Belle added, “Not so much with the kissing back then. That was kind of a tenth grade discovery.”
“She went to the Junior prom with Elmer Fudd,” Tom said, “and I discovered I had... something of a major problem with that.”
“Stella!” Belle shouted in her best Marlon Brando. “Stella!”
“He crashed the prom,” Hobbit chimed in from his territory way over in the umbrella’s shade. “He was really yelling Belle, but it sounded a lot like Stella. Or so I’ve heard. It remains legendary.”
“Elmer Fudd?” Jules asked.
“Names have been changed to protect the innocent,” Belle said.
“To keep me from hunting him down and ugly crying and getting snot on his shoes,” Tom said with a grin.
Belle laughed at his call-back, and kissed him.
Ah, fuck you, David. Jules sighed. He didn’t think it was audible in the noise of the wind off the water, but Belle turned back to him and quietly asked, “You okay?”
“I am,” Jules said, managing to smile at her. As loudly extroverted as she was, she was just as kind as Tom—as all of them. “Just... I thought I had what you have.” He raised his voice, “Fuck you, David!”
“Fuck you, David,” his new-found friends howled along with him, and you know what?
It actually made him feel better.
CHAPTER SIX
Present Day
Burbank, California
Mission Day One
Jules’s very first case came in via Robin, which made total sense.
It was only natural that ripples would occur when Robin, with both his celebrity status and vast network of Hollywood connections, made even just casual comments about the opening of a Troubleshooters office in Los Angeles, run by his former-FBI husband with help from a close friend who’d been a Navy SEAL.
The irony was that they didn’t have a brick and mortar office yet.
They didn’t even have a permanent home—he and Robin were staying in a vacation rental in Sherman Oaks—close to and paid for by the studio where Robin’slatest guest-star gig, long on his schedule, was being filmed. The place was very nicely appointed, for sure, with plenty of extra room for Sam to stay over, which was a bonus.
Robin had wanted to cancel the job, and would have, if Jules hadn’t agreed to fly out here to California with him.
Oh, how the tides had turned.
But Robin had never been more deadly serious about refusing to leave Jules home alone. And since Jules knew that Robin had been looking forward to playing this particular role—the villain in a several-week-long storyline on a popular TV show—getting the hell out of Boston seemed like a very good idea.
So less than forty-eight hours ago, he’d joined Robin on his first-class flight westward-ho and therefore had been in the perfect geographical place to accept his very first client—one Milt Devonshire Junior—when the man had gotten in touch via Robin’s agent, of all people.
The situation wasn’t anywhere close to life-and-death. It was a simplelocate the whereabouts.But maybe it was good that Jules was starting small, like this.
Maybe?
Definitely.
Milt D. the Junior was apparently wealthy and happy to pay a crap-load of money for Jules to leap into action, so leap he did. And Sam leaped, too. The short-term plan was for a wide variety of Troubleshooters operatives to partner-up with Jules until he’d fully staffed the new LA office, and Sam was his first volunteer.
The former SEAL had barely gotten back to his home in San Diego when this job crossed their wire, so this morning he’d caught a commuter flight to Burbank, which was the only time air travel from San Diego to the Los Angeles area made sense. Flying into LAX was insane. But BUR was justa few minutes from both the rental house and this morning’s meeting location.
The tiny Burbank airport was a throwback to Old Hollywood, and Sam was waiting on the sidewalk in the morning sunshine as Jules pulled up.
