by Carol Rose
“Neither Pete nor I ever had crowds of friends,” Max responded, crumpling up the paper his meal had come wrapped in. “I suppose we could both be categorized loners, if you’re into categorizing people, which I can see you are. Pete sometimes played team sports. I mostly pursued solitary sports like running and I read and wrote.”
An expression of sadness skimmed across her expressive face. “Were your parents very involved in your life?”
Max stared across the table at her, the compassion in her face striking him hard. He hadn’t said anything to make her pity him. He didn’t want pity, dammit, but he couldn’t help the sensation of warmth in his chest, despite that. Nicole looked at him as if she understood, which was impossible, of course. She was really a very straightforward person. What was visible on the surface was everything that comprised her. The same could never be said of him.
“Let us say they were very involved in my success,” he said, the precision in his words automatic. There was no pain in thinking about his parents. In truth, he was startled by his reaction to her reaction. Her sympathy troubled him and made him want to reject any hint of concern for him on her part.
What he wanted from her was a neatly typed book…and several weeks of steamy, erotic coupling, if he could get them. He wanted at this moment to reach across the table and angle his mouth across hers. Ached to taste her, to draw her skin against his, to plunge himself into her body. Pity from her, however, he didn’t need. Sex was safer than emotion. He found himself fighting his liking for her, knowing there could be no good outcome from it.
“Some parents,” Nicole said slowly, “are so excited by their children’s’ achievements, they forget to prize the child for just being a child.”
Max looked at her, mentally clicking through all the things he could say. Of course, she’d have a different perspective than most people. She was a teacher, a woman who dealt with kids all the time. For a flash of a second, he wanted to lean forward and impart some wisdom where it might do some good. But he didn’t. What was there, after all, to say? Bright kids gained rewards for being bright. Rewards that generally out-weighed the social complications, if not the loneliness. Teachers were just as much a part of the problem as were parents.
“I was never ‘just a child’,” he told her calmly. “When I went before the civil court judge to request emancipation at the age of sixteen, she commended me on my maturity.”
“Sixteen?” Nicole echoed in disbelief. “Were you earning your own living at that age?”
He nodded, mildly amused by her shock. Writing was who he’d always been. Most people knew him only for this gift that encompassed everything him.
“My God,” she said, shaking her head. “How sad.”
“It wasn’t sad, at all,” he disagreed. “I no longer needed my parents’ protection, nor was I interested in them continuing to bask in the reflected glory my work engendered for them.”
“But, Max,” she said, “it’s not just about your work. You are more than your work.”
He frowned at her, making a gesture as if to push her comment aside. “What else matters besides one’s mind?”
“Character,” she said, “for one thing. And kindness and humor. Those things are part of you, too.”
“Don’t trivialize the mind. The things you list are a product of the mind.”
She shook her head. “Not kindness.”
Max made a scoffing sound in the back of his throat. “Don’t be an idiot. I’m not a particularly kind man or haven’t you noticed?”
“I noticed you helping Jake with his homework the other night,” she said tartly as she gathered all her lunch trash together. “That has nothing to do with your work, unless you’re planning on incorporating a mentor character into your book.”
“No,” he admitted, laughing. He helped Jake because he liked the kid, that was all. Still, could she be right? Was there more to him than the work? The idea that he possessed any personal aspect as valid as his talent…intrigued him. It was a new idea.
He was a decent friend to the select few people he chose to allow into his private world, but he knew better than anyone that Cynthia and Nadine, as well as Ruth’s family, gave way more than they got from him.
Watching Nicole take the trash into the kitchen, Max let the surfaced memories of his childhood sift through his mind. He and Pete had always been awkward with each other, never sure how to feel or demonstrate affection. It certainly hadn’t been demonstrated by their parents. But they hadn’t hated each other either, not until he’d stupidly, insanely, made everything go to shit.
Max sat thinking about his brother.
Pete would be getting his award this next Saturday. He deserved it. Most non-fiction work was pedantic and dry, but Pete wrote in a smooth, clear voice.
Smiling as he tilted back in his chair, Max imagined his big brother standing at the podium, looking awkward and self-conscious as he accepted his award. He wouldn’t make much of a speech. Pete’s skill with words didn’t extend beyond the written page. Damn, Max thought, he’d like to see it. Pete in a rumpled tuxedo, the bright lights shining on his slightly-embarrassed, overly-serious face.
Smiling, Max let the chair settle forward on all legs. He could actually go to the awards dinner. It couldn’t hurt anything. If Pete wanted to ignore him, he could. He didn’t have to talk to him. Down deep in his gut, Max hated the rift. He’d never been buddies with his brother, but he’d always respected him. He wanted to get beyond the anger.
He’d never been good at admitting when he was wrong, but going to the awards dinner didn’t mean he had to grovel.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Come on,” Cynthia wheedled, her sweating mug on the table in front of her, “you’ve got a major jones for Nicole, don’t you?”
Max laughed, shaking his head. Back at the bar, a raucous group of customers laughed loudly at someone’s joke.
“Why do you care about my jones, or the lack there of,” he asked, deftly sidestepping the question as he took a drink from his glass.
“I’m your friend,” Cynthia claimed, the serious note in her voice belied by the twinkle in her eyes. “I may need to step in and protect you if this woman turns out to be a pain-in-the-ass or something.”
“I don’t think so.” His voice was dry. “Much though I love you, I don’t need you to run interference for my love life.”
“Ah hah!” Cynthia’s hand came crashing down on the table. “So, you admit it! You do have a major craving for her!”
Max sighed, still smiling. “It doesn’t matter, Cynthia. I need the book done more than I need to get laid. I’m not risking one of the best typists I’ve ever had—albeit a temporary one—just to get my rocks off. My jones will have to take a back seat, for a while.”
“Okay,” she said, lifting her mug. “But this typist isn’t your normal fling material. You better watch your step with her.”
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, faintly annoyed. For the first time in months, he knew himself to be back in control of his life. Nicole may have developed too much of a tendency to interfere in his life with the best intentions, but he still stood at the helm of his fate.
“Mmmm,” Cynthia looked at him through narrowed eyes. “A jones denied can be an awful, powerful thing. Besides, this woman seems…engaging. She’s interesting to you. That’s different for you.”
* * *
Tears streamed down Nicole’s face, moisture blurring her vision. Her fingers halted on the keyboard, she sniffed and wiped at her eyes. Max’s characters—his people—were so real, so vivid, she lost herself in them. She felt Lauren’s pain and Sam’s confusion. She found herself rooting for them to fight their way through the chaos they’d created for themselves.
It was as if she sank physically into Max’s story, so caught up in his powerful words she was hardly aware of typing them. Here she was working her third Saturday in a row—no breaks, no real time off—and she found herself so consumed in the story
she didn’t even really mind so much. Here it was late in the day and she had hardly torn herself away long enough to eat.
Max was living a lie with all his cold sarcasm. There were incredible depths to him. The huge poignancy of his characters’ emotions were proof of how emotionally real he could be. Why did he fight to keep people from seeing that part of him?
Nicole heard footsteps in the hall and turned to look at him as he walked into the room. But her words of greeting died on her lips at the sight of him. He wore a midnight-dark suit with a shirt so white it hurt her eyes. In all the weeks of working together, she’d never seen him in anything more dressy than Dockers.
He was truly a damn good-looking man.
“We have to leave now if we’re going to be there on time,” he said abruptly, an aggravated expression on his face. His gaze sharpened as he looked at her. “Have you been crying? What’s wrong? Hell, if you’ll get up, we can go have dinner at this damn banquet and you’ll get to be around other people. Come on.”
Startled more by his clothes than by his unusually irritated manner, she said with annoyance, “I’m not crying because I haven’t been around people. And what are you talking about, go to what damn banquet?”
“Pete’s award dinner,” Max informed her as if she was an idiot for not immediately understanding what he was referring to. “The one you’ve been yapping at me about for days now?”
“You’re going!” Nicole exclaimed. “That’s wonderful. I know your brother will appreciate you being there—“
“If you’re not needing interpersonal interaction, why are you crying?” he asked, interrupting her without apology and abruptly changing the topic.
“Oh.” Nicole glanced involuntarily at the computer screen, feeling stupidly embarrassed. No matter how much she was moved by his words, she didn’t want to gush all over him like a ditzy fan. Instinctively, she knew how much Max hated that…and she had little desire to play that role with him, either. “It’s nothing. Sometimes I cry for no reason. PMS, probably….”
Ignoring her, he crossed the room and stopped next to her desk. Studying the notepad she’d been transcribing, he said in an odd voice, “The pothole scene? Why are you crying there? I would have expected that kind of response in the car wreck scene.”
“Oh, you would have?” she said, amused by his unconscious arrogance. Naturally, Max would be used to moving his readers to tears!
“Yes. Why this scene? The two primary characters are simply sitting next to the tree as a car in the background hits a pothole, what about that brings tears?”
Feeling strangely tender, Nicole took his arm and turned him toward the door. For such an intelligent man, he was such a clueless fool. Of course, she’d be moved by a scene in which the heroine helped guide the hero to make a choice that would forever alter his life and guide him past some major life potholes. “Never mind about the scene. You’re going to be late to the banquet.”
“But I’m interested in your reaction,” he said. “Besides, we’re both going to the banquet.”
“What? No we’re not! I’m not,” she disagreed. “I don’t have evening wear—“
“You look fine,” he said, his glance raking her simple black jersey dress. “This doesn’t require a ball dress. It’s just a dinner.”
“But there’s no reason for me to go,” she protested.
“Yes, there is,” he retorted. “Since you thought this was such a good idea, you have to come along and suffer the boredom and bad food with me.”
Snagging her by the hand, Maxwell walked out, dragging her with him.
An hour later, he’d let go of her hand but she found herself still trailing after him as he walked through a gauntlet of reporters and photographers. In his customary manner, Max ignored all questions yelled at him and made no attempt to smile for the cameras as they got out of the limo and went into the hotel where the banquet would be held.
As the photographers’ flashes went off in her face, all Nicole could think about was that she was now linked with Max forever. Hadn’t she read a quote from some famous person about how their photographs were kept on file for eternity? She could just imagine the caption under these photos fifty years from now in retrospective articles on his life. Maxwell Tucker and an unknown woman…. Or, more likely, they wouldn’t even refer to her at all.
“Oh, Mr. Tucker!” Inside the hotel, a heavy-set woman in navy blue satin stood by the ballroom door, clipboard in hand. “We’re so glad you could come! We were thrilled when your publisher called to make a reservation! Your work is so wonderful! I’m sure your brother will be so happy to receive his award with you here to watch! The whole world will know—“
Standing next to Max, Nicole felt his impatient movement, but he didn’t interrupt the woman’s gushing. Waiting for her to finish, he simply asked for their table assignment, his words cool and courteous.
“Oh! Of course!” She studied the clipboard. “Yes, of course! You’ll be at table four, right up front!”
She beamed at him. “Right where your brother can see your face when he accepts his award.”
“No,” Max said incisively. “Don’t you have something further back? I know we made the reservation late. You don’t need to disarrange other people’s seats—“
“Oh, Mr. Tucker,” the navy blue satin woman said, putting her hand confidingly on Max’s arm. “Of course, you get priority! After all, it’s not every day we get a writer of your caliber at our events! And your brother is our honoree!”
“A seat in the back will do,” Max insisted, his face growing rigid. “Pete doesn’t need to look down and see me. It’s his night.”
The navy blue woman said, “Yes, we’re so thrilled for him!”
She raised a hand and waggled it at a man in a tuxedo one size too small, who stood just inside the ballroom. “Andy, here’s Mr. Tucker, Mr. Maxwell Tucker, you know! He and his companion are at table four! Right up front! Will you show them to their seats?”
“Of course,” Andy’s voice was nearly as reverential as the woman’s. “This way, sir.”
Next to Nicole, Max paused, his face an unreadable mask.
Succumbing to both her innate sense of politeness and a desire to keep him from drawing more attention to himself, she hissed, “Just smile and follow him, for heaven’s sake.”
Somewhat to her surprise, he responded to her order, although his smile wasn’t very convincing. Following the tuxedoed man, they wound their way through the table-filled ballroom. Seated at a spot in the very front of the room, Max drew a buzz of attention.
“Max!” A sophisticated older woman came over and hugged him.
To Nicole’s shock, he tolerated the embrace with no sign of increased distress, even patting the woman’s shoulder.
“Hello, Cynthia. You got roped into this crap?”
“No, darling. I love these things. Unlike you, I enjoy schmoozing. I’m over at that table there with Ruth and David.”
“Damn, why didn’t they put me with you instead of planting me right up here in front?”
Cynthia patted his cheek. “You’re a prize, babe. Get used to it and have some fun. That’s what we’re going to do.”
“Well, I hope the three of you have a good time…although the possibility seems ludicrous to me,” Max commented, seating himself with a hunted look on his face.
The reason for the strained expression in his eyes rapidly became clear.
Everyone wanted a piece of Maxwell Tucker. It wasn’t just the other eight people at their table—all in the publishing industry, apparently—people kept coming by from other tables. The first few times, Max stood up to politely respond to whoever accosted him. From that point on, he remained standing.
“Thanks,” Max said for the twentieth time as a woman gushed about his last book.
“And the end!” she exclaimed. “So powerful. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when you hit the New York Times list with that one.”
“Thanks,” he said again, hi
s jaw looking tight as he stood next to the table, his hand encased in both of the woman’s. From three or four spots around the walls, the clicking and snapping of high-powered cameras could be heard.
“Maxwell Tucker,” a large man appeared at Max’s shoulder. “I believe we met at the Mid-Western Writing Conference several years ago. Good evening, sir.”
No hint of recognition showed on Max’s face. If possible he look even more forbidding than before. “I don’t think so. I never attend—“
“We spoke about the educational deficiencies of the masses,” the large man pronounced, his superior sense of himself written clearly on his broad face. “You’ll remember, we shared a cab to the airport afterwards—“
“No,” Max said. “I—“
“I missed seeing you there the last couple of years,” the man intoned.
“That’s because I never go to conferences,” Max inserted swiftly. “That’s how I know we’ve never—“
“Of course, I do understand why you’d want to avoid these gatherings.” The large man looked around him with contempt. “So many small press people….”
As the man droned on, Nicole sat at the table feeling as if she were in the middle of a vortex. The noise of the cameras clicking around them added another layer of sound to the jumbled uproar of conversation. Which ever way she turned her head, she saw avidly staring faces. Everyone was fascinated to have Max in their midst. For a moment, she felt a flare of pride. He was after all her boss and she got to spend every day closely observing the most amazing creative process. Max was phenomenal, really, when he wasn’t being sexually provocative or downright annoying. Although, she amended mentally, at his most sexually provocative, he was pretty phenomenal, too.
Just then her chair was thumped heavily from behind as a dark-skinned woman squeezed through the small space between the tables, clearly trying to get a closer look at Max. Nicole scooted as near to the table as she could, wondering if her ribs were going to be bruised by the constant flow of people passing behind her. She’d seen this sort of thing on television, masses of press and photographers surrounding a star, people grabbing at them, all vying for their attention. Max wasn’t a movie star, but flashes kept going off all around them as people took pictures. How on earth did anyone deal with this sort of thing on an on-going basis? Just sitting here next to Max, she felt somewhat overwhelmed.