Charity shook her head. “Nope. That was years ago now. I’m going forward. But I’ve learned from it. The next guy I hook up with is going to be my last. My Raoul.”
Nina’s thoughts went back to Alex. “It’s not just the sleeping. He’s drinking too much.”
“Alex? He doesn’t seem like the drunk type.”
“He’s not.” Nina bit her lip. “His brother shows up four or five nights a week with a six-pack and they split it. And then they both look at the empty cans the way Fred looks at an empty Oreo wrapper.”
Charity scowled. “Well, there’s your explanation. It’s his brother.”
Nina shook her head. “No, it’s not. Max is a good guy. In fact, Max is a great guy. The rest of Alex’s family is sort of cold, but Max has been great from the start.”
“Sort of cold? You didn’t tell me you met his family.”
“We had dinner.” Nina’s face twisted as she remembered. “His father looked at me and said, ‘We were hoping Alex would have children.’”
Charity winced. “Ouch. What did Alex say?”
“He said, ‘No, we weren’t,’ and Max said, ‘Can I get you a drink, Nina?’ and Max’s mom did something to his dad and he sort of flinched and shut up. But it was ugly. And then there was the dinner with my family.”
“Oh, boy. How is your mother? Still flash-frozen?”
“She was very polite to Alex,” Nina said. “And then after dessert, she pulled me to one side and said, ‘What are you going to do when he leaves you for a younger woman?’”
Charity rolled her eyes and picked up her milk shake to finish it off. “So I guess you and Alex won’t be spending the holidays with the families.”
Nina laughed shortly. “Just with Max. I like him a lot. We’ll make our own family with you and Max and Fred.”
“Well, if you’re planning on marrying me off, I’ll take Fred before I take Max.” Charity stood up. “Listen, I’ve got to go. Thanks for the milk shake.”
“Wait a minute.” Nina scrambled to her feet. “Don’t you want to talk about the book?”
“No. The book is finished. I wrote it and rewrote it and rewrote it and now I want to forget it for a while. Do I need to rewrite it again?”
“No,” Nina said. “I’ll do the final edit and send it to you to check over, and then we’ll send it to the printer. Jessica put a hurry-up on it, so we should have bound ARCs in a month.”
Charity stopped stretching. “ARCs?”
“Advance Reader Copies. They go out to reviewers so we can get some good review quotes for the jacket.”
Charity’s arms dropped to her sides. “Lots of reviewers?”
“For your book, yes.” Nina bent to pick up their milk shake glasses. “I’m sending this one to every reviewer on the planet. It’s going to be great.”
“I hope so.” Charity’s voice sounded hollow. “I really want this to be good, Neen. I’ve never done anything with my brains before.”
Nina blinked at her. “Of course you have. You run that store beautifully.”
Charity swallowed. “I mean creative brains. I already have an idea for another book. I really want this to work.”
Nina hugged Charity, wrapping her arms around her so that the glasses in her hands clanked as she clutched her. “It’s going to work,” she promised her, while she said a silent, fervent prayer that it would, not only for Charity’s sake, but for her own and Jessica’s, too.
“SO HOW’S IT GOING with Nina?” Max asked Alex at lunch the next week in the hospital cafeteria.
“Nina’s great.” Alex tried to sound happy but a yawn overwhelmed him. “Life’s great.”
Max raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, don’t let the enthusiasm make you lose your grip.”
“No.” Alex shook his head and then regretted it. It felt as if his brains were rattling in his skull like marbles. “I mean it. She’s great.”
Max leaned back. “And how’s cardiology?”
Alex tried to focus on him. “Cardiology? Cardiology sucks.”
Max shook his head. “Why don’t you knock this off and go back to the ER and make everybody happy?”
Alex glared at him. “People are happy I’m in cardiology. Dad’s ecstatic.”
Max looked at him with disbelief. “How can you tell?”
Alex ignored him. “And Nina’s going to be happy once I get this work schedule ironed out—”
“And then you will be miserable,” Max finished. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to yourself. And for what? Nina will love you no matter what you do. She’s great, the best thing that ever happened to you. And you’re missing it because you have some dumb idea that she needs to be rich.”
“I’ll tell you what’s a dumb idea,” Alex told him. “The Incredibra. That’s a dumb idea.”
Max nodded. “Yes, I can see how we got from cardiology to bras. Makes perfect sense. A word of advice—get some sleep before you kill a patient.”
“I may kill myself first,” Alex said, and then blinked. “Forget I said that. I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“You’re saying you’re unhappy.” Max stood up and shoved his chair back, and the screech it made on the floor made Alex wince. “Stop this, Alex. You’re going to end up like Dad. And me.”
Alex blinked up at him. “You? What’s wrong with you?”
Max looked down at him, and for the first time, Alex saw his brother as an older man, not just a guy to pal around with. “I’m thirty-six, I’ve poured my whole life into my career, I’m burned-out and I’m alone,” Max said, and his voice was like lead. “I’m tired, and I’ve got nowhere to go. And no one to go to. You have Nina. Hell, if I had Nina, I’d grab her and go to a beach somewhere and just watch the sun come up and go down forever. You’ve got it all, and you’re throwing it away. Don’t screw this up, Alex.”
Alex swallowed. “You’re exaggerating.”
Max nodded, defeated. “Probably. I’ll be by with a six-pack tonight, and we can forget I said that together.”
“Good,” Alex said. “Make it a twelve-pack. I’ve got some other stuff to forget, too.”
“SOME OF THE advance reviews are back, Charity,” Nina said to her a month later on the office phone while she stared at the letters before her. “We’re just getting them.”
“Well, how are they?” Charity demanded.
“They’re good,” Nina said. “They’re really good. They’re just not what I expected.”
“Like what?” Charity said. “Nina, you’re killing me here!”
“Like ‘funniest sex farce in years,’” Nina read to her. She picked up another review. “Like ‘Moll Flanders meets Odysseus.’ Like ‘Jane Errs will do for boutique owners what Jane Eyre did for governesses.’ Like ‘Read Jane Errs and find out all the things your mother never taught you about sex.’”
“That’s good, right,” Charity said dubiously.
“Well, it’s going to sell books,” Nina said.
“Didn’t they notice the other stuff?” Charity said. “How she changed? What she learned? Didn’t they notice the important stuff?”
Nina flipped back through the reviews. “They seem to be concentrating on the sex, but that’s probably because they weren’t expecting it. Howard Press doesn’t usually publish a book like yours.”
Or as one of the reviews put it: “This book blows a hole in the side of stuffy old Howard Press and lets the light of the twentieth century in. The surprise is that it’s the bedroom light.”
Jessica was going to have heart failure when she showed her the reviews.
But what Jessica did instead was fire her.
“It’s fiction?” she screeched to Nina when Nina gave her the reviews.
“It started out as a memoir.” Nina clasped her hands in front of her. “It truly did, but in the last rewrite, Charity changed it to fiction, and it was better that way, and the reviews are good—”
Jessica waved a review at her, apoplectic with rage. “Listen to t
his review! ‘Jane Errs makes the rest of the Howard Press output look like a bad blind date.’ That’s what you call a good review?”
Nina gave up. “Well, yes. I call that a good review.”
Jessica stopped waving paper around and leaned on her desk. “You’re fired.”
Nina stepped back. “I’m what?”
“You’re fired. You’re out. And you take this book with you because I’m not releasing it. Not now, not ever. Howard Press will never print trash.”
Nina regrouped. “Okay, fine, fire me, but release Charity’s book. It’s not trash. You haven’t even read it yet, how can you say it’s trash? That’s intellectually dishonest. For heaven’s sake, Jessica, it’s already in production. You can’t—”
Jessica leveled a look at her that stopped her cold. “I can do anything to save the reputation of my father’s press. And I will. Now get out.”
THAT NIGHT, Alex tried to comfort her. “It’s all right, you don’t have to work, anyway. I can support you. That’s what I wanted to do, anyway. It’ll be just like when you were married to Guy.”
“That’s a great comfort to me,” Nina said. “And I’m sure it will be a great comfort to Charity, too.”
Then she went to Charity’s apartment to tell her in person.
Charity’s face went blank with shock as she sank onto her wicker couch. “She’s not going to release it? It’s printed. Why won’t she release it? I’m not going to have a book, after all?”
Nina sat beside her. “Let me think. I’ll fix this.”
“Why didn’t you tell her it was fiction?” Charity asked.
“I thought it was better that she didn’t know,” Nina said. “She didn’t want to know. I thought she’d just have to accept it.”
“You thought wrong,” Charity said, her voice dead.
Nina jerked her head up. “Listen to me, I’m going to fix this.”
Charity shook her head, defeated. “How? It’s over.”
“The hell it is.” Nina stood up. “There are other presses and this is a great book. It even has advance reviews. We’ll just buy it back from Jessica and sell it somewhere else.”
Charity nodded but her heart wasn’t in it. “Sure, Neen. Whatever.”
“I’ll fix this,” Nina said.
“I’M NOT SURE I can fix this,” Nina told Max the next night at dinner.
It was his father’s birthday and the family had gathered for cake and booze. “It’s a Moore tradition,” Max had told her, filling her glass. “By the time the candles are lit, so are we.” His mother and his sister had toasted his father briefly and coolly and then left the room, and now it was just Nina and the three Moore men, who were looking more and more alike: tall, good-looking, strained and unhappy.
Max was looking particularly miserable.
“Are you all right?” Nina had asked him, searching his eyes.
“No,” Max said. “But thanks for asking.” He smiled at her, a small smile but a genuine one. “I hope to hell Alex talks you into marrying him soon. It’s about time we got a human being in this family.”
“I don’t think marriage is a good idea,” Nina said.
Max snorted. “Why, because you want to give him an out in case he grows up and changes his mind?”
Nina set her jaw. “It could happen.”
Max shook his head. “Not if he has any brains. And notwithstanding his performance lately, he has brains.”
“I don’t,” Nina said. “I just lost my job because I’m stupid.”
“Tell daddy,” Max had said, and Nina had dumped it all in his lap.
“I’m sorry to bore you with this,” she said when she was finished, “but Alex tells me not to worry about it since he’ll be supporting me, anyway.” She looked across the living room where Alex was discussing something somber and cardiac with his father. “So I told Fred. It was a help, but not like telling you.”
“Forget the book,” Max said. “Save Alex. Hell, save me.”
Nina watched Alex across the room, nodding at something his father said, and he looked so much like his father that she felt cold. “He doesn’t laugh anymore. We’ve been together for almost two months now, and he doesn’t laugh anymore. We don’t watch movies or jog because he’s too tired. Even Fred knows something’s wrong. He whines until Alex pays attention to him. It’s like he knows Alex has to be reminded to live life.”
“Send Fred to my house,” Max said. “Do you want another drink?”
“No,” Nina said. “I didn’t want this first one.” She turned to Max. “And neither did you. If you’re so unhappy, do something about it. Stop anesthetizing it with alcohol.”
Max blinked at her anger. “Hey, don’t take it out on me because Alex is turning into the old man. I told him not to do it, but he wanted to give you the rich life.”
Nina stopped. “What are you talking about? Are you telling me he doesn’t want cardiology for himself?”
Max snorted. “Of course not. He loves the ER. He’s doing it for you.”
Nina gritted her teeth. It was Guy all over again. Doing it for her when she didn’t want it. Alex and his father came to join them and she glared at them with such passion that Max patted her hand, but they didn’t seem to notice.
“Alex and I have worked out a wedding present for you, my dear,” his father said.
The hell you have. Nina smiled tightly. “We’re not getting married.”
His father smiled back at her, oblivious. “Now, now, Nina, there’s no need to feel guilty because you’re past childbearing age. As Alex has pointed out, it isn’t that important. Max isn’t married yet.”
Alex winced, and Max looked at her and said, “I’ll flip you for the right to say something nasty here.”
“So we bought you a house,” his father finished, and Nina rose straight out of her chair like a banshee.
“You did what?”
“We bought a house,” Alex said, blinking at her. “Dad gave us the down payment. It’s on Lehigh Terrace.”
Nina gritted her teeth. “I used to live on Lehigh Terrace.”
“I know,” Alex said. “That’s why we bought there. So it’ll be just like when you were married to Guy.”
Nina gritted her teeth harder, so hard she thought her gums were going to shove through her cheeks. “I left Guy. Why are you turning into him?”
His father intervened. “Really, Nina, I hardly think—”
“Yeah, we know,” Max said. “That’s why you drink. That’s why we all drink, so we don’t have to think about anything but work and booze. You know, we have a problem here.”
His father scowled at him. “What are you talking about?”
Max scowled back. “You’re an alcoholic workaholic, and you raised the Drunk Brothers in your own image.” He looked at Alex. “Turn back now, boy, or you’re going to lose everything.”
Alex glared at him. “I don’t see why I’m the bad guy because I want Nina to have it all.”
“This isn’t about me. You don’t care about me,” Nina said. “If you cared about me, you’d listen to me. All you can hear is your own ego shrieking, ‘If I don’t give her everything Guy gave her, she’ll leave me.’” She grabbed her purse from the table. “I love you, you jerk, but I’m not going to live that damn life again, even for you. I like the apartment, and I like my dog, and I liked my job, and I just screwed up my best friend’s life, but I don’t have to screw up my own.” She shook her head at him, close to tears, so angry she wanted to kill him. “I hope you and your father are very happy in your house and your career. I wouldn’t have any of it as a gift, or you, either, for that matter. I was right. You’re too young for me. You’re so caught up in your own insecurities that you can’t even see me standing in front of you.”
Alex put his drink down. “I can see you. And you’re wearing that damn Incredibra. You think I don’t listen to you? You don’t listen to me! How about—”
“Good night,” Nina said. “I’ll find my own way
home.”
Max stood up, too. “Nah, I’ll take you. I’m not going to be popular here, anyway.”
Nina headed for the door, but she heard Max tell his father, “Retire and dry out. It’s the only thing that’ll save you.” When she turned back, he was looking at Alex. “God knows what’s going to save you.”
“Wait a minute,” Alex said, but Max was heading for the door, taking Nina’s arm. “Let’s go, kid.”
“Will you wait a minute?” Alex roared, but Nina walked out into the night, grateful she had Max to lean on, already wishing he was Alex instead.
Chapter Eight
“And then what?” Charity said, the next night over non-Amaretto milk shakes.
“And then I went home and cried myself to sleep,” Nina said. “But I did the right thing. I know I did the right thing because I feel so relieved. I even spent the day at the library making a list of publishers and planning our book strategy so Alex couldn’t find me and convince me to go back to that lousy life he was building for me. I mean, I’m miserable because I love the rat bastard, but I couldn’t have gone through another marriage like that one. And Alex was crazed. He was bound and determined that I was going to have my old life back whether I wanted it or not. And the only thing he could think to say was that crack about the Incredibra.”
Charity frowned. “I don’t get that part. Why did he hate the Incredibra?”
Nina closed her eyes and groaned. “Because I wouldn’t take it off until the lights were off.”
Charity put her milk shake down. “Let me get this straight. You slept with this guy for two months, and you never took your bra off with the lights on? He never saw your breasts?”
Nina frowned back at her. “Don’t make it sound so stupid. I’m forty, for God’s sake. I—”
“Did he care? Did he say, ‘I hate your forty-year-old breasts, wear a bra to bed’?”
Nina glared at her, shocked. “Of course not. He’d never say anything like that. Alex was wonderful. He’d tell me how beautiful I looked, and ask me to take it off but—”