by Carol Rose
He wheeled away from her, the ravages of his regret still visible despite his averted face. “My God, I thought she was interested in my work…in me…and that was enough to— But I realized what she really liked was the tabloids and the media attention and the money.”
Max looked down, his face tight with self-disgust. “None of that matters anyway. I did what I did…and now you know.”
Nicole looked at him, a knot of anger and sadness balled up in her stomach. “So you make out with every woman who seems interested in your work?”
“Of course, not,” he said wearily, self-condemnation written large on his face.
With her chest so tight, she could hardly breathe, she waited, hoping he could say something to put this all straight in her mind. Could she believe his denials of an affair? Pete certainly didn’t and he ought to know his own brother.
Max shook his head, half turned away from her, his hands on his hips. “It doesn’t really matter why I let myself get involved with her. I can’t undo what I’ve done…no matter how much I wish I could.”
Turning to face her, he said, “Now you understand why I didn’t want to go to the banquet, why I haven’t tried to push myself on Pete. Alexa was…troubled and I was stupid and Pete got hurt badly—not that she hadn’t been sleeping around for years, because she had, but I shouldn’t have—“
He broke off, taking a few steps away from Nicole. His regret seemed genuine, his pain real. All these weeks, she’d been picking up on his longing to reconnect with his brother. She just hadn’t known the deep injury behind their estrangement.
So this is what had been burning a hole in his soul. This was the trouble she’d seen in his eyes. Understanding Max’s regret couldn’t help but lessen her anger some. He’d obviously been in hell the last four years, even if he’d earned some of it. But she still couldn’t understand how he could do something so…thoughtless…to his brother.
How lonely did a man have to be to get in this kind of trouble?
“Having any contact with Alexa is worst thing I’ve ever done,” he said finally. “It pushed my brother and I even farther apart. The only thing close to the stupidity of that choice was sleeping with you—“
Nicole gasped, shock ripping through her.
“—we had a working rhythm, you and I,” he went on. “We were getting the book done…and now this.”
“You cannot—possibly—be comparing our sleeping together with your…messing around with your brother’s wife,” she stammered in sickened disbelief.
He raised his head, his gaze dark almost to the point of hopelessness. “I seem to have a certain pattern of…mistakes. I need to…go now….”
Fury rose up inside her as she watched him turn and walk away.
Nicole charged forward, catching him by the arm. “Do not walk away from me! Our sleeping together was not—“
“Let go of my arm,” he asked in a tense voice. “Please.”
The polite term didn’t soften his rigid face.
Loosening her grip on his sleeve, she watched as he abruptly walked off.
How could he classify the tender beauty of their lovemaking with his furtive groping with a married woman? The asshole! Taking several agitated steps forward, Nicole stopped, tears blinding her.
How could he have said such a thing? Did he have any idea how hurtful his words were? Scrubbing a hand over the tears running down her face, she took several shaken breaths.
He was such a fool, such a stupid, dense, emotionally-warped fool. So clueless and so…sad.
As angry at him as she was, still a powerful, confusing sorrow gripped her. He’d looked so…alone, so lost as he walked away just now. Despite her own hurt and rage, she knew a confused, baffling longing to comfort his torn spirit. He was so damned complicated, so much more intricate a man than any she’d ever known before.
Had any of the troubled kids she taught been completely free of mistakes? As she well knew, trouble bred trouble.
Max was such an amazing man, capable of cold, unfeeling words and…kind, warm behaviors. No other man was even half this…involving. Even learning all this about him, she couldn’t help but still—
Nicole’s thoughts came to a screeching halt.
Returning to the park bench where Max had earlier asked her to wait, Nicole sat down and stared into space, a feeling of disintegrating shock rippling through her.
She could help but still…love him.
She was in love with Max Tucker.
How long had she felt this connectedness with him? This sense of involvement. Weeks now? Days?
Never had she been a woman who sought easy sex. The fact that she’d slept with him—actually pursued him sexually—should have been a clue to her that her emotions were completely engaged. But how could she love such a…withdrawn, confused man? A man who would allow himself to become sexually-implicated with his own brother’s wife? He’d been caught kissing the woman, for god’s sake.
Nicole stared ahead unseeing. How could she have allowed herself to grow so entangled with such a tormented soul?
And what the heck did she do now? She couldn’t return to him. Slip back into his office and into his arms. Hell, he classified her with his pitiful, amoral sister-in-law.
But Nicole couldn’t yet see how to pry him out of her heart.
What she ought to do was go home today and forget him. He’d probably say she had no choice but to return to do his work…for her father’s sake, although she wasn’t so sure of that either.
* * *
“So what happened?” Cynthia asked as the waitress left the table where she and Max sat.
Ignoring the mug in front of him on the table, Max rubbed at his temples. “I met Pete in the park this afternoon. He called and wanted to talk to me. Nicole was there, too, and she heard everything he said. About Alexa and the divorce. He was angry about the press uproar at the banquet and blamed it all on me. Of course, the situation with Alexa came up.”
Cynthia’s whistle was long and soft. “Wow. But I always thought it was weird that Nicole hadn’t heard about that. Didn’t you tell me she’s a talk show nut?”
“No,” Max said shortly. “She’s just into Johnna! It’s the one talk show that doesn’t do much gossip stuff.”
“Oh.” Cynthia cradled her mug between both hands. “So today was the first Nicole knew of you being blamed for breaking up Pete and Alexa’s marriage?”
“Yes.” His mind kept replaying the image of Nicole’s shocked face. Her beautiful, accusing, disbelieving eyes. She was a woman who valued family above most everything else. How could she begin to understand this? “Now she thinks she’s working for an even bigger weirdo.”
Cynthia leaned forward. “But you tried to explain, right? You told her about Alexa filing for divorce a year before that day with you? And then dropping it. You mentioned all the other men?”
“None of that really matters,” Max said, refusing to make any excuses for his behavior. He’d succumbed to that impulse briefly with Nicole, wanting to erase the shock and revulsion on her face. But excuses never took away the crime. “I shouldn’t have taken Nicole with me to the park. It was crazy. Hell, I shouldn’t have gotten involved with her, regardless. Not…sexually.”
“I think it matters that Pete and Alexa were having big troubles before that day with you,” his friend disagreed, brushing aside his pitiful efforts to treat the incident today were insignificant. “Okay, you shouldn’t have kissed Alexa, but it’s not like she was Little Red Riding Hood and you were the wolf.”
“I hardly think that matters to my brother,” Max pointed out heavily, emphasizing the last word. No matter how disjointed their family, shouldn’t his relationship with Pete have kept him from returning the woman’s kisses?
“Pete’s hurt,” Cynthia stated. “That’s understandable. Not only did he have a lousy marriage, but he let it go on way too long. A situation like that makes it easier to blame someone else when the whole thing does blow up.”
“I don’t see that,” Cynthia said. “Nicole’s a really attractive person. Very open and warm from what Ruth says. I mean, I only met her that once, but it’s natural that you’d be interested in her.”
Max fell silent. Cynthia didn’t know that he hadn’t even started this book until Nicole waltzed into his life. With her own career on the line, he hadn’t wanted to tell his editor how close they both were to disaster.
“I shouldn’t have touched her,” he said, forcing the words out through thinned lips. “What if she doesn’t come back?”
“Then we’ll find another typist,” Cynthia promised easily. “I know we’ve had a hard time finding one you can work with, but it’s not like Nicole is the only typist in the world.”
No, but she was his muse. She was the place this book resided.
“Frankly,” his friend said, pausing to take a sip, “I’m more concerned about you’re having fallen for Nicole. I mean, if she’s really pissed about the Alexa-situation, you may have lost someone more irreplaceable than a typist.”
Max felt the ice sheathing his heart grow colder and tighter. He knew, if Cynthia did not, that he had no real future with any woman, regardless of whether or not he’d fallen in love. Nicole wouldn’t tolerate the dysfunctions he knew were woven into his psyche.
“I haven’t fallen for anyone,” he denied through stiff lips. Why even consider a possibility that could only bring him more pain?
The book was the most he could hope for from Nicole…and even that he’d stupidly risked.
Pain splintered through his head. How could he have let women do this to him…again? Alexa had really only mattered in that she’d been married to his brother, but Nicole…she was a different woman.
His emotions shuttered as tightly as possible, Max deliberately picked up his mug and took a drink. “So, how’s Nadine doing? Are her treatments going well?”
* * *
Nicole walked along the streets of the city, hardly aware of the bustle around her. What the hell had she been thinking? She’d known Max had problems, but she’d still allowed herself to be drawn in.
Struggling to be objective, she thought now about the insanity of getting involved with him of all men. Her life was in Chicago. Her family, her job. Her friends. She’d chosen to work in one of the tougher high schools in Chicago because she had a thing about making a difference. The kids there were people in need—young, developing lives who desperately craved someone who cared, even just a little.
Was she thinking she’d give all that up to move here? Had she even thought about the practicalities of long-term involvement with Max Tucker? Maybe, she’d sensed there could be nothing more than that moment between them. And yet, some emotions couldn’t be contained so easily. I’ll love you now, but tomorrow, I’ll stop caring.
Nicole dodged a guy walking six or seven dogs, shifting against a building as he passed.
In the last twenty-four hours, she’d gone from using her summer vacation to sort though her dad’s difficulties…to a woman knee-deep in trouble herself. A relationship with Max—if he even wanted one which seemed unlikely—would mean turning her life upside down. Why hadn’t she thought about that before she’d followed him upstairs last night?
But his kiss…. Her thoughts drifted for a moment, reliving the time in his arms. His kisses and, even more powerful, the admission he’d made that she had actually cracked his shell and reached into his emotions. He’d said she was driving him insane.
Pausing at a street crossing as a herd of taxis thundered past, she laughed, a hard, short sound, half under her breath. The classic response to his admission would be that it was a “short trip,” but she knew Max wasn’t insane…just isolated and struggling to decide how much he wanted people to matter. How much would he allow himself to be impacted by others?
That’s what love was—unavoidably being effected by what another person did or didn’t do. She realized that standing there on the street corner. Did she even want to make Max the central person in her life? Leave her job, her father, her home and allow herself to be swallowed up in the celebrity that was Max Tucker? It seemed an alien thing, that kind of life.
He certainly hadn’t asked her to do any of that, but Nicole knew suddenly that she had to answer those questions for herself.
How much did she want Max to impact her life, if at all?
Roaming the sidewalks of the city, Nicole found herself pondering her life. She loved her students, even the stinky, prickly, dangerous ones. Loved them and couldn’t imagine her life without that kind of purpose.
The knife-wielding eighteen year-old sophomore who’d come to school strung out on pills and despair…mostly despair. She could still see Jerome’s hopeless eyes that morning when he’d jumped at her, weak from hunger and buzzing with the drugs in his veins. Jumped at her and fallen back when she’d challenged him, her heart pumping with so much adrenalin that she’d thrown up when the whole thing was over. Jerome, who’d dropped his knife and fallen to his knees, weeping.
Nothing about Jerome’s poverty-filled life should remind her of Max, but it did. Emptiness was emptiness. Max had surely had access to better medical care and more food on the table, but hadn’t he been as abandoned by his parents as had Jerome?
Certainly, they weren’t the same people, living worlds apart as they did. And Max evoked so much more of everything in her—yearning, laughter, fury and frustration.
No, he wasn’t a Jerome, but he was just as lost.
She couldn’t envision herself living happily with half a man and Max had certainly never hinted at any sort of commitment between them, but with everything torn and aching inside her, Nicole found herself evaluating the possibilities anyway…evaluating them and wondering what the hell she’d been thinking to let Max Tucker take up residence in her heart.
* * *
“So, you’re telling me Pete knew his wife was unfaithful with a lot of different guys?” Nicole asked as she viciously scrubbed a potato over the sink in Ruth’s kitchen.
She didn’t know why she’d headed here after wandering around Manhattan. She’d just needed someone to talk to…preferably someone who didn’t hate Max.
Since making her way to Ruth’s, Nicole had thought of little else besides Max’s betrayal of his brother. That and his horrible comment comparing her to his brother’s wife.
“Yes, he knew.” Ruth nodded. “At least, I think so. Cynthia thinks he knew what his wife was up to, but Pete and I have never talked about it. Pete’s not the kind of guy who talks about personal things. We’ve never even discussed the incident between Max and Alexa.”
Nicole repressed the urge to wince. Just hearing the woman’s name spoken felt like a mental poke with a sharp stick. She kept envisioning Max kissing the woman…just as he’d kissed her. The thought left her queasy.
“What kind of a woman is…Alexa?” Nicole asked after a few minutes, hating her own curiosity about the woman who’d come between Max and his brother in such an ugly way. The woman who’d tempted Max into such a horrific betrayal of his brother and himself.
Still, she had to know, had to sort this mess out in her own head.
Ruth shrugged. “I don’t know. She and I were never really friends. I knew her, of course, but just through Pete.”
Nicole swallowed and tried to keep her voice as natural as possible. “Is she very beautiful?”
“I guess she’s attractive.” Ruth paused. “She was pretty much into her appearance. You know the type. Into clothes and plastic surgery. It was kind of a life focus for her, really.”
“She didn’t work?”
“Not since Ryan was born. She did dabble in interior decorat
ing some. I think Max even let her do up a room in his apartment. She kind of nagged and begged him into it. Said it would give her an ‘in’ with other people who would then hire her. That was before the break-up. I don’t think Max has even seen her since she and Pete divorced.”
“So it wasn’t like they really got together?” Nicole hated herself for asking. What did it matter now? The damage was done. What kind of man could be forgiven for coveting his brother’s wife to the point of nearly bedding her? Pete was right. The natural conclusion to that kiss might well have been the bedroom. And just how did anyone know that kiss was the first?
Her thoughts came screeching to a halt here. Max might be clueless about some things, but she couldn’t see him outright lying.
“Oh, no, Max and Alexa didn’t really date.” Ruth came to rinse lettuce at the sink, casting a sideways glance at Nicole. “It was just that situation, you know. That once. At least, that’s what I think. I mean, it’s not like Woody boffing Mia Farrow’s daughter. From what I can gather, Max let his guard down one time and Alexa was there ready to jump in.”
“He’s a grown up man, Ruth. She didn’t molested him or something” Nicole said shortly. “He chose to, at the very least, kiss his brother’s wife.”
All afternoon she’d wrestled with the situation and she was no nearer to peace inside herself. She cared about the man, but that wasn’t reason to excuse everything that had happened. How could Max have had such tremendously bad judgment?
“I don’t know. I guess, he did kiss her,” Ruth agreed, shaking the lettuce before moving over to shred it into a bowl. “But you have to understand Max. Most people don’t. To most people who have any contact with him, he seems more like a series of social dysfunctions, but he’s really just very…unique. Very intense. But he’s tremendously kind once you get to know him. He’s not your average guy. And I’m not talking about his writing. Max is…different. He’s never talked to me much about his family, but over the years I’ve come to realize how badly his parents hurt him. They weren’t able to nurture their children. All they cared about was Max’s superior intellect and, I think, they pretty much blew Pete off completely.”