Just Between Us.... Tori Carrington

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.

      4

      HAD JACK REALLY JUST beeped the horn at her?

      Mallory gaped at the old Chevy and at Jack himself. The late morning sunlight caught his dark hair just the right way, bringing out sandy highlights that only lent to his lean, handsome appeal. She swallowed past the sudden tightness in her throat, gave him an irritated wave, then returned her attention to the prostitute she’d just introduced herself to.

      Coco Cabana (she’d fought not to snicker) was more than just your average, run-of-the-mill hooker. First off, she had to be pushing fifty, a fact no amount of makeup, exercise or designer clothing could hide.

      Second, she wasn’t a woman at all, but a man.

      Of course, Coco hadn’t come right out and shared the information. And Mallory guessed that, after sundown, shadows obscured age and gender and Coco would probably be drop-dead gorgeous. But Mallory knew the score the instant she began talking to him.

      He…she…whatever…was also the first person among the dozens Mallory had interviewed who knew more about The Red Gardenia than just passing rumor.

      Coco lifted a cigarette to her mouth, her nails long, talonlike and blood-red. “Sure, I knew The Red Gardenia.” She rolled her eyes, blue ones enhanced with spidery false eyelashes and blue eye makeup. “We both arrived in L.A. at about the same time.”

      Mallory’s heart skipped a beat. But she still didn’t completely trust the extent of Coco’s knowledge. “And her real name was…”

      “Jenny Fuller, of course.”

      Check.

      “And she was from?”

      Coco waved her cigarette. “Omaha, I think. Yeah. It was Nebraska.”

      Double check.

      “Horrible tragedy, that one,” Coco added with a sigh. “She had a future. Could have been a real contender.”

      Now that was a different take. Most people Mallory spoke to said that Jenny Fuller had probably gotten what she deserved. That Hollywood had a way of glossing over the details and that a good girl usually wasn’t all she appeared.

      Mallory sometimes wondered how much bad a girl from Nebraska could get into in six months.

      Jenny Fuller’s story wasn’t all that unusual. People who came to L.A. armed only with their dreams were a dime a dozen. But the aspiring actress—whose claim to fame had been a beer ad that featured her wearing a twenties getup and a red gardenia in her hair—and her unsolved murder twenty-five years ago had come to represent all those forgotten someones whose dreams of stardom had ended, and would end, in tragedy.

      Mallory looked back to Coco. She’d been digging for more info of the sympathetic and specific variety for months now. And while it seemed her personal life was in the dumps, her professional life appeared to have just taken a full tilt toward the better.

      At least she hoped so.

      “Look,” Coco said. “If you’re not going to feed me, pay me, or provide some other kind of amusement, sweetie, then I’m going to have to move on. This is a working day, you know.”