Hot in Hellcat Canyon

by Julie Anne Long

  The thing was, most people who knew both him and Rebecca knew that toast couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with her.

  Which, he suspected, was why Rebecca was drinking like a fish.

  J. T. stood again and wove swiftly through the crowd to seek out a waiter and another glass of champagne. On the way he ran smack into Franco.

  Who was actually with Missy Van Cleve.

  How she’d gotten her own invite to one of the most exclusive, security-­enmeshed weddings he’d ever attended, was beyond J. T., given that there was no way she was Franco’s plus one. She was wearing a champagne-­colored lace minidress, and, if J. T. had to guess, no underwear.

  “I think you know each other,” Franco said.

  “Tenssesseee!” Missy was drunk. And delighted to see him.

  J. T. stared at Franco for a long, incredulous time.

  “What?” Franco demanded.

  “For the love of God, man.” J. T. was genuinely pained. “Really? Come on, Edward. Even I know you’re better than this. Grow. The Fuck. Up.”

  He sighed gustily and took himself off back to his table.

  He might be a little drunk, too.

  “ ’Bye, Tenseeseesee!” Missy waved after him.’

  He settled in again, and looked toward the bride and groom’s table, smiling. They gave off their own light, those two. You couldn’t help but look at them, any more than you could help but look at the moon.

  And he got out his phone and flipped through to that photo of him and Britt lying on beach towels on a rock, their knees touching. Yearning tightened his gut. He’d once been that happy. He hadn’t really known it. He was unconsciously seeking his own light when he looked at that photo.

  Someone swiftly took the chair next to him. He looked up and he managed to get his features under control instantly.

  “J. T.”

  “Good to see you, Phil.”

  Phil, as in Phil Zahn, the director of Last Call in Purgatory. Vigorous, a little plump, balding, eyes like lasers. Good guy and scary smart.

  J. T. produced a welcoming smile, even as the words Last Call in Purgatory conjured such simultaneous shame and lust it was almost Pavlovian.

  “Boy, your toast was a real hanky-­soaker, J. T. My wife had to redo her mascara twice.”

  “Gratifying,” J. T. said with a small smile.

  “I always knew you had it in you. Listen, I know the producers shot you down in the end, J. T., but I know Al told you I want you however I can get you, J. T. Don’t tell my wife. Ha ha. But when Rebecca said she wanted you to read with her for Last Call in Purgatory, well, funny how things change. You two have never been on film together and the publicity would be a wet dream for them. So I guess we’ll see you at the studio at around one this Wednesday. And I have a favor to ask.”

  “Name it.”

  “My son-­in-­law is head of cardiology at the Placer County Children’s Hospital. I was hoping you and Rebecca would film a PSA for them, since Hellcat Canyon is so close. That’s where you’ve been, right? Sven Markson has put his jet at your disposal, and Rebecca told him to pick the two of you up at that little airfield outside Hellcat Canyon on Tuesday.”

  J. T.’s smile felt like it was going to crack. He’d love to do that PSA under any other conditions. He did not want to haul Rebecca back with him to Hellcat Canyon.

  He was booked solid with lunches and dinners in San Francisco tomorrow with various friends and colleagues. At least he’d have a mostly Rebecca-­free day tomorrow.

  “Happy to do it. Honored to be asked,” is what he told Zahn.

  Phil gave him a back thump and a smile. “My wife wants to get home, so I’m outta here. Nice wedding, huh? Congrats again on that toast.”

  Home sounded good to J. T., too.

  Wherever the hell that was now.

  As if she’d heard her name, Rebecca, who had finally strolled off the dance floor, plopped down next to him, and laid her head on his shoulder. “Hi, Johnny.”

  He stiffened, and stretched for his drink on the table. Her head slid off gracelessly and she nearly toppled from her chair. She righted herself with a little uncharacteristic flailing.

  “Enjoying yourself, Becks?” he said ironically. “Thanks for volunteering me for that PSA.”

  “You are SO welcome.” She was too drunk to catch the irony. “Hey, J. T.? I’m ready to get back to my cottage. Will you walk me? It’s getting dark and Gordon Papadakis is getting handsy out there on the dance floor. I’m afraid he plans to follow me. ”

  J. T. stared at her. Hell.

  J. T. He knew that “Wanna walk me?” for what it was. But Rebecca was who she was, and she was hammered, and he knew it probably wouldn’t be safe for her to get to her cottage on her own.

  So it was quite a long moment before he answered.

  And then he sighed. His manners wouldn’t allow him to do otherwise.

  “All right. I’ll walk you.”

  They stood. She leaned against him tipsily, struggling a bit in her towering Jimmy Choos, as they wandered the serpentine stone path that wound through the cabins, the night air velvety on the bare parts of his skin, and loneliness was practically a train whistle through his soul.

  Loneliness, he decided, was a beautiful night in the company of the wrong person.

  “Why so sad, Johnny?” she asked.

  “Who says I’m sad?” He was surprised.

  Surprised that it showed, actually. And surprised that she’d noticed.

  “You’re just quiet. You usually try to make me laugh. Make me laugh, Johnny.”

  “I don’t take orders, Becks. You know that.”

  He said nothing else. He’d rather be alone with his thoughts of another woman than with Rebecca Corday in the flesh.

  He might be the only man in the universe who would.

  Fortunately it was a shortish, if dimly lit, walk.

  “That was a really remarkable toast today, Johnny.”

  “Yep,” he said shortly.

  “I had no idea you knew all those things about that word you’re so scared of.”

  “I just learned ’em,” he said curtly. He suspected she knew that.

  And Rebecca finally stopped walking.

  “This your cottage, Becks? I’ll watch you get in.”

  She turned to face him.

  “I can make you happier,” she murmured. She startled him by toppling forward and burying her face in his neck and inhaling as though she’d been missing his smell.

  And then she turned her head and slid her big, pillowy billboard-­worthy lips landed on his.

  He was astounded. He turned his face away from her swiftly and put a hand out to keep her from toppling forward when he did that.

  And he put his hands in his pockets, as if tucking them away for the night. Making his point.

  They stared at each other in the dark.

  “Good night, Rebecca,” he said firmly.

  This wholesale rejection seemed to have startled her into some semblance of sobriety.

  She stared at him, wide-­eyed. Then her eyes narrowed.

  Because she then spun with surprising grace.

  And flung her door open and closed it behind her with something like a slam.

  He heaved another sigh. Women.

  He strolled along the path back the way he came, hands in his pockets, and took the turn that would lead him back to his own cottage, a healthy distance away from hers.

  He stopped abruptly.

  Propped in front of one of the cottage doors was a sad orchid in a pot. Its petals were browning. It looked just about ready to give up the ghost.

  He stood in front of it for a while, as if it were a shrine.

  Britt was just about to turn out her light for the evening when she heard a text chime into
her phone.

  Her heart leaped and she seized the phone.

  It was a picture of a half-­dead orchid.

  Thinking of you.

  Damn him. Damn him. Because she was now both laughing and crying.

  She stared at it. Willing it to yield more in the way of information.

  She couldn’t quite decide how to reply. Or whether she should at all.

  She mulled, staring out at the night, imagining him standing there, feeling alone in that crowd, alone enough to text her.

  Finally, she scrolled through her emojis.

  And found one of a little blue flower.

  And that’s what she texted back.

  Hopefully he would see it as an apology. Or an olive branch.

  She fell asleep holding her phone as if it were his hand, and a little crack opened up in all her fear and anger, just big enough to allow a little ray of hope to shine in.

  A few hours later she woke with a start when it vibrated with an incoming text.

  She stirred sleepily and glanced down eagerly.

  It was from her sister.

  Britt’s stomach turned to ice when she read it.

  I’m here if you need me, Bippy.

  With a link.

  To TMZ.

  REBECASSEE REDUX!

  John Tennessee McCord and Rebecca Corday were seen canoodling at Director Felix Nicasio’s wedding in Napa this weekend while her lover of a year, Sir Anthony Underhill, films overseas, oblivious.

  Good buddy Franco Francone confirms it. “They seem to be really happy together.”

  No.

  Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit.

  That son of a bitch.

  Franco had actually given them a quote?

  J. T. was incandescent with anger. Of course someone had managed to take photos, even though the photographers had all signed confidentiality agreements and the wedding guests were Hollywood royalty and had nothing to gain from a photo like that. Paparazzi, like mosquitoes, really could manage to squeak in anywhere. Some waiter or staff member had been bribed, probably.

  There he was with Rebecca’s head resting dreamily on his shoulder, as if she had every right to be there. Of course she looked dreamy. She never stopped acting, and she never stopped looking beautiful.

  A split second before he’d all but flicked her off like an insect.

  Worse was the second photo: the two of them, talking outside Rebecca’s guest cottage, Rebecca leaning into him, as though she’d just been kissed senseless.

  When he was really trying to set her drunken self back up on her feet.

  Two moments that meant less than nothing to him, but taken out of context were elevated to profundity. J. T. sat down hard on the hotel bed and dropped his head into his hands and growled savagely.

  Then he stood up and paced the room.

  Everyone he knew would see those photos. And while the Hollywood community at large knew the drill and would take it with a grain of salt, except for maybe Sir Anthony Underhill—­poor sap, his publicist was probably fielding a lot of phone calls this morning.

  Britt would see those photos.

  And if she was squirrelly before . . . well, that was nothing compared to how she’d feel now.

  And in truth, he couldn’t blame her.

  Because there was no way he’d insult her with a flurry of “I can explain!” texts. At a certain point he just sounded like a guy crying wolf. She wasn’t that stupid.

  But he also couldn’t bear sending her texts that were ignored. It really wasn’t fun the first time.

  He stared at his phone.

  At the blue flower she’d given him that had sent his heart skyrocketing.

  She probably felt like an ass for sending it now, and he wouldn’t blame her.

  He vented by sending Franco a one-­word text:

  Asshole.

  With a link to that website.

  He got a text back immediately.

  I thought you and Becks were working it out.

  He frowned. Was Franco being a jerk, or was he actually contrite?

  He texted back.

  No.

  Franco texted back.

  Sorry man. Worried about a particular other woman seeing it?

  He stared at that a moment, wondering again whether Franco was being a jerk.

  Or being a friend.

  With Franco, half the time the two were synonymous.

  He sat there, paralyzed with fury and panic.

  Three seconds later he got another text from Franco.

  If she really loves you, you can’t lose her.

  Wow.

  Franco must have waited years for a chance to say that. It was almost cinematically timed. He might be Irish, but he could hold a grudge like a mafioso.

  Thing was . . . J. T. might not have actually been wrong when he’d said it the first time.

  Maybe he wasn’t entirely clueless after all.

  And if these photos shot straight to hell whatever remaining chance with Britt he had, so be it.

  And he might be out of his mind. But like he’d told Britt about his truck, he didn’t like to give up on things.

  Maybe he should remind her she’d said the very same thing.

  “This is not what I ordered,” Casey said firmly, pushing away a Glennburger with cheese and bacon.

  Britt had heard this sentence quite a bit all day.

  “Oh, Casey, I’m so sorry.”

  She’d been saying that sentence a lot all day, too.

  Britt snatched up the plate so quickly the pickle wedge rolled off the edge and thumped onto the table. As if it, too, were scrambling to get away from her.

  Who knew misery came in such wide and surprising varieties and had infinite strata?

  Those two photos on TMZ were all but stamped on her corneas, and it was like she was trying to see around them as she moved about the restaurant.

  Just when she’d told her sister J. T. was a good guy, too.

  So much for that. It was almost hilarious how wrong she’d been.

  He might be the only guy in the world who’d drunk-­texted a dying orchid to a woman.

  And she might be the only woman in the world stupid enough to fall for it.

  The other possibility, of course, was that she might have driven him right into the clutches of Rebecca Corday with her . . . what was the word Laine used—­ah, yes: pigheadedness.

  All possibilities were awful.

  J. T. had made her feel like a fool, whether or not he knew he was being photographed.

  She was just pivoting to dart back to the grill with the botched order in her hands when Casey clamped her hand on her arm and held her fast.

  “Britt.” She stared somberly into her face. Like someone about to issue a blood vow.

  Britt was alarmed. “What?” she asked on a hush. “What is it?”

  Casey hesitated for strategic effect.

  “We are going to get drunk.”

  “Come again?”

  “You’re coming over to my house tonight, I’m going to make margaritas, and we’re going to get drunk, because that’s what you need.”

  “Listen to her, Britt,” Sherrie said, whizzing by to fetch back to the kitchen another order Britt got wrong.

  Ah, hell. They were probably right.

  Alcohol wouldn’t kill her feelings for J. T. stone-­cold dead. But it might give her a merciful reprieve from them. There would be plenty of time to feel terrible later.

  Giorgio was glowering at her. She mouthed “sorry” at him.

  He shook his head to and fro mournfully. As if he’d known from the moment John Tennessee McCord walked into the Misty Cat that his flawless grill coordination, the poetry of his days, would be shattered.

 
; CHAPTER 21

  Like any responsible citizen who planned to get drunk on a weeknight, Britt took the bus as close as she could get to Casey’s house. To add insult to injury, she was required to sit on the bus bench featuring Rebecca Corday trailing a scarf from her flawlessly manicured fingertips. But it really enhanced her drinking mood.

  She brought the now fully recovered coleus plant with her. She knew, somehow, that Casey would take good care of it. She would at least make sure that the leaves were regularly trimmed.

  Britt hadn’t drunk a little too much with a girlfriend in ages.

  She wondered if she’d lost her knack.

  Casey’s house was a white cottage about twice the size of Britt’s house. Its green shutters matched the tidy lawn, which, like the shrubs, was clipped ruthlessly short, as befitted the yard of a hairstylist and waxer.

  She nearly crashed into a long tubular wind chime dangling from the front porch and rang the bell.

  Which only made her think of J. T., who had nearly been brained by one at the Angel’s Nest.

  She could hear the promising sound of a blender through the door.

  She waited it out. Then rang again.

  Casey flung the door open. A big pitcher of something frothy and pink was in her hand and a shaggy yellow dog panted knee-­level.

  “I’m so glad you came, Britt! I thought we’d go sit in here. My roommate is working tonight so we have the place to ourselves.”

  “Oh, good! I . . . I brought you a plant, Casey.”

  Casey beamed and scooped it into the crook of her free arm.

  “Gosh, that is awfully sweet of you, Britt. It’s beautiful! Let’s just bring it in here with us. It’ll like the kind of light we get in the kitchen.”

  She led Britt through a hall painted a very stylish glossy orange. The walls were decorated with framed inspirational messages in striking modern fonts: “Imagine”; “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind”; “Give Peace a Chance.” She suspected they were more aspirations than credos, given Casey’s own mythology.

  Her living room was clean lined and tidy and contemporary and bright, and she’d managed to blend turquoise and orange in her upholstery and accessories in a way that didn’t singe Britt’s corneas.

  She settled at the vintage blue retro Formica table in the kitchen while Casey pulled down glasses the size of goldfish bowls and poured the drinks.