A Novel Seduction

by Gwyn Cready

  She considered telling him about the Lark & Ives position, but decided against it. “You know me,” she said. “There’s always something around the corner.”

  “Well, whatever it is, I know you’ll nail it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Now, I hate to rain on all this fun, but it’s getting close to noon and we have a flight and I still have to dump the yeast and then get you back to the hotel to pick up your stuff—that is, unless you’re willing to spend the rest of the trip in jeans and a Monkey Bar T-shirt.”

  “Believe me, if you saw what else was in my suitcase, you’d understand why that isn’t such a bad idea.”

  “But I’m pretty sure that laptop’s going to come in handy on assignment. Speaking of deadlines, did I hear you mention you’d started to write?”

  God, what had she said to him? She remembered sitting down to type, but she didn’t remember anything about romance coming out of her fingers. “It’s, ah, coming along.”

  Something in her tone must have alerted him, for he gave her a long, considering look. “You are going to write it, aren’t you?”

  Ellery stiffened. She didn’t like to be backed into a corner, especially when it came to her work, especially by Axel. The assignment sucked, which was exactly what Black wanted, but that didn’t mean she had to do it. Not if Carlton Purdy was going to get his bow tie in a double knot over it. She was pretty sure she’d rather explain to the folks at Lark & Ives why she didn’t have any article at all in next month’s issue of Vanity Place than explain why she had written a freakin’ ode to romance novels.

  “Yes,” she said. “Of course.”

  He nodded. “Good.”

  She ran a hand through her slightly matted and malt-smelling hair. “I don’t suppose there’s a shower upstairs.”

  “What? The renewal of your soul wasn’t enough?”

  “Axel. Is there?”

  “Of a sort.”

  She cringed. “Spiders?”

  “No walls.”

  “Oh.” She relaxed. “That’s not a problem.”

  “Not for a woman who stared down the garbage can of hell, I suppose. What was I thinking? Make it fast, though. I’ll be done dumping the yeast in fifteen minutes and then we’ve got to go.”

  Axel listened to the thunder of the water upstairs. He found the notion of a naked Ellery in his brewery quite enthralling—so enthralling, in fact, that he’d found himself at a total standstill twice when he should have been working. Crafting beer all day, crafting interesting interludes all night—now, that would be the way to live.

  He didn’t know why he hadn’t told Ellery about the diabetes when she’d asked what had happened. He supposed he was still getting used to the idea himself. Perhaps if he were a little more confident that whatever this thing with her was becoming would last…

  Of course, he also remembered the way that guarded look had come over her face when he’d asked her about her dreams. In that flash, he’d felt the same small sting of being shut out that he’d sometimes felt when they were together.

  The shower stopped and the sound of her toweling off inspired yet another pause, this one involving a vision of a snowy night, a Hudson’s Bay blanket and a bed far more forgiving than a bushel of Vienna malt.

  “Axel?”

  He jumped. “Yes?” She had crept down the stairs without a sound. Her hair hung in damp tendrils and her face was scrubbed a moist pink.

  “I feel tons better—though fresh panties would hit the spot.”

  He held up a finger and dug with his other hand in his pocket. Then he handed her the red thong.

  She gazed at it, hypnotized. “I’m not even going to ask.”

  “My lips are sealed. Listen, I need some help.”

  “Sure, what?”

  “I’m going to up the pressure in the tank by putting the CO2 line to it.” He pointed to a gauge at the top of a nearby fermenter. “We need to get the yeast out. It’s all used up. Kaput.”

  “Like me after last night.”

  “No comment. The pressure compacts the yeast inside into a manageable mass. When I give the word, you open the valve at the bottom and it slides out into the tub there. Got it?”

  “Sure.” She knelt down and gave him a thumbs-up. “Ready.”

  He climbed the ladder and increased the pressure. It generally needed to be about five pounds per square inch to get the soggy yeast to coalesce. He waited a minute then turned it off.

  “Okay,” he said. “Try it.”

  She opened the valve. “Nothing.”

  “Okay, close it tight. I’ll turn it up a little more.” He turned it up to ten and tapped his foot, counting.

  “So what does a manageable mass of kaput yeast look like?” she asked.

  “Pudding. A barrel-sized serving of sticky, smelly chocolate pudding.”

  “Yum.”

  “Definitely not yum.” He turned the pressure off and signaled her to try it again. “Actually, it reminds me of one of the funniest things I ever saw. We like to refer to it as the Bugs Bunny syndrome.”

  She opened the valve and shook her head. “‘Bugs Bunny’?”

  “When you build up the PSI,” he said, turning the pressure on again, “the yeast slowly creeps down the side and amasses at the bottom; then, when you turn it off and open the valve, it slides out.”

  “Yeah?”

  “But if you forget to tighten the valve at the bottom and the pressure gets high enough, you get something very much like what you might see in—”

  An explosive wet boom filled the room, and Ellery stood there, mouth open, arms outstretched, dripping from head to toe with a thick, bready slag that also covered the walls from end to end except for the silhouette of one perfectly shocked Ellery.

  “—a Bugs Bunny cartoon. Maybe we can make time for another quick shower.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Tarmac, Philadelphia Airport

  “Seat belts fastened?”

  The smile the flight attendant bestowed on Axel was instantly replaced by a look of pinched surprise and she drew away from Ellery. The woman’s hand flew to her nose and she hurried to prep the next row for takeoff.

  “I told you I still smell,” Ellery cried in horror.

  “It’s just a little malt,” Axel said reassuringly. “Very European.”

  Ellery wore one of Axel’s shirts and a spare pair of his jeans belted with a long piece of torn burlap. Since she hadn’t also asked to borrow a pair of his briefs, he assumed she was either panty-free or wearing a red-sequined thong, and empirical evidence certainly suggested she was bra-free. The brewery cleanup had taken so long, they’d barely made it to the airport in time to catch the plane to Philly, which meant the opportunity to change into the clean clothes they had snagged from her hotel never materialized. And then their flight had arrived late, which meant they’d had to run to catch the flight to London.

  She’d showered again at the brewery, but the shampoo had run out, and she’d refused to even try the industrial soap Brendan used in the vats, even after Axel told her it was the same soap they use in the Żywiec brewery in Poland. In any case, Axel liked the smell of malt on her. Girl plus beer. The only thing better would be a few notes of Porterhouse.

  “Are you getting Wi-Fi here?” he asked.

  She stopped typing and checked. “Yep.”

  “Mind if I borrow it for a minute? I need to dash off a quick note.”

  She frowned. “What’s wrong with your phone?”

  “Left it in my bag.”

  She saved her file, minimized it, and handed him the laptop. Then she pulled a magazine out of her tote bag.

  It was considerably past eleven a.m., and he hoped Black would be broad-minded about his deadline. Axel fired up Gmail and began to type.

  Major progress on the piece. Ellery jumped in with both feet, even going so far as to cross the famed Vamp monkey bars herself. On the Team Britta/Team Ynez front, she has fallen firmly in the Ynez camp. In sh
ort, full speed ahead. I am amazed at her transformation. I can literally smell the scent of the chase on her.

  He chuckled at that one.

  The story arc is building, and as far as preparation

  He stole a glance at the article she was reading: “Five Easy Ways He Can Heighten Your Orgasm.”

  she has completely submerged herself in the genre. I’ve attached some pictures to whet your appetite.

  Then he added his sign-off, slipped the thumb drive with the memory card from the camera into the USB, uploaded a few of the shots he’d taken the night before—including one of Ellery on the platform, victoriously flashing her Monkey Bar T-shirt to the crowd—and sent the whole thing off to Black. A few hours late, but it ought to hold the old codger. He logged out of e-mail.

  As an afterthought, he logged into Facebook, found Jill’s profile and sent her a message with that last photo as well, adding, “Never tease your sister again: See what it leads to” as the body.

  Ellery was still deep into better orgasms—an excellent state in which to find a woman, he considered philosophically. Then again, based on what he remembered about Ellery—and his recollection was quite clear on this point—if her orgasms had gotten any better, she’d have exploded.

  Perhaps, he thought, with a satisfying mental pat on the back, her more recent boyfriends had been lacking. Then he remembered the sight of the TAG Heuer guy in the hallway, and it reminded him of what his high school hockey coach had told him after Axel had been ejected from his first playoff game: It doesn’t help to be a great shooter if you can’t get on the ice.

  He reached for the thumb drive so he could return the laptop to her, but the sight of the Word icon at the bottom of the screen stopped him. Had she been working on the story? Guiltily he clicked on the icon and the document opened to its title page.

  “Going to the Mat: The Literati’s Love-Hate Affair with Irving”

  As titles went, it wasn’t bad—it acknowledged Ellery’s snobbery concerning the romance genre while paving the path for her rebirth as a fan—but he was scratching his head, trying to figure out who the hell Irving was. He knew Harold, Ynez and Britta. Jemmie was the guy from that Scottish romance, though he didn’t think Ellery had cracked that one yet. He wondered if Irving was the author of Vamp. Despite all the hoopla about it in the press, he wasn’t sure he’d recognize the name of Vamp’s author even if he saw it.

  “I’m sorry,” the flight attendant said, and Axel jumped. “You’re going to have to put that away.”

  He saved Ellery’s file to his USB, yanked out the device and closed the laptop. Ellery gave him a look of mild boredom and took it from him. “I hope they don’t wait too long after we take off to serve dinner,” she said, slipping the laptop into her tote. “I’m finding myself a little hungry.”

  “Throwing up a dozen times will do that for you.”

  In twenty minutes they were in the air, on their way to Heathrow.

  “I think I’m going to sleep.” He balled up his coat.

  “I might too,” she said, grabbing her laptop, “as soon as I finish some stuff.”

  “So, if you’re sleeping and I’m sleeping, does that mean we’re sleeping together?”

  She didn’t turn her head, but he saw the corner of her mouth rise.

  He went on, “I mean, I didn’t know this was going to turn into one of those Year of Living Dangerously, We don’t even know if we’ll be alive tomorrow assignments, but if it does, I’m game.”

  “I’m pretty sure we’re not going to be running for our lives doing a story on vampires and Highland warriors. It’s not that kind of a piece.”

  “Big talk from a woman who doesn’t know where her shoe is.”

  She reached for her purse and pulled something out.

  “What’s that?” He was starving, and Ellery had always carried mini Kit Kats with her.

  “Carob soy bar,” she said, holding it out. “Want one?”

  Gah! He shook his head politely.

  All of a sudden he remembered what his sister had said that had been niggling at him. It had been when they were talking about Jemmie, the Highlander in Kiltlander. “It’s magic!” she’d squealed. “Honest to God, I don’t understand why more men don’t read it. Don’t they understand they could get any woman they wanted if they just acted like Jemmie?”

  The idea intrigued Axel, but was what she’d said even a reasonable assertion? He considered what he knew about romance novels, which admittedly wasn’t much, though his knowledge had increased considerably in the last twenty-four hours. First, women seemed to love them. Not all women, of course—he looked at Ellery, who for many reasons, not all of them good, was in a category all by herself—but a decent number. Second, even if a woman didn’t love romance novels, they all loved romance. Apart from the clichéd flowers and candy, however, what actually constituted romance was rather foggy to Axel. He felt like champagne had to be involved, and a lot of necking, which brought back the memory of that dark Monkey Bar hallway with an unhappy wallop. Third, just talking about the romance novels with the cashier at the bookstore had earned him a phone number. Fourth…

  Hm. What else did he know about romance novels?

  Oh, that’s right: Fourth, Kiltlander, the very book his sister was recommending as a primer on seduction, had actually helped him score with Flip Allison in college.

  One, two, three and a pretty interesting four. Maybe his sister was right.

  He cleared his throat, and Ellery, who was reclining her seat back, looked at him. “Yes?”

  “Do you have those other books I gave you?”

  “They’re in my tote.”

  “Mind if I take a look?

  “Knock yourself out.”

  He leaned down, dug under a bottle of water and a sweater and found Kiltlander.

  Ellery eyed him curiously.

  “I’m trying to get a feel for shooting possibilities,” he said.

  “Shooting possibilities, huh? Maybe you’ll get your wish, after all. The trip’s starting to sound more and more like The Year of Living Dangerously.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Ellery scratched her nose and gazed out the airplane window. She had missed the interviews she was supposed to get at the Monkey Bar. She knew she could make up part of that loss by interviewing Kate and Jill, since they were such big Vamp fans, but she was also planning to call the bartender there and talk to her as well. Axel, of course, had gotten her name.

  She examined the other two books Axel had given her, including the one she’d had to wriggle out from under his arm after he’d fallen asleep. She refused to reopen Vamp. She was highly suspicious of the effect it had had on her in that fleeting hour of reading, and she had placed it in the category of things that were bad for you but had the illusion of being good, like high-fructose corn syrup, anything by the Pixies and Axel Mackenzie.

  She picked a book at random and turned it over to read the description.

  An ambitious writer discovers that bad-boy painters are as timeless—and irresistible—as their art.

  Not bad, she had to admit, listening to Axel snore. She certainly liked the “ambitious writer” part. And who didn’t love a story about an artist? She thought of The Great Man, Kate Christensen’s wonderful novel about a pain-in-the-ass painter as told through the eyes of his mistress, his wife and his sister. Now, there was a narrative!

  Ellery sincerely doubted, however, that this novel would hold quite the same place in her regard.

  The cover was tolerable—at least, there was no half-naked man clutching the heroine like a pairs skater about to execute a throw. Instead, there was just a woman in a low-cut pink gown. If Ellery didn’t know better, she’d swear the gown was Restoration-era, though she’d assumed all romance novels were set in some timeless place in the past when kilt-wearing Highlanders roamed the earth like packs of wild dogs; in some not-too-distant dystopian future when vampires roamed the earth like packs of wild dogs; or exactly in 1811 for
the start of the Regency era.

  She jumped down further in the description.

  A few hours posing on Sir Peter Lely’s modeling chaise—

  Hey, wait a second. Peter Lely was a real painter. They didn’t put real people in romance novels—why, she didn’t know for sure, but she assumed it was because real people somehow kill the mood. She reflected on this for a moment and found herself inexplicably sorry Ynez and Harold hadn’t been real people.

  She returned to the description.

  A few hours posing on Sir Peter Lely’s modeling chaise leads to a night of seductive passion

  Now, there’s an effing surprise.

  She was interrupted by the appearance of a young boy, perhaps four or five, in the aisle beside her. He had dark hair and inquisitive green eyes and bit his finger in some vestigial remnant of toddlerhood thumb sucking. He was dressed in Power Ranger pajamas, which made her smile. Jill had loved the Power Rangers as a child and had dressed as the pink Power Ranger for several Halloweens running. Ellery wasn’t aware that a new generation had come to worship at the Ranger shrine.

  “Hey, there,” she said.

  He nodded, uncertain.

  She assumed his mom or dad was making a bathroom stop and he’d wandered from his seat. “You a Power Rangers fan?”

  He pointed to the red Power Ranger on his sleeve.

  “You like the red one? Did you ever use a Zord?”

  His eyes sparkled and the finger came out. “I have a Tigerzord. I wish it was a Mega Winger. My grandma got it for me. It’s the old kind,” he added with a touch of disappointment.

  “Well, the old ones were more powerful, you know.”

  “No they’re not.”

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “That was back when Zordon invested them with megapowers. The Zords now are good, but not like before.”

  His eyes widened. “Really?”