Strokes of Midnight

by Tarr, Hope

  Max held the phone away from his ear, feeling sick inside. The very last thing he’d wanted his agent to do was cut out Becky.

  “Why am I not hearing champagne corks popping, huh? I thought you would be pleased.”

  “I’ll have to call you back. In the meantime, you should know that unless the screenplay deal is revised to include Becky as coauthor, there is no deal. Got it?”

  “But Maxie—”

  Max hung up. A month ago Harry’s news would have shot him clear over the moon but not so now. He would refuse, of course. In the interim, he didn’t want Becky to find out. She’d really pushed the envelope on her writing these past weeks, not to mention taught him a thing or two. She felt deservedly good about the book they’d sent in, and he didn’t want anything to wreck that for her. He’d fix things behind the scenes so that when the screenplay deal came around, she’d be a full partner. A Hollywood screenplay would open up a world of new contacts for them both.

  Another coauthorship would, of course, require they continue to spend time together. So far, neither of them had broached the sticky subject of when Becky was leaving—or when she might be coming back. He wasn’t really interested in living in D.C. but he remembered her mentioning her family was in Maryland. He didn’t yet know how important it was for her to stay near her relatives and friends. On the positive side, she no longer had her consulting career tying her to the area, but she still wasn’t crazy about cold weather or the countryside. Who knew? Maybe they’d split the difference and get an apartment in Manhattan? He could hold on to his house in New Hampshire as a weekend and holiday retreat. The dog would miss running off leash outside but then again the old guy didn’t move so fast or so far anymore. Becky had a cat, and Max wasn’t thrilled about that but he wasn’t allergic. Somehow they’d all learn to adjust.

  Max stopped himself when he realized he was picking out honeymoon locations and naming their two point five children. Before he planned any further, he should probably consult his sexy partner. The new year had brought a bounty of fresh starts and dazzling opportunities, not just for Becky but for them both. It was like coming downstairs on Christmas morning as a kid and having so many presents under the tree to unwrap you didn’t know where to start. Having too many wonderful choices was the sort of “problem” Max was happy to have.

  * * *

  Becky hung up the phone in her bedroom, Max’s betrayal ringing in her ears. After hearing him say “Are you saying you’ve found a way to cut Becky out of the screenplay deal?” she’d quietly replaced the cordless in its cradle. She didn’t need to hear any more to know that Max had sold her out.

  A few weeks ago, she wouldn’t have been all that shocked. He was the bestselling author, after all, and as an up-and-comer she’d heard the horror stories. It wasn’t unheard of for a big-name author to steal work from someone lesser known.

  But that was before they’d made love and it had meant something, before she’d poured her heart out to him about her failed relationship and stupid mistakes, before he’d wiped away her tears and kissed her lips and told her how much he loved her. If she hadn’t just heard him say the damning words with her own ears, she never would have believed it.

  Hearing footsteps coming up the stairs, she snatched up a book and moved away from the phone to the rocking chair by the window. He entered her darkened bedroom a few minutes later. “I’m sorry if that phone call woke you up.”

  Closing the book she was pretending to read, she said, “That’s okay. I was awake anyway. Who was it?” Out of the corner of her eye, she kept close watch on his face.

  “No one really.”

  “No one?”

  She turned to look at him, her heart turning over at the slick ease with which he lied to her just like…Elliot. Her former lover, she felt sure, wouldn’t hesitate to steal someone’s glory. It seemed that once again her judgment had failed her. Though they looked and behaved very differently, both men were cut from the same cloth.

  He shrugged, but she didn’t miss how he couldn’t look her in the eye. “You know telemarketers. There’s no getting off the phone with them. It’s probably just better to hang up.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “I’m going to drive into town for groceries. We’re down to our last egg and Scout’s kibble bag is scraping bottom. You want to come? Lunch at the truck stop, all the blue plate specials you can eat on me. Surely you can’t resist an offer like that.” Max winked at her, and Becky felt as though an invisible razor were slashing at her heart.

  “No, thanks. I think I’ll hang out here and take a bath.”

  He stopped in his tracks and turned around. “You okay?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “You don’t seem like yourself.”

  Look who was talking. “I guess these late nights are finally catching up with me.”

  He crossed the room to her, stopping behind her chair. “Okay, you rest up. I’ll be back in a couple of hours and then we’ll celebrate—really celebrate—okay?” He leaned in to kiss her, but she turned away at the last minute. His lips met her cheek instead.

  Pulling back, he looked down on her and asked again, “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Positive.”

  This was worse than her restaurant run-in with Elliot. She’d realized now she’d only been infatuated with him. She’d fallen in love with Max. And once again she’d placed her trust—and her heart—in the hands of the wrong man. Would she never learn?

  The crunch of Max’s car tires on the gravel drive had her adrenaline kicking in. She jumped out of the chair and rushed to the window in time to see him back out of the drive, leaving her own snow-covered car behind. Thank God she’d held on to her rental, otherwise she’d be stuck. Heart thudding, she turned her attention to packing. Fortunately she didn’t have much beyond the outfits she’d brought for her overnight New York stay and the few essentials she’d picked up over the past month, an extra pair of jeans and some toiletry products. The fancy shoes from Saks, including her Cinderella slippers, took up most of the space in her suitcase. Picking out one of the pair, she zipped up her suitcase and headed downstairs to Max’s study.

  He’d left his notepad by the computer. Tears welling, she bent over to write her farewell note.

  Max,

  Congratulations on the screenplay deal. Just so you know, you don’t have to bother getting your agent to work any behind-the-scenes deals to cut me out. I’m cutting myself out. I never want to work with you again. I never want to see you again—period.

  If the shoe fits…

  Becky

  Becky backed out of the room, leaving the note and the high-heeled red slipper on Max’s chair.

  Chapter 13

  Angelina strapped on her helmet and zipped the front of her Belstaff jacket before mounting her bike—a 1974 Ducati Imola 750 she’d picked up the day before. The vintage bike was her reward for another mission accomplished. It hadn’t been easy but she and Drake had reclaimed the rocket plans and gotten out of Toro Toro amidst heavy enemy fire and copious explosions. The papers now resided in a vault in an undisclosed and highly secure government location.

  She swung her leg over the side of the bike and revved the engine. It roared to life and seconds later she was zipping through the winding Venetian streets, long black hair lashing the arid Italian air like a dragon’s tail. Only, instead of contemplating her next erotic encounter and mystery-solving adventure, she found herself wondering about Drake. Where was he? Did he ever think of her?

  Was he…happy?

  * * *

  Wrong , wrong, wrong!

  Becky stared at her laptop screen through bleary eyes. She’d rewritten the first fifty pages of her new book so many times over the past month, she felt as if she’d come full circle. No matter which version of the manuscript she picked up, the prose was the pits. Falling in love had softened Angelina so that she’d lost her edge. Instead of planning her next solo adventure, she was preoccupied with missing
Drake. It was pathetic.

  Exhausted as she was, Becky had to get out of the apartment, if only for a little while. Maybe a jolt of caffeine would help. “I’m out of here,” she said to no one in particular.

  “Well, if you’re going to mope, then good riddance.”

  She swung around to find Angelina perched on the edge of her kitchen counter, long legs tucked beneath her. Wearing an oversized cashmere sweater with Diesel Super Slim stretch jeans, she was her usual fashion-forward self down to her Manolo leopard-print pumps. Still, something seemed different…missing.

  “Who’s moping? I was just going out for a walk.” Even though she had one foot out the door, she slipped back into her computer chair. They hadn’t had a creator-character heart-to-heart in a very long time. Judging from her muse’s pout, Becky had been neglecting her, among other things. “How have you been, by the way?”

  Angelina put on her game face and smiled. “I’m brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Where are you sending me on my next adventure, by the way?”

  “Honestly I have no idea,” Becky answered.

  The pisser was she really didn’t. She was burned out on planning exotic adventures for fictional characters. “Any place in particular you’d like to go?”

  Angelina let out a sigh. “I’m bored to death of Italy, France and England, and the Greek Isles have been done to death. I used to have a fancy for Malta but…I don’t bloody care, Rebecca. You decide.”

  Uh-oh. Angelina not having an opinion was a huge red flag that something must be really wrong. Becky gave her creation the once-over, struck by how much Angelina had altered in one month. Her upswept eyes looked more muddy than jade, there were dark, puffy circles beneath, and her waist-length hair lacked its usual luster. Becky recognized this as the face of a woman who’d come out on the wrong side of love.

  “If you’ll pardon my saying so, you don’t look so good. You’re missing Drake, aren’t you?”

  Angelina snapped up her head, but this once her curtain of hair failed to fall back perfectly around her shoulders. “Don’t be absurd, Rebecca. You’re the one who’s pining, not me.”

  “Is that so? There’s no point in trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I created you, remember?” If you couldn’t have a frank talk with your own fictional creation, what was the world coming to?

  The corners of Angelina’s sensuous mouth dipped down. “Why did you do it, Rebecca?”

  “Why did I do what?”

  “Ruin everything by giving me a soul.” Angelina tossed Becky an exasperated look. “Bugger! Things were good for us before Drake and Max came on the scene. We were free to come and go as we pleased, we could shop until we dropped, come in at any hour of the day or night, sleep with anyone we fancied—well, I could, at least. But no, you had to tinker with perfection. You had to open Pandora’s bloody Box and introduce soul mates into our lives, and now look what we’ve come to.”

  Becky hesitated. “Do you really think Max and Drake are our soul mates?”

  Angelina lifted one perfectly-plucked eyebrow and regarded her. “You ought to know the answer to that, Rebecca. After all, you wrote the book.”

  * * *

  I wrote the book, I wrote the book, I wrote… The butting against the top of her head brought Becky out of the dream. It took several seconds before she realized she must have fallen asleep at her computer. She lifted her head from her folded arms and looked straight into Daisy Bud’s amber-colored eyes. From her perch atop Becky’s computer cart, the cat leaned in and nuzzled her neck.

  Becky reached out and scratched the cute little white spot beneath Daisy’s chin. “Sometimes I wish you could talk—people talk, I mean. The whole spaying incident aside, I bet you’d be a pretty damn good relationship advisor. You always manage to get exactly what you want out of me while giving back so much more.”

  Back in D.C. and with Sharon gone home to Fredericksburg, Becky ought to be a lean mean writing machine. Instead she’d found it really hard to focus. She couldn’t seem to get Max out of her mind. The other day, she’d had the radio on when the DJ had played Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind.” She’d thrown it into the nearest wall and cried for a solid hour.

  From a career standpoint, though, everything seemed to be working out for the best. Thrilled with the coauthored book, Pat had offered her a contract for a spin-off series on far better terms than anything she’d had previously. Provided she could meet the demanding deadline schedule—and without Max in her life, what else did she have to do but write?—Becky would be a guaranteed bestseller in her own right. She wouldn’t need Adam Maxwell any more than he apparently needed her.

  The problem was she’d liked having a partner, or rather, having Max for a partner. Working on the next Angelina book without him and his character was turning out to be hell on wheels. No matter how hard she tried coming up with a new love interest for her heroine, she simply couldn’t create one who was Drake’s equal. No matter whether the hero in her book was blond or dark haired or blue eyed or brown, in her mind’s eye he was always Drake in disguise—and that meant he was always Max.

  Padding into the kitchen, she poured kibble into Daisy’s bowl and considered fueling up, too, starting with coffee. Her Starbucks fix was obviously overdue.

  She went into her bedroom, changed into better clothes and tidied her hair. Still thinking about the dream, she stuck twenty dollars and her key in her jeans pocket and headed out into the hallway. In the past she’d used Angelina as a means to experience life at arm’s length without having to dive in and really live it. She’d let her creation have all the adventures, all the fun that she was too chicken to go after. Maybe it was high time she cast herself as the leading lady, the heroine, of her very real life.

  One of the first things she’d done after coming back from New Hampshire was to dig out her Christmas wish list: Become bestselling author. Take trip to Ireland. Go on motorcycle ride. Go to animal shelter and find feline friend for cat. Save up down payment for house. Meet man of dreams and fall in love…”

  She supposed she could cross the last one off her list. She’d met and fallen in love with Max. Too bad she’d forgotten to stipulate that he be trustworthy. She couldn’t do much about that, but she had made some progress on the other items on her list. The other day she’d set up a meeting with a travel agent to book a trip to Ireland for June. She’d started saving in earnest, including putting herself on a shoe diet. Not that she regretted splurging on her red satin “Cinderella slippers” for even a minute. The shoe she’d kept resided in its Saks box at the back of her closet. She wondered what Max had done with the one she’d left behind. Thrown it out, she supposed. The thought not only depressed her, it made her heart hurt.

  Becky took the hall elevator down to the lobby and exited through the double glass doors of the main entrance. The first person she saw when she stepped outside was the college kid who delivered her Thai food on Friday nights. Since she’d seen him last, he’d toned down his dyed ink-black hair to a more natural nut-brown and pared his body piercing ensemble to a single safety pin stuck through his left eyebrow. Goth-style aside, he’d always struck her as a decent, hardworking kid. He stood on the apartment pull-up next to a parked motorcycle talking to a pretty blonde. They each wore thick, black leather biker jackets and had helmets tucked beneath one arm. Judging from the silly smile on his face, he liked this girl a lot. Becky bet she could slip by without him even seeing her.

  She started walking when the glimmer of sunlight striking chrome stopped her in her tracks. Go on motorcycle ride. The hulking Harley seemed like her modern-day equivalent of a knight in shining armor’s white horse.

  Becky had never been on a motorcycle in her life, not the vintage Italian one Angelina favored or the kid’s Harley. Like her knowledge of foreign countries, the little she knew about bikes came from the Internet or books, not firsthand experience. Maybe, just maybe, it was time to change that.

  Chalking up her courage, she turned back and
walked up to the edge of the sidewalk. The couple stopped talking and stared at her as though she was a creature newly landed from outer space, which was about how she felt—odd, out of step, and yes, old.

  “You probably don’t remember me, but I live here in apartment 812.” She jerked a hand to indicate the highrise behind her. “You deliver my Thai food.”

  The kid pulled his gaze away from his girlfriend. “Sure I remember you—shrimp pad thai and a side of tod mun.”

  God, I am so predictable. Her delivery order struck her as a metaphor for everything wrong with her life.

  “Yeah, right, that’s me.” She really ought to move on, but she couldn’t, not yet anyway. “Is that bike yours?”

  As conversation starters went, hers was pretty poor. Obviously the bike belonged to him. Why else would he be standing next to it wearing full gear? Duh!

  “Yeah, I just bought it. I’ve been saving for a couple of years now.”

  So that’s where her five-dollar tips had gone. Well, at least he’d had a goal and the determination to make it happen. Good for him.

  She looked from the kid to the bike and back at him, her heartbeat kicked up to a rapid fire pace. “I know this may come off as a weird request, but what would you say to giving me a ride on the back of your bike?”

  His eyes widened. “Seriously?”

  She answered with a jerky nod. “Seriously.” She’d apparently already lost her mind, but she hoped he’d say yes before she lost her nerve, too.

  He exchanged glances with the girl and then turned back to Becky, expression sheepish. “I don’t know. We’re supposed to catch the matinee of Lawrence of Arabia at the Uptown.”

  The girlfriend chimed in with, “The actual one with Peter O’Toole—back when he was really hot,” she added.