“I might just stay awhile, at that,” he told Eden Harwood.
When J. T. reached the bus stop, a pair of women sporting the sleek, glossy tresses of the freshly blow-dried were waiting there and chattering in Spanish. Across the street a sign featuring a single, huge flirty eye fringed in luxurious sparkly gold eyelashes swung on chains. The Truth and Beauty must be a beauty salon.
They went abruptly silent when he appeared and turned big, admiring, wary eyes on him.
He knew that expression well. It translated roughly to, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
He offered them an unthreatening “I’m not a vagrant” smile and stood at a polite distance.
“Cuánto es la tarifa de autobús?” he asked.
Thanks to movie tours and the army and all the various foreign versions ofBlood Brothers, he’d picked up a hodgepodge of languages, and he’d wrestled a few of those into fluency during his downtime.
They beamed at him like indulgent aunts. They looked like sisters in town for a day of beauty, maybe. “One dollar fifty,” one of them told him.
“Gracias.”
They picked up their conversation again. “Oh! Louisa!” One of them grabbed her friend’s arm and turned her. “Look, Look!Mi actriz favorita! Ella es muy hermosa!” She pointed at the advertisement on the bus bench.
The day someone said, “Look at that beautiful woman,” in any language and he didn’t look was the day J. T. was in his coffin.
So he looked.
A famous actress was ecstatically clutching a new handbag with both hands and her knees were bent in what looked like the beginning of a jump for joy. “Spring into savings with Macy’s!”
Oh. Hell.
He could have told them he’d heard that woman fart in her sleep and he’d held her while she sobbed over losing a part she wanted, and that he’d ducked when she’d hurled a shoe at him during their first big fight but she’d still managed to wing his cheekbone. And millions of other little things, because J. T. was a guy who paid attention. Including the very last words she’d said to him. Which were, “Don’t wait up.”
Which had been a warning, but he hadn’t known it at the time.
“Mi película favorita esBetter Luck Next Time!”
He knew that she’d hated the script forBetter Luck Next Time, but it was the movie that turned her from star into mega star.
Or to put it another way, from someone who had struggled to get a mention in any sort of press, let alonePeople, who’d suffered torments that he soothed her out of when some other actress got a mention, into someone so ubiquitous she was practically like the weather. Someone he couldn’t avoid, even here in Hellcat Canyon. A town she would definitely consider beneath her notice.
He turned his back coldly on the advertisement and stared straight down the street as if the sheer force of will could urge the bus to arrive faster.
The bus didn’t come.
And he imagined he could feel Rebecca Corday’s eyes on his back.
Look at you, J. T., with your broken truck and your broken career. You should just get a Bentley, for God’s sake. Now you’re going to have to walk. Nobody who’s anybody walks in Los Angeles.
Oh, Rebecca, he thought silently. You never did really get me.
He decided he was going to walk the rest of the way to Angel’s Nest, and like it.
Britt finally allowed herself to stare fully and unabashedly at the stranger when he got up to walk out the door.
She watched him go, panic and relief duking it out in her gut.
Because from the moment he’d walked in, it was as if someone had dialed the universe up a notch: all of the colors were just a little brighter, and everything seemed more distinct and more beautiful, and her very blood seemed to buzz.
She’d once gone out with a guy who drove an ancient VW van with insulated walls. She could put her hand on the side of it andfeelhow loud the music was inside, from how it thumped and vibrated. And when she’d opened the door to get in, the music had burst out, echoing all over the street, setting off car alarms and prompting her dad to poke his head out the door and shout, “Turn that crap down!”
That’s a bit how she felt right now. Like a VW van secretly bursting with music.
