The Original Sinners: The Red Years

The words and the wink forced an image into Zach’s mind of doing that very act. He forced the thought out just as quickly as she put it in.

Wesley shook his head in amused disgust.

“Mr. Easton, good luck,” Wesley said, turning to him. “Just don’t act impressed, and she’ll eventually settle down.”

“Impressed?” Zach repeated. “I doubt that will be a problem.”

Zach waited for his words to register. He saw Wesley’s eyes narrow, but she only looked at him from under her veil of black eyelashes.

“Oh…” She nearly purred the word. “I like him already.”

“God help us all.” Wesley left on the heels of his prayer. Zach glanced back at Wesley’s retreating form. He wasn’t quite sure he wanted to be left alone with this woman.

“Your son, I presume?” Zach asked after Wesley departed.

“My intern. Sort of. He cooks so I guess that makes him more of a factotum. Intern? Factotum?”

“Houseboy,” Zach supplied, putting his large vocabulary to use again. “And a rather well-trained one, I see.”

“Well-trained? Wesley? He’s horribly trained. I can’t even train him to fuck me. But I don’t think you drove all the way from the city just to talk about my intern with me, adorable as he is.”

“No, I did not.” Zach fell silent. He waited and watched as Nora Sutherlin sat back in her chair and studied him with her unnerving eyes.

“So…” she began. “I can tell you don’t like me. Shows you’ve got good taste in women at least. Also shows you’ve heard of me. Am I what you expected?”

Zach stared at her a moment. The last three writers he’d worked with had been men in their late fifties and early sixties. Never once had he seen any of them in their pajamas. And never had he met a writer as uncomfortably alluring as Nora Sutherlin.

“You’re shorter.”

“Thank God for stilettos, right? So what’s the verdict? J.P. said he’s giving you total control over the book and me. It’s been a long time since I’ve let a man boss me around. I kind of miss it.”

“The verdict is undecided.”

“A well-hung jury then. Better give me a retrial.”

“You’re very clever.”

“You’re very handsome.”

Zach shifted in his seat. He wasn’t used to flirtation from his writers, either. Then again, she wasn’t one of his writers.

“That wasn’t a compliment. Cleverness is the last recourse of an amateur. I look for depth in my books, passion, substance.”

“Passion I have.”

“Passion is not synonymous with sex. I’ll admit your book was interesting and not entirely without merit. At one point I even detected a heart inside all that flesh.”

“I hear a ‘but’ in there.”

“But the heartbeat was very faint. The patient might be terminal.”

She looked at him and glanced away. Zach had seen that look before—it was defeat. He’d scared her away as he’d planned. He wondered why he wasn’t happier about it.

“Terminal…” She turned her face back to him. A new look was shining in her eyes. “It’s almost Easter—the season of Resurrection.”

“Resurrection? Really?” Zach said, astonished by her tenacity. “I leave for Royal’s L.A. offices in six weeks. Six weeks is not nearly enough time to involve myself with any project of worth or magnitude. But six weeks is all we have.”

“You just said six weeks isn’t long enough—”

“But it’s all I have to give. Fix it in six and it’s off to press. If not—”

“If not, it’s back to the gutter for the guttersnipe writer, right?”

Zach stared at her in stunned silence.

“John-Paul Bonner’s the biggest gossip in the publishing industry, Mr. Easton. He told me what you think of me. He told me you think I’ll fail.”

“I’m quite certain of it.”

“If you’re my editor, my failure will take you down, too.”

“I’m not your editor yet. I haven’t agreed to anything.”

“You will. So why did you quit teaching?”

“Quit teaching?”

“You were a professor at Cambridge, right? Pretty good gig especially for someone so young. But you quit.”

“Ten years ago,” Zach said, shocked by how much she seemed to know about him. How on earth had she learned about Cambridge?

“So why—”

“Why my personal life is of such fascination to you, I cannot fathom.”

“I’m a cat. You’re a shiny object.”

“You’re insufferable.”

“I am, aren’t I? Somebody should spank me.” She sighed. “So you’re kind of an asshole. No offense.”

“And you appear to be two or three words I don’t feel quite comfortable saying aloud.”

“I’d tell you to say them anyway, but I promised Wesley I wouldn’t let you flirt with me. But I digress. Tell me what’s wrong with my book. Say it slowly,” she said, grinning.

“You have a very sanguine attitude toward the editing process. What will you say when I tell you that you must cut out the ten to twenty pages you’re certain constitute the living, beating heart of your book?”

She said nothing for a long minute. Her eyes glanced away from him and she seemed to lose herself in a dark place. He watched as she breathed in slowly through her nose, held the breath then exhaled out her mouth. She turned her uncanny green eyes to him.

“Then I’ll say that I once cut the living, beating heart out of my own chest,” she said, her voice devoid of its usual flippancy. “I survived that amputation. I’ll survive this one.”

“May I ask why you’re so determined to work with me? I’ve done my research, Ms. Sutherlin. You have a rabid fan following that would buy your phone bill in hardcover and still manage to wank off to it.”

“I’m also very big in France.”

Zach gritted his teeth and felt the first stirrings of an impending headache. “Didn’t your ‘intern’ say you would settle down at some point?”

“Mr. Easton,” she said, rolling back in her swivel chair and throwing her legs back on her desk. “This is me settled down.”

“I was afraid of that.” Zach stood, prepared to leave.

“This book,” she began and stopped. She moved her legs off the desk and sat cross-legged in her chair. For a moment she looked both very earnest and terribly young.

“What about it?”

She looked away and seemed to search for words. “It…means something to me. It’s not another one of my dirty little stories. I came to Royal because I need to do right by this book.” She met his eyes again and without a trace of levity or mirth said, “Please. I need your help.”

“I only work with serious writers.”

“I’m not a serious person. I know that. But I am a serious writer. Writing is one of the only two things in this world I do take seriously.”

“And the other?”

“The Roman Catholic Church.”

“I think we’re done here.”

“You’re not much of an editor then,” she taunted as he headed to the door. “It’s much too early for an ending. I’m no editor and even I know that.”

“Ms. Sutherlin, you’re obviously emotionally involved in your book. That’s fine for writing, but editing a book you love hurts.”

“I like doing things that hurt.” She gave him a Cheshire cat grin. “J.P. said you were the best. I think he’s right. I’ll do whatever it takes, whatever you say. I’ll beg if it will help my case. I’ll get down on my knees and beg if it’ll help yours.”

“I’m going now.”

“J.P. also said they call you the London Fog around the office,” she said as he turned his back to her. “Is that because of the long coat, the accent or your gift for putting a cold, wet damper on everyone’s good time?”

“I’ll leave you to decide that.”

“Tell me what to do and I’ll do it,” she called out, and Zach was forced to admire her stubbornness. He couldn’t believe he was tempted to consider rewarding it.

“A writer writes,” he said, facing her again. “Write something for me, something good. I don’t care how long it is, and I don’t care what it’s about. Just impress me. You’ve got twenty-four hours. Show me you can create under pressure, and I’ll consider it.”

“You’ll be surprised what I can do under pressure,” she said, but Zach had his doubts. The houseboy, the jokes, the flirting—she was no serious writer. “Any suggestions?” she asked, slightly more sincere this time.

“Stop writing what you know and start writing what you want to know. And,” he said, pointing a finger at her, “none of your cheap tricks.”

Her spine straightened as if he’d finally found an insult that stuck. “I assure you, Mr. Easton,” she said in a tone both stern and reproving, “my tricks are anything but cheap.”

“Prove it then. You’ve got twenty-four hours.”

She leaned back in her chair and smiled.

“Fuck your twenty-four hours. You’ll have it tonight.”

3

Numbing.

As an editor Zach often forced his writers to dig deep, cast aside the obvious and find the perfect word for every sentence. And the perfect word to describe this book release party he’d been forced to attend? Numbing.

Zach stalked through the party saying little more than the occasional hello to various colleagues. He’d only come because once again J.P. had twisted his arm, and Rose Evely—the guest of honor—had been a Royal House writer for thirty years now. What a ludicrous party anyway—someone dimmed the lights to create a nightclub sort of atmosphere but no amount of ambience could turn the banal hotel banquet hall into anything other than a beige box. He wandered toward a spiral staircase in the corner of the room to surreptitiously check his watch. If he could survive two hours at this party, maybe it would be long enough to placate his social butterfly of a boss.

Scanning the crowd, he saw his twenty-eight-year-old assistant, Mary, trying to talk her new husband into dancing with her. His first week at Royal, he’d been pleasantly surprised to find out his spitfire of an assistant was, like him, Jewish. He’d teased her he’d never known a Jew named Mary before and started calling her his pseudoshiksa. Mary, for all her endearing brusqueness, only ever called him “Boss.” J.P. stood with Rose Evely. Both J.P. and Evely had been happily married to their respective spouses for decades but nothing stopped J.P. from chivalrously flirting with any woman who had the patience to listen to his literary rambles. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves at this miserable party. Why wasn’t he?

Once more he glanced down at his watch.

“I can save you, if you want,” came a voice from above him.

Zach spun around and looked up. Smiling down at him from over the top of the staircase was Nora Sutherlin.

“Save me?” He narrowed his eyes at her.

“From this party.” She crooked her index finger at him.

Zach’s better judgment warned him that climbing that staircase could be a very bad idea indeed. Yet his feet overruled his reason, and he mounted the steps and joined her on the platform at the top. He raised his eyebrow as he cast a disapproving gaze over her clothes. That morning at her house, she’d worn shapeless pajamas that concealed every part of her but her abundant personality. Now he saw on full display what his mind had before only imagined.

She wore red, of course. Scarlet red and not much of it. The dress stopped at the top of her thighs and started at the edge of her breasts. She had miraculous curves that the dramatic floor-length red jacket she wore over her dress did nothing to hide. Even worse, she wore black leather boots that laced all the way above her knees. Pirate boots and a roguish grin on a beautiful black-haired woman…for the first time in a long time Zach felt something other than numb.

“How do you know I want to be saved from this party, Miss Sutherlin?” Zach leaned back against the railing and crossed his arms.

“I’ve been watching you from my little crow’s nest here since the second you walked in. You’ve said maybe five words to four people, you’ve checked your watch three times in as many minutes, and you whispered something to J.P., which, guessing from the look on his face, was a death threat. You’re here against your will. I can get you out.”

Zach cocked a self-deprecating smile at her.

“Unfortunately, you’re right. I am here against my will. I have to wonder, however, why you’re here at all. Didn’t I give you homework?” he asked, remembering his rash decision this morning to give her one chance to impress him.

“You did. And I was a good girl and finished it. See?”

He tried and failed to look away as she reached into the bodice of her dress and pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to him. The paper was still warm from her skin.

“This is it?” he asked, seeing only three paragraphs on the page.

“Don’t judge a book by its mother. Just read.”

Zach glanced at her once more and wished he hadn’t. Every time he looked at her, he found something else to attract him. Her jacket had slipped down her arm and her pale sculpted shoulder peeked out. Sculpted? His petite little writer had some muscle to go along with her impressive curves. Tougher than she looked.

Remembering himself, Zach turned from her, tilted the page into a patch of light and read.

First she noticed his hips. The eyes might be the windows to the soul, but a man’s hips were his seat of power. She doubted he’d chosen those perfectly fitted jeans and that black T-shirt that belied the tautness of his stomach for the purpose of flattering his lower body, but he had and now she lost herself in the thought of caressing with her lips that exquisite hollow that lay between smooth skin and elegantly jutting hip bone.

She had to meet his eyes eventually. With reluctance she dragged her gaze to his face, as dignified and angular as the rest of him. Pale skin and dark Brutus-cut hair contrasted with eyes the color of ice. Glacial, she decided his eyes were—they spoke of hidden depths. A stark beauty, he was a man made to be admired by intelligent women.

Lean and tall but with the substantial mass of an athlete, he was utterly masculine. The world had fallen away in his presence and now that he was gone, she was left in the equally potent presence of his absence.

Zach read the words one more time trying all the while to ignore the annoyingly pleasant image of Nora Sutherlin caressing his naked hips with her mouth.

“I’ve noticed you usually shy away from long descriptive passages in your book,” he said.

“I know people think erotica is just a romance novel with rougher sex. It’s not. If it’s a subgenre of anything, it’s horror.”

“Horror? Really?”

“Romance is sex plus love. Erotica is sex plus fear. You’re terrified of me, aren’t you?”

“Slightly,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.

“A smart horror writer will never put too much detail in about the monster. The readers’ imaginations can conjure their own demons. In erotica you never want your main characters to be too physically specific. That way your readers can insert their own fantasies, their own fears. Erotica is a joint effort between writer and reader.”

“How so?” Zach asked, intrigued that Nora Sutherlin would have her own literary theories.

“Writing erotica is like fucking someone for the first time. You aren’t sure exactly what he wants yet so you try to give him everything he could possibly want. Everything and anything…” She enunciated the words like a cat stretching in sunlight. “You hit every nerve and eventually you’ll hit the nerve. Have I hit any nerves yet?”

Zach clenched his jaw. “Not any of them you were aiming for.”

“You don’t know what I was aiming for. So what do you think of the writing?”

“Could be better.” He refolded the page. “You use ‘was’ too much.”

“Rough draft,” she said unapologetically. She stared at him with dark, waiting eyes.

“The last line’s the strongest—‘the equally potent presence of his absence.’” Zach knew he should give the page back to her but for some reason he stuck it in his pocket. “It’s good.”

She gave him a slow, dangerous smile.

“It’s you.”

Zach only stared at her a moment before pulling the folded page back out.

“This is me?” he asked, his skin flushing.

“It is. Every last long, lean inch of you. I wrote it right after you left this morning. I was, needless to say, inspired by your visit.”

Swallowing hard, Zach unfolded the sheet again. Brutus-cut black hair…ice-colored eyes…jeans, black shirt… It was him.

“Excuse me,” Zach began, trying to regain control of this conversation, “but didn’t I repeatedly insult you this morning?”

“Your kvetching was very fetching. I like men who are mean to me. I trust them more.”

She tilted her head to the side and her unruly black hair fell over her forehead, veiling her green-black eyes.

“Forgive me. I might be speechless right now.”

“Your orders,” she said. “You told me to stop writing what I knew and start writing what I wanted to know. I want to know…you.”

She took a step closer and Zach’s heart dropped a few feet and landed somewhere in the vicinity of his groin.

“Who are you, Ms. Sutherlin?” he asked, not quite knowing what he meant by that question.

“I’m just a writer. A writer named Nora. And you can call me that, Zach.”

“Nora then. I’m sorry. I’m not used to being hit on by my writers. Especially after verbally abusing them.”

Nora’s eyes flashed with amusement.

“Verbal abuse? Zach, where I come from ‘slut’ is a term of endearment. Want to see where I come from?”

“No.”

“Pity,” she said, sounding not at all surprised or disappointed. “Where should we go then? I promised to save you from this party, didn’t I?”

“I really shouldn’t leave,” Zach said, terrified what would happen the second he found himself alone with Nora.

“Come on, Zach. This party sucks and not in the good way. I’ve had pap smears more fun than this.”

Zach covered a laugh with a cough.

“I must admit you do have a way with words.”

“So you’ll edit me then? Please?” She batted her eyelashes at him in mock innocence. “You won’t regret it.”

Zach glanced up at the ceiling as if it could give him some hint of what the hell he was getting himself into. Nora Sutherlin…he had only six weeks left in New York until he left for L.A. Why was he even considering getting involved with Nora Sutherlin and her book? He knew why. He had nothing else in his life right now. He liked Mary and enjoyed working for J.P. But he’d made no friends in New York, no connections of any kind. He hadn’t allowed himself to even consider dating. One day he’d taken off his wedding ring in a fit of anger and couldn’t find a reason to put it back on. He wouldn’t consider inflicting himself on any woman right now. At least working with Nora Sutherlin might give him a much-needed distraction from his misery. She seemed like the type of woman who’d help you forget about your headache by setting your bed on fire.

Won’t regret it? He already did.

“You do realize that working with you could be bad for my career,” Zach said. “I do literary fiction, not—”

“Literary friction?”

“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Zach shook his head.

Nora leaned in close to him. He was suddenly and uncomfortably aware of the long, bare curve of her neck. She smelled of hothouse flowers in bloom.

“I can.” She breathed the words into his ear.

Zach exhaled slowly and pulled, reluctantly, away from her.

“I’m a brutal editor.”

“I like brutal.”

“I’ll make you rewrite the whole book.”

“Now you’re trying to turn me on, aren’t you? Shall we?”

“Fine,” he finally said. “Save me then.”

“Let’s do it,” she said. “If J.P. gives you shit about leaving the party with me, tell him it was my idea for us to go work on my book. J.P. won’t spank me.”

“I’m not certain of that,” Zach said.

“I knew I liked that man for a reason.”

“I need to say a few goodbyes if we’re leaving.” J.P. for one. Then Mary. And he hadn’t met her husband yet. And Rose Evely, too.

“Nope. Can’t do that,” Nora said. “Never say goodbye when you leave a party. That way you leave a mystery in your place. They’ll have so much more fun talking about us than they ever would talking to us. Can’t you already hear them? Zach Easton just left with Nora Sutherlin. Are they…surely not…of course they are—”

“We aren’t,” Zach said with finality.

“I know that. You know that. They don’t know that.”

Zach looked around the room. Everywhere he looked he saw eyes glancing furtively in their direction. The most intense gazing came from Thomas Finley, his least favorite coworker. Zach noted that Finley didn’t so much stare at him as he did at Nora. And the look in his eyes wasn’t particularly friendly.

“I prefer not being a topic of gossip,” Zach said.

“Too late. At least with me, it’ll be really good gossip.” She strode down the staircase with an audacious kick of her heels on each step.

Zach followed in her wake. The crowd parted for her as she cut a bloodred swath through the center of the room.

Finally free of the suffocating party, Zach threw on his coat and breathed in the bracing winter evening air.

A cab stopped within seconds for Nora and she slipped gracefully inside. He took a sharp breath as her black-booted legs disappeared into the cab. One more time he asked himself what the hell he was doing before sliding in next to her.

Nora said nothing as he joined her, only turned her head and gazed out at the night. She seemed to be trying to stare down the city. He had a feeling the city would blink first.

Nervously, he rubbed the empty spot where he’d once worn his wedding band. Nora reached out and wrapped her hand around his ring finger. Facing him now, she raised her eyebrow in a question.

“Grace,” he answered.

Nora nodded. “You married a princess.”

Princess Grace—her mother called her that.

“She hates being called ‘Princess.’” Zach heard the anguish in his voice.

Nora lifted his hand and brought it to her neck. She pressed his fingers into her throat. Her pulse throbbed through her warm, soft skin.

“Søren,” she said and met his eyes. In those dark, dangerous depths he saw a glimmer of something human—not merely sympathy but empathy. And he felt something inhuman in response—not passion but pure animal need. For a brief moment he imagined his hands digging into her thighs and the bite of her leather boots on his back. He tore his gaze away before her uncanny ability to read him saw that image in his hungry gaze.

She released his hand just as the cab pulled up in front of Zach’s apartment building. He opened the door and got out. He wanted to ask her up, wanted to spend a few hours forgetting his pain and all the reasons for it. But he couldn’t, could he? Because of Grace, not that she would care anymore. Zach opened his mouth but before he could ask Nora up, she reached out to shut the door.

“See, Zach? I told you I’d save you.”

* * *

Nora watched Zach stare after the cab before turning and walking into his building. What a beautiful wreck of a man. Kingsley always said beautiful wrecks were a specialty of hers. He should know. He certainly qualified as one himself.

“Where to, lady?”

Nora thought about it for a moment. For the next six weeks she and Zach would rewrite her book. If he started kicking her ass tomorrow, might be cathartic to kick a little ass of her own tonight.

“Lady?” her driver prompted.

Nora rattled off an address for a Manhattan town house and nearly laughed as she saw her driver’s eyes widen in the rearview mirror.

“You sure about that? That’s no place for a nice girl to go after dark. Or ever.”

This time Nora did laugh out loud. Every cabdriver in town knew Kingsley’s address. No one with anything to lose would ever turn up there in his or her own car. Good thing she had nothing to lose. Not anymore anyway.