“You’re fobbing this off because of a woman,” Rance said.
“No, I’m not.” Not in the usual sense.
“I thought you were committing yourself to building Hunter Productions back up. Making it strong again.”
Dex had known Rance a long time. He counted this man as a friend. Now Dex’s jaw clenched and voice lowered. He was laid-back, certainly. That didn’t translate into pushover.
“You’re forgetting who pays the bills,” he let his friend know.
“You need to make the cash to pass it on.”
Dex ended the call. With her own phone, Shelby was taking shots of the famous fashion shops on Rodeo Drive across the way.
“You need to cancel, don’t you?” she said, phone near her face as she clicked. “That’s fine. In fact, it’s best.”
Flicking back his jacket hem, Dex set his hands low on his belt. Damned if he’d let her get away that easily. If for some reason she gave notice at the café, he might never find her again. But Rance had a point.
While he’d refused to spend his life hunched over a desk at the office, until this latest hit, Hunter Productions’ books had favored the lean side. When he’d first come out here from Australia, a kid of twenty-five, a friend at the time had helped him with manipulating budgets. He’d learned a lot from Joel Chase, and had put in the kind of crazy hours his family might have trouble believing of him. Even so, if he had to tend to business tonight, he wouldn’t let this other important matter slide.
“Come along,” he suggested. “We’ll grab a bite afterward.”
“I’m not comfortable with that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know you well enough.”
“I don’t own a wooden club, Shelby. I won’t knock you out and drag you away to my secret lair.”
Her gaze held his with a narrowed pondering look that said she wasn’t so sure. She was wary and, living in a place like L.A., wary was good. If she was cautious about going to some unknown address, it only showed common sense. Another plus.
He’d lay the rest on the table.
“My writer’s hit a snag with a script,” he explained. “The story’s a romantic comedy with an edge. We’re working on a pivotal scene where everything falls apart. The man who the female lead once loved—a man who cheated on her—is getting married to her friend and she’s invited to the wedding. Her date for the evening had to bow out so she’s gone on her own.”
The single line forming between Shelby’s brows suggested that she was intrigued so he went on.
“She’s sitting with a group of the bride’s relatives, who go on about how beautiful the bride looks in her gown. Then a clumsy waiter spills cucumber soup on the female lead’s dress.” When Shelby blinked, maybe remembering the splashed coffee incident earlier that day, he continued. “In her stained gown, she’s on her way to the restroom, asking herself why she’s putting herself through all this, when she runs into the groom.”
Shelby waited. “Then what?”
“We’re not sure.”
Exhaling, she glanced around at the same time she absently dropped her cell in her tote. A Santa Ana wind chose that moment to whirl around their feet, up their legs and into her bag. The gust picked up a loose paper—a card of some sort. Twirling out from the tote, it circled midair then swept toward the road.
Shelby snatched at it. Missed. Without thinking, she stepped off the curb at the precise moment a gleaming new V-8 sedan whooshed past.
Two
Dex leaped forward. At the same instant, the gust from the vehicle—or, perhaps, her own fear—propelled Shelby back onto the curb. Off balance, she smacked into him, then toppled sideways toward the pavement. Before she hit concrete, he caught her in a dramatic low-slanted pose.
While she lay stiff at a thirty-degree angle, his arms suspending her weight, Dex found himself studying her face. Her eyes, fixed and round with fright, were actually the most unusual mint-green mixed with flecks of blue. A tiny scar interrupted the sweep of one eyebrow. This close, her lips looked so much fuller.
Those lips moved now, quivering as Shelby managed a few hoarse words.
“Seems I’m still getting used to the traffic.”
A second of inattention and she might have ended up in the hospital, or worse. Instead she was lying here, her back a foot off the ground, her mind spinning and nerve endings crackling with awareness.
This was a city where stories came to life. Right now she felt as if she were in a movie: a girl far from home almost demolished by a moment’s distraction. Instead she’d been saved with the help of a tall, tawny-eyed man, who felt so hot and capable holding her in this tango-type dip that, if she weren’t so dazed, she might well melt.
Dex carefully set her on her feet. As the numerous sounds and lights faded back up, Shelby schooled her expression, straightened her twisted dress and told her rabid pulse to quit pounding so wildly.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Everything except my pride,” she admitted. “I feel stupid.”
Judging from the curious looks of passersby, her incident was a bigger draw than Bernice’s show.
“That paper that whipped out of your bag,” he said. “It must’ve been important.”
She remembered and her heart squeezed. “Sentimental value,” she replied. Now that piece of her was gone forever.
Dex crossed to a nearby base-lit palm tree and swooped down. When he returned, the paper—a photo—was in his hand. Shelby’s breath let out in a rush. Accepting it from him, she pressed the picture close for a second then placed it in her tote, in a zipped compartment this time.
“A person I respect very much,” he said, “used to say that sentiment is never overrated.”
While now didn’t seem the right time to ask who that person might be, Shelby decided she’d like the opportunity to find out…maybe over a late dinner.
“Is that invitation to visit your scriptwriter still open?” she asked.
His face broke into a big white smile. “Rance and I would be honored.”
A few minutes later, he was opening the passenger-side door of a sleek black Italian sports car. After she’d slipped into the leather bucket seat and buckled up, the engine growled to life and the pristine machine rolled into a break in the traffic.
“Does this sort of emergency script thing happen often?” she asked, trying not to double-guess this decision or feel overwhelmed. Far too much had happened today. She wouldn’t be surprised if she woke up and found this had all been a dream.
“When you decide to make a movie,” Dex said, changing up gears, “there are all kinds of challenges.”
“I imagine a room filled with smoke,” she said, “and a man sitting at the end of a long table, tapping away madly on a typewriter while someone else paces back and forth, head down, hands clasped behind his back.”
Dex sent over a look.
“A typewriter?”
She reconsidered. “Guess that’s a little last-century.”
“They have heard of the internet where you come from, right?” he teased.
“Oh, sure. We put a cow on a treadmill to generate the extra electricity.”
He laughed, and that warm deepwater feeling swirled around her again.
“I’m