Mr. Personality (13 page)

Max laughed, shaking his head. Back at the bar, a raucous group of customers laughed loudly at someone’s joke.

“Why do you care about my jones, or the lack there of,” he asked, deftly sidestepping the question as he took a drink from his glass.

“I’m your friend,” Cynthia claimed, the serious note in her voice belied by the twinkle in her eyes. “I may need to step in and protect you if this woman turns out to be a pain-in-the-ass or something.”

“I don’t think so.” His voice was dry. “Much though I love you, I don’t need you to run interference for my love life.”

“Ah hah!” Cynthia’s hand came crashing down on the table. “So, you admit it! You do have a major craving for her!”

Max sighed, still smiling. “It doesn’t matter, Cynthia. I need the book done more than I need to get laid. I’m not risking one of the best typists I’ve ever had—albeit a temporary one—just to get my rocks off. My jones will have to take a back seat, for a while.”

“Okay,” she said, lifting her mug. “But this typist isn’t your normal fling material. You better watch your step with her.”

“What are you talking about?” he demanded, faintly annoyed. For the first time in months, he knew himself to be back in control of his life. Nicole may have developed too much of a tendency to interfere in his life with the best intentions, but he still stood at the helm of his fate.

“Mmmm,” Cynthia looked at him through narrowed eyes. “A jones denied can be an awful, powerful thing. Besides, this woman seems…engaging. She’s interesting to you. That’s different for you.”

* * *

Tears streamed down Nicole’s face, moisture blurring her vision. Her fingers halted on the keyboard, she sniffed and wiped at her eyes. Max’s characters—his people—were so real, so vivid, she lost herself in them. She felt Lauren’s pain and Sam’s confusion. She found herself rooting for them to fight their way through the chaos they’d created for themselves.

It was as if she sank physically into Max’s story, so caught up in his powerful words she was hardly aware of typing them. Here she was working her third Saturday in a row—no breaks, no real time off—and she found herself so consumed in the story she didn’t even really mind so much. Here it was late in the day and she had hardly torn herself away long enough to eat.

Max was living a lie with all his cold sarcasm. There were incredible depths to him. The huge poignancy of his characters’ emotions were proof of how emotionally real he could be. Why did he fight to keep people from seeing that part of him?

Nicole heard footsteps in the hall and turned to look at him as he walked into the room. But her words of greeting died on her lips at the sight of him. He wore a midnight-dark suit with a shirt so white it hurt her eyes. In all the weeks of working together, she’d never seen him in anything more dressy than Dockers.

He was truly a damn good-looking man.

“We have to leave now if we’re going to be there on time,” he said abruptly, an aggravated expression on his face. His gaze sharpened as he looked at her. “Have you been crying? What’s wrong? Hell, if you’ll get up, we can go have dinner at this damn banquet and you’ll get to be around other people. Come on.”

Startled more by his clothes than by his unusually irritated manner, she said with annoyance, “I’m not crying because I haven’t been around people. And what are you talking about, go to what damn banquet?”

“Pete’s award dinner,” Max informed her as if she was an idiot for not immediately understanding what he was referring to. “The one you’ve been yapping at me about for days now?”

“You’re going!” Nicole exclaimed. “That’s wonderful. I know your brother will appreciate you being there—“

“If you’re not needing interpersonal interaction, why are you crying?” he asked, interrupting her without apology and abruptly changing the topic.

“Oh.” Nicole glanced involuntarily at the computer screen, feeling stupidly embarrassed. No matter how much she was moved by his words, she didn’t want to gush all over him like a ditzy fan. Instinctively, she knew how much Max hated that…and she had little desire to play that role with him, either. “It’s nothing. Sometimes I cry for no reason. PMS, probably….”

Ignoring her, he crossed the room and stopped next to her desk. Studying the notepad she’d been transcribing, he said in an odd voice, “The pothole scene? Why are you crying there? I would have expected that kind of response in the car wreck scene.”

“Oh, you would have?” she said, amused by his unconscious arrogance. Naturally, Max would be used to moving his readers to tears!

“Yes. Why this scene? The two primary characters are simply sitting next to the tree as a car in the background hits a pothole, what about that brings tears?”

Feeling strangely tender, Nicole took his arm and turned him toward the door. For such an intelligent man, he was such a clueless fool. Of course, she’d be moved by a scene in which the heroine helped guide the hero to make a choice that would forever alter his life and guide him past some major life potholes. “Never mind about the scene. You’re going to be late to the banquet.”

“But I’m interested in your reaction,” he said. “Besides, we’re both going to the banquet.”

“What? No we’re not!
I’m
not,” she disagreed. “I don’t have evening wear—“

“You look fine,” he said, his glance raking her simple black jersey dress. “This doesn’t require a ball dress. It’s just a dinner.”

“But there’s no reason for me to go,” she protested.

“Yes, there is,” he retorted. “Since you thought this was such a good idea, you have to come along and suffer the boredom and bad food with me.”

Snagging her by the hand, Maxwell walked out, dragging her with him.
An hour later, he’d let go of her hand but she found herself still trailing after him as he walked through a gauntlet of reporters and photographers. In his customary manner, Max ignored all questions yelled at him and made no attempt to smile for the cameras as they got out of the limo and went into the hotel where the banquet would be held.

As the photographers’ flashes went off in her face, all Nicole could think about was that she was now linked with Max forever. Hadn’t she read a quote from some famous person about how their photographs were kept on file for eternity? She could just imagine the caption under these photos fifty years from now in retrospective articles on his life.
Maxwell Tucker and an unknown woman….
Or, more likely, they wouldn’t even refer to her at all.

“Oh, Mr. Tucker!” Inside the hotel, a heavy-set woman in navy blue satin stood by the ballroom door, clipboard in hand. “We’re so glad you could come! We were thrilled when your publisher called to make a reservation! Your work is so wonderful! I’m sure your brother will be so happy to receive his award with you here to watch! The whole world will know—“

Standing next to Max, Nicole felt his impatient movement, but he didn’t interrupt the woman’s gushing. Waiting for her to finish, he simply asked for their table assignment, his words cool and courteous.

“Oh! Of course!” She studied the clipboard. “Yes, of course! You’ll be at table four, right up front!”

She beamed at him. “Right where your brother can see your face when he accepts his award.”

“No,” Max said incisively. “Don’t you have something further back? I know we made the reservation late. You don’t need to disarrange other people’s seats—“

“Oh, Mr. Tucker,” the navy blue satin woman said, putting her hand confidingly on Max’s arm. “Of course, you get priority! After all, it’s not every day we get a writer of your caliber at our events! And your brother is our honoree!”

“A seat in the back will do,” Max insisted, his face growing rigid. “Pete doesn’t need to look down and see me. It’s his night.”

The navy blue woman said, “Yes, we’re so thrilled for him!”

She raised a hand and waggled it at a man in a tuxedo one size too small, who stood just inside the ballroom. “Andy, here’s Mr. Tucker, Mr. Maxwell Tucker, you know! He and his companion are at table four! Right up front! Will you show them to their seats?”

“Of course,” Andy’s voice was nearly as reverential as the woman’s. “This way, sir.”

Next to Nicole, Max paused, his face an unreadable mask.

Succumbing to both her innate sense of politeness and a desire to keep him from drawing more attention to himself, she hissed, “Just smile and follow him, for heaven’s sake.”

Somewhat to her surprise, he responded to her order, although his smile wasn’t very convincing. Following the tuxedoed man, they wound their way through the table-filled ballroom. Seated at a spot in the very front of the room, Max drew a buzz of attention.

“Well, I hope the three of you have a good time…although the possibility seems ludicrous to me,” Max commented, seating himself with a hunted look on his face.

The reason for the strained expression in his eyes rapidly became clear.

Everyone wanted a piece of Maxwell Tucker. It wasn’t just the other eight people at their table—all in the publishing industry, apparently—people kept coming by from other tables. The first few times, Max stood up to politely respond to whoever accosted him. From that point on, he remained standing.

“Thanks,” Max said for the twentieth time as a woman gushed about his last book.

“And the end!” she exclaimed. “So powerful. I wasn’t the least bit surprised when you hit the New York Times list with that one.”

“Thanks,” he said again, his jaw looking tight as he stood next to the table, his hand encased in both of the woman’s. From three or four spots around the walls, the clicking and snapping of high-powered cameras could be heard.

“Maxwell Tucker,” a large man appeared at Max’s shoulder. “I believe we met at the Mid-Western Writing Conference several years ago. Good evening, sir.”

No hint of recognition showed on Max’s face. If possible he look even more forbidding than before. “I don’t think so. I never attend—“

“We spoke about the educational deficiencies of the masses,” the large man pronounced, his superior sense of himself written clearly on his broad face. “You’ll remember, we shared a cab to the airport afterwards—“

“No,” Max said. “I—“

“I missed seeing you there the last couple of years,” the man intoned.

“That’s because I
never
go to conferences,” Max inserted swiftly. “That’s how I know we’ve never—“

“Of course, I do understand why you’d want to avoid these gatherings.” The large man looked around him with contempt. “So many
small press
people….”

As the man droned on, Nicole sat at the table feeling as if she were in the middle of a vortex. The noise of the cameras clicking around them added another layer of sound to the jumbled uproar of conversation. Which ever way she turned her head, she saw avidly staring faces. Everyone was fascinated to have Max in their midst. For a moment, she felt a flare of pride. He was after all her boss and she got to spend every day closely observing the most amazing creative process. Max was phenomenal, really, when he wasn’t being sexually provocative or downright annoying. Although, she amended mentally, at his most sexually provocative, he was pretty phenomenal, too.

Just then her chair was thumped heavily from behind as a dark-skinned woman squeezed through the small space between the tables, clearly trying to get a closer look at Max. Nicole scooted as near to the table as she could, wondering if her ribs were going to be bruised by the constant flow of people passing behind her. She’d seen this sort of thing on television, masses of press and photographers surrounding a star, people grabbing at them, all vying for their attention. Max wasn’t a movie star, but flashes kept going off all around them as people took pictures. How on earth did anyone deal with this sort of thing on an on-going basis? Just sitting here next to Max, she felt somewhat overwhelmed.

“—No, I’m sure my publisher hasn’t contacted me about co-authoring a book with you,” he told the large man with increasing acerbity. “I also know we never discussed it and that’s because I’ve never met you before.”

“Of course.” Stalemated, the large man bowed in a dignified manner before straightening and sailing away through the crowded tables, blown on his way by his powerful self-assurance.

“Pompous bore,” Max muttered, finally seating himself again. “Of all the obnoxious—“

“Maxwell,” Nicole said in an under voice, “be quiet.”

He subsided, but his handsome face was as mask-like as she’d ever seen it. Was this how he wanted his brother to see him? She looked around. Where was Pete Tucker anyway? Shouldn’t they have been seated at his table? Glancing at the tables near-by, Nicole tried to spot the man who’d showed up that day at Max’s door. With people still milling through the tables and the wait staff scurrying to place dinners before the guests, she couldn’t spot Max’s brother.

Dinner seemed to last hours. Barely touching his food, Max’s silence seeming to grow colder with each minute. Nicole tried to make enough small talk with their table-mates to cover his silence. What on earth was the matter with the man? Yes, he’d had a rush of people to deal with, but they were leaving him alone now.