Man things aren’t a joke with Max. He leans in toward my ear. “I can’t tell you what a perfect Reno you’d make.”
Everybody turns and watches us as we’re seated next to the window. A few people come up and say hi to Max. He introduces me to some, but not to others. The ones he introduces me to, he always says something like, we go way back.
“You make a point of saying we go way back,” I observe between interruptions.
“That’s for anybody connected to the press or blogs who might conclude you’re a Max Hilton girl, and that they can get all sorts of access. What we’re doing isn’t PR.” He picks up the menu. “You’re the opposite of business.”
“I’m pleasure?” I say.
He gives me a look, that frank, open face of his that never appears on the ads. “You’re my real life.”
Heat steals over my face.
“And pleasure.”
I snort. “Touché.”
His half smile appears. The waiter comes up, but I don’t want to take my eyes off Max and his half smile. He covers my hand with his and orders two New York teas and champagne, and the waiter leaves.
“Aren’t we gonna eat?”
“The tea is sandwiches.”
“No comment,” I say.
“What?” he asks.
“So all of those models, you don’t go out with them?”
“The models are my co-workers. Lana Sheffidy is one of my oldest friends. She’s a good friend who’ll show up places. Business. I forget that everybody just doesn’t know that. Mia, tell me you don’t think those ridiculous shots are real life.”
“I don’t think they’re literally real life.”
“A woman in a Givenchy gown gazing at me as we stand in the ruins of the Coliseum? That is not what a date with me looks like.”
“Speak for yourself. That’s what always happens on my dates,” I say.
He gives me a look. “Come on. What do you do on dates? Or just for fun. Like with your friends. Where do you go?”
“What do the little people do?” I tease.
“I’m serious. I want to know.”
I shrug. “Order pizza and watch a movie. Or, for going out, there’s this old-school bar down on 47th that a lot of my gang goes to. They have this amazing juke box and you just sink into these booths. A lot of theater people go to it, and there are certain nights where, if you’re there after midnight, you can find out that, yes, these tables are sturdy enough to dance on.”
“I love it.”
“It is. Or we go to shows. A lot of comp tickets floating around. There’s also, you know, the park. Park dates.”
“Yes,” he says.
“Is this what your dates look like?” I look around. “The Plaza and Four Seasons?”
“I usually go low key,” he says. “But I feel celebrational.”
I’m stupidly excited and trying not to grin too big. I feel celebrational, too.
He adjusts his fork. “Parker apologizes, by the way.”
“So he thought it would be…funny?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. It was messed up, and he should’ve told me.”
“I can’t believe you guys stayed friends all these years. I bet he’s a good business partner—he always was kind of an operator.”
Max beams at me. “He still is. You have no idea.”
“Remember when he was always starting those wacky businesses he’d try to get everyone involved in? The dance mob birthday business. Or that guerilla serenading YouTube channel? Getting kids to serenade jaywalkers and things?”
“He almost got hit a few times off that. He’s lucky he didn’t.” We laugh about Parker businesses.
The scones come. They’re warm, served with clotted cream. I nearly die of bliss.
“Right?” he says.
“They’re almost as good as a pork roll sandwich from Mort’s Diner back home.”
“Mia.” His tone is warning.
“What? Have you ever tasted one?”
“Are you talking about that fried ham stuff that you get in a can? Tell me you’re not.”
“Taylor ham, and it’s amazing. Though these little cucumber things? Giving the pork roll a definite run.”
We try the different sandwiches. It’s like we’re right back how we were that summer. The way we go together, it feels like we were forged in the same oven, pieces from the same set that got separated, and now we’re back, but better, because Max is all grown up, and there are exciting new sides of him.
The song changes. It’s background classical music, but it’s not background-ish for Max. It’s a song he once played really well. I secretly watch his expression. He probably has opinions on this version. I can see the knowledge in his eyes, following the notes. He could play it backward and forward. Back then, anyway.
“Why’d you quit, Max? With the music? Not that you haven’t done obnoxiously well for yourself and all. But you were so good and you left it behind.”
“You said I attacked the keyboard like Terminator.”
“That’s not answering the question.”
He turns his champagne glass in the light, studies the bubbles. “It wasn’t for me.”
“You had to get to the most elite level of musicianship to realize music wasn’t for you?”
There’s a beat where I think he might not answer. Then he says, “I always knew I hated it.”
The admission hits me in the gut. I think back to him bent over that keyboard, working so hard. Did he hate it all that time? “I’m sorry,” I say, bewildered. “You hated it?”
“Ferociously.”
“Something that you did like eight hours a day.”
“You’re supposed to be miserable in high school, right?” he asks. “Isn’t that a rule?”
“I kind of can’t get over it. You were in a performing arts school and you hated performing.”
“Not all performing.”
Oklahoma! I think it like it’s a lost thing. Maybe it is. “You liked Oklahoma!.”
“I loved it. That summer…I’d always loved that music. I mean, I never had the chops for doing it professionally, but I loved it. Maybe that’s part of why I loved it. And then for them to put us together.”
“Why didn’t you just go over to the theater side? Max, you were having fun up there. They probably would’ve let you.”
“My folks would’ve pulled me out of that school so fast. You don’t know. I could’ve been snorting coke and making bombs, and they wouldn’t have pulled me out as long as I was performing at an elite lever, but show tunes? The seventh ring of hell.”
“It’s pretty far from Mozart, I guess.”
“Classical music is the Miller family business.” He tips his silver butter knife this way and that, playing with the reflection. “If I’m honest, I liked what came with the child prodigy status. It was an instant place on top of the food chain.”
“Like being star quarterback,” I say. “You get all the popularity for being good at some game.”
A group seems about to approach us. Max uses his knife to cut a scone, and the group fades off. “See that? They usually won’t talk to you if you have food in front of you. Unless they’re complete assholes. FYI.”
“You played angry.”
He spreads cream onto the scone. “Yes, and like a robot. Without feeling. Terminator, you said. You heard it and you were right.”
“I didn’t say that to be cruel.”
“This might sound a little strange, but it meant something that you saw it. You saw me. It made me feel less alone.”
19
The world is your cocktail party; never forget it.
~THE MAX HILTON PLAYBOOK: TEN GOLDEN RULES FOR LANDING THE HOTTEST GIRL IN THE ROOM
* * *
MAX
I hit the button for my penthouse, relieved to have Mia all to myself without the eyes of the world on us.
The elevator doors shut and she leans back, hands on the rail behind her, lumino
us in her pink dress.
“Nice elevator. There’s just one thing missing,” she says. “What could be missing?”
I go to her and cage her with my arms. I love her sassy smile. I love that she gives me shit about the Max Hilton lines.
“What could it be?” she teases.
I shut her up with a kiss. She grabs my shirt, pulls me in hard. I’m stunned all over again at how well we fit. The more time I spend with her, the less I want to let her go back to her apartment, her job, her world.
The door opens and we’re there.
She turns. “So this is where you live.”
“When I’m in the city.”
“Ah, of course.” I can hear the smile on her lips as she says it. More Max Hilton mockery, but she likes that I’ve built this. Mia loves competence. She always has.
I hang behind and watch her look around. “Where are the giant freak lips?” she asks.
It takes me a moment to realize what she’s talking about—a massive posterized image of lips that was above the fireplace once upon a time. My designer hung it as a favor to the artist for the magazine shoots.
“Somebody is obsessed with me. Did you collect all of the articles ever written about me?”
“You’re inescapable,” she says. “You’re even on the sides of the busses? Somebody loves his own face.” She goes to the window and peers out over the park.
I go up behind her. I move her hair aside and kiss her neck. “I think you love my own face.”
She turns around in my arms. Her look says, aren’t you so full of yourself? It also says, I do love your own face. She kisses me and pulls away to continue her self-guided tour around the living room.
I love the sense of ease between us. I never brought women home into my private spaces. Never introduced them to my driver or made confessions about the music.
But no woman is Mia.
She runs her hand over the nubby blue couch and the antique lamp.
“This isn’t at all what was in the magazine. It’s so much more…” She turns around and looks at the painting above the fireplace. I bought it at a flea market in Amsterdam. It’s a crow in a tree, done in bold, heavy black strokes on a bright blue background. It’s not at all realistic, but there’s something I just love about it. I want her to love it, too.
“It’s so you,” she says.
“A crow?”
“It’s so straightforward, just the lines of it. Energetic and watchful. People think crows are carnivorous and mercenary, but in truth, they’re fun and smart and playful.”
“Are you saying people think I’m carnivorous and mercenary?”
She looks at me strangely. “Maybe.”
I don’t love that she’d say that. We’ve been trying to modulate that image lately. Not enough to defang the brand, but corporate responsibility is a thing with me these days. It’s a lot of what Catwalk for a Cause is about.
She moves on into the dining room. “It looked so different in the Architectural Digest article. This is much more human.”
“I’m still on the carnivorous and mercenary thing.” She looks thoughtful, as though she has something more to say.
I think she’s about to tell me, but then she spots the hot tub on the porch. “Look, Max, there’s steam coming out of there.” She points to the corner of the cover where steam leaks up. “Is that thing functional in the wintertime?”
“Maybe.”
“That is so decadent.”
“Decadence is the spice of life, baby.”
She gives the Max Hilton line an eye roll and I go to her, slide a knuckle along her jaw, down her neck, down the smooth silky bodice of her dress. I’m imagining her naked in there. “It’s amazing in the winter. You want to go in?”
“Would we need suits?”
“I have a no-suit policy for you.”
She gives me a sassy smile. “Oh really?”
“I’m sorry, but it’s a strict no-suit policy that I enforce in only the harshest way.” I slowly unzip her dress, kissing my way down, unwrapping her like an erotic confection. “I’m afraid I’ll have to enforce it.”
Her breath speeds. I love that I can affect her this way. I plant kiss after kiss along her spine. My cock is rock hard as I push her dress down in front of the panorama of the park. Her whole body shudders as I pull down her panties, get her to step out of her clothes. “Bra off,” I grate.
She takes it off and flings it in true Mia style. It lands on the couch.
I stand, running my hands over her hips. “So beautiful.”
She gives me a wicked look over her shoulder, and I’m so overcome with affection, I forget how to breathe. Just her standing there naked is all my fantasies from that lost summer coming true, but so much better. She goes to slip off her shoes, but I stop her. “No, no, no, no. Keep the shoes on,” I growl.
“I can’t wear shoes in there.”
I wrap my arms around her from behind, slide my hand down over her pussy. One stroke and her whole body quivers. In her ear I whisper, “Bad news. We’re not gonna make it that far.”
She gasps as I stroke again.
I hold her more tightly. “You’re so wet for me,” I say. “I love how you get wet for me so fast. Almost as fast as I get hard for you. Almost.” I finger her some more, waiting for the feeling of her melting in my arms.
“See that table over there? I’m going to bend you over that table, and you’re going to let me do what I need to do.”
She turns all the way around now, with a hazy look in her eyes. “Yeah?”
I lower my voice. “You want me to describe how I’m going to fuck you?”
“Yeah, Hilton.” She pushes my jacket off my shoulders. “I want the details.”
I kiss her the way she seems to like—soft and slow, though there’s nothing soft and slow about how I want to take her.
“I’m going to hold your hair in my fist and press you right onto that table. It’s cool marble, but you’ll warm it up with your sweaty little body, because I’m going to be working you so hard.”
I slide my hands over her chest, her hips, learning her curves, the silky warmth of her skin.
“I’m not just gonna fuck you. I know from last night you like a little something extra over your clit, and it’s the perfect position for that. I’m going to make you come so hard you’ll forget how to meow.”
“That’s a tall order,” she whispers huskily.
I hoist her up; her legs lock around my waist like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like she was always meant to be flush against me. I carry her over to the table and put her down, threading my fingers through her soft curls before I fist her hair at the nape of her neck. Her eyes go unfocused as I tighten my grip.
“Undo me,” I whisper.
I kiss her while she fumbles at my pants. I want her hands on me again. I loved the reverent way she touched my cock last night. The way she kissed it.
She takes me in her hand and squeezes.
“So good,” I whisper. “That’s how hard I am for you. I’ll get even harder once I’m inside that pussy of yours. I’m gonna make you come so hard, your knees might give out. But I’ll hold you. I need you upright for how I’m gonna do you.”
I spin her around. There’s nothing gentle about the way I press her down on the table. She makes little begging sounds as I push aside her folds, press one finger in, then another. “This pussy,” I grate. She angles up her hips as I press myself in. As I lose myself in her.
She cries out. I slide my hands all over her back. “I gotcha, baby.”
I cover her, fucking her. I reach around and do her, lost in the sounds of her pleasure. Lost in her. Never have I lost myself in a woman so completely.
* * *
SOME TIME LATER, we’re in the tub. I have her foot. She has the view. “Well-fucked is a good look on you,” I say.
Her smile gets me in a way I can’t describe. Her smile draws me to her. Across the room, across the bed, across the da
rk bubbly water. I slide my hand up her calf, smooth and warm.
“You’re just saying that because I’m naked,” she says.
“So not true.”
She reaches over the side and grabs one of the Italian chocolates a design house sent over. She closes her eyes and moans as she lets it melt in her mouth.
“I’ll never get sick of watching you enjoy things.”
“That works because I’ll never get sick of enjoying things. Especially you things.”
I massage the ball of her foot.
“You are spoiling me,” she says. “You are ruining me…”
“For other guys? That’s the plan.”
The silence stretches long, punctuated by horns honking below. The ambient noise of Fifth Avenue.
“Have I modulated my mercenary carnivorous image with you yet?”
She opens her eyes and gazes at me from across the steam. Like she has a thousand thoughts. What?
“We’re actually working on it. Not to change the Max Hilton persona, but adding a corporate responsibility dimension.”
“I’m not talking about dimensions of your persona, exactly.”
Something inside me twists. “What?”
“Well, the book. The pickup book.”
“What? The book? It’s ancient history. I don’t think anybody even reads that book anymore.” I move onto the next toe.
“Oh, people read the book. People take it to heart. It’s not good. It teaches guys how to be jerks.”
This gives me pause. The book has always had haters. I tend to ignore them. “It’s designed to help awkward men have confidence.”
“I don’t know if it does that, but it definitely teaches guys who are stupid jerks how to be smart jerks. And they go out and screw with women.”
I frown. What happened to her? Low and slow through grit teeth, I ask, “Did somebody mess with you?”
“Not with me, but my roommate Kelsey? Her boyfriend picked her up with your techniques. And they ended up living together and it turned out that the entire time, he was using your techniques to pick up a zillion other girls. While they were living together.”
“That is awful. It’s an awful thing to discover something like that.”
Breaking the Billionaire’s Rules Page 16