One Ring to Rule. Christa Maurice
projectiles. Look, I know what I did was a world class asshole act, but let me explain.”
Lindsey jabbed the elevator call button, folded her arms and glared at the elevator, clinging to her anger. She heard excited conversation in the lobby below. She tried to listen to that, hoping to block out Kent. She wanted to hate him, and she wanted to lure him to her room and screw him blind in the vain hope of getting him back. Her fans would be so disappointed.
“Before I met you, I’d never met a woman so driven. You had a plan. You were going to write fantasy novels, remember? Comics were a stopover while you worked on your craft and networked. You were better than the next tights-wearing superhero.”
“I am better than the next tights-wearing superhero. I edit my own line, and there are no tights in it.” Lindsey made the mistake of turning to glare at Kent, thinking she was ready. She wasn’t. She doubted she ever would be.
Kent’s quicksilver eyes bore into hers, making her guilty and needy at the same time. “You were going to be the next Marion Zimmer Bradley. The next Ray Bradbury. And you were getting out of New York. We were going to live on a farm with horses and a couple of dogs,” he accused.
“So? All you were supposed to do was draw men flying in tights and stick around.” The elevator doors swished open.
Kent stepped in like he’d been invited. “I know that. Why did you give up?”
“Who says I gave up on anything?”
Someone approached the open elevator doors, but reeled back at the tone of her voice. The doors closed, imprisoning her inside with him. Lindsey turned to the window at the back and stared through it down at the lobby. She hadn’t given up. Other things just took precedence. At first, one of those things had been him. Later, one of those things had been revenge on him.
“You did it to spite me, didn’t you?”
Even as his words made her want to shout denials, his tone made her want to beg him to make love to her. She bit her lip.
“You decided to take over the comics world to spite me. Comics were always my thing, not yours. It’s like The Gift of the Magi.” He tangled his fingers through her wild hair.
Tears gathered in her eyes at the tenderness of his touch. She’d sworn she’d never cry for him again. With the other hand he brushed her cheek.
“You remember the San Diego Con? We went to that party for that rock star’s startup company, and all night everybody kept thinking I was the rock star. Remember how we went back to the hotel and had so much fun that you spent the whole next day sitting down? We had good times.”
Lindsey steeled herself. She couldn’t take this again. Once was too much. “Remember that Friday four years ago when I went to work and came home to find all your stuff gone except for a scrap of sketch paper with a note on it telling me how sorry you were?”
“I still am sorry.”
The doors opened and Lindsey dove through them. She fished her keycard out of her pocket even though her door was halfway down the hall. “I didn’t even know there was anything wrong. You didn’t give me a chance.”
“I know. After I left, I knew what I’d lost. I knew I needed to try and get you back. It just took me a while.”
Lindsey stopped at the door she fervently hoped was hers. Her vision was too blurry to check the number even if she remembered it. She shoved the card into the slot, and the door unlocked. “That explains all the letters and flowers you’ve sent over the years trying to apologize. Or maybe that was one of the other guys who’ve so spectacularly dumped me. Oh wait, there was only the one. You.” She pushed the door open and stepped inside. “Go away, Kent. It’s too late. Way too late.”
* * * *
Kent flinched when the door clicked closed in his face. He knew she’d wanted to slam it and wished she’d been able to. It might have helped burn out a little more of her anger. Her very appropriate anger. If he hadn’t been such a coward four and a half years ago, he’d have been on her doorstep with the flowers and the apologies that would have worked then. Inside the room, he could hear her sobbing. He pressed his hands against the door, wishing he could somehow get inside to comfort her. But no, he’d messed up big time. He’d assumed she would give him a minute to talk so he could tell her what he’d done to make amends.
He should have known better. Actually, he had. Time for Plan B.
Kent looked at his watch. He had an appointment to keep and an invitation to finagle before seven o’clock. And he should stay out of Lindsey’s way until the close of the Con today. He didn’t want her sneaking out of the publisher party before he caught her.
* * * *
Lindsey observed the party from a carefully constructed distance. After Kent destroyed her reserve this morning, she’d hid in her room until lunch, for which she felt terribly guilty. As a rule, editors did not have fans, but she did, and her fans had been haunting the booth all morning waiting for her to return. She’d spent all afternoon talking with them and reviewing portfolios to make up for her absence this morning. Her fans had been very kind. For a bunch of radical feminists-in-training, they were very sympathetic to her man problems.
Or rather her problem man.
He had not reappeared, but she knew better than to think he’d just given up. This was a feint. He would be back tomorrow. But tonight she was safe. This was a publisher party for company people. Kent was no longer a company person.
“So are you going to tell me what happened this morning?” Amy whispered.
Amy had not been her assistant four years ago. She hadn’t even worked for the publisher yet. But Lindsey knew Amy had heard stories from the other women in the office. The men seemed to have forgotten about the broken relationship in her meteoric rise to power. The women attributed her rise to the break up. No one talked to her about it. Too dangerous. Lindsey supposed that would change now. Especially if he came to the office.
“My ex showed up. That’s all.”
“It didn’t look like that was all. I’ve never seen you get that crazy before. Not even when Fed Ex lost the pencils for that issue last year.”
Lindsey raised one eyebrow at her assistant, pleased that she could maintain her cool. “I threatened to rip the Fed Ex VP’s heart out.”
“Yes, but you weren’t shouting when you did it,” Amy pointed out. “It’s me, remember?”
Lindsey considered her options. She’d kept her work and personal life strictly separate after Kent left. His leaving had torn such gaping wounds, she never wanted to be in that position again. But that meant all her friends were too far away to be much comfort right now. “Kent and I lived together for a year, but one day I went to work, and he moved all his stuff out before I came home.”
“Ouch.”
“That fits the situation as well as anything else.” Lindsey took a deep drink from her glass. She’d wanted alcohol tonight, but with all the emotion in the air, she’d been afraid of the consequences, so she'd ordered ginger ale. If she’d joined up with bar-Con like she’d wanted to, she’d most likely wake up in Brad’s bed and spend the next four years making up for that. On a positive note, that would keep him from sniffing around Amy. Just because she was wound up about Kent didn’t mean she was oblivious to the looks darting between the two of them. Brad was one person she felt obligated to keep away from her rather naïve assistant.
“Did he say why he left?”
“Some bull story about not being the man I needed.”
Amy groaned. “I hate that. You know, just give me a real reason already. Gary said you were, uh, different when you were with Kent.”
“Different?” Lindsey asked, even though she could guess the exact words Gary used to describe her personality now. One of them was five letters long and started