Mr. Personality (28 page)

* * *

Her face as strained as her voice, Cynthia said, “Max, I don’t think Nicole is coming back. You’ve got to let me find you another typist. I mean, I know you cared—care—for Nicole, but we can still finish the book.”

“I’m working on it, but don’t bother getting another typist. She’ll be back.” Sitting in his kitchen, across the table from Cynthia, he refused to accept what she suggested. “Nicole made a deal with me. She left without the signed release for her father. I can still sue him. She knows that. Getting her damned father off the hook was the only reason she came here in the first place. She’s not going to quit without covering his ass. It’s what she’s about.”

Drumming his fingers on the tabletop, he tried not to linger on the possibility that Nicole’s determination to get her father free was in any way connected to her sexual involvement with himself.

“Max,” Cynthia said, her voice almost painfully reasonable. “I realize you feel like Nicole owes you—“

“Of course, she doesn’t owe me,” he said irritably. He didn’t know why it pissed him off to think of her having sex with him to get her father off the hook. It wasn’t like he’d declared any emotional attachment to her or expected any in return, but the thought of her having a motive other than lust…it rankled. She’d wanted him. He knew that. From a purely logical perspective, he supposed it shouldn’t matter what she felt or why she’d had sex with him, but it did.

“She doesn’t owe me anything, but we had a deal,” he said, his words angry. “It’s as simple as that. We had a deal and she’d better damn well hold up her end of it.”

Setting his coffee cup down on the counter with a thump, he got up and left the room.

* * *

“Ms. Cavanaugh, are we really going to have a test Monday?” Josh, a tall ninth grader asked in a half-placating, half-protesting tone.

“Yes,” Nicole said mechanically. “The more small tests we have, the better you guys tend to do. That way if you forget to read a chapter or if one of our topics doesn’t hold your attention, you have a chance to pull up any low grades.”

“But this is the first week of school,” Deondra pointed out, her shiny, slender braids dancing in protest.

“I know. Seems harsh, doesn’t it? But we have to get to work sometime. Summer is over,” Nicole kept her voice pleasant despite her growing headache. She usually looked forward to starting each school year. Fresh faces and new beginnings were normally exciting, but this year she’d left her whole heart in New York when she returned home to Chicago.

She’d always tried to be practical and realistic, but Max…got to her. He wasn’t a troubled student or a lost kid off the streets. He was the man she loved and, try as she might, she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

The bell rang just then, catapulting her students out of their desks. With the thunder of cattle stampeding, they herded toward the door, backpacks hanging precariously off their shoulders.

“Remember,” she called out. “Chapter One. Read it and look over the discussion questions.”

As the kids straggled out of the room, she began loading her own homework into her bag. She loved teaching, particularly these gangly adolescents who were just facing life. But sometimes she hated the homework.

With great effort, she had pulled herself together in the last few weeks and gone back to work, telling herself the sooner she returned to her old life, the sooner she’d recover. Grimacing at her hollow-eyed reflection in the mirror each morning, she layered on the make-up and forced herself to fake it. The kids deserved that, at least.

Every day she came home exhausted from hours of determined smiling. But she knew she had to go on.

Usually, she’d crash on her couch and watch the tape of
Johnna!
she recorded each day. Tonight, however, she was scheduled to eat dinner with her father and his new girlfriend.

Swallowing a Tylenol from the bottle in her desk, Nicole made her way out to her car and drove to the house she’d grown up in.

This dinner tonight with her father and his girlfriend was part of the recuperation process. Food held little interest for her lately, but she knew she needed to meet Shirley and see what her father had gotten himself into.

Fifteen minutes later, she found herself wondering if she’d just met the perfect woman for her father. It was a weird sensation.

“You must have had a lot of fun in New York,” Shirley said enviously. “That’s a big, exciting city.”

Shirley McCleary, on the shady side of sixty, had an improbable head of dark brunette hair and a permanently cheerful smile. Nothing like the bimbos in her father’s past, the woman radiated solid good sense and healthy practicality.

“I didn’t get to see as much of New York as I’d like,” Nicole confessed, trying to covertly assess her father’s relationship with his new girlfriend. “Mostly I just typed.”

“You told me you were doing some sightseeing,” Alton reminded her with a gentle, chiding smile, as tolerant of her fib as he was of most human foibles. She loved her dad so much. Over the years, he’d given her a fair number of reasons to think he needed a guardian angel. But she found herself wondering now how much of that was her own desire to shield him and how much real ineptitude on his part?

Max thought she protected her father out of her own need to be needed.

Just the thought of Max brought a catch to her breathing. Feeling her smile waver, Nicole fought against the thickness in her throat while she tried to think of something to say to end the awkward pause in conversation.

“I was pretty busy all the time I was in New York,” she managed to say in a constricted tone. When would she stop thinking of Max silhouetted against his window, his face intense as he concentrated? When would she stop remembering his arms around her?

“Well, we just got started,” Nicole said. “But the kids are good. You know, as good as any kid between the ages of fourteen and eighteen.”

The door between the kitchen and the dining room swung open just then and Shirley bustled in bearing a casserole.

“I hope you don’t mind eating vegetarian,” she declared brightly. “Alton and I are at an age to worry about our cholesterol.”

“Not at all,” Nicole responded, smiling at the sprightly woman. Seeing another woman cooking in her father’s kitchen jarred a little, but from everything she’d seen so far, Shirley was the antithesis of the women her father had attracted when he was younger. “Are you sure I can’t help with something?”

“I’m positive,” the older woman assured her. “You just sit and visit with your dad. He missed you something terrible when you were gone to New York.”

Liking the woman more for her lack of jealousy, Nicole smiled at Alton as Shirley disappeared into the kitchen again. “She seems nice.”

“Yes,” Nicole confirmed, trying not to let her smile falter. It was crazy, but she missed Max badly, even as ugly as he’d been that last day, and she couldn’t help wondering if he was okay.

She needed him to be okay and, at the same time, she couldn’t help hoping he missed her as much as she missed him.

“And you managed to settle that legal problem your father was telling me about?” Shirley’s face showed concern.

“I—I think so,” Nicole said, stumbling over the words. Truthfully, she wasn’t absolutely sure if Max would drop his suit against her father. That sort of assessment depended on which Maxwell Tucker was the real one—the man she’d fallen in love with or the bastard she’d had to leave.

Regardless, the chips would just have to fall where they may. In the interest of self-preservation, she’d cut and run without insuring her father’s safety. While she hated the thought, she hadn’t felt like she had much choice. Self-preservation kicked in.

And maybe she did need to stop rescuing her father.

“I was in New York in the fifties,” her father said reminiscently, clearly not brooding about his legal troubles. “Wonderful place. Skyscrapers as far as you can see.”

Taking a bite of cole slaw, Shirley said, “Did your father tell you I work for an attorney?”

“Yes.” The irony of her dad dating a legal secretary would have sent Max into instant laughter, Nicole knew.

“Well, John, my boss hasn’t done a lot of copyright cases, but if worse comes to worse, he could brush up on it,” Shirley assured her, a determined glint in her eye. “I’ve worked for him for twenty years. He’d love to help Alton out.”

“I’m glad.” Nicole stretched her smile wider to convey the very real gratitude she felt. It seemed like her father had found someone else more than willing to look after him.

“We don’t need to worry about that Maxwell Tucker anymore,” Alton said, beaming at Nicole. “I sent my secret weapon over and she charmed him into seeing it our way!”

“Thanks, Dad. I hope you’re right.” Nicole forced herself to take a bite and chew. Ever since she’d come back, her stomach revolted against everything.

When she returned home, she couldn’t find a way to tell her father the entire truth about her relationship with Max. She’d simply let him assume everything had worked as planned. The rest of it seemed too personal and painful to talk about.

“Not that I wanted you to go to New York, in the first place,” her father scolded. “I would have worked something out about that lawsuit. You act like the old man can’t take care of himself!”

“You’re not an old man,” Nicole demurred.

“Listen to her, Shirley,” Alton recommended playfully. “I’m not old, but she’s not sure I can take care of myself.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Nicole said, shaking her head with a sense of uneasiness. Wasn’t this the very thing Max accused her of? Taking care of her father when he could take care of himself?

“Now, Alton, don’t tease the girl,” Shirley admonished. “A lawsuit is nothing to laugh at. I’ve seen people ruined trying to pay their legal fees.”

“Yes,” Nicole said, ignoring the lump in her throat. “That’s what I thought.”

“I’d have handled it,” Alton said calmly. “I’ve gotten myself through sixty-some-odd years of life. I’m sure I would have worked out something if I had to barter with an attorney to handle the situation.”

“Oh, that’s right!” Shirley exclaimed. “Did John talk to you about being his caretaker? That lake house of his is vacant so much of the time, he really needs someone to look after it for him.”

“That’s terrific,” she told him, conscious of a tiny pang added to the load she was already carrying. The sensation startled her and she mulled it over while Shirley served dessert.

What was upsetting about her father getting a job? Particularly one as low-stress as keeping an eye on an unoccupied house?

Though, it did seem like he was…moving away from her, she couldn’t resent his good fortune. Shirley was terrific and her dad needed someone his own age in his life…but Nicole was conscious of a faint feeling of loneliness inside.

Were Claire…and Max…right? Did she cling too closely to her father. And was it more about wanting to protect her own loss than protecting her dad from his own poor judgment?

“Thanks.” She accepted her dessert plate and absently toyed with the strawberry shortcake on it.

All this time, she’d been trying to help Max see how he needed to change his life. Maybe he’d been trying to open her eyes to how she needed to change hers.

* * *

“So,” Pete said, three weeks later, “You’re not sure she’s coming back?”

Slathering butter on a roll, Max pushed away the nauseating wave of rage that rose in him. “She’d better come back.”

Two weeks ago, before his annoyance at Nicole’s defection had turned to panicked fury, he’d contacted his brother and suggested lunch. They should meet on a regular basis, he’d said, if they were going to get beyond their past.

His apartment seemed empty and too-large. He realized he ate too many meals alone. Even haunting Ruth and David’s place or hanging out with Cynthia and Nadine hadn’t changed the echoing hollowness inside himself.

So he’d asked his brother to eat with him. To his surprise, Pete had agreed. This lunch at Armando’s was the second time they’d eaten together in a kind of Thursday-meeting-of-the-dysfunctional-brothers club.

Nicole had been right about this one thing, if nothing else. He had needed to reconnect with Pete. But then fourteen days ago when he’d made the overture towards his brother, he’d still thought she was coming back to him. Or at least to his typing.

He’d been sure Cynthia was wrong.

Sternly quelling the trembling of his fingers on his fork, Max tightened his jaw and waited for the swell of muddled grief, helplessness and anger to pass. This was the worst, though, this massive welter of emotion she’d left in her wake. But he’d get beyond it, one way or the other. He’d weathered storms before.