Sexy Ink!

by Jamie Collins

  The show’s theme music was cued and at the ready. The clock ticked away the seconds to the live broadcast. La Costa took a deep breath and gave her best smile into the blinding white lights. She would find the spark inside of her that was fearless and brave and capable.

  In the control room, the director sprang into action. “Fifteen seconds. Stand by in studio.

  Ready ONE on your wide shot; ready TWO on a close-up of Reed. Stand by to key in title. Take ONE; hit music—key title.”

  Once the music faded, the unseen announcer delivered the show opening: “It’s a good day on The Kristen Michael’s Show with today’s first guest host, best-selling romance author, La Costa Reed!”

  La Costa smiled widely and beamed. “Good morning, New York! I’m so happy to be here today to help put a little sunshine into your morning.”

  At the end of the segment, the camera trucked right to the mid-position and zoomed back for a wide shot. Then, the studio lights dimmed, and it was over. La Costa thanked the cat-toy lady and unhooked her own lavalier mic.

  Tess ran toward the control room, disappointed to find that Bumpy Friedman had already left. She searched the studio floor for La Costa, who was nowhere in sight.

  La Costa hadn’t a second to spare. She high-tailed it straight to the dressing room, where she hit the restroom, just in time—and puked.

  Three hours later, Tess and La Costa had a good laugh over a light lunch about the debacle that had La Costa’s head still spinning. Tess showered her star author with accolades and praise from the show producers. “They loved you, Bubbi. Said you were a natural.”

  “A natural wreck,” La Costa said, hoisting her suitcase into the SUV herself and sliding into the passenger seat. She could not wait to touch down at Hilton Head airport that evening, and to reunite with Louis and Henry. It had been a whirlwind few days.

  They pulled up to the curbside drop-off. “Say hi to those two handsome men of yours. Thank them for letting me steal you,” Tess said. “I mean it. You did great.”

  La Costa smiled. “And no lie, I’m definitely going to get you back for this. I promise. I think I left two years of my life back there on that studio set.”

  Tess laughed nervously, and La Costa felt compelled to ask, “Is everything all right?”

  “Of course, Bubbi,” Tess said. “You know, I just want you to have every opportunity to share your incredible light with the world. That’s really what I want for you.”

  “I know,” La Costa said, squeezing Tess’s hand. “You push me in all the good ways. And I am grateful.”

  Tess nodded and swiped at a tear that threatened to belie her hard-ass demeanor. “Yeah, I got nothing. It’s just that the goddamn change has me going all weepy sometimes. It’s a pain in the ass.”

  La Costa smiled and gave Tess a warm hug that forgave all. Then, she disappeared with her suitcase through the sliding glass doors.

  Back in the car, Tess blew her nose, and then checked her phone that had been buzzing for the past half hour. There she saw it—the first of several texts from Global Network and Bumpy Friedman that simply read: LA COSTA WAS PERFECTION. WE WOULD LOVE TO SIGN HER. WILL BE IN TOUCH.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The next night, La Costa laid against Henry’s chest, which was wet with sweat; their hearts were pounding wildly from the joyous ride they had taken just moments earlier in loving ecstasy. La Costa breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that she was back on familiar ground and in the comfort of her routine and Henry’s loving arms. With the recent impromptu talk show appearance, she had experienced enough adventure to last her for a while.

  The two were blissfully alone, stealing an evening away at Henry’s townhome, where La Costa had surprised Henry with a home-cooked meal. Louis was at a campsite at Cali Lake with his buddy Kayden and his family, stretching the remaining days of spring break as far as possible before the start of the new semester that next week.

  The two had lit a fire of their own beneath the cedar-beamed walls of Henry’s birch wood living room. They lay naked and satisfied atop a cushion of quilts, basking in the afterglow of desire, lost in their perfect love.

  The roast remained on the kitchen counter in a pan, uneaten, just where La Costa had left it two hours earlier. Right before Henry decided to role-play one of La Costa’s heartthrob protagonists from one of her novels.

  He had scurried outside to the patio and knocked at the door, then disguised as a burly stranger, feigning distress.

  “Excuse me, madam. May I use your phone? You see, my car broke down, down the road a piece, and I should really call my wife to let her know that I’ll be running late.”

  The beans were boiling on the range, and she was just about to start the biscuits.

  He had gestured gallantly, pretending to remove his hat when she beckoned him in from the night. “Well, of course, kind sir. Come right in now, and get yourself out of that cold. It’s not every day that a handsome stranger such as yourself shows up on my doorstep.”

  “Why, thank you, kind woman,” he said, with a stoic face. Then, following her through the den into the kitchen with his eyes, he broke into a Cheshire grin.

  “Not at all. There you are. The telephone’s in there.” She turned, leaving him helpless to do anything but stare at the vision of visions as her ample hips moved in an easy glide across the wooden floor, back toward the kitchen. She was barefoot, and the hem of her long skirt just grazed her ankles when she walked.

  She stood at the stove, stunning and beautiful, pulling at his heart. She was stirring something in a saucepan, the sight of which simply did him in. There was something about La Costa that could even make stirring brown gravy, bring him to his knees. It was the call of the wild that commanded him to abandon the charade of their little game and claim his old identity back. He bear-hugged her from behind, wrapping his arms around her large, beautiful body.

  “Gotcha!”

  La Costa startled playfully, annoyed by his sudden change in demeanor, mid-script. “Hey!” she protested. “You’re supposed to play the handsome stranger. Don’t break character!”

  He shrugged. “I can’t help myself, Ms. Reed. I just love to watch you stir that gravy!” She shrieked and giggled as he gathered back her hair and kissed her neck. Softly stroking her back, he nuzzled her ears and cheeks until she rescinded and turned off the stove. They carried the wineglasses into the living room, spread the blankets on the floor, and then Henry lit two raging fires: one in the hearth and the other, in La Costa’s soul.

  Tess could wait no longer. She had to call with the news. She had to tell La Costa about Global Network’s offer and risk putting her into a full-blown panic attack. Would La Costa be as forgiving when she learned that Tess had duped her into auditioning for Bumpy Friedman during her guest host appearance on the Kristen Michael’s Show? As La Costa’s agent, she had to present the offer.

  From her desk, Tess had spent the night reviewing the voluminous contract for Global Network’s offer that had been couriered to her earlier. La Costa would be the third of four high-profile women hired for Bumpy Friedman’s new talk show juggernaut, The Gab. The details of the formal signing would be forthcoming, pending acceptance of the terms therein, etcetera. She took a deep breath and phoned La Costa.

  It was nearly nine p.m. in California, but Tess rationalized that time was money.

  “Are you sitting down?” she asked when La Costa sheepishly answered the phone.

  “I’m about to resurrect an interrupted meal for my man,” La Costa said, slamming shut the door to the microwave. “I love you, girl, but can this wait?”

  Tess shrugged. “It depends on how much you want this deal.”

  “What deal?”

  “The deal that you cinched with Global Network to be the third hire as co-host of their debut talk show, The Gab.” She paused for effect and let the news sink in.

  The connection went silent. “What?” La Costa said as she stepped with bare feet out onto the patio with he
r cell phone glowing against her cheek. “Come again?”

  “You are who they want. Bumpy Friedman loved you on the Kristen Michael’s gig. How great is that?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The show’s producer, Bumpy Friedman, saw your live guest host spot. His wife is a huge fan. She gave you the nod, and he agreed to see you in action, La Costa. He was there at the studio, and he loved you!”

  “But how—?”

  “I might have had a little to do with that as well, Bubbi, but that is not important. The thing is—you got the offer!”

  La Costa could not believe what she was hearing.

  “All we have to do is say yes.”

  “Tess, I have to think about it. This is so sudden. You haven’t committed to anything yet, have you?”

  “No, but you have to know that they are desperate for your answer. Friedman is on a tight deadline. You cinched it with your performance. It’s yours if you want it.”

  “Give me some time. That’s all I ask.”

  “Think it over. This is a life-changing offer. Call me back, girl.”

  Tess was off the line, and Henry was standing in the doorway, frowning. “Everything okay?” he asked, looking like her past, present, and future rolled all into one dream come true.

  La Costa smiled and hugged his neck. “It’s just Tess being Tess,” she said. “Let’s dig into that roast I made earlier, and I’ll fill you in.”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Riverside, CA

  Panther St. James spent her shift breaks at the campus diner slumped in her nineties Nissan Sentra smoking filtered menthols. The car had ripped floorboards, a leaky clutch, and a missing gas cap. It was, however, a steal for the eight hundred dollars she was able to squirrel away in tips from a stint as a cocktail waitress in west Texas, where she had laid low for several weeks. She bought the beater in Nogales after a bus ticket brought her all the way across New Mexico to Arizona. The tin can with one working headlight then brought her, miraculously, to the California border, where she settled on Riverside, fifty-some-odd miles outside of LA, when the engine overheated in front of a walk-up studio with a rental sign in the window.

  It seemed like as good a place as any, as four months and five cities managed to keep her decidedly hidden from the trouble that was sure to find her when she would not be looking. To keep her one step ahead of AJ and his rage. Just long enough to reclaim what was hers.

  She checked her watch and stretched the remaining seventeen minutes flipping through the dog-eared paperback that was wedged between the parking brake and the passenger seat. It was a La Costa Reed novel, and something in the prose made her flinch. The glossy photo of La Costa on the book’s back cover seemed to further irritate her, when she flipped it over, to study it for the one thousandth time. She flicked an ash out of the window and continued to read the pages with a stern but measured countenance.

  She slid her finger across a piece of paper torn from her ordering pad, which she used as a bookmark and kept for safekeeping. On it was scrawled the phone number of a social worker at the women’s shelter downtown. Another waitress from the diner had fronted her the name of an Amelia Rhineholt, who was supposedly well versed in child custody law in California, and who worked pro bono. “Give her a call,” the co-worker had said. “She’ll help you out.”

  Panther was tapped of resources for sure, but rich in the need to set things straight. To make things right. And she would, she vowed, do whatever it might take.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  The next morning, La Costa kissed Henry sweetly before heading back to her apartment to pack for a book signing tour in the Northwest.

  “I hate to leave you guys, but duty calls. I’ll be in three states over the next five days. Do you think you and Louis can survive?”

  Henry chuckled. “Oh, I think we can manage. I’ll swing by practice tomorrow evening and pick him up with a mega meat lover’s pizza and a boatload of bread sticks. We’ll have a feast for a king at your place. I can’t wait. Netflix and toilet seats left up all the way!”

  La Costa snickered. “Just clean up any mess you two make before I get back. What I don’t see, didn’t happen.”

  “I’ll be heading back here to La Jolla tomorrow. Way too much going on with our spring wine tasting. Are you sure Louis will be fine staying on with Kayden and his family the rest of the week?” Henry asked.

  “Be fine? I can hardly convince him that he is not related to those people! No, he and Kayden share everything—the same clothes, the same gym shoes, the same schedule at school. I don’t even think that Dorleen and D’Juan notice whenever Louis is there, or Kayden is here with us. I’d say, there will be no objections there. I’ll continue to check up on him like a hawk, though. I got GPS on his phone, so he’s on a short leash, for sure.”

  Henry poured her a coffee in a to-go cup with a lid for the road. “What are you going to do about the Global Network offer?” he asked expectantly.

  They had spent the better part of the late-night hours into the early dawn devouring the peach pie and discussing every angle of the gigantic gearshift that signing on to the TV host gig would cause to La Costa’s career, her and Louis’s life—their life together.

  “Truly, I haven’t decided yet,” La Costa said.

  “I just want you to know that whatever you decide, babe, is what I truly want. Moving to New York would be a huge change, but it would put you closer to Splendor Bay, not to mention your publisher, your agent, and—”

  “Farther away from here,” La Costa interjected. “Farther away from this home, Louis’s dream university. I just don’t know. I’m going to speak with Louis when he comes home from school today. I need to have his input before I give Tess my answer.”

  “I told you this morning, my love, and I’ll tell you again. I am behind you one hundred percent. It’s not every day that an opportunity like this falls into your lap.” Henry smiled and kissed her sweetly on the lips.

  His beard, which was beginning to grow in, felt like sandpaper, but she did like the way that it made him look even sexier.

  “Thank you for our beautiful dinner last night, and everything,” he said, squeezing her bottom playfully. The dog, Merlot, bounded across the tile and bumped into their legs, nearly knocking them off of their feet.

  “I guess someone’s ready for his walk,” La Costa said, laughing.

  “Oh, before I forget, I slipped something in your overnight bag for you to look at on the flight to Portland,” Henry said. “It’s just something that I wanted to show you.” He grabbed the dog leash and bounded out onto the patio, with Merlot’s tail thumping against his calves. “Have a safe flight! Talk tonight.”

  La Costa blew him a kiss, grabbed her car keys and her overnight bag, and headed out the door.

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, back in LA, La Costa heard the front door slam.

  “Hey, sweetie, how was school?” La Costa asked, still focused on the computer screen, putting the finishing touches on a chapter for her current work in progress. Book tour or no book tour, Patty, her publisher, expected deadlines to be met, God help her.

  “It was good,” Louis quipped, tossing his gym bag in the hall. “Can I go down to Kayden’s for dinner tonight?”

  La Costa stopped typing and swung around in the chair. “I’m sorry, honey, but I really wanted it to be just us two for dinner tonight. You know, I’m leaving for a few days for the signing tour, and I really need to talk to you about something.”

  “Okay, but can I pick the place?”

  “Sure.”

  An hour later the two were seated at a bright Costco picnic bench beneath high florescent lights in the food court of the bustling box store.

  “Really? Sushi at Costco?” La Costa was baffled. “This is your idea of dinner?”

  “It’s rad, Mom. They have the best wasabi, I’m telling you. Try some! Plus, I like to people watch here. It’s dope.”

  “I think yo
u like to girl-watch, but that’s another talk.” La Costa rolled with it, as she had long since learned that her Louis was full of surprises and extremely avant-garde when it came to music and cuisine. It had to be a teenager thing, she reasoned. “Listen, I have something very important to run by you. I received an offer through Tess from a network television company to be a part of a pilot talk show.”

  “Like as a guest? No big deal, you do that all the time—except for this last one you did, where they put you on as the guest host and you hurled.”

  La Costa’s voice dropped. “Little did I know that I was auditioning for a co-host position.” She paused and let it sink in.

  “Oh! Did Miss Tess punk you?”

  La Costa nodded. “Yep. She wasn’t exactly forthcoming with the details of my appearance on the show until after it was over. Apparently, the network’s producer was there.” The very thought of reliving the experience, along with the smell of the fishy globs that Louis was wolfing down, was beginning to turn her stomach. She fought the mounting nausea. It was a good thing that she opted for a simple salad instead.

  “So, they want you to be a talk show host?”

  “Global Network wants me to be one of four women co-hosts of their debut talk show in New York. If it goes well and the show is picked up, it would be a huge commitment, baby. It would mean moving to New York.”

  She paused and let the second point sink in.

  Louis stopped chewing. “Wait, what?”

  “If I take this job, I would be expected to be there daily to do the live shows. There would be no way to commute from coast to coast five days a week. It would mean some changes for us, for sure. Starting with your choice of school.”

  “Choice?”

  “Well, you could stay here and attend UCLA, but it would have to be in a dorm on campus. We would keep the apartment and the Newport Beach house for weekend visits.”

  “Or . . . ?”