by Carol Rose
People lived through loss. Relationships broke up all the time…and she couldn’t really claim to have had a relationship with Max. More like a collision between a midget car and an SUV. Impervious to anything outside his own dark world, Max had probably barely felt the impact.
She felt flattened. Compacted.
After the first three days back home, she’d refused to let herself sleep all the time, but weren’t weekends for lazing around? Surely, she could be forgiven one morning in bed. But she wouldn’t cry, she told herself fiercely. No more tears, no more agonizing questions about whether or not she should have walked out—
The phone rang just then, interrupting her in the act of climbing back into bed. Searching for the cordless phone through two more rings, she finally located the silly thing and, picking it up, answered breathlessly.
“Hello?”
For one long second, there was only silence.
“Hello?”
“Nicole,” Max said, his voice familiar as nightfall. “I wasn’t sure I had the right number.”
“Hi,” she said.
No matter how searing the pain in her chest, she determined she had to keep the shakiness out of her voice. Hope could be a wicked, deceitful thing, she reminded herself quickly. The stupid, pink roses meant nothing.
Breathlessly, she waited to hear what he might say.
“Hi.” He sounded unusually hesitant. There were many words to characterize Max Tucker, but “uncertain” had never made the list.
“Hi!” she repeated, forcing enthusiasm into the slender syllable.
“I…I’ve missed you,” he said, all at once.
“Oh…well. Oh.” What the hell was she supposed to say to that, Nicole thought, holding the phone in a grip so tight her fingers hurt.
His manuscript was due soon.
Despite her determination to forget him, she had the specific date emblazoned on her brain. He must be getting desperate for a typist. The thought came slicing across her conscious. No matter what, she wasn’t going back. She couldn’t. Not with her job.
Hearing her own thoughts, she cringed. If it weren’t for the job, she would actually struggle with herself not to return to…New York. God, she knew she couldn’t return to him.
What had changed since she’d left him?
“How have you been?” he asked as the silence between them lengthened.
Nicole swallowed against a dry throat. “Fine. Good, really.”
“Good,” he said with that weird hesitation in his voice.
“Yes.” The word forced itself out through the tight muscles of her throat.
“Did you get the flowers?”
Closing her eyes, she said, “Yes.”
“Oh.”
A silence ticked slowly through the phone.
Unable to unclench her hands from the receiver, she sat on the bed, her body tensed to the point of cracking.
He didn’t know how to ask her to come back and help him finish the book, she thought. Begging wouldn’t come easily for Max Tucker.
Some stupid part of her wanted to jump in and help him, at least with the conversation, but she struggled against the urge. She couldn’t go back. Even if she’d come no closer to regaining her enthusiasm for her life, she couldn’t risk getting pulled back into his life. Feeding her hunger for him made no sense. Going back to him would be bad for her and bad for him.
“I guess,” she said, caving into her impulse to ease the conversation, “you’re probably working hard on the book. It’s due when? In a week or so?”
“Yes,” he said quickly. “Yes, I’m working. It’s—it’s almost there. Almost finished.”
Nicole envisioned the stack of notebooks piling up on the desk beside the computer. Switching the phone to her other ear, she found herself pressing her free hand to her chest as if to still her chattering heart.
“Good. That’s good.”
She couldn’t go back, she chanted in her head. Nothing was different. He wasn’t any more or less than the man who’d raged at her, demeaned and dismissed her…after she’d loved him so much. Nothing had changed since she walked out.
“I…really miss you,” Max said, heavy emotion in his voice.
Frowning into the blank space over her bed, she tried to decipher the nuance in his words. He didn’t seem angry, but beyond that, she couldn’t pick up anything besides…fear?
His work was everything to him, she knew. He needed to turn that book in on time. He needed it typed.
“Max,” she said, after a long moment. “Why are you calling?”
He didn’t answer immediately, as if her directness left him taken aback. “Just to say that. I miss you…badly and—“
“Do you have a new typist?” she interrupted abruptly.
“No,” he answered. “Not really. I’m calling you to—“
“I’m sorry,” she cut him off, the room gone hazy with the unshed tears in her eyes. “I’m can’t help you with it. I don’t think I can help you at all. Goodbye, Max.”
Fumbling for the button to disconnect the call, she heard him say her name and then there was silence.
She stood beside the bed, trembling, before blindly dropping the receiver in the direction of her bedside table. Unable to contain the pain coursing through her, Nicole crumpled onto her bed, muffling her tears in her pillow.
* * *
The line went dead, but Max held the phone to his ear for a long moment.
She thought all he cared about was the typing?
Glancing over at the computer desk and the stack of notepads waiting to be transcribed, Max lowered the phone.
“Shit!”
He was an incompetent fool, unable to take care of even the simplest task. For too long, he’d wrestled with this insane limitation.
Nicole didn’t want to be pursued for clerical purposes, he recognized with a grim smile. So he had to remove that problem.
Sitting down in front of the computer, he wiggled the mouse and watched the screen illuminate in front of him. Along the left side of the monitor ran several columns of icons. He’d hated this piece of machinery for as long as he could remember, but he was damned if he would let it control his hope for a future.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Max felt almost giddy. In front of him sat the results of a marathon night, a stack of clean, typed papers haphazardly stacked on the desk. The typing was rough, he knew. He’d never gotten the hang of the spell-check device. But the friggin’ book was finished and he’d done it himself.
Glancing at his watch, he saw it was four-thirty in the morning. He should feel exhausted by an entire night spent pecking away to get it done, but he felt exhilarated.
Free! He’d face the damned monster and whipped it.
Impulsively, he reached for the phone. It was…what time in Chicago? Nicole had to know! He had to tell her.
He didn’t need her for his typing because he’d done his own typing. For the first time in years, he didn’t need someone else…no one but her, and not even her to get his work ready for Cynthia.
He needed Nicole for something else entirely. He needed her in order to breathe. Somehow his heart couldn’t keep beating on its own.
Looking again at his watch, he did a rapid calculation in his head. New York was an hour ahead of Chicago, time-wise. If it was four-thirty in the morning here, then it was five-thirty where Nicole slumbered.
Surely, it wasn’t too early to call her. She was a teacher. They had to get to school on time.
Max swallowed, his hand trembling as he picked up the phone. She need to know, to understand, that he wanted her for herself, not for the job he’d first coerced her into…so long ago.
Punching in her phone number, he waited as the line connected and began ringing. His stomach felt faintly nauseous, anxiety jittering there.
On the third ring, Nicole answered, obviously only half-awake. “Hello?”
“Nicole,” Max said, his voice sounding strained to his own ears. “I need
to talk to you—“
His words stopped as he imagined her groggy and sleep-warm in her bed. In that instant, it seared him not to be there with her. He wanted so badly to crawl into her bed, into her arms and just hold her.
“I need to talk to you,” he said huskily, starting again.
“No.” The word came out like a shot, her voice as low and strained as his. “No. Please stop calling me!”
The phone went dead.
Startled, Max sat with the receiver pressed to his ear for several seconds, as though she might come back on the line. Finally putting it down, he frowned, the pit of his stomach now awash in acid.
She wasn’t letting him in, wasn’t letting him close to her. Like a door slammed shut, he could almost hear her flipping the deadbolts around her heart.
Fury swept over him at his own helplessness. No matter how much he knew he was changing, he couldn’t seem to get through to her to tell her. She was so fucking far away, no longer just down the hall.
Damn! What an idiot he’d been, not to have seen her value earlier and tell her how precious she was, how necessary to his very existence. Longing swept over him for the months he’d spent with her so close. The remembered scent of her, the sound of her laughter mingled with the television as she watched Johnna!
Had he come this far only to lose her?
No! He refused to let it be so. Dammit, after all his sterile days and bone-deep loneliness, he wasn’t accepting losing her.
Somehow he had to make her see he’d changed.
* * *
“Any possible lawsuit is my problem,” Alton insisted, his gnarled hand warm over hers as it rested on the porch railing.
Nicole regarded him with a troubled gaze. Going back to New York was out of the question, no matter how furious and demandingly distressed Max was, but she’d been worried lately about her father. Shirley seemed like a great person, but it wasn’t her job to pull Alton out of trouble.
Was it even Nicole’s job?
Max had thought she needed to let her father solve his own problems. Blinking suddenly to clear her vision, she tried to believe that Max could solve his problems. It did her no good to think about him raging around his apartment. No good to worry about him.
Thank God, he hadn’t called again. She knew enough not to accept a dead-end relationship, but hearing his voice hurt her. He’d made it very clear that she meant nothing to him. The pain of that thought still made it hard to breathe, no matter how many times she’d tried to force herself deal with it.
“Sweetheart, you’re got to stop worrying about all this,” her father insisted, his beloved face gathered into a concerned frown.
She shouldn’t have finally talked to him about how she’d left things in New York. Only, she kept thinking about Max and remembering his fury. His rage and his coldness. And the slow, sweet kisses that last time they’d made love….
Alton patted her hand. “I never wanted you to go to New York, even though I did let you go. I didn’t want you to.”
“It’s all right, Dad,” she murmured, conscious of the leaden weight of her heart in her chest. Breathing never seemed to get any easier. Would she ever get beyond this?
She put her other hand on top of her father’s. “It’s all right.”
“No,” her father shook his head, “I think I’ve let you do too much sometimes. Even when you were a little girl, you were a serious child. So responsible all the time.”
He reached out and wrapped his arms around her. Nicole let her head fall against his shoulder. He felt smaller now than when she was a child or perhaps she’d just grown. As a child, even when he forgot to pay the bills, he could always dry her tears. Now, with a chunk of herself torn away and the rest of her still struggling not to love Max, she cherished the Band-Aid of his concern.
“I love you, Dad.”
“I know,” he said, shaking her a little. “And I love you bushels. But you’ve got to quit worrying about this guy in New York suing me. I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t understand him, Dad.” Staring ahead, she saw again Max’s rigid face, flushed with anger and denial. He didn’t love her, he’d said, and even if he did, it didn’t matter. Few people were as insulated against their own feelings as Max Tucker.
And now that she was refusing to return and help him pull his butt out of the fire, she knew he’d be insanely angry. Mentally, she braced herself against the image. He’d be more inclined to sue her father now.
Nicole smiled at her father, the effort feeling tight. “I left him without a typist for his book and he was already behind schedule. He was…very angry. I shouldn’t have left.”
But she’d had to leave, she knew that.
“I figure you had your reasons for coming home when you did,” Alton commented with a surprisingly shrewd glance in her direction. “It’s really not your problem, honey. It may not be anyone’s problem. He’s probably just a rich man having a bad week.”
“You don’t know Max. If he doesn’t finish that book, he’ll….” She let her voice trail off, not knowing what to say. How could she be so concerned about him when he’d hurt her so badly? Had he ever given a damn about anyone or anything but himself?
Nicole forced her smile to widen as she looked at her dad. “Anyway, your problems are mine, same as mine are yours.”
The phrase came out naturally like the unfolding of a well-worn garment. How often had her father said that to her when she’d come home with childish troubles?
Her dad shook his head now. “I think I was wrong about that. Back when you were little your problems were mine, but my problems were my own. I never meant that you were responsible for my troubles. But this lawsuit thing has gotten me to thinking about how you’ve always jumped in to help your old man. Too much maybe.”
“No,” she said in half-hearted denial. Didn’t people need to help their parents? Nicole glanced at her father, trying to examine him objectively rather than with the eyes of a daughter.
“I’m a grown man, honey.” Alton hugged her tightly before letting her go. “I really can take care of myself. Heck, this lawyer of Shirley’s is a good guy. Now that I’m working for him, I figure he won’t mind giving me a little legal help now and again.”
Nicole was silent. What sort of attention would a lawyer give the legal troubles of the caretaker who looked after his summer cottage? The guy owed her dad nothing but his meager salary.
“Look at it this way,” her father said, “have I ever not gotten myself out of fixes? Well? I always manage something.”
Staring up at him, she had a flash of memory from before her mother’s death. Just a few words between her parents. Her mother chiding him, “Alton, you can’t always rely on your good looks and your luck.”
He had always had good luck. Ever smiling and over-flowing with generosity, people couldn’t help but like Alton. But sometimes his form of luck involved just shrugging off difficulties and moving on.
Her dad hugged her again. “Remember how I handled that big debt we had when the store closed? Jim, down at the bank wanted to take the house and even then I’d have still owed fifty thousand. But we made it work. Remember?”
They had lost the house, Nicole remembered with a tiny pang. She’d cried when she said goodbye to the old pear tree in the back yard, but even back then, she’d sucked it up and made the best of things.
“We moved out of that big old house. I found the cute little one on Pecan Street and eventually Jim wrote off the rest of the debt. We came out of it okay, just like we’ll do this time.”
“Yes,” Nicole murmured, seeing the comfortable sense of success on his face. She’d hated losing the old house. It wasn’t so much the failure of the store, but the sense of having lost her home so soon after losing her mother. Looking at her dad now, she realized he’d had less distress in moving from their home than she had. Maybe the same was true about Max’s potential lawsuit.
Her father’s style seemed to work for him, even if it wasn’
t her style. They’d lost the store and the house when she was a child…and they’d gone on and made a new home. It was as simple as that for Alton. From when she’d first learned of Max suing her dad, she’d wanted to protect his peaceful old age. But hadn’t her dad always protected his own peace? He rolled with life’s ups and downs, she saw now.
Slippery, evasive and ever-charming that was Alton. Some people lived a life of cut-corners and shrugged-off losses. On some level, she’d always known he was irresponsible, but that didn’t stop her loving him.
“You’re my sweetheart girl,” Alton said. “I hate seeing you sad. Don’t you worry about anything. I’ll take care of it all now.”
“Yes,” she said softly, as much to herself as to him. He did take care of things…in his own way.
* * *
“Are you comfortable, Mr. Tucker?” asked a young woman wearing a headset with a microphone. With her cat-eye frame glasses and her harried air of efficiency, she exuded business chic.
It was a chilly Tuesday in September in the city of Chicago, but the lights around the Johnna! set had the temperature up like a furnace blast.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Max responded, trying to ignore the damned butterflies in his gut. He’d known this wouldn’t be easy when he’d had Ruth phone the production company, but all the best things in his life were now inextricably linked with Nicole. Sitting at the computer, his hands over her keyboard, he’d realized that. He needed her, loved her. If he had to walk over the fucking hot coals to get her back, he would.
Unfortunately, dealing with the press felt just about that searing.
“You’re good? Great!” the production assistant said with a quick smile. “We’ll be getting started in just a few minutes. I’ll get you miked soon and they’ll want to check the lighting.”