He played his part perfectly until we got through to the palm-tree-clustered pool outside, and there he let his arm drop. He gave me another grin, though this was a real one—less wattage than his usual Hollywood Star smile, but much more genuine—and looked at Jack.
“Who’s your friend, causing all this trouble?”
“Call me JJ,” Jack said before I could reply. He stepped forward to aggressively shake the hand that Chris offered, but his voice was cold enough to drop the ambient temperature a few degrees. “And you are?”
Hehadto know who Chris Booker was, right? I couldn’t tell whether Jack was pretending or not. Chris just laughed. “Leaving you two alone, I guess is the answer to that,” he said. “No disrespect meant, man. Just helping out an old friend.” His eyes gave a wicked flash as he looked back to me. “But you ever find yourself in need of company, you call me. Okay?”
I saw Jack’s hands curl into tight balls and decided it was time to move on. “Thanks for the help, Chris. You’re the best.”
“You know it,” he said. “See you round…JJ.” He fired finger guns at Jack and winked at him before whirling around to shout a greeting to the group across the room that was evidently expecting him.
“What the ever-loving fuck iswrongwith you?” I asked Jack with a big, fake smile, so it wouldn’t look to outsiders like there were any issues. The manager had made it pretty damn clear that he considered Jack a problem, and two minutes into our visit, I was beginning to wonder if the manager had been, well.Right.
Jack, who had been glaring after Chris’s retreating back, blinked and refocused on me. “What?”
“Chris played Lancelot onCamelot Courtwhen we were kids. He washelping us out. And you went full caveman on him.”
Jack looked away. “Let’s just find Rochford, get her intel, and then get out of here.”
I looked around the place and saw, as I expected, Roxy Rochford lounging under a large sun umbrella at the VIP end of the pool. She wasn’t the tanning type, unlike my sister, who had always insisted that golden skin set off her hair to best advantage. Roxy, on the other hand, was arealredhead who freckled rather than tanned, and as long as I’d known her she’d considered the sun an enemy. As well as the umbrella she had on a huge, floppy sun hat, large sunglasses that covered half her face, and a kimono-style lounging wrap in a vivid black and gold Japanese print. It served to make her legs, seductively peeking out where the outfit slid open up her thigh, look even whiter against the dark fabric.
“Over there,” I told Jack, nodding towards her. She had her usual Chateau coterie with her—a few TV extras who weren’t and would never be as famous as she was, and several men, all vying for her attention. “What did you do, anyway?” I asked as Jack and I started walking over.
“Huh?”
“To get blacklisted from this place. You take photos or something?” The Chateau’s policy on no-pictures, no-video was strict enough that it earned people a one-way ticket out with no way back in. But their policy on just about everything besides that was notoriously lax, so I couldn’t imagine what the hell Jack could have doneexcepttake photographs.
“Well?” I prompted when he didn’t reply. “Were you running a side hustle as a paparazzo or something?”
“No,” Jack said, and didn’t elaborate.
Roxy saw and recognized me long before I reached her, but pretended not to until I was close enough for her to give a dramatic rendition of “Woman greeting an old friend she hasn’t seen for many years.” It was Oscar-worthy.
She gave a sharp gasp that silenced the chatter of her group, her hand flying to her chest. After a frozen moment, she pulled off her sunglasses, staring straight at me, and I could see her large, dark brown eyes widen perceptibly even across the remaining distance.
“MillerBeaumont!” she squealed. She swung herself up from the lounging chair and flew to me in a fluttering of black and gold satin. Her arms were around my neck before I could even say hello. I just hoped Jack wouldn’t react the same way to Roxy’s hug as he had to Chris’s.
He didn’t. In fact, he was acting more like a bodyguard, hanging back and looking around the area, not letting his eyes stop on any one thing. All he needed was an earpiece.
Roxy pulled back a little, but kept hold of me just above the elbows. “Miller, howare you?” she demanded, shaking me slightly.
“I mean, you know,” I said vaguely. I hadn’t seen Roxy for a while. “I’m fine. I thought Annie might be here. I’m trying to track her down.”
This close up, even under her makeup and her performance, I could see that Roxy wasn’t her usual self. There were dark shadows under her eyes that her concealer didn’t quite cover, and tension in her forehead from more than just the preventative Botox. Her eyes couldn’t meet mine, not because she didn’t want to look at me, but because she was looking everywhere else.
Like she wasn’t quite sure she was safe.
“Rox,” I said softly, hoping she’d drop the public show, “do you know where Annie is?”
She looked around and gave a loud laugh as though I’d said something hilarious. “Oh myGod, Miller, you’re too much.” She dropped her voice to add, “Let’s go to the lounge.”
The lounge area of the Chateau was where the gossip happened, therealgossip, the true and the terrible, the kind that never got written up as Blind Items because it was too mundane, depressing, or horrifying. But the lounge was a better place than the pool to avoid attention.
“This is my, uh, friend. JJ.” I stood aside to indicate him, hoping the lie about our relationship status wouldn’t sound too obvious.
I wasn’t sure what Jack was to me, butfrienddidn’t cover it.
Jack came forward to kiss Roxy’s limp hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Ms. Rochford,” he said.
