Royal Pain (12 page)

“Seriously. So what? So you didn’t come right out and tell her that a future with you would be full of flashing paparazzi cameras and prying reporters. That’s not irreconcilable. Call her now. It’s Christmastime.” Devon tossed his phone at his older brother. “Quit being a puss.”

“Shut up.” Max caught the phone but stared at it without dialing the number he’d never forgotten.

“Just do it.”

Max took a fortifying slug of scotch, then dialed the number. It went straight to voice mail and her message was damnably short. He was recording dead air before he’d even considered what he might say. “Merry Christmas, Bronte. I hope… you have a wonderful year ahead.” Click.

“You’re going to have to call her back. Tell me you did not just leave that stilted piece-of-shit message on her answering machine! That was a joke, right?” Devon was laughing.

Max whipped the phone back at his younger brother.

“Ow!” He scrambled to protect his face.

“Serves you right, you pushy bastard. I wasn’t prepared to talk to her. I need to think about the best way to go about it.”

“For another six months? Time’s a-wasting, Max.”

“Just shut up. I want to get foxed.”

“That I can do!” Devon stood up and retrieved the nearly full bottle of scotch. “Let’s get despicably drunk, shall we?”

“Perfect.” Max held out his glass for a refill and the two brothers proceeded to get hammered. Max was passed out cold a few hours later when Bronte returned his call.

The fact that he let it go to voice mail struck Bronte as some sort of petty retaliatory gesture for her not having picked up his lame Christmas greeting. She left him a mirror version of the message he’d left. Empty and meaningless. And she began to feel more and more grateful that she’d escaped with her heart (barely) intact from a man who could run so hot and cold.

Having just gotten her hair done and looking like a goddamned shampoo commercial, Bronte was humming one of her favorite New York tunes and feeling like the city was her oyster. She gave her long, dark mane an extra sassy swing as she headed out onto Madison Avenue.

Damn that guy was good. No matter how hard she tried to brush, treat, blow, condition, or deep-fry her hair on her own time, it never felt as good as it did after two hours at Frederic Fekkai. What was up with that?

As long as she didn’t factor in her nonexistent love life, the year that had passed since her move to New York had been very, very good to Ms. Bronte Talbott, if she did say so herself. The Sarah James flagship store and atelier had swooped into Manhattan like a heat-seeking missile. Everyone was crazy about her barely-there, sky-high styles, and Sarah herself was the perfect It Girl to embody the whole brand. She didn’t need to promote it: she lived it.

Bronte glanced up to see which cross street she was on and realized that the Sarah James store was only two blocks north. She decided to pop in unannounced and check in on her favorite client and closest friend. As the sparkling, seemingly endless early June day was starting to wane, Bronte thought she might even convince Sarah to join her for a celebratory cocktail. The Council of Fashion Designers of America had surprised them all by shortlisting Sarah James for one of their prestigious CFDA awards, and the presentation ceremony and ball were the following night at Lincoln Center.

A couple of beautiful people were coming her way, Bronte noted absently, as she rummaged through her too-big satchel to retrieve her ringing cell phone. The woman was a tight little colt of a thing with a short blond bob, classic retro wayfarers, and Sarah James kitten heels clicking in time on the sidewalk, and the guy was in a great, classic blue suit, and had his arm hung loosely around her shoulder.

Bronte pulled herself up short and turned to face the Barneys window, lifting one knee to support the bottom of her bag. She attempted to dig deeper into her godforsaken garbage pail of a purse, murmuring a steady stream of “fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck” as the phone continued to ring and she continued to be unable to extract it from the quagmire that was the inside of her bag.

As she shook the long wall of her gleaming hair out of the way with an impatient toss, she looked up into the plate-glass window of the department store to see Max’s reflection staring at her back. She gave up on finding her phone and slowly turned around.

Thank God I am looking fucking hot
, she thought stupidly. Her phone beeped one last petulant time to let her know she had missed the call.

“Hi, Max.”

“Hi, Bron.”

Did he have to say it in that deep, familiar way? Ugh.

He raised his sunglasses up on his hair. His killer hair. What? Did she think that after less than a year, he wouldn’t still have the best fucking hair in history? That he would have gone prematurely gray and bald due to her absence? His hideously perfect blond, nearly preteen companion was looking doe-eyed, moving her glance from one of them to the other, when Max came back to his senses, partially, and said, almost dismissively, “Oh, this is Lydia. Lydia, this is Bronte Talbott.”

“Nice to meet you, Bronte,” Lydia said formally and a bit shyly, looking up to Max as if for guidance.

“Nice shoes, Lydia,” Bronte commented dryly. “I was just on my way to see Sarah James as a matter of fact.”

“Ah,” Max said, “so you won that account after all. Congratulations.”

“Yes,” Bronte answered, surprised that he would even remember. “Sarah opened her shop on 68th and Madison last year.”

Max turned to his companion. “Do you want to go shoe shopping, Lyd?”

What
the
hell?
Bronte thought.
Did he think I could just bump into him and act all normal?

“Sorry,” Bronte cut in, “it’s a business meeting. We’re going over some advertising budget numbers for next year. Maybe another time.” Bronte gave the petite woman a tight smile, then turned to face Max.

Bronte lifted her oversized black sunglasses onto her head and caught Max’s eyes. Big mistake. His gaze pinned her tighter than a butterfly in a lepidopterist’s glass box. Not good. Definitely not good.

“Okay then,” Bronte snapped after that eternal stare, returning her sunglasses to her face: mortal combat required the proper body armor. No way was she going to survive those gray-blue eyes boring into hers right out here on the open battlefield of Madison Avenue.

“Great to see you, Max. Lydia, a pleasure.”

Bronte turned to go. Max gave her his best half-smile and reached tentatively for her upper arm—to stall her, touch her, she didn’t know what—then he thought better of it and looked heartbreakingly vulnerable for a split second. He put his sunglasses back on and made a gesture with his hand that was part salute, part wave.

Bronte continued apace, trying to regain her composure as she made her way north on Madison Avenue. She still hadn’t succeeded by the time she barreled into Sarah’s store and continued upstairs to her office, ripping the door open unceremoniously and throwing her enormous bag onto Sarah’s gorgeous white calfskin couch.

“Well, well, well,” said Sarah. “If it isn’t my brilliant advertising agent.”

Sarah then turned to her assistant, Julie, with whom she had been looking over some letters and last-minute speech adjustments for the CFDA awards (on the million-to-one chance that Sarah James the person actually received an award on behalf of Sarah James the brand) and told Julie she could go home for the day.

Bronte sat on the couch, one leg crossed over the other and kicking quickly, quickly, quickly.

“It’s times like this I wish I smoked, because all I want to do is rip open a pack of cigarettes and chain-smoke like a fucking dragon lady.”

“Hmmm,” Sarah offered noncommittally as she took a bottle of Veuve Clicquot out of the small refrigerator at the back of her cluttered private workroom/studio and began to uncork it.

“Only you,” Bronte said through a bitter laugh, “would have Veuve Clicquot at the ready at a time like this. You are truly the best woman on the planet.”

POP!

Bronte smiled warmly despite herself, grateful that even the most chaotic emotional upheaval could still be soothed by the sound of a cold bottle of champagne being uncorked.

“Talk,” Sarah barked unceremoniously as she handed Bronte an immaculate Waterford crystal flute. “As my grandmother says, everything’s better with the merry widow.”

“Who the hell is the merry widow?” Bronte asked.

“The champagne! Veuve Clicquot is French for merry widow.”

“And of course you would know that.” Bronte took a grateful sip. “Sarah, you are such a paradox. This office, or studio, or whatever you are calling it these days looks like a tornado just blew through, yet you have spontaneously produced a perfectly chilled bottle of the best champagne and two immaculate glasses from which to drink it. All I can say is, thank fucking you.”

“Keep going.”

“So, as you may or may not have gathered, that little fling with the duke has been rather difficult for me to, well, compartmentalize… this champagne is particularly restorative. I can’t thank you enough.”

Bronte sank deeper into the luxurious couch and took another sip, closing her eyes half-mast to further appreciate the delicate snap and flavor. When she reopened them, she saw the pink, orange, and purple sunset starting to color the sky behind Sarah’s silhouette through the fabulous studio windows that made up the west wall of her second-floor space.

“Go on.”

“I feel like I am at the best possible shrink appointment in Manhattan: champagne, sunset, and I can dump my heart out onto your beautiful carpet. So… whatever… I don’t really even know where to begin, but suffice it to say I thought it was completely over with a capital
O
and I just bumped into him on Madison Avenue with some little blond British bimbo hanging from his arm and he looked at me like… as if… you know… as if we had been drinking coffee this morning and he was on his way home from work and what’s for dinner, darling? For fuck’s sake, here I am having the best fucking year of my career”—Bronte raised her glass to Sarah, which Sarah returned in kind with a wink and a wry smile—“and I’m feeling like I am all that and a side of fries, shaking my booty right out of Frederic Fekkai and hacking through this urban jungle with a goddamned, motherfucking Prada machete for chrissake. And then I bump into him and I am… fuck… slammed. I was a fricking deer in the fricking headlights. All my mojo was utterly fucking AWOL.”

“Who is he, Bronte?”

“Max. His name is Max. What’s he even doing in New York? I hope he’s not actually living here. That would be just fucking perfect. I would bump into him and his bit of fluff at every fucking crosswalk. How can I be so mature in other areas of my life and so fucking juvenile about this? Oh, Sarah. He was so damn good in bed. That’s the worst part. I didn’t really even care about little Blondie… I almost blurted out something along the lines of, ‘Want to meet up for a quickie while you’re in town?’ I mean that’s just lust, right? Nothing more than animal magnetism, right?”

“Ummm. Not sure I’m really the one to ask about the animal stuff. I’m pretty much a grab-the-animal-magnetism-where-you-can-find-it-and-never-let-go kind of gal. But if you are more of the take-it-or-leave-it variety, then maybe a quickie would be the right thing for you.”

“Of course, I would grab it and wrestle it to the ground if I had the courage, but the bottom line is I am your basic commitment coward. And I don’t even mean long-term, connubial commitment… I mean even committing to
considering
connubial has me running for the proverbial hills. But this guy, I mean, I could really hunt him down and tie him up and hold him hostage in my apartment for a really long time before the police came. I mean, I think he would really like that.”

Julie tapped on the door and then poked her head in. “Sorry to interrupt. Bronte, there’s a really hot British guy named Max Heyworth downstairs asking to see you.”

Sarah smiled broadly and said, “Please send him up.”

“No! Fuck you, Sarah. Please don’t! Julie, please don’t let him up! I’m a mess,” Bronte cried.

“You’re going to have to see him at some point, Bron,” Sarah said gently, “and he obviously wants to see you if he followed you up here.”

Bronte’s head swung around to Julie. “Is he alone?”

Julie smiled and leaned her head further into the office. “Yes. Tall. Dark. British. And totally alone,” she said in a loud stage whisper.

Julie hovered at the door until Sarah put on her best fake-bitch face and said, “What the hell are you waiting for, then? I am your boss and I told you to send him up. Do it!” Sarah winked and Julie smiled as she shut the door and went to get Max.

“Oh, but you are so evil,” Bronte growled. “You were supposed to be my friend, to protect me! Batten down the hatches and all that. You will pay so dearly for this. I think your heels might accidentally break off on your way up the podium stairs to accept your CFDA award tomorrow night, you little—”

Sarah purred as the door opened: “Hello. You must be Max.” She reached out to shake his hand then forged ahead. “What a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve heard so much about you. Care for a glass of champagne? Bronte and I were just toasting my nomination for the CFDA accessories award tomorrow night.”

Sarah turned casually back to the cabinet where she kept the Waterford champagne flutes, poured Max a glass, and handed it to him with her best air-hostess smile. Bronte rolled her eyes, then turned her head back to look at the brilliant colors of the sky, her crossed leg resuming its quick, annoyed kicking.

“So,” Sarah prompted.

“Thank you for the champagne, Sarah,” Max began graciously, raising his glass. “Congratulations on your achievement.” Max took a sip of the cool, sparkling champagne, then held the flute by the stem between thumb and two fingers and rested the base in his other hand. He slowly turned his head enough to look at Bronte through heavy lids.

She refused to look at him.

He returned his gaze to Sarah and gave her his best ducal smile. “Sarah, would you mind terribly if I had a word alone with Bronte?”

“Absolutely not a problem! Let me just grab a few things and I will be out of your way in two shakes. Take your time. I have a million things to do downstairs so no rush whatsoever—”

“That’s enough, Sarah!” Bronte snapped.

“Bye, you two,” Sarah cooed as she shut the door firmly behind her. The background music of the hip shoe boutique wafted through the closed door, the muted voice of Morcheeba coolly encouraging everyone to be themselves.

Before Bronte could prepare herself, Max was sitting next to her on the buttery-soft, white leather couch. Dangerously close.

“Where’s your… date?” she blurted.

“Jealous?”

“Probably. Pathetic, I know, but probably.”

“Good to hear, because when I saw you on the street just now, looking this smoking hot”—his eyes traveled briefly down her body then back up to her eyes—“I thought you had to be seeing someone and my thoughts turned to murder.”

Bronte’s heart plunked right down into her stomach, her eyes closed miserably, and her head sank back onto the couch. Morcheeba was now on about how we all want some success but it’s never around. How fucking true, thought Bronte.

Max just sat there staring at her. Drinking her in. He was speechless. What had he expected? That she would be holed up somewhere waiting for him? Well, maybe not in a cave, but he certainly did not anticipate this confident, sexy, fierce woman. She was so tense, he thought he could touch her with one finger and watch her explode.

Bad idea.

His mind immediately leapt to all the places on her body he remembered doing exactly that. She still sat with her neck stretched taut and her eyes closed in contemplation. He thought of the first time he had made love to her, with her neck stretched in ecstasy.

Lou Reed was up next, his übercool I-love-yous seeping through the door.
I
am
going
to
kill
Sarah
, thought Bronte viciously. She heard the delicate clink of Max’s glass being put down on the glass coffee table in front of the sofa, and she continued to sit there like a statue, unable to move, eyes closed. She nearly threw her own glass out of her hand when she felt Max’s index finger trail down her exposed neck.