She’s cute. Are all the girls like that in Hellcat Canyon?
Effing Franco Francone.
J. T. reflexively, angrily, texted back a photo of his Emmy.
Then, just as he was stuffing his phone back into his pocket, another text chimed in.
BTW, McCord, they cast me in a secondary role inThe Rush. Three-episode arc. See you in Napa in a week?
Franco again. J. T. went still. Just for an instant an old reflexive gladness kicked in. Because he and Franco really had a blast working together onBlood Brothers. The press had loved their relationship. They had, indeed, almost been brothers.
Until Franco accused him of stealing his girl.
And J. T. had knocked him flat in a parking lot.
The press had loved that, too.
“You can’t lose her if she really loves you,” J. T. had said at the time. Staring down like a conqueror at a flattened Franco, whose nose was bleeding.
It seemed an eternity ago. What a pompous young prick he’d been back then. As ifheknew anything at all about love.
It occurred to him, however, that he might not have been wrong.
He stared at Franco’s text.
And decided not to answer it. Yet.
He forced himself to examine his mood. Stealthy paparazzi photos were a way of life for him. All the women he’d dated before understood implicitly that they were part of the Hollywood ecosystem, the way mosquitoes and barnacles had their role in nature. Rebecca in particular was adept at making that work in her favor.
But Britt was still learning how to feel safe again in the world, and with a man. He’d earned that trust, and he cherished it.
And some asshole had stalked them with a camera.
He had a hunch Britt could actually cope with all of that. She had a competitive streak, after all.
But at the heart of the usual anger was something new: a little, cold shard of something that might be fear.
He’d seen Britt glance at the wall calendar.
As if she was counting the days until he’d be out of there.
She was a bolter. It was a built-in defense.
J. T. suspected all she needed was a reason.
Not only would this never have bothered him before, he would have been the one counting the days. An Advent calendar, so to speak, for relationship escape.
How did a woman who’d begun as a good time turn into three weeks of hot nights entwined under absurdly floral sheets, twilights with a chatty rum-swigging, nonagenarian, cat food in his basket at the grocery store, and a sense that he was finally, after forty years, where he should be?
Something soft wrapped around his ankles. A tail.
He looked down into the benevolent green gaze of Phillip.
He sighed, knelt to pet him for a while.
He could entertain Phillip for an hour at a time by aiming a laser pointer all over the place. Phillip would stalk and pounce and scramble but he never caught it, because it couldn’t be caught, of course. It didn’t really exist.
J. T. wished he was as simple as Phillip. He probably was, once.