But then his smile faded, and gave way to the pitch black of his mood and he wasn’t quite able to parse out a single reason for it.
He’d been getting texts all morning from friends who were, frankly, simply glad to see him and to find out where he was and wanted to know if they’d see him in about a week at the Nicasio wedding.
From Linda Goldstein (with a flurry of emojis: a thumbs-up, a blonde girl, a heart, and a bikini):
She’s pretty, John Tennessee! I hope you’re happy!
And then his phone chimed in with another text.
She’s cute. Are all the girls like that in Hellcat Canyon?
Effing Franco Francone.
J. T. reflexively, angrily, texted back a photo of his Emmy.
Then, just as he was stuffing his phone back into his pocket, another text chimed in.
BTW, McCord, they cast me in a secondary role in The Rush. Three-episode arc. See you in Napa in a week?
Franco again. J. T. went still. Just for an instant an old reflexive gladness kicked in. Because he and Franco really had a blast working together on Blood Brothers. The press had loved their relationship. They had, indeed, almost been brothers.
Until Franco accused him of stealing his girl.
And J. T. had knocked him flat in a parking lot.
The press had loved that, too.
“You can’t lose her if she really loves you,” J. T. had said at the time. Staring down like a conqueror at a flattened Franco, whose nose was bleeding.
It seemed an eternity ago. What a pompous young prick he’d been back then. As if he knew anything at all about love.
It occurred to him, however, that he might not have been wrong.
He stared at Franco’s text.
And decided not to answer it. Yet.
He forced himself to examine his mood. Stealthy paparazzi photos were a way of life for him. All the women he’d dated before understood implicitly that they were part of the Hollywood ecosystem, the way mosquitoes and barnacles had their role in nature. Rebecca in particular was adept at making that work in her favor.
But Britt was still learning how to feel safe again in the world, and with a man. He’d earned that trust, and he cherished it.
And some asshole had stalked them with a camera.
He had a hunch Britt could actually cope with all of that. She had a competitive streak, after all.
But at the heart of the usual anger was something new: a little, cold shard of something that might be fear.
He’d seen Britt glance at the wall calendar.
As if she was counting the days until he’d be out of there.
She was a bolter. It was a built-in defense.
J. T. suspected all she needed was a reason.
Not only would this never have bothered him before, he would have been the one counting the days. An Advent calendar, so to speak, for relationship escape.
How did a woman who’d begun as a good time turn into three weeks of hot nights entwined under absurdly floral sheets, twilights with a chatty rum-swigging, nonagenarian, cat food in his basket at the grocery store, and a sense that he was finally, after forty years, where he should be?
Something soft wrapped around his ankles. A tail.
He looked down into the benevolent green gaze of Phillip.
He sighed, knelt to pet him for a while.
He could entertain Phillip for an hour at a time by aiming a laser pointer all over the place. Phillip would stalk and pounce and scramble but he never caught it, because it couldn’t be caught, of course. It didn’t really exist.
J. T. wished he was as simple as Phillip. He probably was, once.
He was starting to think he just couldn’t play the same game over and over.
J. T. arrived at his house, happy to have any opportunity to hammer nails into things, because that might just suit his mood. The uneasy shard in his stomach didn’t go away.
But when he got out of his truck outside of the house, a new sound was mixed in with the river and squirrels and trees.
Somewhere, someone was already hammering.
Not a swift, steady tap tap tap on a nail.
It sounded more like someone was swinging a mallet into a stake or a fence post.
He just listened a moment, as if it was music, and imagined that it was the sound of a spike being driven into the symbolic black heart of paparazzi everywhere.
Or maybe it was the sound of a monumental tack being driven into time itself. So he could hold these past few weeks with Britt in place, to keep them from flying away, to keep them from moving on.
Half wishing he walked around every day like his character in the Blood Brothers, one hand on his gun half the time, he moved on silent feet toward the sound and then stopped. Surprised. He had a gun. He just didn’t always travel with it.
A few yards down the trail he stopped.
There was the sheriff, swinging a big hammer at a wooden sign, pounding it into the ground near the creek next to that narrow path.
And then he stood back and swiped a hand across his brow.
“Morning, Sheriff.”
He got the sense the sheriff had already seen him.
“Morning, McCord.” He stood back and let J. T. read the sign.
Anyone caught in this area with a telephoto lens
might be mistaken for vermin and shot on sight.
J. T. smiled slowly. “Well.”
“I aim to protect and serve,” the sheriff said dryly.
“Much obliged, Sheriff.”
“Call me Eli.”
“You want something cold to drink after that hard labor, Eli?”
“Thanks, but I got some bad guys to catch. Some teenagers were throwing apricots at cars off the overpass.”
“Hooligans. Can’t have that.”
“We caught the guy who took that photo, by the way,” Eli told him, moving back up the trail. “Sprained his ankle trying to climb down to get even closer to you and couldn’t walk himself out of there. Some kids found him hollering up there later and we had to stretcher the fool out. He ended up in the hospital in Black Oak. I think we scared him sufficiently so he won’t be back. And we cited him for trespassing.”
“Thanks for that. At least he made his buck.” J. T. was ironic.
The sheriff paused near him and they both looked back at that sign and listened to the water. “Those photos pissed me off, too, McCord.”
“Yeah,” J. T. said grimly. “I felt like I should be able to protect her from that.”
“You should be able to just be with her without going through hell.”
Something about the way Eli said it made J. T. think maybe there was a little subtext there.
J. T. flashed back to that moment at the Misty Cat. And the sheriff’s expression as he watched. Glory Greenleaf onstage.
And then he remembered something with startling clarity: the Eternity Oak was carved with the initials ELB + GHG.
“You got that right, Eli,” was all he said, quietly.
It was pretty clear love hadn’t been kind to Eli Barlow, either. He wondered if he regretted that little visit to the Eternity Oak.
“See you around, McCord.” Eli Barlow touched his hat and headed off, back down to the road.
CHAPTER 16
Just like a rock chucked into the river, the photos of J. T. and Britt caused a ripple through all of Hellcat Canyon.
Casey and Kayla were thrilled almost to incoherence to see Britt in a Kayla dress with a Casey hairstyle getting into a truck with movie star on a website that millions of people read.
“You almost look like someone he would really date, Britt!” Kayla told her.
Unfortunately, Britt knew exactly what Kayla meant.
“Gosh, thanks, Kayla. The dress, the mak
eup. I’m sure that’s why the photographer decided to take the picture at all.”
And a week went by, and the rhythm of their days mostly resumed. But the conversation J. T. and Britt ought to have but weren’t having now ran like a subliminal hum through every word they said to each other, through everything they did. It kept them ever-so-slightly on edge and made every word they said to each other just a little careful, a little more polite than it ought to be.
Sex helped them forget about that. The wanting part didn’t go away in the least. It in fact, diversified. In terms of positions and locations.
But Britt was reminded of an old television she’d once had, that developed an odd hum. She’d thought nothing of it, because everything that gets old seems to develop quirks along the way. It went on like that for a year.
Until the day there was a loud “pop” while she was watching a repeat of Friends and flames shot out its back.
Deep down inside she knew nothing good could come from unattended hums.
“Surprise me,” J. T. said, clapping his Misty Cat menu shut. “Like you did last night.”
Last night she’d finally told him about Sherrie and Glenn and the mermaid and the fisherman.
As an actor, he was intrigued. They hadn’t quite tried it out because they hadn’t worked out the wardrobe, but it had led to some friskiness that left both of them flattened, panting, replete and chock-full of bonhomie this morning.
J. T. had gotten into the habit of stopping in at least once or twice a week during one of her shifts. He always ordered a Glennburger with cheese.
“Surprise, huh? Be careful what you wish for, J. T.,” she purred. And she swiveled to take his order up to the counter. She’d decided she was going to bring him a turkey club with spicy mustard, because he liked that, too. She loved knowing the things he liked. God knows he knew the things she liked.
The french fries he’d ordered as a side were up and she whisked them back to him with a smile, and then zipped away again.
It was the lunch rush and the place was packed and in full cheerful conversational roar, and silverware was clinking and Giorgio’s spatula was ringing on the grill and Casey Carson was waiting for her to-go order, so when the door opened, no one paid much attention at first.
But when the door didn’t close, people looked up.
And conversations winked off, one by one, like bulbs blowing out.
Fully half the jaws in the place froze mid-chew. The rest swung open as if the hinges had snapped.
Every head swiveled toward the door. Every pair of eyes was unblinking and wondering.
And there wasn’t a sound except for the sizzle of meat on the grill. It was threatening to be the first time in history Giorgio had burned anything.
Rebecca Corday was like a carnal version of a Disney heroine. The light from the doorway obligingly backlit her flame-colored waves and made the floaty, gossamer peasant top she wore all but transparent. Her brilliant blue eyes were enormous and almost perfectly round. The rest of her appeared to be makeup free, but her great wide pillow of a mouth painted red. She’d been born to sell lip gloss.
Her legs were miles long, about the diameter of a thin woman’s forearms, and encased in faded jeans.
It was like a gazelle had wandered into a watering hole occupied by lapping wildebeests.
Sherrie gripped Glenn’s arm in either excitement or trepidation, and he covered her hand with his as if they were waiting for news of plane crash survivors.
Britt surreptitiously rested her own hand on the counter because the world was dropping out from beneath her, and there were no handholds anywhere.
A ringing started up in her ears.
And when she looked at J. T., her stomach plummeted another fourteen stories, and took her heart with it.
Because he’d frozen.
His face was taut with some indecipherable emotion, equal parts fury and wonder and astonishment, all underlaid by something hard and resolute that she couldn’t read at all.
He slowly, slowly, lowered his fork.
He stood and moved in almost dreamlike silence toward Rebecca Corday. The two of them paused in what to onlookers appeared to be a moment of silent communion.
And then they both turned as one and went right out the door.
The first one to speak was Casey. “You could see her boobs right through that thing,” she said, sounding more impressed than censorious. “What there was of them.”
The next sound was the clang of the spatula on the grill as Giorgio whipped around and turned his burgers in the knick of time.
Little by little, conversations revved into motion again.
But they never really rose above a murmur.
Britt still couldn’t move. She literally felt so nauseous she nearly buckled. And she was also so surprised it was very nearly funny. Because it couldn’t be real, could it? That couldn’t have possibly just happened?
“You know that thing Kayla says she can do with a cherry stem? Tie it in a knot with her tongue?” Britt said faintly to Casey.
“Yeah?”
“I bet Rebecca Corday can do that with her entire body.”
She had no idea why this was the first thing out of her mouth after seeing J. T. disappear.
“Yoga,” Casey said knowledgeably and solemnly. “She’s probably so bendy she can kiss her own butt.”
Britt watched that door in numb shock. A great toxic soup of emotions—rage, humiliation, wounded pride, a sick fear—that never ought to mingle were now simmering in her bloodstream. “She’s almost luminescent. Like she’s an alien or fairy.” She was incensed by this.
“That’s because she’d moisturized and exfoliated and waxed to a fare-thee-well,” Casey said pragmatically.
“I hear they do shapes down there now, don’t they?” Sherrie mused, turning to Casey as the expert.
“What do you mean, shapes?” Glenn was suspicious.
“They prune it down there. Into shapes,” Sherrie explained.
It took him a moment.
And then he was aghast.
“What, like how the shrubberies at Disney World are shaped like Pluto and Mickey, that sort of thing?”
“Probably not Disney characters. But you never know with Hollywood.” And in Hellcat Canyon, Casey was the one who passed for an expert on Hollywood. Given that she, like Britt’s sister, read TMZ the way Mrs. Morrison read her Bible.
“Why would you need to do anything but trim the runway?” Glenn was utterly baffled.
“Fashion,” all the women, even Britt, said aloud at once.
That was as cryptic a word as you could say to Glenn.
“I was so much happier when I didn’t know that,” he muttered. “If young women have that much time on their hands, they should learn a useful skill, like plumbing, or Olympic pole vaulting, or knitting. Or waitressing,” he said meaningfully.
But not without sympathy. It’s just that Glenn always thought that being useful was the cure for anything that ailed you.
Britt numbly shifted herself. She couldn’t quite feel her limbs, but they seemed to be doing what they ought to do. She dutifully moved from table to table. She probably wrote down orders. She couldn’t remember any of it.
Time ceased to move normally. The afternoon was a desert now. A barren, J. T.-less wasteland.
And when it became clear that he wasn’t coming back, Britt started to bump into things. Like a broken toy.
Maybe . . . maybe he’d been expecting Rebecca all along.
It was so counter to everything she thought she knew about the man that her mind all but ejected it violently.
And yet she’d been profoundly wrong about a man once before.
And eventually Glenn cleared away J. T.’s table as if he were cleaning out a deceased loved one’s closet.
And instead of excited murmurs and speculation, which is what one would expect after what was probably the most famous movie star in the world had strolled in and then out with another famous movie star, the Misty Cat remained almost funereally quiet, apart from clinks of silverware on the plate. Her tips were a little larger than usual, too.
This tender solicitousness managed to reach in through the numbness. She was touched. She knew this was because they had all been rooting for her and J. T. And just a few weeks ago she didn’t think anyone gave a whole lot of thought to her at all.
She wondered how many of them anticipated this as the inevitable end.
It was, appropriately enough, like something out of a bad movie.
Her phone rang and she gave a start. And just like that, her heart boomeranged between joy and fury.
It was J. T.
It rang and it rang.
And it rang.
Fury won.
She stabbed it to voice mail.
The sun was cruel to nearly everyone today, high and hot as a blow dryer aimed straight into the face.
Cruel to everyone, that was, except Rebecca. She looked spectacular in any light.
J. T. aggressively pushed his sunglasses onto his face. As far as he was concerned, looking at her head on was like looking into an eclipse.
“What the hell are you doing here? And where’s your bodyguard, Rebecca? Aren’t you usually flanked by a couple of brutes these days?”
“Hello to you, too, Johnny. You look great! Not even an air kiss? No? Fine. Don’t you have a black belt now? Something else you did in your downtime? I told them to stay at home and you’d look after me.”
“That was presumptuous as hell.”
“When have I been otherwise?”
Fair point.
“How did you know I was at the Misty Cat? And what the hell are you doing here in Hellcat Canyon?”
“I bummed a ride with Sven Markson and we flew into that airfield a few miles up the road. Everyone’s starting to head up to Napa.” She waved a hand in the general direction. By “everyone” she meant Hollywood royalty and by “bumming a ride” Rebecca of course meant flying in luxury on director Sven Markson’s little private Lear jet, which he shared generously with her since her movie, Better Luck Next Time, had doubled both his wealth and cachet. “I took a cab in to Hellcat Canyon from there. And by ‘a cab’ I think I mean ‘the cab’ because I’m pretty sure there’s only one in this part of the woods. I had to wait for it.” She sounded astonished. Rebecca never had to wait for anything anymore.
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