He turned in time to catch her smile of satisfaction.
“But once the lawyer heard me out, she took the job on the basis of how much she could screw out of my mother and the show. My case was so solid, we never even went to court. I settled for almost nothing after paying the lawyer, but I was free.”
“Nothing? You got nothing? You were on that show since you were eight! You earned every damned penny and then some. Your mother should have invested a fortune in your name.” He thought his brain exploded at the loss of all that money.
“Freedom was worth it,” she said with a wave of dismissal. “Besides, my sister was still at home, and I made keeping her out of the business part of the deal. With all her problems, Amethyst would have been crushed by our mother’s wheeling and dealing. And I never earned what you did. I think Crystal and Dell had some side deal happening that never went on the books. I couldn’t hire accountants to get into that. Now tell me about Willa.”
He was still fuming about selling her childhood for crap-diddley. He hated to admit that he’d sold out his dreams too. “Her father’s a big shot producer. He’s given Willa what he considers one of the less important branches of his kingdom, a branch that’s currently financing my next film. Willa and I decided we’d bump the production up to the next level. She’s ambitious, and my name should help her take her company another step higher.”
He waited for her disapproval. She just sounded sad when she finally spoke.
“You never wanted to stay in the business. You hated the pressure. Whatever happened to the farm you wanted to buy? The books you were going to write?”
“I grew up,” he said with a shrug. “It happens. Did you think you’d make a living at tarot reading when you were a kid?”
She laughed. “Actually, I did, although I thought I’d have money to do it in style while I went to acting school. Psychic to the Stars has a nice ring, doesn’t it?”
“I can probably make that happen,” he suggested tentatively. “I don’t believe in a lot of that stuff the way you do, but a hell of a lot of people do.”
“I like it here,” she said softly. “I don’t want to leave.”
And then she added sadly, “But I may have to.”
Without explaining, she stood and pulled on her caftan and announced it was time for her to go.
Their trip down memory lane had relaxed some of his tension—until she’d cut him off again. He got it. She didn’t want him prying. He didn’t want her to leave, but even he knew spending the night wouldn’t happen.
“I’m going home tomorrow,” Josh told her as he walked her to his car. “Give me your email and phone number. Let’s talk again.”
She handed him a business card from her over-sized bag but shook her head sadly. Her face was almost heart-shaped with her wide cheeks and narrow chin, but it was the long-lashed pools of turquoise he fell into every time. They were dark with shadows now. The low sidewalk lights provided little illumination.
“Different worlds, Jacko. I’m here if you need your cards read, but you and I both know the distance is too much for your busy career. I’ll always cherish our friendship, and maybe I’ll even try to keep up with your work now that I know you haven’t forgotten me.”
When they reached the drive, he kissed her creamy cheek and tried not to remember a time when he’d had the right to hold her in his arms. “I’ll always love you, even if you don’t need my swords and dragons.”
She laughed, touched his bristled jaw, and slid into the car without saying more.
Josh felt as if he were cutting an invisible bond when he let her go. He wasn’t much on sentimentality anymore, but Amber . . . had been his entire childhood and adolescence. She’d been the brat who’d kicked his shin with her cowboy boot when he’d teased her, crippling him for nearly a week. At age twelve, she’d beaten him with a magazine when he’d kissed her. Then she’d become the pest who had demanded that he teach her to dance. They’d been pretty damned good too, although they’d used old movies to learn the routines. They’d never make it on a modern dance floor.
He’d never sleep tonight. He might as well get some work done.
Four
I will always love you.
Had she dreamed last night? She’d gone swimming in her underwear with her teenage heartthrob, and he’d said those words she’d always hoped to hear someday.
Except he’d said it on the eve of his marriage, damn him. Life was cruel. And Josh had probably meant it in that film star way that was as meaningless as air kisses.
A knock hit her front door. The bell hadn’t worked in years. Amber finished fastening an earring and ambled out to her front room. She might wish that was Josh on her porch, but he’d be on his way back to the big world.
“Hold your horses,” she muttered, then winced, realizing she sounded like her mother. That’s what happened when transported back in time for an evening.
Sam and Mariah usually just waltzed in since Amber didn’t bother locking her door. Hillvale wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime. Crazy Daisy, may she rest in peace, had lined her porch with protective stone guardians, and that was good enough for Amber. Besides, she had nothing worth stealing.
She needed to consider what Zeke would need to feel at home here—starting with a television, she suspected. But first, she had to twist her mother’s arm to let him visit. She needed a few cups of tea before she was ready for that battle. She opened the door.
Hillvale’s chief of police, Sam’s husband, Chen Ling Walker, stood outside. Tall, with an intimidatingly blank expression in his flat eyes, Walker was impressive even without uniform. When he was wearing his gun and gear, he was downright scary. Her heart thumped harder, not in a good way.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded.
“Where were you from the time you left the shop last night to midnight?”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” she retorted, unhappy that Walker obviously knew she hadn’t been home. “Quit behaving like an asshole from a bad cop show, come in, and let me drink my tea. What happened?”
She thought he snorted, but she knew Walker preferred his enigmatic face when on a case. And if he was on a case. . . she really needed her tea before facing it. She offered him a cup, but he shook his head. She poured hers and drank it black.
Did she verify that she had been with Josh? What if Josh’s fiancée found out? Or word spread and everyone figured out she was part of Ginger and Jack? She really didn’t want to be Ginger anymore.
“Do I have to tell you where I was?” she asked, leaning against her counter. She liked to examine all possibilities before deciding. Impulsive, she was not.
Walker didn’t do relaxed. Crossing his short-sleeved, muscled arms, he filled her tiny kitchen. “No, but you might help out a friend if you did.”
Her rather large stomach fell to her feet. “Josh? Did something happen to Josh?”
“He’s fine, for the moment. Answer the question, Amber. You know I don’t gossip.”
“You’ll tell me what’s wrong if I answer?” she demanded.
“You’ll hear anyway. I just want honest confirmation first.”
“I came home after work, all alone. I walked down to town a little before ten. Josh’s driver picked me up and took me to the lodge right about ten. It was sometime around midnight when he returned me to town. I was with Josh in the pool in between those times. Does that help?” She crossed her fingers and prayed, covering all bases.
He nodded. “Partially, for now. A hiker found your Josh’s fiancée in a canyon outside of town this morning, in an area where someone in high heels isn’t likely to have walked on her own. We don’t have the time of death yet. I just wanted you to confirm what he told me.”
“Willa? Willa Powell is dead?” she asked, horror washing over her. The death card, he’d pulled the death card. It usually wasn’t literal, but Josh’s vibrations had been really bad. She couldn’t corral all the ramifications to even start asking questions. “Ther
e’s been another death in Hillvale?”
“It might not have happened here,” Walker reminded her. “Looks to me as if she’d been dumped. But she was found near here, so it looks bad.”
“Oh, hell. Josh thought she’d gone back to LA. Take me over to the lodge, please.” Tears filled her eyes. To fight them, she slammed down her cup and marched out.
She needed to talk to her friends, go to the café and hear the gossip, but she couldn’t leave Josh bereft and alone, not again. He had to be devastated.
“This is what happens when I marry friends, right? I don’t get to be chief anymore?” Walker asked, helping her into his official SUV.
“Exactly. You’re just Sam’s husband, and you know Sam would want you to take me to Josh.” Although now that she said it, she wanted to smack herself silly. Being seen in public with Jack/Josh was the last thing she wanted.
But this wasn’t about her anymore. Besides, despite Walker’s protestations that he didn’t gossip, the news would be all over town by mid-morning that she’d been with the famed Joshua Gabriel in the middle of the night for a pool rendezvous. People weren’t dumb and lodge staff talked.
Maybe she should read her own cards more often, but that required reading herself, and that was a game of Russian roulette.
Walker drove her to the lodge and politely walked her back to Josh’s suite. He knocked, and Kurt Kennedy, the resort’s owner, answered. Seeing Walker, he looked relieved. “Any news?”
“I brought your local psychic to read the stars,” Walker said grimly. “I have to go back and use more mundane methods.” He stalked away, abandoning Amber to her fate.
Tall and handsome in a very mundane Null way, Kurt grimaced and ran his hand through his hair. Amber patted his shoulder in sympathy. Recently married, attempting to establish his own architectural firm while dealing with the multiple difficulties of owning half the resort and town, he had his hands full. At least, now that he was married to Teddy, he was learning to accept Lucy eccentricity.
“How is he?” she asked, because that mattered first.
“Manic. I have to go back to town. How well do you know him? Are you okay staying here? I think he has staff on the way up, but it’s a long drive from LA.” Kurt cast a glance over his shoulder at a shout of fury from inside the suite.
“His temper goes down as fast as it goes up,” she said reassuringly. “Send food, orange juice, no coffee. Coffee will drive him ballistic.”
Kurt raised his eyebrows in surprise but nodded. “Got it. Thanks, Amber. I didn’t want to leave him alone.”
“He needs friends. Just be available if he needs help. He has some bad things happening in his cards, which may reflect some bad things in his life. Tell Teddy. She’ll know what to do.” Amber set down her bag and walking stick on the foyer table and entered the main room of the suite, letting Kurt escape.
“Tell the scurrilous knaves whatever the hell you want, just keep them away from me,” Josh was shouting into the landline. “Tell them I crawled into my dragon cave and pulled a mountain over me. Let the grave robbers haunt the coroner’s office. It’s not as if I can tell them anything.”
Oh yeah, she remembered those days of publicity pressure. She didn’t miss them in the least.
Josh didn’t even seem to notice as she continued on to the kitchen and emptied the coffee pot. He’d had enough caffeine from the sounds of it. She found a tomato juice bottle in the mini-fridge, poured some in a glass, and carried that out to where he paced up and down the carpet, still shouting at his minions.
When he inevitably flung the receiver across the room, she handed him a glass of nutrition.
Josh looked awful. He hadn’t shaved. His thick brown locks fell over his broad forehead, giving him a hobbit look. The emptiness in his beautiful cobalt eyes almost broke her heart all over again.
He took a sip of juice and returned to pacing. “I’m sorry, kid. I don’t know how I’ll keep you out of this. I can send you far, far away, if that will help. Want to visit Paris?”
“I’d love to visit Paris, but my nephew is here next week, so I’ll have to decline. Thank you for the thought. I can see how you’re holding up, so I won’t ask. What about Willa’s parents?” She took a seat on the luxurious sofa. The Kennedys didn’t stint on comfort for their wealthy guests.
She glanced around, seeing papers strewn across the tables and half the chairs, and a laptop running on the long, elegant dining table. A video game bounced on the TV screen.
“Willa’s mother has been on an African safari or European tour for years. Her father is unavailable. I have no idea if anyone has reached either of them yet. I’ve left voice mail on every number I have. They’re not a close family,” he said with acerbic dryness.
“Well, I know how that goes. Tell me about Willa. I heard she was really pretty.”
“Taller than I am when she wore heels,” he said with a half laugh, reaching for the juice again. “Whip-smart, ambitious. I think she wanted to prove to her father that she was better than him. She would have too. Ivan is too set in his ways to understand the new media culture.” He flung papers off a lounge chair and slid into it. “I wish I’d asked her which friend she was driving back with, but she had her car with her, so I figured it was Ernest, the assistant she’d brought up with her.”
He slumped and buried his face in his hands. “Willa was a force of nature. I can’t believe she’s gone. I’m waiting for her to walk out of the closet and yell at me for not milking this for publicity.”
“You’ll get more publicity by playing the part of grieving lover and hiding out for a while. Speculation will explode the headlines.” Reporters would be all over the town by dusk, Amber knew. She almost wished she could take him up on Paris.
“Maybe you should go to Paris,” she suggested hopefully.
He lifted his head. “I’m not leaving until I know what happened. I owe Willa that much.”
Amber sighed and wondered if she could order mimosas. “Yeah, I figured.”
“Shit, the reporters will be all over town, won’t they? They’ll hear about the pool. Let me call my PR person back,” he said, wearily rubbing his face.
Amber waved her rings in dismissal. “No one has a reason to put an overweight tarot reader together with teenage Ginger. Just find some way of keeping the jackals from making it sound like last night was some kind of love triangle.”
Josh nodded and hunted down the cordless phone he’d flung. “Then I’ll arrange someone to shoot her father and give them something new to gnaw on. Piece of cake.”
Room service knocked while he was on the phone. Amber answered it. Instead of the usual rolling cart and uniformed staff, Fiona from the café winked at her and held up a tray. “I haven’t met Josh yet,” she whispered. “I’ll know what he needs better once I have. So this is mostly for you.”
Amber almost expired in gratitude that her friends had her back. “If you tell me he smells of fish, I’ll smack you with one,” she whispered.
“You’re too sensitive to hang with fish,” Fee said, carrying her tray toward the table while studying Josh striding over strewn papers, yelling into his phone. “Oh yeah, Jackie outgrew the nerd role. He rocks that cowboy look now, doesn’t he? I purely loved that show when I was a kid. Jack and Ginger were the family I didn’t have.”
Fiona had grown up in the foster system. With her peculiar sense of smell, the little cook had always been an outcast, until she’d arrived in Hillvale. Fee had kept her mouth shut when she recognized Amber, so she could be trusted.
And Fee was right. With his unbuttoned shirt revealing washboard abs, Josh had definitely grown out of the skinny nerd stage.
“You are part of a family now,” Amber reminded her. “Although I suppose the Lucys are a little less normal than Jack and Ginger. Thank you for coming here. The café must be going insane.”
“Dinah stepped up. She was the one who said I had to help.” Fee discreetly sniffed the air. “He smells of honesty, gen
erosity, and impatience. I don’t recognize emotion as well as Teddy does, so saying I think he also smells of sorrow and anger simply means that’s my interpretation, based on what he ought to be feeling. But there doesn’t seem to be an evil scent on him. I’ll send up some herbal snacks that may help a little. The orange juice is fresh squeezed and should be better for him than the sugary stuff.”
Josh didn’t even appear to notice when she let Fee out again. Amber examined the tray of goodies, found avocado toast that he could munch as he paced, and carried it over to him. Absent-mindedly, he accepted a piece and ate while waiting for someone on the other end of the phone line.
Damn, this felt too much like the old days when they’d helped each other over childhood anxieties and through homework. She needed to be working on her nephew’s problem. Although—once the news broke—this could become part of Zeke’s problem. Willa’s death would bring all Hollywood news down on them, just when she needed to convince a court that she could take care of Zeke better than Crystal.
If anyone discovered she was really Ginger—it wouldn’t take a minute for the press to put Jack and Ginger together in a love triangle with the dead woman and there would go any chance of getting custody.
In a semi-panic, she sat down at Josh’s neglected computer and sent off an email to her lawyer with a quick summary of Zeke’s situation. Alicia knew Amber’s mother. She’d be all over Crystal like fleas on cats. Now, if only they could hold off the press. . .
That done, Amber took a deep breath and opened up the Hollywood websites to see how the gossip was rolling. The news had just hit, so there wasn’t a lot of speculation yet.
She and Josh, as teenage geeks, had learned to manipulate internet publicity better than their PR department back in the day. She didn’t know if the basics still applied, but she’d have to sink into those depths of depravity again if she wanted to keep a handle on their reputations. She could almost feel the muddy ooze between her toes already.
But if she brought Zeke up here, she’d have to support him somehow. All she knew how to do was act, although she wasn’t much good for anything but voice-overs these days. Would Josh help her find jobs?
Amber Affairs Page 4