“We men are shallow. We don’t need a deep conversation to be friends.”
Roz snorted. “Sounds about right. Are you friendly enough to have his phone number?”
Alden winced. “Well …”
“Maybe one of those other guys he was with has his number.”
Alden thought for a moment. “Yeah. One was a golf pro at Vesper Lakes. He’s given me dish before. Let me try him.”
“Great. And I’ll ping Sebastian. And then we’ll write something up for the web so John’s head doesn’t explode.”
Chapter Twelve
“He actually told us to come over!” Alden set down his phone after a flurry of calls, looking as surprised as if someone had just slapped him.
Roz had to laugh. He was just so cute sometimes. “What, you doubted your new best buddy, Blake Burbage?”
After filing a short article for John that mentioned the possibility of foul play, a few details about the movie studio deal and some color from Mae, they hit the road in Alden’s Miata. Roz left her car in front of the newspaper’s office just down the street.
She insisted they stop by the sheriff’s department. Deputies Duke Dawson and Naya Byrd were out, but she left the book for Duke with a note.
“Did you leave him doughnuts, too?” Alden snarked as she climbed back into his sporty little car.
She smiled. “Maybe next time.”
Alden grumbled, but she was pretty sure he did it just to nag her, in a pigtail-pulling kind of way. She kind of liked that he was jealous, even if he was just teasing her. Nobody had ever cared that much before.
Her phone pinged on their way to the beach and Enolia Honeywood’s neighborhood. She glanced at the text. “It’s Sebastian Esquivel. He says we can meet him at the studio site at five.”
Alden glanced at the clock on the dash. “Will we make it?”
“I think so. Depends on if Blake invites you to a sleepover.”
“Oh, shut up.” But his eyes twinkled and his mouth twitched, halfway to a smile.
Blake Burbage also had a gate, but he answered the intercom himself before he buzzed them in.
A mini forest of palms partly obscured his house from the road, but the building stuck up so high it was easy to see most of it. At three stories with a cupola—with most of the lower floor taken up by a garage with two wide doors—it was tall and relatively narrow compared with Enolia’s place. But as they parked next to it, Roz could see the building had plenty of depth. This was another big house, with riotous siding in sunflower yellow and turquoise with white accents.
“Boy, my place is going to feel really small when I go home tonight,” she said as they got out of the car.
“You could always come to my apartment first. Then when you go to your house, it will seem bigger,” Alden joked.
She chuckled. “You’re not wrong.”
The main door was on the side of the house, nestled in a recess under a balcony.
Blake Burbage answered the doorbell in bare feet, navy shorts and an “I Love My Shih Tzu” T-shirt with a goofy-looking dog on it. Rushing down the steps behind him was the dog itself, probably a girl given the froufrou pink ribbons in her long white and gray fur. The tiny pup-mop bounced up and down on her front feet as she yapped.
“Calm down, Morgana,” Blake said, running a hand through his not-quite-short silver-streaked dark hair. He still looked good, fiftysomething or not. He bent down and ruffled the dog’s head, and the barking subsided to a low growl. “She probably won’t bite you.”
“Great,” Alden said wryly. “Thanks for letting us stop by. This is Roz Melander.”
“Roz.” Blake broke into a beaming smile and fixed her with his bright blue eyes, and her heart stopped for a minute. Yes, he really looked good.
“H-h-hi.” She hated herself for the nerves, but she didn’t meet movie stars every day. She stuck out her hand, and he shook it, and then everything was normal again.
“You have to come up the stairs unless you want to take the elevator in the garage,” he said.
