Mr. Personality (26 page)

The ugly slur jarred her. “Max! Just because a man’s gay doesn’t mean his opinions don’t count.”

“Is he gay?” Max lifted his brow. “Not that it matters, the gender of his preference is as insignificant as his thoughts on my work. I was referring to his inability to get it up for
anyone.”

With this last scathing remark, he sat down in front of the window and started to write as if nothing had happened.

Watching him helplessly, Nicole struggled to understand how the sane rational side of the man she loved had so effectively disappeared. At this moment, he seemed like nothing so much as the cold bastard she’d first come to New York to challenge.

* * *

“What do you mean there’s a problem with the book?” Max snapped. Standing in the office the next morning, the phone receiver pressed to his ear, he turned away from where Nicole sat working at the computer. Like he hadn’t had enough shit from that damned columnist. Bracketing a hand across his forehead, he tried to ease the tension band clamped there.

“Well,” Cynthia hesitated. “I…looked over the first two hundred pages you sent—“

“So, what if you did?” Max asked, his gut balling up as his voice sharpened. He’d sent the first half of the book over so she could get started on the editing, but he hadn’t done it without a qualm. This book was different. Hell, he’d been different writing it. Had he lost his touch? Was that fucking columnist right? He didn’t write this kind of book. He was already screwed, missing his deadlines, his brain refusing to work until just a few weeks ago. And the stuff he’d come up with. It was…so different. Was he cutting off his own legs letting this work go out?

“I’m a little…worried,” Cynthia said. “It’s very…different. We had an editorial meeting and, to be blunt, several people are concerned about how a story like this from you will be received. You know, you don’t usually write…upbeat, everything-is-going-to-work-out kind of things. This isn’t what readers look to you for.”

Behind him, he heard Nicole’s chair squeak, his brain registering the sound with a faint sort of consciousness. But the only thing that seemed real in a surreal moment was the phone in his hand and Cynthia’s voice telling him the book was shit.

Cynthia who had worked with him for years, the one person he most trusted with his work.

This book had sprang up in him differently over the last few weeks. Never had a work been so entwined with his daily personal experience. The words came to him all tangled up with his heated images of Nicole. As if the hunger he felt for her had entered his bones, he’d felt propelled by the positive energy that characterized her. The story had taken on a life of its own, all right, but not one he readily recognized. It was as if she’d infected him with new tender emotions that had eventually taken over the story. As he was writing it, he didn’t mind so much, but now….

Was the book crap?

“Listen,” Max said quickly, scrambling to regain his precarious balance. Cynthia was his friend. Yes, he respected his editor’s skill, to a point, but she was just as fallible as the rest of her profession, wasn’t she? Maybe he simply had to play this thing through. After all, he
had
no other story coming to him. “Listen, Cynthia. I told you this book was different. You assured me you trusted my judgment, so what’s the problem?”

“Well,” Cynthia hesitated, no doubt reacting to the blunt anger in his voice. “It’s the happy ending you outlined. Several people here think it’s kind of…sappy.”

He trusted this woman—this editor, Max thought, the concept revolving uselessly in his brain. Not often did he need a guiding hand with his work, but Cynthia had a solid, objective ear. She’d been his friend—and his partner in his work—for years.

Feeling rooted to the spot, he was aware that the vice around his head had spawned a buzz in his ears. It was shit. The entire book…his career…everything was shit. And his career was
everything.
It was him. Yet, once again he’d let his experience with a woman twist him inside out. So what if Nicole wasn’t married to his brother? The heated, sexual glow between them must have polluted his brain, only this time instead of cutting his brother’s heart out, he’d thrust an ice pick into his own.

“Are you there, Max?” Cynthia asked, her voice worried now. “We need to talk.”

“Yes,” he said, the hollow word seeming to come from someone else.

“Well…do you want to think about it and let me know?” she ventured. “We could meet at the pub, if you don’t want to come into the office.”

“Yes, I’ll let you know,” he said automatically, the breath harsh and strangled in his throat. What the hell was he going to do?

“Good, I’ll talk to you tomorrow or the day after, at the latest?”

Max carefully set the receiver in the cradle, the muscles in his jaws feeling locked. All these weeks when he’d thought he found his salvation, it had been a glittering illusion. Yes, he’d been writing, but he’d written dreck. When would he learn!

The real world wasn’t supportive and encouraging, it didn’t wrap people up in a glow of well-being. Reality sank its teeth into you and shook hard like a feline harrowing a mouse.

How could he have forgotten? Once again, he’d lost his perspective in a cunt…only this time, he’d given more than his dick to a woman. He’d almost given Nicole his career.

He looked furious, she thought, as he stood there holding his wrist with his other hand, his face dark with anger. His features contorted with rage, he seemed furious, all the sudden. Angrier than she’d ever seen him.

Max’s mouth twisting bitterly, his voice ringing in the small space, he said, “Yes, dammit, it can be that bad! Not every damned thing is rosy, Nicole. Sometimes—a lot of the times—things are
shit!”

With his eyes wild and dark, he was almost a stranger. She didn’t know what to do or say to him.

Her hands outstretched as if to settle him down, she said in a calming voice, “All right! Tell me what the problem is. Your editor—Cynthia?—thinks the book is bad? Has she actually read it? She’d have to be nuts not to like this book! It’s the best you’ve ever written.”

“What the hell do you know about it?” he roared. “Are you in the publishing field? Do you know any damned thing besides fucking high school level history?”

“Hey!” Nicole protested, jerking back as if she’d cut herself on an unexpected knife. Starting to get angry herself, she said, “You don’t have to be so nasty!”

“Who the hell are you to tell me how to behave?” Max yelled, the veins in his neck bulging.

All at once, she was reminded of his cruel nickname. In the time she’d known him he’d never seemed more ogre-like.

This couldn’t be happening, she thought numbly. She’d seen Max cold and cutting, but this white-hot anger—it scared her and made her mad, at the same time.

He was upset and hurting. She didn’t want to be angry with him, but he’d turned into a roaring fury.

“I’ll tell you who I am. I just happen to be the woman who’s in love with you,” she snapped, getting up from her chair to do battle. “And you don’t need to talk to me like this! If something has happened, we can deal with it without getting ugly and hurting each other.”

“I don’t give a shit about that!” Max yelled. “All this damned time, I’ve been thinking about your ass and your tits and how I want to
do
you night and day and, dammit,
caring
what you think about me and my brother and I’ve been pissing my life away. Just throwing it away and forgetting what it’s really about! I’ve been writing crap! All this
positive
shit! It’s a lie! People hurt! They deceive and cheat with no reason whatsoever other than they can! You were so upset about me messing with Alexa? It meant
nothing!
Not to her and not to me! This is how people are, Nicole. They’re sick and they’re hopeless and the only good moments are rare!”

“That’s not true!” she said on a sobbing breath. “Don’t say that about yourself and certainly don’t say it about me.”

“I’ll tell you what,” he raged. “This damned book is as much a caricature as
Bondage,
the book your father plagiarized. That book skewered business and corporate America, but this one takes on the really big deceit!
Love and fidelity in America!
This book illustrates that none of us know what the hell we’re doing when sex gets involved!”

His laugh rang out mockingly. “I see the end of the story now. The characters will learn the grim truths they’ve been denying and they’ll embrace a refreshing reality! We all want to fuck each other and you can’t trust anyone! Reality! We all have to live there sooner or later! I see it now. With a few revisions, I’ll have a book that’ll really sell!”

“Life is not like that,” she said, aghast at the idea of him ripping the soul out of the book she loved. “Real life is not like that. Love is not like that. Leave the book the way it is!”

“What the hell do you know about love or reality or my work, for that matter? You know nothing!” He stabbed a finger in the air in front of her. “I got so caught up in watching your ass and letting you lead me around by my dick, I almost forgot that your only job here is to type! Well, sweetheart, you can wrap your legs around me anytime, but don’t think that means you know crap about my work!”

Staring at him in shocked disbelief, Nicole struggled to calm the hiccupping sobs in her chest. What was happening to him? She
knew
this wasn’t Max. She couldn’t have been this wrong about him. What was happening here? Why was he acting this way? Only the worst kind of threat could have this kind of effect on a man.

His publisher hated the book? Knowing Max defined himself as his work, helped her to see the threat in that….

But even as she registered the thought, she couldn’t just forgive him, no matter what he was struggling with. How could she ignore the things he was saying? Wasn’t he the one who talked about actions and words having consequences?

“You’re scared!” she accused, blinking to clear the tears in her eyes. “You’re frightened of losing the only thing you thought you had. It’s easier to be angry than to be afraid. I understand that, but you can’t talk to people like this, Max. Especially not people you love!”

Max leveled her a hard stare, saying contemptuously, “Who ever said I loved you?”

* * *

This felt good, this feeling of getting back to being himself. He was right, he knew. Right about the book and right about the snare of his sexual desire for Nicole.

“When you return,” he said in a cold voice as she opened the door, “I’ll have a stack of full notepads for you to transcribe.”

Lifting her head, her face white and set, she met his gaze without a word. She wasn’t crying anymore.

Hands on his hips, he said, “Remember, I’ve still got a deadline and I’ve somehow got to pull a publishable novel from the pile of crap I’ve been writing. But at least I know the theme now and the ending.”

For a long, silent moment, Nicole held his gaze. Then, her hand on the doorknob, she said, “Goodbye, Max.”

The door shut firmly, quietly behind her.

Max stood there in the hallway staring at the door as if he could see through it. He envisioned her crossing the hall and pressing the elevator button. She’d ride down to the lobby and walk out the door past the doorman, turning left towards her hotel. Packing her suitcase would take a half hour or so and then she’d head to the airport.

Wondering if she had enough free credit on her card to afford the trip home, Max thought about all the bad things she’d tell her father and her friend…Claire?…about him.

Turning, he walked to the staircase and sat down on the lowest step. His heart still beat with the panic of nearly losing himself. His work alone had this kind of power with him and he’d come so close to losing his focus, but no longer.

Nicole was angry. As his panic subsided, he supposed any woman would have been upset. But she’d be back in a day or two and they’d go on.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“I can try,” Nicole muttered, pulling the blanket over her head. But as Claire’s knocking on the door continued, she gave up, throwing the covers back and stumbling groggily through the darkened apartment to open the door.

“Thank goodness,” Claire said, coming in and shutting the door as Nicole turned back to her bedroom.

But her friend followed her, opening blinds and curtains along the way.