After what seemed an eternity, he reached the front door of the establishment. He didn’t have time to get his coat. The club would send it to his beachside bungalow in the morning anyway.
The glow of the late evening September light flooded the hallas Flynn crawled through the open door. Frank, the doorman, had opened it for him without so much as a raised eyebrow. Flynn wasn’t sure if that was a sign of the man’s discretion or the regularity with which Flynn ended up in scrapes like this.
He stood and dusted off his suit, the knees of his trousers looking a bit threadbare. The valet had already ordered his car, but Flynn turned at the sound of a commotion behind him and caught the telltale red hair and angry growl of Rhonda Powers, now engaged in an argument with Frank.
“I know he came this way,” she groused.
“Lady, I’m telling you, he’s still in the restaurant,” Frank argued. Thank God Flynn tipped everyone in this establishment well. Still, he didn’t have much time before Rhonda broke through that door and got ahold of him.
A car, an old jalopy, pulled up to the valet stand, and he didn’t even blink before putting his hand on the door and leaping over it into the front seat.
The driver shrieked, their hat falling off as they threw their head back in surprise. Flynn didn’t even clock what the driver looked like, he was so busy looking behind him—just in time to see Rhonda barreling out the front door. He ducked down in the car, pressing himself against the floor and clinging to the door handle for dear life. He begged, “Drive, please!”
To his amazement, the driver did as he asked.
Chapter 2
Livvy pressed her foot to the gas and sped away from the Troc, noticing the angry woman marching out the front door. Pulling away with a stranger in the passenger seat was preferable to whatever the alternative was.
Once they cleared the driveway and she peeled onto Sunset Boulevard, Livvy took a second to process the identity of her hitchhiker. She darted her eyes to the side and was astonished to see a familiar crop of dirty-blond hair, a chiseled silhouette, and the lightly upturned corners of a mouth that seemed to hold a perpetual smirk. She hadn’t picked up any old straggler who had over imbibed at the club; she’d driven off with the subject of her teenage fantasies and her soon-to-be costar—the one and only Flynn Banks.
“You’re—” she started.
“The man at the bar!” he proclaimed, finishing her sentence with a non sequitur.
“Huh?” She threw him a puzzled look as they pulled up to a red light on La Cienega. She’d been so flustered by the sight of a strange man leaping into her car that she hadn’t paid attention to where she was going, merely knowing she should drive east to get back to her dumpy little apartment at the Garden of Allah Hotel.
But then she remembered. She grabbed at her head, huntingfor the newsboy cap that had flown into the back seat in her alarm, and realized the dark curls that she’d tucked beneath her cap were now blowing in the evening breeze.
He grinned at her, a lascivious, devilish smile that made her feel as if she was driving naked. “You’re not a man.”
“Well, no,” she stated, not knowing what else to say.
“I thought you were a woman, but then I realized you were a man. But you’re not.”
Lord, was this the man she’d spent many a teenage afternoon in a movie palace mooning over? He was a simpleton! “Of course, I’m not a man. Why would I be?”
“You’re dressed like one.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see the Café Trocadero, so I decided a disguise was the best way. I just wanted to see it, to get a sense of it, without anyone bothering me. And no one looks twice at a man.”
“You don’t know the right men.” Flynn grinned, and she could swear that his teeth twinkled in the streetlight. He looked like the wolf that ate Little Red Riding Hood. “Besides, honey, I looked twice at you—and I can promise you I wasn’t the only one.”
Livvy’s mouth went dry at the pronouncement, but she swallowed and tried to ignore it. Her heart was beating a mile a minute. Flynn Banks, swashbuckler and silver screen rogue, was flirting. With her. Her sister would never believe this.
“I’ve never been so thrilled to be wrong in my life,” he purred. She got the feeling Flynn Banks was the type that never admitted they were wrong. She supposed she should be flattered.
When they got to Sweetzer Avenue, she started to cruise ahead, but he stopped her. “Hey, turn around. Malibu’s west on Sunset.”
She raised her eyebrow at him. “And what precisely is in Malibu?”
“My cottage,” he replied matter-of-factly. She started to protest. She may have been gaga for Flynn Banks once, but she wasn’t about to go home with him five minutes after meeting him.
“I can’t possibly go back for my driver,” he added. “That woman back there will skin me alive. Please take me home. I’ll be your humble servant forever.” He made a little mock bow, as much as he could manage while seated in the car.
