Chapter 15
Parker batted the book away a nanosecond before it could connect with his temple. It landed in the dirt beside his chair, sending up a puff of dust. He recognized the cover. It was the first volume of the Deck Cayton series.
Maris was standing just inside the open doorway. The first time she came to the deserted cotton gin, she’d been apprehensive and hesitant to enter. This morning her aura was glowing as red hot as a new star. If the threshold on which she was standing had been the gateway to hell, Parker doubted she would have been intimidated.
Given that he could see the outline of her legs—all the way to the top—through her skirt, her fury was ineffectual. At the very least, it was compromised. His eyes were drawn to that vaguely defined delta, but he concentrated on keeping them in a neutral zone above her waist. God knew he didn’t need to provoke her any more than she was already provoked.
Unflappably, he asked, “You didn’t like the book?”
“Fuck you.”
“I guess not.”
With her hands clenched into fists that she held stiffly at her sides, she walked toward him, quoting as she came, “ ‘At least they had parted while all the memories were still sweet.’ ” She came to a stop within a yard of his chair and he noted that she was wearing eyeglasses. “You’re either a plagiarist or a consummate liar, and either way you’re a son of a bitch.”
“So you said. I got it the first time.”
“Which is it? Just so I’ll know. One’s as despicable as the other.”
“I believe you quoted from chapter seventeen, page two hundred forty-three. Deck is at his late wife’s grave.” He feigned puzzlement. “I’m not sure if one can plagiarize oneself. Can one?”
She was too angry to speak.
“Deck is grief-stricken but grateful that he’d had her in his life for even a short time,” he continued. “It was rather good, I thought.”
“Good enough to use again. In Envy. After Leslie broke up with Roark.”
At what hour of the day had she discovered the telltale passage? he wondered. Had it been late last night as she lay in the guest cottage bed, or had she been reading over her morning coffee? The circumstances really didn’t matter. She knew his secret, and she was pissed.
“Why did you lie to me, Parker?”
“I never lied about it,” he countered calmly. “You never asked me if I was Mackensie Roone. You never asked me if I wrote a mystery series featuring Deck Cayton. Even when we were talking about him last night, you never once said—”
“Don’t be obtuse, Parker! You lied by omission. Otherwise, you would have volunteered that vital piece of information.”
“Vital? Hardly. It wasn’t even important. It wasn’t relevant. If you’d’ve asked, I would have—”
“Invented some bullshit story. Like this has been from the very beginning.”
“If I hadn’t wanted to be found out, I wouldn’t have deliberately used that sentence in Envy and then recommended that you read the first Deck Cayton book.”
“Which was another of your games to test how sharp I am,” she shouted.
Her hair was tousled and her cheeks were pink, as though she’d run all the way here from the house. Truth be told, she looked adorably disheveled and smelled of the vanilla in freshly baked tea cakes. But she wouldn’t welcome the compliments.
“I’ve never seen you wearing glasses. Do you ordinarily wear contacts?”
Impatiently she raked her hair back. “What I want to know is why.”
She had lowered the timbre of her voice, although it appeared to have been an effort. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly as though the volume and vituperation trapped inside were creating inner turbulence.
“Why did you play this ridiculous game with me, Parker? Or Mackensie or whatever the hell your name is.”
“Parker Mackensie Evans. Mackensie was my mother’s maiden name. When I was deciding on a pseudonym, it seemed a logical choice. Tickled my mom no end for me to use it. It has a nice ring. It’s androgynous. It’s—”
“Answer me”
“—safe.”
“From what?”
“Discovery.” He tossed out the word like a gauntlet. For long moments, it seemed to lie there between them on the dirt floor alongside the book. Finally he said, “When I sold the Deck Cayton series, I wished to remain anonymous. I still do.”
“The series has been enormously popular. Why hide behind a pseudonym?”
He folded his arms across his chest and gave her a pointed look. “Why do you suppose, Maris?”
Her lips parted as though to speak, but then realization dawned, and her lips closed. She looked away, embarrassed.
“Right. Deck Cayton is every man’s fantasy. Every woman’s, too, according to you. He’s agile and quick, he can chase the bad guys and carry a woman to his bed. Why would I want to dispel his dashing image by showing up at personal appearances in a wheelchair?”
“No author photographs on the book jackets,” she mused out loud. “No book signings or personal appearances. I often questioned your publisher’s marketing strategy and wondered why it didn’t include you. They were protecting you.”
“Wrong. I was protecting me. Even my publisher doesn’t know who Mackensie Roone is. My editor doesn’t know my real name or whether Mackensie Roone is male or female. No one knows anything about Mackensie Roone’s true identity. My agent tells me the speculation has run the gamut from—”
“Of course,” Maris interrupted on a soft cry. “Mackensie Roone has an agent! I know her. You didn’t go through her when you submitted Envy. Why?”
“She doesn’t know about it.”
“Why?”
“Because I haven’t told her. She’ll get her percentage of anything Envy earns because I’ll bring her in to negotiate the final contract. But until that time, I chose to go this one alone.”
“Why?”
“Is there an echo in here?”
“Before I kill you, I want to understand this, Parker.”
Despite the first half of that statement, she appeared more befuddled than angry now, although he sensed he was being granted only a temporary reprieve. If he knew her at all, and he felt he was coming to, once she had time to think about all this at length, she was going to get as mad as hell all over again.
“Explain yourself, Parker. Why the secrecy?”
“I wanted to write a different book. Totally different from the snappy dialogue and fast-paced action in the Deck Cayton books. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not easy to write.” He grinned ruefully. “Frankly, it surprises the hell out of me how popular they’ve become.
“But because they’re so popular, and Deck is so well-known to the fans—I mean, to some, he’s like a member of the family who’s merely away from home between books—they expect a lot from me. They want the same, but different. They want each book to take Deck into a new and exciting adventure, but they’d turn vicious if I deviated too far from the formula.
“It’s hard to deliver every time out of the chute. Each successive book has outsold the previous one, and I’m glad. But that also raises the stakes and the standard, and makes each book harder to top.”
“That’s a refrain I’ve heard from other successful novelists,” Maris remarked. “They say it’s difficult to top themselves. Noah has said that about The Vanquished.”
Parker didn’t want to talk about Noah and his goddamned success story.
“I’ve come clean with you, Maris, now be truthful with me. If my agent had called you up one day and said, ‘Guess what I’ve got? Lying on my desk as we speak is a new novel by the author of the Deck Cayton series. Something entirely different from the mysteries. Very hush-hush. And he wants you to see it first.’ You’d have creamed, right?”
She blinked at the offensive expression, but she didn’t shy away from his eyes as they bore into hers.
“I wanted you to cream over Envy, Maris. But without knowing anything about me or my past successes.”
She looked away, readjusted her eyeglasses, absently brushed a gnat off her arm. When she looked at him again, she said, “All right, yes. I wouldn’t have used your crude terminology, but I would’ve been excited by such a call. Why would that have been such a terrible thing?”
“Because I wanted an unbiased opinion of the writing.”
“Which entitled you to make a fool of me.”
“No, dammit! That wasn’t…” He felt his own ire rising, and he suspected it was because her argument had merit. He began again. “I sent the prologue to you unsolicited because that was the only way to guarantee an impartial reading. I wanted you to approach it without preconceptions. I wanted it to stand on its own, not on my reputation as a bestselling author. I wanted it to be good.”
“It would have been just as good without the charade, Parker. My reaction to it would have been the same.”
“But I would never have known for sure, would I?” He gave her time to respond, but she didn’t. She couldn’t. He was right, and she knew it. “I tricked you, yes. But I needed to prove to myself that there was more in me than a scotch-drinking, skirt-chasing hunk with a big gun and a bigger dick.”
“Deck Cayton has more substance than that.”
“Thanks. I think so. I wasn’t sure you did.”
She bent down and picked up the book.
“Are you going to bang me over the head with that?”
“Maybe.” Her anger hadn’t dissipated. It was still there, simmering. She just had it under control. “But even as mad as I am,” she said, “I can’t abuse a book. It goes against my nature even to dog-ear a page.”
“I’m that way, too.”
She returned his peacemaking smile with a glare. “Don’t you dare try to charm me, Parker.” She passed the book down to him and dusted her hands. “What you did was—”
“Terrifying.”
“That wasn’t the word I was going to use.”
“But it’s the correct one. When I put that prologue in the mail, I was scared shitless.”
“Of what? Rejection?”
“Big time. You could have sent me a curt letter. Said no thanks. Said I stunk. Said I should give up writing and try stringing beads or basket weaving instead. I’d have probably bought a package of razor blades and locked myself in the bathroom.”
“That isn’t funny.”
“You’re right, it isn’t.”
“Besides, you’re too egotistical for suicide.”
How little she knew. There had been times during those darkest days when his soul had been as twisted as his legs and his emotions were as raw as the flesh that defied healing, when, had he been able to move, he would have taken the path of least resistance and ended it there.
But while he was in that pit of despair, he had been imbued with a will to live. Determination had been breathed into him by some omnipotent power or cosmic authority greater than his paltry human spirit.
Not an angel, though. Not an angel as angels are typically portrayed. There was nothing benevolent, God-blessed, or holy about his plans for Noah Reed.
He reached for Maris’s hand and squeezed it hard. “Don’t underestimate how important this is to me.”
She didn’t squeeze back but searched his eyes. “Why did you send Envy to me, Parker? I know your editor for the Mackensie Roone books. He’s very capable.”
“He is,” he agreed solemnly.
“My question stands. There are hundreds of editors in a dozen major publishing houses. What set me apart? Why’d you choose me?”
“The article in the magazine.” He hoped she wouldn’t detect that he was lying. The answer seemed plausible enough to him, but she was looking at him with an intensity that was unnerving. “The things you were quoted as saying convinced me you were the editor for Envy.
“I liked what you said about commerce versus quality, and how the balance in publishing is in danger of shifting in favor of the former. I’m not writing this book for the money. I’ve got more money than I’ll ever need. Deck Cayton has seen to that.
“I’m writing Envy for me. If it finds an audience, I’ll be pleased. If it doesn’t, you still saw something worthwhile in it, and to me that’s damn good confirmation of my talent.”
“It’ll find an audience.” She pulled her hand free of his. “I’ll see to that. I have too much invested in it not to.”
“A measly fifteen grand?”
“I wasn’t referring to the advance.”
His silly smile collapsed and he matched her gravity. “I know.”
“I was referring to…”
He thought he saw the start of tears, but it might have been a tricky reflection off the lenses of her glasses. “I know what you were talking about, Maris.”
They exchanged a long and meaningful look. He was consumed with the desire to touch her. “I don’t want you to leave.”
He hadn’t known he was going to say that until he heard his own gruff voice filling the heavy silence. He hadn’t made a conscious decision to speak the words, but he meant them. And he meant them for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with his revenge on Noah Reed.
“Write your book, Parker.”
“Stay.”
“I’ll be in touch.” She backed up several steps before turning and walking away from him.
“Maris!”
But she didn’t stop or even slow down, and she didn’t look back, not even when he called her name again.