Royal Pain (4 page)

“No problem on the colorful language. If you want, I can beef up your repertoire with some Cockney rhyming slang or the well-placed
shite
.”

Bronte laughed and, for the first time in months, it felt like she had really laughed, instead of feeling like a cracking piece of glass.

“I am definitely adding
shite
to my bag of tricks,” she said through her waning chuckle.

“So what’s your pitch next week?”

“The ad agency I work for is pretty secretive about the whole thing, so I shouldn’t really say, but it would be really great if we got the account. And that was my old boss from New York on the line, and it looks like she might have a spot for me back in New York, in a new boutique operation she’s putting together with a couple of venture capital guys, so, just maybe, I can put this whole, sordid Chicago chapter to bed once and for all… present company excluded, of course,” she added, still smiling.

“No need to make excuses. I love New York. I have enjoyed Chicago for other reasons.” (Cue slow smile… and… there it is.) “But my days here are numbered. I am trying not to be too pessimistic—I mean, I really do love England, especially come midsummer. The gentle rain in July is, well, you should see it some time. It’s beautiful.”

Forcing herself to set aside the dreamy implication of a future that involved her ever stepping foot in the gentle rain, she plowed ahead: “So what should we do between now and then?”

Max gave her a mocking half-smile in response that nearly knocked her off her chair. Clearly, he had some things in mind.

Bronte pressed on. “The thing is, I probably seem really crass and pushy, and
American
in the worst possible way, but I just spent the last year building up to and then crashing down from this imaginary—or at least far more meaningful in
my
imagination than it was in
his
reality—relationship. And I have made this promise to myself that from here on out, I will err on the side of brutal honesty—lest I get sucked into another morass of second-guessing, unspoken hints, gestures, sighs, what have you…”

Just then, Max placed his cool, calm hand over Bronte’s fidgeting one, and she couldn’t talk anymore. She felt all her chaotic, nervous energy sputter and then slowly abate. She looked up into those astonishing slate-gray eyes and felt it physically: her shoulders eased and the weight of her anxiety slid away.

Not
good
, some hard-hearted alter ego grumbled deep in the back of her psyche.
Listen
to
what
he’s really saying. Don’t be fooled! Run!

No! I don’t want to be his arm candy
, she parried with her inner bitch.
I
don’t want to be rescued! He’s just nice and there’s a clear end in sight. I’m safe!

But he just smoothed every conflicting inner quip flush away. He stroked her like she was a nervous creature. A part of her once-burned-twice-shy conscience still bucked, but with a grudging capitulation: like an angry young horse that knows it is about to be saddled for the first time and concedes, haltingly, that it might not be all bad.

She brought her other hand over his and gently caressed the ridge of his knuckles as they rested over hers. She didn’t feel like talking anymore. Her thumb moved slowly over each knuckle, loving the feel of the soft skin between each finger and the contrast of the rough, masculine texture of the hair on the back of his hand.

It was almost noon and the bright sun was streaking through the plate-glass windows to her left that fronted the café. Another bus sped by, shooting another flash of brilliant light across Max’s eyes.

Heaven.

Bronte was going to hold on to this bit for as long as he’d let her. An involuntary hum must have escaped her because at that moment, Max looked at her with a questioning gleam in his eye. When Bronte continued to smile benignly, Max slowly turned her hand palm up on the table and began to trace slow circles there and occasionally up to her wrist and back. It was such a welcome novelty, just to be touched, to open herself to this; her eyes fell half-closed in a pleasant stupor.

It was just physical. Totally fine.

Another little hum of pleasure escaped through her slightly parted lips and Max let out a wonderfully deep, low chuckle.

“My younger sister always hums when she’s happy. It’s a nice habit. Letting people know you’re content.”

He slowly brought her hand to his mouth and kissed the center of Bronte’s palm, then the pulse point of her wrist. She would have never believed that something so seemingly innocent could be downright erotic.

The waitress came over then and smiled conspiratorially at the two of them. They had finished their food and, before Bronte could grab her wallet, Max had already handed his Coutts Visa card to the waitress and preemptively launched into his don’t-even-think-about-trying-to-pay-for-breakfast lecture, ending his diatribe with one eyebrow raised.

“I hate that you can do that, by the way.”

“What? Pay for breakfast?”

“No. That.” She tipped her head toward his. “The one-eyebrow thing. I tried for forever to do it… it’s one of those you-either-can-do-it-or-you-can’t type of talents.”

“I suspect you have other talents.”

They were making their way out of the restaurant then, and out onto the sidewalk, when Bronte looked up at Max. She had not realized how tall he was until this moment. In the bookstore, he had always been crouching or sitting down there near that bottom shelf, and at the restaurant, he had been sitting across from her, at eye level. She was nearly six feet tall and he was a good four inches taller.

“Well, that’s a relief,” she thought, then realized she had said it aloud.

“What? That you have other talents?”

“No. That you are taller than I am. I mean, it wouldn’t have been a deal breaker, but April informs me that when looking for the ideal, er, Transitional Man, physical compatibility is near the top of the list of necessary prerequisites. Since soul-mate compatibility is irrelevant, the corporeal sort takes on, shall we say, greater importance.”

Max laughed: a deep, rolling, joyful sound that coursed right through Bronte and settled somewhere deep in her belly.

“I say, Miss Talbott. I think you are planning on using me.”

Good God. When he reverted to that faux-formal Brit-speak it was sexier than the naughtiest, most graphic pickup line she had ever heard. His arm settled easily across her back and around her waist, his hand coming to rest on her hip as they moved in tandem down Halsted Street.

Her head leaned on his shoulder momentarily and she marveled at how terrifically natural it all felt. No false hope. No empty promises. No more sawdust for food.

“I lost some weight recently, due to the, uh, recent unpleasantness, so you’ll have to pardon the slightly protruding hip bone. Buckwheat banana pancakes are a very good sign that I’ll be back up to my fighting weight in no time.”

“I think I can make do with things as they are.”

“That’s good to know.”

With the hand resting on her hip, Max’s thumb found its way up under Bronte’s T-shirt and traced the upper ridge of said hip, leisurely caressing the indentation, then sliding back up around, meandering under the waistband of her jeans.

She was toast.

Whether it was the hiatus in her sex life or the hot, English, 100-percent-male specimen currently taking his time mapping a few mere inches of her body, she was a goner.

After walking around Wicker Park and Bucktown for the rest of the afternoon, pretending to pay attention to the shops and parks and noisy teenagers and arguing parents and street musicians, and laughing more than she had in months, they stopped for a coffee at the sidewalk café that had just opened on Division Street. Bronte was overcome with the sense of promise that pervaded the universe. She was, as Carol would say, totally blissed out.

They settled into a free table out on the sidewalk and Bronte put her elbows up, resting her chin in her hands. She was so happy just to gape at him. Max trailed his fingers along the back of her hand and down her neck, then across her shoulder, then put his hand down on the table and looked out to the street. Bronte almost felt bereft when his hand moved away.

“I think—”

“I think—”

They both started and stopped simultaneously. Max turned back to look into her eyes again, his lids intensifying. “You first.”

Bronte swallowed. “Well. It’s been a grand day so far, and I was just starting to think about later and—”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said yes. Whatever you want to do, wherever you want to do it, however many times you want to do it. My answer is yes.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“You don’t want to know more about me? Or where I grew up? Or my favorite movies? Or how many brothers and sisters I have…”

“No. I mean, yes, of course, eventually, that would all be splendid information, but for now, no. I am not particularly interested in any of that. All of you is sitting right here. I know what you like to read, after all. And that other information is just, well, as Martin Amis would say, the information.”

“Nicely put. I could not agree more. I mean, gentle rains and all that sound delightful m’lord, but why bother?”

Max winced for a split second, then grabbed Bronte’s hand and leaned across the narrow table for a kiss. The first kiss he had been anticipating for the past four hours, the past six weeks. The kiss he could no longer delay. His tongue trailed tentatively across the seam of her inviting lips, then ventured into the warm welcome of her luscious mouth.

Bronte simply gave in. Her eyelids became unaccountably heavy and she emitted an unconscious mewl of pleasure. He tenderly withdrew a few inches, his eyes clouded over with desire, barely able to focus.

Bronte whispered his name, “Max.” An invitation. A new statement of fact.

The moment hung there: weightless, timeless. Bronte brought her tongue to the corner of her mouth, to relive the feel of his in that same spot only seconds before. Max leaned back into his seat and put the palms of both of his strong, beautiful hands flat onto the table.

“We should probably go, Bron.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere with a bed?”

“Okay.”

Max smiled and pressed on. “I was just kidding about the bed part. Well, sort of; I mean, maybe we should start on a couch and work our way up. I think you might live in this neighborhood…”

Bronte replied dreamily, “You’re right. I think I might.”

“Shall we go there? Or would you rather hop in a cab and go to my place in Hyde Park?”

The tiny, piercing voice of the savvy single woman in her balked at the idea of having some guy she’d never really met into her apartment, let alone diving into bed with him after a few hours hanging out on the near west side of Chicago. She tried to rationalize that she’d kind of known him for six weeks, or six Saturdays, as it were. Maybe it wasn’t so slutty and tawdry after all.

The other, visceral, gut-knowing part of her accepted the fact that she was going to attack him one way or the other, and it might as well be at her place right around the corner rather than his grad-student studio apartment twenty minutes away.

What was the best way to run a three-minute security check on a guy to make sure he was not an axe murderer?

“You’re worried I’m an axe murderer?”

Bronte looked at him askance. “That’s a worry.”

“What? That I might be an axe murderer?”

“No. That you can answer my unasked questions… I’ll have to work on cloaking my pedestrian thoughts a little more thoroughly.”

“Not at all. I will tease them out of you one way or another. Might as well stick to Plan A: Brutal Honesty.”

“Okay, then yes, it did just, for a split second, cross my mind that all of your sexy, British wonderfulness might be a fabulous ruse and you are really a homeless vagrant, come to seduce me.”

“Let’s see. That very last part is true by the way.” Max ruminated, theatrical index finger tapping one cheek. “References? A dance card? Letters of credit? I’ve got it: a mutual friend! Isn’t there some damn thing about six degrees of separation? Surely, between the two of us, we know someone in common—someone who can vouch for us to one another. Do you know anyone in the economics department at the University of Chicago?”

“Alas, Milton Friedman and I have lost touch. Chicago is probably going to be a dead end, since I know about seven people here—six of whom I work with and one of whom I never wish to lay eyes on again. What about New York City advertising agencies?”

“Sorry, no. Not that I can think of. Where did you go to college?”

“UC Berkeley. What about you?”

“Oxford.”

“Of course you did.”

“Very funny.”

“It’s just that, does every highfalutin Brit go to Oxford or Cambridge?”

“Who said I was highfalutin?” Max asked with more force than he had intended.

“No one, Mr. Sensitive. But wouldn’t you agree that British PhD candidates at the University of Chicago are not that thick on the ground, if you get my meaning. A self-hating intellectual, perhaps?”

“Something like that,” Max conceded.

“All right then. I was not a total slacker at Cal—there has to be some highfalutin Brit who has crossed my path. Let me put my thinking cap on and—” Bronte snapped her fingers and smiled with enough wattage to disrupt the grid. Max could not have been more pleased.

“Who?”

“David Osborne? He was at Oxford, then I met him through one of my cousins who was in the same training program at Morgan Stanley and now he’s back in London—”

Max was whipping out his cell phone and scrolling through his saved numbers, then he looked up and punched the green “talk” button with a victorious jab.

“David? Then step out of the pub if you can’t hear me, you stupid toff… No, I’m not back in London yet… stop your yammering and listen… no, I won’t be back in time for that party. Tell me what you know about Bronte Talbott… mm-hmm… mm-hmm…”—broad smile—“… yes, nice bit of crumpet that, eh?”