ago. Had they met at some publishing event? New York was a big place, so he supposed it was possible. With the exception of her last message when she’d turned kind of shrill, her voice didn’t fit with his mental picture of a romance-novel writer. He hadn’t bothered to see if her publicity photo was at the back of her book, but he’d always thought of romance writers as plump grand dames with blue hair, feather boas and a brace of snow-white poodles. Rebecca St. Claire sounded a lot closer to thirty than sixty. Not that it mattered.
Max walked into the dining room and over to the marble-top bar. He poured a splash of Macallan vintage thirty-year-old single malt Scotch into a Baccarat crystal tumbler and took a slow, satisfying sip, rolling the liquor on his tongue. Drink in hand, he moved to the bay window. It was too dark to see much of anything, but by tomorrow morning the window would open out to snow-covered mountains, a pine forest and, if it was as clear as it was supposed to be, a canopy of dazzling blue sky. He and Elaina had built the simple Craftsman-style house with just that view in mind.
The thought of Elaina prompted a twinge of guilt. This New Year’s Day was the one-year anniversary of her death. It wasn’t that he felt guilty for having sex with another woman, at least not exactly. He was only human, after all. Some men in his position would have remarried by now. If he felt guilty about anything it was that he’d gone nearly twenty-four hours without once stopping to pay tribute to her memory or find some ritual to mark her passage. A mental-health professional would likely view that as progress, a sign he was moving on, but he wasn’t so sure. What he’d had with Elaina had been wonderful, a special gift. He didn’t ever want to forget her.
And yet he knew if he were to walk into the Serena Lounge and see Rose sitting there, he wouldn’t hesitate to do the same thing all over again. The whole encounter had the feeling of something that was fated, a meant-to-be. To run into her (literally!) in midtown was one thing, but then to find her a few hours later in his hotel was a pretty incredible coincidence. In a city the size of New York, what were the odds of that?
Once they got to his suite, he’d expected to feel awkward, maybe even a little shy, but he hadn’t felt either of those things. Rose was a complete stranger and yet sex with her had felt so unbelievably good, so natural and right, it was as if they’d been lovers in another life. He and Elaina had had a good marriage in every way, but sex had been more tender than adventurous. If he were honest with himself, he’d admit his night with his sexy Cinderella was the hands-down best sex of his life.
She’d said she hadn’t had sex in a while, either, and as many times as he told himself he was a sucker to believe her, he did. Not because she’d seemed awkward or unsure—she hadn’t seemed either. She was good in bed, pretty damned amazing as a matter of fact. It was more the sense he got from her, a vibe she put out that he couldn’t quantify but felt all the same. Their bar hookup aside, she didn’t strike him as the sort of woman who slept around.
Celibacy for a woman who looked like she did had to be a choice on some level. She was altogether too sexy and too pretty and too smart to go without a lover for long. It was obvious she liked touching and being tou
ched, kissing and being kissed far too much to be satisfied with taking care of her sexual needs exclusively on her own. Even between lovemaking, she’d kept some part of her connected to him at all times, massaging his neck, sliding gentle fingers up and down his arm, lightly scratching her nails over his back. There was one explanation, a theory really, he kept coming back to. The last man she’d been with must have hurt her badly, badly enough for her to swear off lovers for a whole year.
That he’d been the one whose kiss had brought her back to sexy life felt like an incredible honor. It really was too bad he hadn’t gotten her phone number or left her his. But then if she’d wanted him to call her, she would have found some subtle way to let him know. Women were good about that sort of stuff. It was probably for the best. The cardinal code of casual sex was you didn’t try to turn your one-night stand into a relationship. What happened in Manhattan would stay in Manhattan, end of story—theirs at least.
And yet, were she to materialize miraculously on his doorstep, he knew he’d toss caution to the wind along with just about any rule he’d ever lived by. Just remembering her—how soft her rosemary-and-mint-scented skin had felt on his fingertips, the throaty little noises she’d made when he pleased her, the salty flavor of the sweet spot between her thighs—he felt himself growing thick and hard.
In a week, or at least a few weeks, the memory should start to fade. By next New Year’s she’d be a vague recollection that brought about an occasional smile but nothing more. That thought filled him with a sad sense of regret. It might not be manly to admit it, but he wasn’t cut out for casual sex. He wanted a lover he could hold afterward, not one who expected him to get up and leave.
One thing was for sure. Be it weeks, months or years, he’d never again think of roses without thinking of her.
* * *
It was dark outside by the time Becky drove up the pine-lined drive leading to Maxwell’s residence. If it hadn’t been for catching the number on the streetside mailbox, she would have missed the turn altogether. But then again, Maxwell was some kind of hermit, albeit a hermit with very vocal opinions about what kinds of books he wanted to write and, more to the point, who he didn’t want to write them with.
After leaving the hotel, she’d taken a train from Penn Station, only instead of going home to D.C. she’d headed northeast. The five-hour-plus trip was pretty grueling, but it had also provided her with hours of uninterrupted writing time. Her previous night with Max must have gotten her creative juices flowing, as well—before reaching Boston, she’d banged out almost ten pages of Angelina’s next adventure while sitting in the café car sipping really bad coffee and picking at an even worse packaged pastry snack. She had no idea how or even if the scenes she wrote would fit into her and Maxwell’s joint novel, but there’d been no ignoring the words—or the spark—burning inside her. Whatever else he was—a modern-day Prince Charming, an amazing lay or just a really sweet guy, Max was one hell of a muse.
There’d been one layover in Boston. Getting off the train to stretch, she’d walked into the station bookstore and walked out with Adam Maxwell’s latest Drake’s Adventures book. By the time she reached her Manchester destination, the nearest stop to Hadley, she’d read several chapters, enough to get a flavor for his style. Becky doubted she was in any danger of becoming an action-adventure fan, but he definitely had a bestselling author’s sense of timing and flair. His distinctive voice rang out from the printed pages, pages she caught herself turning pretty rapidly to see what happened next.
She’d picked up a rental car and driven the rest of the way. It turned out Maxwell didn’t live in Hadley but rather fifteen miles north. To her knowledge, the town, if you could call it that, didn’t have a name. Aside from a two-pump gas station, a truck-stop diner and an apple-cider stand, there didn’t seem to be much there.
The drive dead-ended into a gravel lot. She parked and climbed out, muscles stiff from the other day’s fall, all the sitting she’d logged in and, well, the previous night of vigorous sex. Her rental car wasn’t the only thing running low on gas. She seriously hoped that after they got past the initial clash of wills (his and hers) and star author egos (his), Maxwell would offer to put her up in a guestroom for the night. The one ramshackle motel she’d passed on the way might as well have been the Bates Motel.
Becky looked up the slope to the house. The outdoor lights illuminated a stucco exterior in the Craftsman style, the building’s long, low profile suggesting its owner would have more than one bedroom to spare. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but it definitely wasn’t this. To someone who rented a one-bedroom apartment, it looked huge, more mansion than house. Action-adventure novels, at least bestselling ones, must have a bigger market than she’d thought.
She left her luggage in the trunk and hiked up the snow-packed pavers, her high-heeled boots slipping in the slush. Reaching the pinnacle, she thought of how far she’d come in just twenty-four hours. She couldn’t make fresh starts and dazzling opportunities materialize at will, but at least she was taking positive charge of her life. The very resourceful, very Angelina-like way she’d gone about getting Maxwell’s address stood out as a particular point of pride. By some miracle, the diner was open today, and once she’d made it into “town,” she’d bought herself yet another coffee and settled in to chat up her fellow customers. As she’d expected, having a bestselling author in their midst amounted to bragging rights for the entire town. Even better, Maxwell was a local boy, a native son. Inside a half hour, she was on her way again, the directions to his house on a paper napkin lying on the front passenger seat. It had been pretty simple.
Now came the hard part: convincing him to team with her.
Becky rang the doorbell and stood back to wait. Damn, it really was cold in New England. Stamping her feet to bring back the feeling, she ran through her rehearsed speech in her mind, a paraphrased version of Pat’s lunchtime pep talk. The more she thought about it, the more she suspected Maxwell’s last book must not have sold all that well, either. Why else would their publisher pressure him to team with another author? If only she’d thought to get her hands on his Bookscan numbers before she’d left New York, she’d have some solid ammo to hit him with if their conversation started heading south.
Speaking of heading south, she couldn’t wait to get her butt back to D.C. It was cold there, too, in January but not this cold. Assuming Maxwell relented, she hoped the bulk of their collaboration could be accomplished by trading files over the Internet.
She punched the bell again and squinted, trying to see through the door’s glass panel. Somewhere inside the house, a dog barked. She laid her ear against the door to see if she could hear anyone coming. Get a move on, Maxwell. I’m freezing out here—
The door opened and Becky almost fell inside. Stepping back, she looked up—and felt her breath freeze along with her body. Max stood framed in the timbered doorway, a golden retriever flanking his side. Wearing a pullover sweater and a pair of stone-washed jeans, he looked very different than he had a few hours before, or maybe it was just the look of a man in his element, in this case, his home.
Meeting his shocked eyes, which must have mirrored her own, Becky felt she wasn’t drowning so much as reeling. Her sexy travel-writer lover was the bestselling action-adventure novelist she’d spent the past several hours cursing. The one-night stand she’d planned on never seeing again was standing there in front of her. And if things worked out the way Pat wanted, she’d be seeing a lot more of him.
The retriever chose that moment to go into watchdog mode, barking and snarling like a Cujo wannabe. Snapping out of his zombielike daze, Max reached down and grabbed hold of the animal’s collar.
“Scout, heel. Heel.” The dog went down on his haunches with a whine. Straightening, Max looked her over, blue eyes bulging. “Rose, what are you doing here?”
Becky swallowed hard. Now that the first shock was wearing off, she was beginning to grasp just how bad her showing up on his doo
rstep was going to look. Deciding to go for broke, she said, “My name’s not really Rose. It’s Becky—Rebecca, actually. Rebecca St. Claire.”
Pupils huge, he fell back a step. “You’re the romance writer Pat wants me to team with?”
Eyeing the doorway, she calculated there was just enough space to squeeze past him. “Yep, I’m her, the one and only.” Not about to miss out on the opportunity, dazzling or otherwise, to salvage her career, Becky shouldered her way inside.
Chapter 7
“Crikey, you’re a bloody spy?” Drake stared at Angelina, feeling as though he was seeing her for the first time. The beautiful brunette had played him like a fiddle, and he’d been too caught up in shagging her to see her for the scheming seductress she was.
Propped against the banked pillows of his hotel-room bed, Angelina folded her arms across her chest, the low-riding bedsheet showing off the high slopes of her breasts, creamy as alabaster. “To be perfectly accurate, I’m an international espionage agent in the employ of Scotland Yard specifically and the British government generally.”
Drake paused in pacing the room to glare at her. “Like I said, a spy?”
Angelina nodded. “Basically, yes. You must be something of a spy yourself, otherwise how did you know my first name?”
“Easy. I bribed the bartender to have a look at your passport.”
“Clever,” she allowed. “Look, Drake, here’s the thing. I need a guide to see me to Toro Toro.”
“Toro Toro is the deep bush, beyond the black stump as we say. What business do you have there?”
Angelina blew out a breath. As much as she detested being patronized, she did really require the Aussie’s help. “I have reason to believe some stolen rocket plans are being concealed in the caves there until they can be passed on to an enemy government. The dossier I have on you from Scotland Yard indicates you’re the man for the job. What do you say?
