Hot in Hellcat Canyon (36 page)

Britt was astonished.

“That’s a much better speech,” she allowed after a moment.

And Laine actually sounded a little like J. T., but Britt wasn’t going to tell her that.

Laine laughed.

“I don’t want you to be hurt or scared, Bippy. It kills me. But I also don’t want you to think this is the end of the world. And if you really do love him, maybe you should try to get him back. I’ve never known you to run away from a challenge, and I can’t imagine you can’t take Rebecca Corday with one hand tied behind your back, blindfolded.”

“I totally could.”

“But if you’re still too scared, then maybe that’s something you just have to wait out. Maybe you’re not ready. And if it’s really over, you’ll probably survive to get back up on another horse one day. That’s all I’m sayin’.” She swiveled her head and bellowed, “MUFFIN!”

Britt gave a start.

“Crap! Gotta go, Britt! The cat is tearing around the house. I think he has a dingleberry. I have to grab him before he gets up on our comforter. Love you! Alley-oop!”

The screen went black.

Britt couldn’t bring herself to say Alley-oop back. She didn’t feel like she had the right anymore.

CHAPTER 20

A
brilliant scarlet-and-purple sunset hung like bunting over a scene out of a fairy tale—or out of a Hollywood movie. Same difference this time, J. T. thought. And this particular movie had a cast of hundreds. Fairy lights twinkled in the trees surrounding them; laughing, lounging, cuddling guests clustered at tables covered in white umbrellas that bloomed like little toadstools all over the sprawling green Napa grounds. The ones who weren’t at the tables were dancing or doing deals or mingling or drinking way, way too much or possibly sleeping with someone they shouldn’t in one of the myriad guest cottages.

Speaking of drinking too much, Rebecca was out on the dance floor and she was drunker than he’d ever seen her. She was wearing an astonishing purple dress, very short at the hem, high in the front, scooped so low in the back the teensiest hint of butt cleavage showed. He wouldn’t be surprised if half the men in the place were walking around with involuntary boners thanks to that dress.

He’d asked her to take the wheel of his truck and drive the whole way from Hellcat Canyon to San Francisco, where he’d left her to find her own way to Napa. And on that drive his wedding toast finally poured out of him. He was suddenly fucking Shakespeare. And he’d tapped it all into a draft e-mail to himself in his phone.

Rebecca wasn’t happy about that at all.

And now J. T., after a lot of aggressive and mostly agreeable socializing, had finally found a spot alone at a table on the outskirts of the party. He wanted to be alone.

Guests kept finding him anyway, to pay homage.

Clyde Gordimer, an actor, said, “J. T., my man, that wedding toast . . .” He mimed a knife to the heart. “You’re setting the bar too high for the rest of us.”

“Ah, c’mon, Gordimer. You never met a bar you didn’t love.”

Gordimer laughed and fist-bumped him and strolled on.

A few minutes later, the esteemed multi-Oscared actress Dame Naomi Nivens knelt next to him and said on a hush, “J. T., I want you to know . . . that toast . . .” She clasped her hands. “The stuff of legends. If only all men thought the way you do.”

“Maybe they do,” J. T. told her, “and they just can’t say it.”

She nodded as if he was a sage and drifted off again.

The thing was, most people who knew both him and Rebecca knew that toast couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with her.

Which, he suspected, was why Rebecca was drinking like a fish.

J. T. stood again and wove swiftly through the crowd to seek out a waiter and another glass of champagne. On the way he ran smack into Franco.

Who was actually with
Missy Van Cleve
.

How she’d gotten her own invite to one of the most exclusive, security-enmeshed weddings he’d ever attended, was beyond J. T., given that there was no way she was Franco’s plus one. She was wearing a champagne-colored lace minidress, and, if J. T. had to guess, no underwear.

“I think you know each other,” Franco said.

“Tenssesseee!” Missy was drunk. And delighted to see him.

J. T. stared at Franco for a long, incredulous time.

“What?” Franco demanded.

“For the love of
God
, man.” J. T. was genuinely pained. “Really? Come on,
Edward.
Even I know you’re better than this. Grow. The Fuck. Up.”

He sighed gustily and took himself off back to his table.

He might be a little drunk, too.

“ ’Bye, Tenseeseesee!” Missy waved after him.’

He settled in again, and looked toward the bride and groom’s table, smiling. They gave off their own light, those two. You couldn’t help but look at them, any more than you could help but look at the moon.

And he got out his phone and flipped through to that photo of him and Britt lying on beach towels on a rock, their knees touching. Yearning tightened his gut. He’d once been that happy. He hadn’t really known it. He was unconsciously seeking his own light when he looked at that photo.

Someone swiftly took the chair next to him. He looked up and he managed to get his features under control instantly.

“J. T.”

“Good to see you, Phil.”

Phil, as in Phil Zahn, the director of
Last Call in Purgatory
. Vigorous, a little plump, balding, eyes like lasers. Good guy and scary smart.

J. T. produced a welcoming smile, even as the words
Last Call in Purgatory
conjured such simultaneous shame and lust it was almost Pavlovian.

“Boy, your toast was a real hanky-soaker, J. T. My wife had to redo her mascara twice.”

“Gratifying,” J. T. said with a small smile.

“I always knew you had it in you. Listen, I know the producers shot you down in the end, J. T., but I know Al told you I want you however I can get you, J. T. Don’t tell my wife. Ha ha. But when Rebecca said she wanted you to read with her for
Last Call in Purgatory,
well, funny how things change. You two have never been on film together and the publicity would be a wet dream for them. So I guess we’ll see you at the studio at around one this Wednesday. And I have a favor to ask.”

“Name it.”

“My son-in-law is head of cardiology at the Placer County Children’s Hospital. I was hoping you and Rebecca would film a PSA for them, since Hellcat Canyon is so close. That’s where you’ve been, right? Sven Markson has put his jet at your disposal, and Rebecca told him to pick the two of you up at that little airfield outside Hellcat Canyon on Tuesday.”

J. T.’s smile felt like it was going to crack. He’d love to do that PSA under
any
other conditions. He did
not
want to haul Rebecca back with him to Hellcat Canyon.

He was booked solid with lunches and dinners in San Francisco tomorrow with various friends and colleagues. At least he’d have a mostly Rebecca-free day tomorrow.

“Happy to do it. Honored to be asked,” is what he told Zahn.

Phil gave him a back thump and a smile. “My wife wants to get home, so I’m outta here. Nice wedding, huh? Congrats again on that toast.”

Home sounded good to J. T., too.

Wherever the hell that was now.

As if she’d heard her name, Rebecca, who had finally strolled off the dance floor, plopped down next to him, and laid her head on his shoulder. “Hi, Johnny.”

He stiffened, and stretched for his drink on the table. Her head slid off gracelessly and she nearly toppled from her chair. She righted herself with a little uncharacteristic flailing.

“Enjoying yourself, Becks?” he said ironically. “Thanks for volunteering me for that PSA.”

“You are SO welcome.” She was too drunk to catch the irony. “Hey, J. T.? I’m ready to get back to my cottage. Will you walk me? It’s getting dark and Gordon Papadakis is getting handsy out there on the dance floor. I’m afraid he plans to follow me. ”

J. T. stared at her. Hell.

J. T. He knew that “Wanna walk me?” for what it was. But Rebecca was who she was, and she was hammered, and he knew it probably wouldn’t be safe for her to get to her cottage on her own.

So it was quite a long moment before he answered.

And then he sighed. His manners wouldn’t allow him to do otherwise.

“All right. I’ll walk you.”

They stood. She leaned against him tipsily, struggling a bit in her towering Jimmy Choos, as they wandered the serpentine stone path that wound through the cabins, the night air velvety on the bare parts of his skin, and loneliness was practically a train whistle through his soul.

Loneliness, he decided, was a beautiful night in the company of the wrong person.

“Why so sad, Johnny?” she asked.

“Who says I’m sad?” He was surprised.

Surprised that it showed, actually. And surprised that she’d noticed.

“You’re just quiet. You usually try to make me laugh. Make me laugh, Johnny.”

“I don’t take orders, Becks. You know that.”

He said nothing else. He’d rather be alone with his thoughts of another woman than with Rebecca Corday in the flesh.

He might be the only man in the universe who would.

Fortunately it was a shortish, if dimly lit, walk.

“That was a really remarkable toast today, Johnny.”

“Yep,” he said shortly.

“I had no idea you knew all those things about that word you’re so scared of.”

“I just learned ’em,” he said curtly. He suspected she knew that.

And Rebecca finally stopped walking.

“This your cottage, Becks? I’ll watch you get in.”

She turned to face him.

“I can make you happier,” she murmured. She startled him by toppling forward and burying her face in his neck and inhaling as though she’d been missing his smell.

And then she turned her head and slid her big, pillowy billboard-worthy lips landed on his.

He was astounded. He turned his face away from her swiftly and put a hand out to keep her from toppling forward when he did that.

And he put his hands in his pockets, as if tucking them away for the night. Making his point.

They stared at each other in the dark.

“Good night, Rebecca,” he said firmly.

This wholesale rejection seemed to have startled her into some semblance of sobriety.

She stared at him, wide-eyed. Then her eyes narrowed.

Because she then spun with surprising grace.

And flung her door open and closed it behind her with something like a slam.

He heaved another sigh.
Women.

He strolled along the path back the way he came, hands in his pockets, and took the turn that would lead him back to his own cottage, a healthy distance away from hers.

He stopped abruptly.

Propped in front of one of the cottage doors was a sad orchid in a pot. Its petals were browning. It looked just about ready to give up the ghost.

He stood in front of it for a while, as if it were a shrine.

B
ritt was just about to turn out her light for the evening when she heard a text chime into her phone.

Her heart leaped and she seized the phone.

It was a picture of a half-dead orchid.

Thinking of you.

Damn him. Damn him. Because she was now both laughing and crying.

She stared at it. Willing it to yield more in the way of information.

She couldn’t quite decide how to reply. Or whether she should at all.

She mulled, staring out at the night, imagining him standing there, feeling alone in that crowd, alone enough to text her.

Finally, she scrolled through her emojis.

And found one of a little blue flower.

And that’s what she texted back.

Hopefully he would see it as an apology. Or an olive branch.

She fell asleep holding her phone as if it were his hand, and a little crack opened up in all her fear and anger, just big enough to allow a little ray of hope to shine in.

A
few hours later she woke with a start when it vibrated with an incoming text.

She stirred sleepily and glanced down eagerly.

It was from her sister.

Britt’s stomach turned to ice when she read it.

I’m here if you need me, Bippy.

With a link.

To TMZ.

REBECASSEE REDUX!

John Tennessee McCord and Rebecca Corday were seen canoodling at Director Felix Nicasio’s wedding in Napa this weekend while her lover of a year, Sir Anthony Underhill, films overseas, oblivious.

Good buddy Franco Francone confirms it. “They seem to be really happy together.”

N
o.

Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.

That
son of a
bitch
.

Franco had actually given them a
quote
?

J. T. was incandescent with anger. Of course someone had managed to take photos, even though the photographers had all signed confidentiality agreements and the wedding guests were Hollywood royalty and had nothing to gain from a photo like that. Paparazzi, like mosquitoes, really could manage to squeak in anywhere. Some waiter or staff member had been bribed, probably.

There he was with Rebecca’s head resting dreamily on his shoulder, as if she had every right to be there. Of course she looked dreamy. She never stopped acting, and she never stopped looking beautiful.

A split second before he’d all but flicked her off like an insect.

Worse was the second photo: the two of them, talking outside Rebecca’s guest cottage, Rebecca leaning into him, as though she’d just been kissed senseless.

When he was really trying to set her drunken self back up on her feet.

Two moments that meant less than nothing to him, but taken out of context were elevated to profundity. J. T. sat down hard on the hotel bed and dropped his head into his hands and growled savagely.

Then he stood up and paced the room.