Mr. Personality

by Carol Rose

  “Well, maybe,” Nicole said in a snotty voice, “your work would be even better if you learned how real people live.”

  “My work is fine,” he responded absently, still trying to wrench his mind away from her attributes, sexual and otherwise.

  “There’s always room for improvement,” she argued. “Sure, you do pretty well, but maybe you’re limiting yourself. Maybe you would have even deeper insight if you’d mingle a little.”

  “Mingling involves other random people, many of whom love calling gossip columnists and emailing websites that track celebrity ‘sitings.’ People particularly like salacious reports, true or not. No, I don’t think mingling is a necessary life function.”

  “Not everyone is unethical,” she said. “You need to make friends and, heck, even if you have a photographer or two take your picture, get out in the city some more. Go eat at restaurants. Go to plays!”

  “No.”

  “This is part of your problem,” she contended.

  “My problem?”

  “Yes, you have trouble accepting feedback. How can you work and live with so little contact with people? It gives a removed quality to your work—“

  “My work is fine. Exceptional, actually. Here are the changes to chapter two.”

  “But it could be better,” she insisted. “Don’t you want to be the best that you can be? You know, like the Marines?”

  “I think that’s be ‘all you can be’ and it’s the Army, not the Marines,” he corrected her, trying to hide the smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. At the oddest moments, he had to admit to finding her amusing. He liked her and it bugged him.

  “Whatever,” she said impatiently. “I’m talking about improving your work.”

  “I’m not interested in what you think about my work,” he told her, not looking up from the stack of typed pages.

  “That’s your problem—“

  “Another one?” he murmured.

  “Yes,” she continued, not appearing the least intimidated by his supposed disinterest in her opinion. “You could connect with people better if you listened.”

  “But they never say anything I’m interested in,” he said. “It’s like your talk show addiction, er, habit. You watch that show every single day. I fail to see what, if anything, in that televised drivel could possibly interest a person of even average intelligence, which, most of the time, you appear to possess.”

  “Thank you,” she replied, not visibly fazed by his provocative tone.

  He knew he was deliberately trying to annoy her. Just as clearly, he knew he was developing respect for her. It was as grudgingly given as his enjoyment of her, but undeniable still. As a matter of fact, he found their repartee energizing. The woman never seemed to falter. Regardless of the subject they were discussing, if Nicole cared about it, she had a definite opinion. Moreover, she never hesitated sharing that opinion with him. No matter how often he told her to keep it to herself, she seemed to sense his ambivalence. He did want her to shut up…but he found her interesting, too.

  And his fantasies about sliding slowly into her hot, tight body were making his nights increasingly restless.

  “Well, I think you would benefit all the way around by—“

  “I am not particularly interested in what you think,” he said, lying.

  Not the least intimidated, she stuck her tongue out at him.

  “That’s mature,” he said dryly, catching her childish response out of the corner of his eye.

  Nicole suppressed the urge to laugh at him. In the weeks she’d been working with him, she’d come to realize a few things. First, Max’s bark was definitely worse than his bite. Not that he’d done any actual biting, and if she knew what was good for her, she certainly wouldn’t let him within biting distance again. But, the second thing she’d realized was that Max Tucker wasn’t always the beast she’d first thought him to be. Not completely.

  It was crazy, and she certainly didn’t want him to find out, but she really kind of enjoyed his quick, acid sense of humor.

  “Oh, I could never be as mature and well-functioning as you,” she said, sighing artificially. “So rich, talented and famous.”

  “Remember that,” Max told her, his handsome face perfectly straight.

  She couldn’t help it. Nicole had to laugh. “You’re so modest.”

  “Yes. You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is, given all my natural sterling attributes.” A quiver of amusement briefly disturbed his normally impassive face.

  “I’m sure.” She grinned at him. He truly wasn’t as conceited as she’d first thought. In fact, she sometimes wondered if he, down deep inside, had any real appreciation for just how danged intelligent and good-looking he was.

  * * *

  Seated in his window the following day, Max heard her approaching up the stairs. Conscious of a regrettable quickening of his heartbeat, he ignored her. Lust, pure and simple.

  Nicole stood there a moment without saying anything. When he didn’t acknowledge her, she said abruptly, “So are you going to Pete’s awards dinner?”

  “What?” Annoyed, he looked up from the metaphor that just occurred to him.

  “Your brother’s awards dinner is next week. Don’t you think that would help mend some fences if you went?” she asked.

  Max didn’t answer her, conscious of a bitter ache in the back of his throat at the thought of his brother. Damn, why wouldn’t the woman give it up? She’d been after him repeatedly in the last few days to “heal the breach” with Pete. It would obviously never occur to her that Pete himself wanted things this way. His brother had more than adequate reason to put Max out of his life.

  “Go away,” he ordered testily. “I’ve asked you not to disturb me while I’m working.”

  “And I’ve told you that you need to take a break once in a while,” Nicole shot back. “You’ll work yourself into a breakdown.”

  “This is your idea of taking a break? You coming up here to harangue me about my brother?” Max asked, slicing a glance up at her. She might amuse him now and then, but he couldn’t tolerate her becoming overly familiar with his personal business.

  “Well, if you won’t come down from your perch and get a drink of water now and then or something, I might as well come up and drag you out of your ivory tower.”

  “It is not your job, now or ever,” he said with biting conciseness, “to drag me out of anything.”

  It made him angrier that he actually liked her wanting to look after him.

  “Not even if you’re in a burning building?” she asked with an impertinent lift of her brow. “I’m just trying to get you moving to do something about this situation with Pete. You know you don’t want to go on fighting. And he certainly doesn’t. If he really didn’t want to see you, why did he bother to bring your royalty check over? Why didn’t he send it back to Ruth? She was the one who made the mistake.”

  Holding his temper reined in, Max said carefully, “If I could believe this loving concern on your part had anything to do with me or my situation, I might—I say might, be able to tolerate your misguided attempts to meddle in my life. As your meddling is not about me, I refuse to abide it.”

  “I’m not meddling,” she retorted, “I’m just trying to help you. You miss your brother—“

  Max swiveled around, his gaze colliding with hers as she stood on the stair just below the landing. He knew he deserved Pete’s scorn. That knowledge, however, didn’t make his being put out of his brother’s life any less bitter. And none of this was any of Nicole’s damn business. “It has long been my observation that women who meddle in other people’s lives, do so out of a lack of personal integrity and a pitiful, wretched need to gain some emotional reward for themselves.”

  Frowning, she said, “What are you talking about?”

  “You,” he said, laying his pad aside to lend the weight of his full attention as he delivered his assessment. “For some reason, you apparently suffer from the need to intrude yourself in
to others’ lives, desperately trying to gain a pat on the head for your efforts. If you think I need your assistance, in any form, please disabuse yourself of that thought. Yours is the worst kind of vanity.”

  “Vanity!” she echoed both disbelief and anger growing on her expressive face. “How exactly am I supposed to be vain? And how am I lacking integrity?”

  “You lack truthfulness within yourself,” Max told her, his face feeling tight as he spoke. “If you had any integrity, you’d know your kind efforts towards others are motivated by your own desire to earn approbation for yourself.”

  “You’re nuts,” she told him angrily. “Maybe you only do nice things for people when you have ulterior motives, but there are actually people who like helping other people!”

  “Are there? Tell me, this sacrifice you’re making for your father?” he said in a mocking voice. “This is how you’re helping him? You leave your home and travel here to rescue a grown man from the consequences of his own actions?”

  “My father didn’t deliberately steal your work. He was careless,” she said indignantly.

  “How will he learn to think about his choices, if he never experiences the consequences of his actions?” Max shot back, his voice harsh. “We humans never learn without suffering the results of our mistakes. But you are here robbing your father of his learning experience merely to gain glory at his expense.”

  “Glory!” she gasped. “I’m not getting anything—“

  “All your friends back home know what you’re doing, don’t they?”

  “Some of them,” she admitted, her face flushed and angry. “But it’s not like I took out a newspaper ad. I’m just here to help my dad.”

  Turning back to the window, Max said, “Ask yourself, does being rescued by his daughter help your father think before he acts?”

  “He’s an old man! Sometimes he needs help.”

  “Then he’s had someone taking care of him his whole life,” Max said implacably. “You call it love, but emotional excuses don’t help anyone learn.”

  He knew better than most how useless excuses were. Loneliness made no better a defense than did ignorance when it came to bad choices.

  Behind him, she uttered an incoherent exclamation and turned to huff off.

  * * *

  “That’s it!” Nicole shrieked two days later as he put another stack of notepads beside her. “I’m officially going crazy!”

  Looking at her with mild interest, Max gave no sign that this was news to him.

  “I have to get out of this apartment! I’ve been at this for days. Days and days and nights. Lots of nights. I’m losing my mind! The only people I see, besides Ruth, are the ones going to open the delis at dawn and the occasional reporter snoozing in front of your building.”

  “Don’t forget the doorman.”

  “Argghh! I’m going crazy!”

  “Okay,” he said slowly, one eyebrow lifted.

  For the last two days, he’d barely spoken to her, the result she knew of her ‘meddling’ in his relationship with his brother. Since she only had Max to interact with and he was pissed at her, she’d been mightily alone the last few days. It was making her nuts.

  “I promised myself a little walk when I finished this last notepad,” she explained in a tense voice, holding her frustration down with a struggle. “Just a few more pages and then I’d get to see the sky when the sun is still up. Actually get to talk to someone who’s vocabulary is that of a regular person! I was almost there. Then, you come and add another hundred notepads!”

  “Three,” he pointed out, unsmiling.

  “I don’t care! I’ve got to talk to someone! I need people. I like people! Unlike you, I am accustomed to spending time with other human beings everyday. I enjoy my classroom being full of students! Teens who bicker and talk back! I’ve got to have some social interaction, no matter how limited it is,” she declared. “I need a day off. What is this? Sunday? Thursday? Surely, it’ll count as a weekend! I just need another human face! Now!”

  “I’d really prefer you wait until sundown before you leave,” he said stiffly. “The doorman said we’ve had some media types hanging around again and we don’t want to give Inside Edition it’s lead story for the day.”

  “I couldn’t care less about Inside Edition! No one is watching me. Why would anyone care about me leaving this building—“

  Max’s face grew sardonic. “Don’t kid yourself, Nicole. When the media finds out you work for me, they’ll immediately care everything about you, from your toothpaste to what kind of condom you prefer.”

  “Whatever.” Despairing, Nicole dropped her head into her hands, saying dully. “Can’t…go…on. Must…have…contact….”

  To her surprise, Max laughed. It was a short laugh, but it still counted. “Okay, Miss Social Butterfly. We’ll think of something.”

  Recognizing that for the first time since their argument, he didn’t sound angry with her, she lifted her head. “What do you mean? I’m not asking you to entertain me—I’d have to be an idiot to do that.”

  “And this breakdown you’re suffering doesn’t have any similarity to an attack of idiocy?” he asked wearily. “If you need a respite from work, I’ll arrange something.”

  “Don’t strain yourself.” Nicole eyed him with curiosity. “And don’t go to any trouble. Just give me a day off.”

  “If I do that,” he said patiently, “I lose an entire day of your productivity. I’d like to find another antidote to what ails you.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask what you think will cure what ails me,” she commented suspiciously, her mind suddenly filled with hot, steamy possibilities. Didn’t men always think sex was the cure to what ailed a woman? Not that she hadn’t been struggling with some pretty sexy inclinations herself.

  He looked meditatively at the computer screen for a long moment. “Do you like Ruth?”

  “Sure,” Nicole said, jolted out of her fantasy, but not sure how this connected to the subject at hand. “She’s great.”

  “I’ll call Ruth,” he said, getting up.

  “You think she’ll want to go out bar hopping with me?” Nicole inquired, mystified.

  “No,” he said, shooting her a sardonic glance. “I think we can make an early day of it and have dinner with Ruth and her family. You did specify ‘human faces.’ You didn’t say anything about them needing to be completely unrelated or all adult. Ruth has two young sons and a husband. They all qualify as human faces.”

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “And you’ll be coming with me…to have dinner with Ruth’s family?”

  “Of course,” he said with an ironic smile. “I’m your jailer, aren’t I? I have to come along to make sure you don’t stray or stop to visit with any of the idiot reporters hanging around.”

  “Do you socialize with Ruth much?” she asked. Maybe he had a bigger world than she’d realized.

  “Sometimes,” he responded indifferently. “I try not to intrude on her family time, but sometimes I do socialize with them.”

  “You know them well enough to just invite the two of us over there for dinner?”

  “Yes,” he responded patiently. “You need social interaction to continue functioning. I need you to continue functioning. Ergo, we must provide you with social contact.”

  “I hope Ruth sees it that way.”

  “She will,” he responded in an absent voice.

  “And you’re going to eat with us?” she enquired, trying to understand what he was doing.

  “Yes,” he said impatiently as he walked out.

  Nicole watched him leave the room, her mind struggling with the significance of what had just happened. She’d asked for an adjustment of her working hours—which required an adjustment of him, she knew…and he’d made the adjustment. She hadn’t worked here these past few weeks without realizing his work was all-important to him.

  But he was coming with her to Ruth’s? Why would he really do that? With her father’s financial well-bein
g and peace of mind on the line, it wasn’t like she’d leave and never come back to finish the job. Still Max was giving her a little time off…and he was coming with her.

  Feeling the smile on her face grow, Nicole wondered at the small surge of power radiating through her. Max was doing something he didn’t normally do…for her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “No, Josh,” Ruth said, matter-of-factly, “you cannot turn on the television until you’ve taken your shower and gotten into your pajamas.”

  Max grinned, enjoying as always Ruth’s rock solid parenting style.

  “Before you do anything else,” Ruth’s husband, David, told their youngest son, “carry your plate to the sink.”

  “Okay!” Seven year-old Josh scooted off his chair and disappeared into the kitchen, his dinner plate in his hand.

  “Mom,” Jake, the older boy, said, looking worried, “I’ve got that paper that’s due in two days. Do I still have to gather the trash?”

  Ruth raised her eyebrows. “The trash will take you about three minutes. I think you can do your chore and still have time to work on your paper. Remember, you begged us to let you take this special writing class this summer, so now you’ve got homework when your friends are staying up late playing Nintendo.”