Strokes of Midnight

by Tarr, Hope

  Harry let out a sigh. Pushing sixty-two, he’d been in the industry forty years. Knowing when to coddle an author and when to get tough was part science and part art. Max’s bullshit barometer was a lot lower than most of Harry’s top-selling clients. He didn’t need ego-stroking from his agent, his editor or anyone else. Like his fictional bounty hunter, Drake, he was a man’s man who appreciated it when you played it straight.

  And yet everyone, including Max, had a weak spot.

  “It’s time for a reality check, Maxie, and the reality is the sales numbers on your last royalty statement don’t look so good.”

  Max shrugged, though he felt far from nonchalant. A few years back he’d sold his family’s regional newspaper business for a minor mint, but writing novels was his first love, his dream job ever since he could remember. The income earned from his books was a secondary reward to the joy of sharing his stories with readers around the globe.

  “Everybody’s numbers are down. It’s a tough market. Unless you’re Michael Crichton or Dean Koontz, you’re bound to take a hit.”

  Harry mustered a sympathetic look, but Max detected a certain smugness lurking beneath. “It’s a shrinking market, no doubt about it, and it’s shrinking more all the time. First Generation X, then Generation Y and now Generation Echo and each cohort of kids reads less than the one before it. By the time you reach my age, you’ll be writing your books as blurbs and posting them on a Myspace page, the attention spans will be that goddamn short.”

  Max stuffed his hands in his coat pocket if only to keep them from his agent’s throat. “Come to the point.”

  “Gladly. My point is this—our entertainment-glutted society has created a survival-of-the-fittest publishing market. Only the toughest authors survive. These days toughness means tenacity and tenacity, Maxie, means flexibility. Look at this collaboration as your golden opportunity to grow your readership. Women are the number-one consumers in this country. Whether the product is a book or a car tire, they drive the purchase decisions, not men.”

  The old buzzard was playing him, no doubt about it. Determined to stand his ground, Max shot back with, “I didn’t become a writer to churn out trash I wouldn’t read myself.”

  Harry bobbed a vigorous nod. “Of course, of course, quality is our watchword, but this Rebecca St. Claire is supposed to be very good.” To Max’s chagrin, Harry picked up the paperback and tapped a finger to the quote on the cover. “Her latest received a very favorable review from Publishers Weekly. Pat tells me she has quite a following. Why not look at collaboration as an opportunity not only to broaden your readership but give Drake a little action between the sheets for a change? The poor bastard’s been living like a monk for the past two books now.”

  The remark hit home. Drake wasn’t the only one who’d been living like a monk. Over the past year, well-meaning friends had foisted one woman after another on him, begging him to start dating, start living again. The trouble was, Max wasn’t interested in dating. His ten-year marriage hadn’t been perfect, no marriage was, but it had been damn close to it. It might not be macho to admit it, but Max had liked being married. Still, he couldn’t see himself taking that step with just anyone, and Elaina was one hell of a tough act to follow. At thirty-nine, he’d more or less resigned himself to living out the second half of his life solo. If he wasn’t exactly a confirmed bachelor, he was well on his way to becoming a confirmed curmudgeon.

  Harry clucked his tongue. “Your personal life is affecting your writing and not in a good way. Killing off Drake’s wife at the beginning of the second book wasn’t the smartest marketing move.”

  Writing Isabel out of the story hadn’t been about marketing. It had been about survival—Max’s. When Elaina lost her battle with cancer, the second “Drake’s Adventures” book had existed only as a rough draft. It had taken Max months before he’d been able to look at it again. When he had, he’d known there was no way he could carry his wife’s fictional persona into future books, just as in real life there was no way he could imagine another woman ever filling her shoes.

  Harry’s voice pulled him back to the present. “I hate to bring this up, I know it is a sensitive subject, but the clause in your last contract—a clause you willingly signed off on—states that the last novel is a blind book, meaning the publisher, not you, calls the shots on content. If they want you to write a comic strip or pulp fiction, you are legally bound to do so. It could always be worse.”

  His hopes sinking like the Titanic, Max doubted it.

  Pressing his advantage, Harry added, “If it doesn’t work out, I give you my personal guarantee I’ll find a way to break the contract.”

  Max folded his arms across his chest, adrenaline firing his blood like rocket fuel. “In that case, find a way now.”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  Max stabbed his index finger into the air. “If it were easy, I wouldn’t be forking over fifteen percent for your commission. There has to be some loophole, and I expect you to find it.”

  Harry pressed a hand over his heart. “Now after all we’ve been through together, that hurts me, Maxie. When I discovered you, you were lucky if you could—”

  Max held up a silencing hand, in no mood to hear yet again how Harry had pulled his unsolicited manuscript from the slush pile of submissions and generously overlooked his shaky sentence construction and typo-riddled prose to focus on the star quality blazing beneath. Certainly Max was grateful for all Harry had done to build him into a name, but loyalty had its limits. If the coauthored book with the St. Claire woman tanked, Harry wouldn’t hesitate to toss him out like a week-old deli sandwich discovered at the back of the office fridge.

  Harry waved a hand. “Okay, okay, you win. I’ll get our literary attorney to look into it but I’m making no promises. In the meantime, do me a favor and at least make it look like you’re complying. Pat tells me Rebecca St. Claire is in town overnight. Why not invite her out for drinks, or better yet, buy her dinner? It is New Year’s Eve after all and something tells me you don’t exactly have big plans.”

  Max’s biggest plan for the evening was to catch a drink and light dinner at his hotel and turn in early. If he did stay up to see the ball drop over Times Square, it would be on a television screen. Still, he shook his head. “No way.”

  Pretending not to hear him, Harry held out the paperback. “Here, take her book with you. Skim a couple of chapters and be sure to tell her how much you admire her work, yada yada. Remember, Maxie, in life you win more flies with honey than vinegar.”

  Though Max hadn’t ever met her, Rebecca St. Claire was already turning out to be a fly in the ointment and a pain in his ass. He grabbed the novel out of Harry’s hand. “You’re full of good advice. Too bad none of it’s free.” Jamming the book in his coat pocket, he made a mental note to leave it for the hotel maid along with the tip when he checked out in the morning.

  Harry took off his glasses and scoured his forehead with the back of his hand. “You don’t pay me to lie to you. You pay me to tell it like it is. You’re not going to win this one, Maxie. This time you really don’t have a choice.”

  The last time Max had been told he was powerless to turn a bad situation around he’d been sitting in the oncologist’s office with Elaina. Despite a scathing protocol of high-dose chemotherapy, a strict macrobiotic diet and the best doctors money could buy, his wife’s cancer had not only come back but had spread. There was nothing anyone, including him, could do beyond making her last months as pain-free as possible.

  Remembering how helpless he’d felt then, how angry at everyone and everything, he punched a fist into the empty air. “No choice, huh?” Fisting his hands at his sides, he stormed to the door, shaking his head. “We’ll see about that, Harry. We’ll just see.”

  * * *

  Choices, choices. Standing in stocking feet in the shoe department of Saks, Becky did her best to ignore the captive salesman’s foot-tapping and throat-clearing. No doubt he was impatient to clock ou
t for the night and get started celebrating the new year, but she had a big decision to make, and she couldn’t afford any distractions. Should she take the fun and flirty Manolo Blahnik black leather ballet pumps with the adorable little bow on the vamp, or the ultrasvelte Jimmy Choo red satin sling backs topped off with stunning black and red crystal-encrusted brooches? The Jimmys cost almost twice as much as the Manolos, but then they were special-occasion shoes, which meant they’d last a lot longer. On the other hand, the pumps were a lot more practical. Solid black, they could easily double as day and evening wear, so she’d really be getting two pairs of shoes for the price of one—way too sweet a deal for a savvy shopper such as herself to pass on.

  It was a case of apples and oranges—or more appropriately, Cristal and Dom Perignon. Each shoe was so stylishly distinctive and yet so seductively hip, it was impossible to pick. For someone with Becky’s sweet tooth for designer foot candy, there was only one conceivable course of action.

  She dug out her wallet, surrendered her credit card, and uttered the words she would undoubtedly live to regret. “I’ll take them both.”

  What the hell, I’ll be the best-shod woman in the shelter. On her way out of the store, she picked up a Roberto Cavalli beaded bracelet bag from the accessories department and a red lipstick from the Clinique counter, both to go with the shoes. Wrists rimmed in shopping bag handles, she stepped out onto the Avenue. Across the street, the bronze doors of St. Patrick’s Cathedral offered a portal to a calmer state of mind. She hesitated, thinking about going in, but shuffling through the sanctuary with shopping bags didn’t strike her as particularly respectful. Instead she made her way over to Forty-ninth Street. Skirting Rockefeller Center, she headed toward the Avenue of the Americas. Given the number of large hotels in close proximity, she should have better luck catching a cab there.

  Several whizzed by, either already occupied or with their roof lights turned off. By the time she came up on the New York Hilton, the pointed toes of her boots were rubbing her feet raw and the wind had picked up, pulling the pins from her hair and sending rogue strands streaming over her face. Seeing a taxi that looked as if it might be slowing down, she shot a hand up into the air, hoping to catch the driver’s attention before he headed for the hotel pull-up.

  She was in luck. The cab skidded to a stop a half block up the street, tourists pouring out of the rear passenger door. Arms raised, she raced to catch it before someone else beat her to the punch.

  “Taxi. Taxi! Hey, wait up…oomph!”

  She hit the pavement hard, bags flying. Pulling herself up on bruised elbows, she blinked. Damn, but she was smack dab in the middle of a moveable feast of footwear, everything from top-tier designer shoes like the ones in her bags to sock-clad feet stuck into leather sandals so limp and scuffed they might have been left over from the seventies. Wow, a lot of people had really bad foot-care habits.

  “You walked right into me. Are you all right?” The deep New England-accented male voice apparently went with the pair of pebbled-leather penny loafers parked in front of her. The classic shoes badly needed a good polishing.

  “I…I think so. Oh…shit.” Eying a pair of muddy Nikes coming on at a brisk clip, she grabbed the tissue-wrapped Cavalli purse and tossed it back in the bag.

  Mr. Loafers swooped down beside her. “Here, let me help you.”

  Becky looked up and caught her breath, feeling as though the wind had been knocked out of her a second time. Blond and blue-eyed, her hunky Good Samaritan was probably in his mid-to late-thirties—and certifiably hot. Stealing a glance at his broad shoulders, she was pretty sure his khaki-colored trench coat was Burberry, not London Fog.

  “That’s all right. I think I’ve got—”

  A breath-stealing whip of wind ripped through, and Becky felt the snap of cold air on her crotch. Uh-oh. Looking down, she saw her caramel-colored knit dress was bunched at her waist, her peach-colored Victoria’s Secret panties on display for all to see. Oh…my…God. She snapped her legs closed, yanked down her dress, and grabbed hold of his arm as if it was a lifeline.

  Taken by surprise, Max brought the woman to her feet, amazed at how tiny she was, how light. Even wearing high-heeled boots, she barely reached his breastbone.

  Brushing herself off, she glanced down at their feet. “Oh, look, you dropped your book.” Before he could stop her, she picked up Rebecca St. Claire’s paperback and handed it to him. “You read romance novels?”

  Max knew his burning cheeks had nothing to do with the wind. “Not really. Not yet, anyway. A…friend passed it on and said it was worth having a look at. I’m not sure whether I will or not.”

  She pushed back her hair and looked up at him, and Max forgot all about the damn book. He felt the breath leave his lungs as though he’d just hit the pavement. Talk about a knockout. In one sweeping glance, he took in her wide-set brown eyes, porcelain-perfect skin and delicate features—delicate except for her full pink lips. An image of her head of maple-colored curls buried between his thighs, those luscious lips slipping over his cock, burst into his thoughts and he felt his erection rising like a sail caught in a stiff breeze.

  “Well, you should give it a try. You might be surprised. You might even enjoy it.” Was it his writer’s imagination at work or had her expressive brown eyes narrowed ever so slightly?

  Pocketing the book, he said, “Thanks, maybe I will.” Taking up her packages in one hand, he laid the other on her elbow and steered her away from the busy sidewalk to a public bench fronting a snow-covered patch of urban park. Setting the packages on the seat, he turned back to her. “You fell pretty hard. Are you sure you didn’t hurt yourself?”

  “Mostly my pride.” She reached behind to brush off her bottom. “I didn’t think this day could get any worse, but this brings it to a whole new level.”

  So she’d had a shitty day, too. That was interesting. Running his gaze over her, he decided she definitely wasn’t a tourist—too well-dressed and too obviously at home in the city. He could see her if not in Tribeca or Soho then certainly in one of the trendy up-and-coming neighborhoods in Brooklyn or the Bronx. Wherever she was going, she’d squeezed in a little shopping before heading there. He shifted his eyes to the two heavy Saks bags. Make that a lot of shopping.

  “Sometimes the next level really is down,” Max said, thinking of the book in his coat pocket.

  She nodded. “You can say that again.” She turned her attention to rearranging her jumbled purchases, maple-syrup curls blowing about her face.

  Max knew he should probably be on his way, but curiosity kept him hanging around. Gaze gliding over her, he found himself wondering what she wore beneath her three-quarter-length camel-colored coat—aside from peach panties, that is. The coat’s belted waist suggested a trim torso and softly curved hips, but beyond her small size it was hard to get a sense of her body beneath the outerwear.

  For whatever reason, he found himself confiding, “I haven’t had the best of days myself.”

  Her brown eyes stole a quick sidelong glance at his face. “If you don’t mind my asking, what sign are you?”

  Feeling himself harden—thank God for overcoats—Max wondered what the hell was going on with him. Since his first book had hit the bestseller lists, he’d come into contact with any number of women, from attractive news reporters to bikini-clad Playboy Bunnies, the latter when his book was excerpted in the magazine. Despite numerous opportunities, he hadn’t had sex in more than a year, closer to two. His need for release was something he’d gotten used to taking care of himself when Elaina was ill. After she’d passed, going to bed with another woman hadn’t even entered his thoughts.

  So why was he so completely turned-on by a shopaholic stranger?

  Catching her curious stare, he realized he hadn’t answered her question. At times like this, he’d give a lot for Drake’s smooth-talking tongue. “Taurus.”

  “The sign of the bull.” She gave a sage nod. “That makes sense.” Sexy lips pursed, she studied h
im as though he was a New York Times crossword puzzle she’d just begun figuring out. “What does your horoscope say?”

  He hesitated. “My horoscope? I…I don’t know. I never read it.” He considered astrology to be a bunch of New Age crap but since he’d probably pissed off his quota of people for one day, he held back from saying so.

  Expressive brown eyes settled on his face, bringing a funny fluttery feeling to Max’s stomach—and a warm sensation over the vicinity of his heart. “Well, I read mine every day online, the monthly and daily forecasts and then the end-of-year predictions. I suppose you could say it’s my guilty pleasure, only I don’t really feel guilty about it.” Slender shoulders lifted in a hint of a shrug. “I figure it’s free, so why not? I’m a Libra—you know, the scales, the eternal search for balance and justice and…well, partnership.” When she came to partnership, her breezy tone seemed to falter. “January is supposed to be bringing me fresh starts and dazzling opportunities in my houses of career and love. Transportation is another area apparently not going so well for me.” She shifted to look around his shoulder. “I guess I lost out on that cab, huh?”

  Bedazzled, it took Max a moment to absorb that last bit of information. He looked back over his shoulder, past a cluster of young people, tourists judging from their I Love New York baseball caps, sweatshirts and windbreakers, to the empty curb. “Looks like it.” Turning back to her, he realized he was fresh out of excuses to linger. “Well, I guess I should be getting on—”

  “Oh, no. No!” She stuck a hand inside the open shopping bag and brought out a tissue-wrapped red satin high-heeled shoe.

  Staring at the shoe and then back at her stricken face, Max asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m missing a shoe. The mate must have rolled out when I fell.” She unfurled the shoe from the paper and held it up for him to see, the sparkly beaded medallion on the top winking in the waning winter light. “What am I going to do? I can’t take them back like this, and I can’t go around wearing one shoe.”