Just Between Us...

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what you two are so down about. I mean, the way I see it you just dodged the ultimate bullet, Layla.” Her friend cringed. She switched her attention to Reilly. “And, well, you pretty much know I’ve had my doubts about Ben all along, Rei.”

Another cringe.

She looked at Jack who was glaring at her.

“What?” she barked. “What is it about the three of you this morning? I swear, you’re enough to make a corpse be sorry for dying.”

Layla sighed heavily for what seemed like the umpteenth time. “You don’t understand, Mallory.”

“What’s there to understand? I may not be Mensa material, but I’ve been known to rub two thoughts together.”

“You don’t get it,” Reilly said, gesturing with her hands. “Because you’re…single.”

Mallory’s spine snapped upright.

Jack pushed from the table. “I’m going to get some more napkins.”

Coward, Mallory wanted to say.

Instead she sniffed and said, “I’m not single, I’m busy.”

Layla and Reilly looked at her pitifully.

“At least I’m not crying into my coffee like you two,” she said quietly. “God, you guys know how I hate whining. And right now you two are walking, talking poster children for whiners the world over.”

Reilly snapped to. “For someone who claims to be a liberal, you’re awfully opinionated and judgmental.”

Layla agreed. “Is there a single person, group or entity that you haven’t insulted at one point or another?”

Mallory honestly didn’t know what to say.

Layla pushed from the table. “God, you can be so damn cynical.”

“Bitter,” Reilly said. “She’s bitter.”

Jack picked that moment to return to the table. “I’d go with cynical. To be bitter you have to have something to be bitter about. And Mallory’s too scared to live.”

All three women stared at him, shocked.

Making Mallory want to die.

She glanced at her two female friends, wondering what Jack had revealed with his little piece of personal insight. Was what he’d said something a friend would offer up? Of course, it probably was, but when coupled with the fact that he, as a rule, disappeared whenever one of these discussions surfaced, and never contributed anything, his change in protocol was sure to raise some brows.

Interestingly enough, however, neither Layla nor Reilly seemed to catch on.

Reilly pointed at him. “You know something? You’re right.”

Mallory made a face and gathered her backpack. It was chock full of everything a working producer needed.

Now, if only she could find some work.

Actually, not so much work, but capital to work with. Her current subject, The Red Gardenia, was waiting.

The Red Gardenia who haunted her at times when she’d be better off thinking about something else. But there was just something about the subject, about Jenny Fuller, that intrigued her. The similarities in their ambitions, maybe. Whatever it was, this documentary, more than the others, was one she was driven to make.

“Jack, I think it’s time for us to go,” she said.

He leisurely drank his coffee. “Go where? I’m not going anywhere.”

Mallory glared at him, resisting the urge to point out that Layla was watching the interplay with great curiosity. “Yes, we are. You promised to take me to that site for The Red Gardenia, remember?”

He slowly shook his head. “Nope. I don’t recall.”

Reilly narrowed her eyes. “Have you two had a fight or something?”

“No,” Mallory said.

“Yes,” Jack said at the same time.

Layla looked back and forth. “Well, which is it?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mallory said quickly. “We’ve already kissed and made up. Haven’t we, Jack?”

He didn’t answer her.

Reilly made an uh-oh sound. “Doesn’t look that way to me. What are you two arguing about?”

Oh, was it ever time to get out of there. Mallory grabbed Jack’s arm and virtually jerked him from his chair. “We’d really like to discuss it with you, but from the looks of things you both have enough on your plates already. Don’t they, Jack?”

He looked like he might like to strangle her.

The Red Gardenia had been strangled. Which Mallory really wanted to look into more—if Jack would just cooperate.

“It might help us forget our own problems,” Reilly said.

“Don’t worry. It’s nothing the two of us can’t work out,” Mallory said. “Come on or we’ll be late.” She flashed a smile at her friends. “I’ll call you both later, okay?”

They both smiled at her like they expected those phone calls to fill them in on what they were missing.

Ha! Fat chance.

WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THE woman that got under his skin so?

Jack sat behind the wheel of his ’69 Chevy Camaro Z-28 and watched Mallory walk up and down Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, stopping every now and again to take notes. Today she wore a tight pair of faded jeans and a powder-blue T-shirt that read “Outta My Way or You’re Roadkill.”

Jack leaned his elbow in his open window and sighed. He only wished he didn’t feel like roadkill.

He really couldn’t say what had made him drive her to where she wanted to go. One minute he’d been about to spill all to Reilly and Layla, the next Mallory was giving him directions and he was following them.

He absently rubbed the back of his neck, watching as she approached someone and struck up a conversation, her pen waving in the air as she gestured with her hand. She was good at what she did. He knew that. Her documentaries were edgy and current and offered an unflinching viewpoint that not many filmmakers could capture. The word “real” sprung to mind. Her vision was real. Just like Mallory, herself, was real. Earthy. No nonsense. Sexy as hell.

And an unqualified pain in the ass.

He glanced at his wrist only to find he wasn’t wearing his watch. Which wasn’t surprising, because he usually didn’t wear his watch. That he was even looking to see what time it was said a lot.

Didn’t she understand that he had places to go, people to see?

No, he realized, she didn’t. Because, unlike her, he didn’t lay out his agenda like an open book.

He laid on the horn. Mallory shielded her eyes and looked in his direction while still talking to the woman she’d just introduced herself to. Then she gave him a little wave and returned her attention to her new friend.

Jack was half-tempted to drive away. But he knew he wouldn’t. No matter how maddening it was to watch her curvy little bottom in those tight jeans. Or wonder at the way the light December California breeze toyed with her dark curls. Or stare at the way her mouth moved when she talked.

He forced his attention away and stared instead at the street ahead. Shit. He was in deep, wasn’t he? When he’d thrown out the ultimatum last night, it had begun as a joke of sorts. But once it was out of his mouth, he’d discovered that he’d said exactly what he’d wanted to say.

And was now finding out that not only was he in deep, he was in it up to his elbows.

Not good.

Not good at all.

Especially since he had the sinking sensation that Mallory might never come to her senses and would spend the rest of her life—and his—making him live in a state of limbo.

He searched in the glove compartment for the pack of cigarettes he always kept there. Only he didn’t find them. He pulled down both sun visors, glad when the driver’s side one yielded a crumpled pack with one cigarette inside. He shook it out and lighted it with the car lighter.

Shit.

He filled his lungs with the acrid smoke then slowly blew it out.

Shit, shit, shit.

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