The Original Sinners: The Red Years

He expected her to flinch or fight. Instead, she just laughed.

“I really can’t blame you. Have a seat and tell me all about it.”

Warily, Zach sat down in the battered paisley armchair across from her desk. He started to cross his ankle over his knee but froze in midmovement as his foot tapped an unusually long black duffel bag that sat on the floor. He heard the distinct, unnerving sound of metal clinking against metal.

“I’ve got to get to class,” Wesley said, sounding desperate to leave. “That okay?”

“Oh, I doubt Mr. Easton will bend me over my desk and ravish me the second you leave,” she said, winking at Zach. “Unfortunately.”

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.”