River Road

by JoAnn Ross

  She was more than a little frustrated when Nate gave his brother a questioning look.

  Even more irritated when Finn said, "Go ahead. Just don't leave the room."

  Julia blew out a breath. "Why don't you go spread some of that Southern charm around, Callahan, while I mingle with the natives?

  "Your brother," she fumed to Nate as they crossed the floor, "is, without a doubt, the bossiest man I've ever had the misfortune to meet."

  "He can be a little heavy-handed, from time to time," Nate allowed. "But there's nobody better in a crunch. Once, when I was in the third grade, this gang of big kids kept stealing my lunch money. I didn't tell my parents because it was so damn humiliating. But you can't get anything past Finn. He found out what was happening, went over to the park where they were playing a little after-school one-on-one, and cleaned their clocks. They never bothered me again."

  "Why am I not surprised he resorted to violence?"

  Obviously the man had possessed industrial-strength testosterone even as a schoolboy. She had never been the least bit attracted to men who opted for brawn over brains.

  "That's the only thing those thugs would have understood. Hell, half of them later ended up in prison and I suspect it's just a matter of time before the others join them. I was damn lucky to have my big brother looking after me. You are, too."

  Julia didn't want to be rude and argue with her host, but the only answer she could come up with was a muttered humph.

  Finn was watching her ooze charm to the parish council, all of whom appeared appropriately star struck, when a sloe-eyed brunette wearing a clingy red dress came up to him. Margot Madison, Finn mentally clicked through the River Road credits. The farmer madam of River Road's only brothel, turned romance writer.

  "As hunky an addition as you are to our little family, Agent Callahan, you do realize, of course, that your presence is totally unnecessary," she said, dispensing with any polite opening conversation.

  "Is it?"

  "Of course. Its obvious Julia doesn't need a bodyguard. Because it's just as obvious that she sent that photograph to herself."

  "Why would she want to do that?"

  "To garner attention. We actors are outrageously egocentric. We can't bear not to be in the middle of the spotlight. God knows, Julia's certainly done whatever it takes to boost her career. Now that the buzz about her winning that Bond Girl role is beginning to die down, I've been expecting her to pull some stunt to get herself back in the news."

  "It's a little difficult to take a picture of yourself from across the room without anyone noticing."

  "She undoubtedly had an accomplice. Perhaps her agent. Or publicist. Or maybe even that stuffy acting professor she was dating for a time." She shrugged. "Julia's an actress. She wouldn't have had any trouble talking some man into helping her out."

  Finn couldn't argue with that. "Is that what you'd do?"

  "Absolutely." She smiled up at him. "Are you shocked?"

  "I don't shock all that easily."

  "I wouldn't guess you would. I saw the clip on the news after you apprehended that horrid serial killer." Her eyes glittered with avid interest. "I imagine you've seen a great many unsavory things in your career."

  Her voice went up a little on the end, turning the comment into a question. Finn wasn't surprised; civilians seemed ghoulishly drawn to murder. And serial killers were the most fascinating of all.

  "None suitable for cocktail party conversation. So, you were telling me about why Ms. Summers would send that photograph to herself?"

  "Tell me, Special Agent, do you have to practice that just-the-facts-ma'am tone, or does it come naturally? Never mind." She waved her question away. "You'll have to forgive me. I have an unfortunate habit of being facetious when I'm excruciatingly bored. . . .

  "Why would Julia fake a threat to herself? The answer is obvious, darling. Because it makes such juicy headlines. We all like to pretend that we hate the tabloids, but the truth is that we have a parasitic relationship with them. We need them to keep us in the public eye as much as they need us to fill their tacky little pages every day."

  "I suppose a death threat might be the kind of story the Enquirer or Star could get their teeth into."

  "Oh, they could masticate on it for months." Her crimson lips curved in a smile that was more predatory than friendly. "What our Julia lacks in acting ability, she definitely makes up for in imagination."

  "I don't know anything about acting, but she seems pretty good."

  The dress slid off a shoulder as she shrugged with calculated insouciance. "It's not that difficult if you're playing yourself. Believe me, Amanda and Julia could be twins separated at birth." She tossed back her champagne and snagged another glass from the tray of a passing waiter.

  She swayed a little as she leaned toward him, worrying Finn that he might have to keep her from falling flat on her face. "Let me tell you a little secret about television." She was beginning to slur her words, suggesting she'd had some warm-up drinks before coming downstairs to the party. "The schedule for an hour-long weekly series is so grinding, there's not a lot of room for an actor to stretch. If you're not playing yourself, you're going to make it a helluva lot harder than it need be."

  Her words had Finn recalling a scene he'd watched where her character, who was being blackmailed by Amanda for some reason the tape hadn't made clear, had hired a buffed up, not-all-that-bright romance novel cover model to kill Amanda. The plan fell apart when the would-be assassin fell in love with his victim and refused to go through with the crime.

  "I've been married five times," she revealed. "Six if you count Everett Channing, whom I made the dreadful mistake of marrying twice. Every one of those marriages has made it into the story line of the daytime soap I starred in before I moved to River Road. So have several of my affairs. As I told that officious little IRS man who audited me last year, that dalliance in Rome with the Italian shoe king was merely creative research, which I had every right to deduct."

  Finn would have loved to have been present for that audit. "Thanks for your take on the situation, Ms. Madison. It's been very helpful talking with you."

  "Any time, Agent Callahan." Her slow, blatantly sexual appraisal suggested she might be considering him a new research project. "You'll find I'm a very accommodating woman." With that gilt-edged invitation hanging in the air, she wove her way unsteadily through the crowd over to the open bar.

  It was obvious that Margot Madison was jealous of Julia Summers.

  However, Finn reminded himself as he watched Julia laugh appreciatively at something Nate had said, jealousy didn't necessary preclude the actress from being right.

  ***

  "Welcome to Blue Bayou." The blonde holding the flute of champagne toward Warren had a beauty queen's smile and a cover girl's body shrink wrapped into a pink floral silk dress. A rhinestone-studded tiara rested atop a cloud of pale blond hair. "I'm Lorelei Fairchild. And I'll bet you're Warren Hyatt."

  "That's right." Because it would have seemed rude to refuse, he accepted the champagne, deciding to dump it into one of those potted palms at the first opportunity. "How did you know?" People usually didn't pay attention to the writer. Especially in a room of actors.

  "Because you're the most intelligent-looking man here." Dimples deep enough to drown in flashed charmingly. She leaned toward him, as if about to share a deep secret. "I do so admire your work."

  "You do?" He found himself holding his breath, waiting for those magnificent breasts to pop out of their scant covering.

  "Of course. I'm all the time tellin' Mama, 'Mama, that Warren Hyatt is a literary genius.'"

  "Really?"

  "I surely do. Mama, of course, agrees. She's a huge fan, too. She absolutely adored the story line where you killed that Swiss ski instructor, but I think my favorite, until this latest triangle with Vanessa, Jared and Amanda, of course, was the one where that alien from outer space landed in River Road and snatched Amanda right out of her snazzy red conve
rtible and beamed her up to his ship to take her back to his womanless planet to save their species."

  That had been one of his personal favorites. "You didn't think the premise was too over the top?"

  "Why, of course not!" She looked askance at the idea. Forgetting all about any potential damage to his liver, Warren took a sip of champagne. "I thought it was absolutely inspired. And sexy as all get out. I especially loved how you had her escape by pretending she was actually going to go through with having hot alien sex with him." She flashed another of those smiles that caused him to go a little lightheaded. "If you promise not to tell a single solitary soul, I'll share a little secret."

  "I promise." The scent emanating from acres of creamy skin was making his head spin. At that moment, Warren would have agreed to anything.

  "That's always been a personal sexual fantasy of mine."

  "To be beamed aboard a spaceship?"

  "No, silly." She skimmed a glossy pink fingernail down his sleeve. "To be taken against my will and ravished."

  "Really?" he croaked.

  "Well, not in actuality. I mean, I certainly wouldn't want some stranger to drag me into an alley, strip my clothes off and rape me in real life, but I do fantasize about a handsome masked man breaking into my bedroom at night and having his way with me. Why, just thinking about it gives me goose bumps all over, if you know what I mean."

  Her light laugh flowed over him. like warm honey as he imagined that lush body. All over.

  "Well, of course you do. Since you're the one who wrote the story tine in the first place. I haven't been able to sleep since I heard you were coming to town. I just kept lying all alone in bed, hoping that I'd get a chance to meet the one man who truly and deeply understands women's secret desires." She sighed and pressed her hand against a magnificent breast. "You must be a purely wonderful lover."

  That did it. He was definitely going to faint.

  "Oh, dear. Are you all right?" Feminine speculation instantly turned to concern. "Gracious, sugar, you've gone as white as Stonewall Jackson's ghost."

  "I'm fine." He took a deep breath. "The flight from L.A. was a bit bumpy. I think it's probably just a touch of lingering airsickness."

  "Oh, don't you just hate that?" Glossy pink lips that matched her nails turned down in a sexy little moue. "I have a stomach like iron. Mama says it's as hard as my head, but she used to get butterflies something awful whenever we flew. They'd start flapping their wings even before she got on the plane. It got so she just couldn't travel anywhere, except on Amtrak, which really upset her because Mama does so love to visit new places, bless her heart.

  "I swear, we tried everything: pills, hypnosis, those little wristbands with the magnets on them, why, we even got Nate to take us out in his boat, deep into the swamp where we paid this wonderful old juju woman to do a voodoo spell for her, but nothing worked.

  "I can't tell you the despair we were in. Then, thank heavens, I found this miracle cure on the Internet and since we figured we didn't have anything to lose, we gave it a try." She smiled brilliantly. "It worked like a charm. Mama's never had a lick of trouble since."

  "You found a miracle cure on the Internet?"

  "Oh, it's just filled with the most interesting information, sugar. Why, you can't imagine. Anyway, the cure's as easy as pecan pie. You just splash some Southern Comfort into a glass of flat ginger ale and swallow it all down at once. The ginger ale settles your stomach while the whiskey calms you down."

  She looked up at him through her lashes. "Maybe your wife or girlfriend can mix one for you before you fly next time."

  A sledgehammer would have been more subtle. Warren began to worry that this was another of Shane's practical jokes. He quickly scanned the room, but the actor was busy charming a clutch of blue-haired old ladies, and didn't seem to be paying any attention to them.

  "I guess I'll be mixing it myself, since I'm not married. And I don't have a girlfriend."

  "Really?" Salome could not have looked more seductive when asking for John the Baptist's head than Lorelei Fairchild did as she nibbled speculatively on her glossy pink thumbnail. "You're still looking a tad pale," she diagnosed. "Perhaps we should get you back upstairs to your room so you can lie down."

  Warren's first thought was that if he wasn't dead and in heaven, he must be hallucinating.

  And even on the outside chance he was still breathing and this wasn't a joke, and this blond belle bombshell was actually suggesting what he thought she was suggesting, he reminded himself that energetic sex could kill you. He'd learned that firsthand when, a week before his twelfth birthday, his father keeled over from a heart attack at a mere forty years old while making love to his mistress in a suite at the Plaza on an alleged business trip to New York.

  After the funeral, he'd heard his uncle Paul say that they'd been forced to go with a closed casket because the undertaker hadn't been able to wipe the smile from Warren Senior's face.

  Deciding not to look a gift breast—horse, he corrected, dragging his wandering eyes from those lush white globes which, if they weren't real, were the best silicone job he'd ever seen—-in the mouth, Warren reminded himself that life was filled with risks. Forgetting about his possible liver disease, he tossed back the champagne,

  "You are," he said as the alcohol went straight to his head, replacing the blood rushing hot and thick to lower regions, "the most stunningly Southern woman I've ever met."

  She flashed another of those beauty queen smiles that he decided would be the inspiration for the new character who'd replace Amanda as River Road's vixen. "There you go, making my toes go as tingly as they did while I was watchin' Amanda being licked all over by that horny alien."

  She was every sexual fantasy he'd ever had, all wrapped up into one luscious, sweet-smelling female body. Since he couldn't think of a single solitary line to fit this amazing occasion, Warren stole one he'd written for that womanizing Southern scoundrel, Jared Lee.

  "Let's go upstairs, darlin'," he drawled, "and I'll make the rest of you tingle."

  Carpe diem.

  Chapter 11

  Finn was keeping an eye on Julia while scoping out all the players in this little drama he'd landed in, when Felissa Templeton sidled up to him. "Well? Have you figured out which of us is trying to kill Julia?"

  "What makes you think it's someone from inside the show?"

  "Oh, it's always someone the victim knows," she said airily. "I've made enough women-in-jeopardy movies to know that."

  "Who do you think it is?"

  "Margot, of course."

  "That's interesting. Since she believes Ms. Summers is threatening herself to attract more publicity."

  Felissa laughed. "Of course the old bitch would say that. She hates Julia's guts."

  "Because Ms. Summers took over her bad girl role?"

  "That's very perceptive of you."

  "Thanks."

  "So, you've watched the show?"

  "I've seen a few episode."

  "Which ones?"

  "One where your character and Amanda have a cat fight and fall into the fountain at Amanda's fourth wedding."

  "Oh, that was fun." Remembered pleasure shone in her eyes. "Julia's just lucky Warren wrote that scene for me. Margot undoubtedly would have held her under."

  "She hates her that much?"

  "Mostly she just wants Julia off the show."

  "How about you? Do you want her gone?"

  "Well, of course I do, since playing the good girl is excruciatingly boring, and the bad girl gets the majority of lines each week and most of the press, besides. But there's no earthly point in trying to run her off since she's already going, isn't she?"

  "I hear you tried out for the Bond Girl role."

  "Every actress in Hollywood probably tried out for that role."

  "But Julia got it. Does that bother you?"

  "In the beginning, I suppose it did, just a little. But I've gotten over it. Especially since Warren's promised to give Vanessa an evil
twin. Or better yet, multiple personalities. While those are admittedly getting a little overdone, I just know he'll be able to create a new twist that could earn me an Emmy when one of the personalities starts killing people and poor, suffering Vanessa goes on trial for murder."

  As ludicrous a plotline as that might be, Finn decided it wasn't that different from Lawson's lawyers attempt to pull an insanity defense out of their legal hats.

  "There they go."

  He followed her gaze across the room to where Margot Madison and Charles Kendall were slipping out the French doors.

  "They've been having a fling now for the past month," Felissa revealed. "It's my guess that she's doing a bit of horizontal lobbying to get him to reprise her old bad girl role. With the emphasis on old. Personally, I think she's wasting her time. Charles may write the checks and sit in the executive office, but Warren pretty much has carte blanche when it comes to River Road 's story line. So long as ratings stay as high as they are, he'll be allowed to write just about any plot he wants. Which is why, if Margot had any sense, she'd seduce him instead."

  Her gaze shifted to the bespectacled writer who was standing on the edges of the crowd, appearing absolutely enthralled by Lorelei, who'd squeezed her voluptuous curves into a flowered dress that fit like a sausage casing. If she took an even halfway deep breath, she was definitely going to provide the entertainment for the evening.

  "Damn," Felissa muttered.

  "What?"

  "It looks as if I'm about to lose a bet with Randy. I said it'd take at least an hour for Miss Gator Gulch over there to entice Warren to write her into the script. Randy bet she'd pull it off in under thirty minutes, which means I owe him a weekend at Las Costa."

  As Finn watched Lorelei and Warren leave the room together in a cloud of pheromones, he decided it was getting more and more difficult to tell real life from River Road.