Everybody Loves Evie. Beth Ciotta

along The Real Book, in case you didn’t bring your own charts. Do you know your keys?”

      My heart roared in my ears. Maybe I was still asleep, still dreaming. Maybe this was a result of mind-bending jet lag. “I’m a chick singer,” I said deadpan. “Of course I don’t know my own keys.”

      Tabasco chuckled at the inside joke.

      “Besides, The Real Book is useless since I don’t sing standards.”

      “Only kind of music Jazzman allows,” Pops said.

      I palmed my damp, pounding forehead. “Who’s Jazzman?”

      “Milo Beckett.” Tabasco motioned to Pops to pour me another drink. “Maybe you should have another shot, hon. You look pale.”

      “Maybe I should.” Jayne had bought me that herbal medicine, and, like a cosmic ring she’d once given me, it was a clunker. Maybe I could kill the germs with alcohol and at the same time bolster myself for a confrontation with Beckett. I threw back the whiskey and only choked and hacked half as long the second time around. “How do I get upstairs?”

      Tabasco shook his head. “I don’t think—” “Let her go,” Pops said. He pointed to a door marked Private. “Through there and up the stairs. When you reach the end of the line, knock.”

      “You might want to button your jacket, babe.” I ignored Tabasco’s advice and strode toward the marked door. I’d be damned if I’d gussy up for Beckett. He’d tricked me, conned me. What I wanted to know was why.

      CHAPTER SIX

      BY THE TIME I HIT THE top landing I was primed for a fight. Whatever truce Beckett and I had silently agreed to in the islands had shattered along with my Charlie’s Angel fantasy. An image of that cocky SOB Tex Aloha exploded in my brain along with every other man who’d ever tripped up my dreams. If he thought I was going to roll over and take this news like good ole roll-with-the punches Evie Parish, he was wrong with a capital W.

      “I’ve changed with a capital C!”

      Hopped up on righteousness, I banged on the door with my umbrella, then charged ahead expecting a spacious loft. Stark white walls. Stainless steel desks. Men in black tinkering with superspy gadgets. Instead I stepped into a compact living area reminiscent of Sam Spade’s apartment in The Maltese Falcon. My gaze skimmed over the padded rocking chair, leather sofa, wooden bookcase and spindle-legged desk—all circa 1940—and landed on the scarred wood molding framing the nearest window. Was that a bullet hole?

      “Can I help you?”

      I whirled, envisioning a hard-boiled dick in a dark suit brandishing a revolver, and slammed into a hardheaded dick in a towel holding a bottle of aftershave.

      I bounced off Milo Beckett’s bare chest with an oomph.

      “Damn, Twinkie, you’re soaked.”

      “Yes, well, that’s what happens when you get caught in a rainstorm with a cheap-ass umbrella!” The flutter of embarrassment I’d felt interrupting his postshower primping evaporated with that cream-puff innuendo. I didn’t give two figs that he was half-naked, nor did I allow my female appreciation of his very male essence to distract me from my mission. “I have a bone to pick with you!”

      “Could it wait until I’m dressed?”

      “No. First of all, my name is Evie. Twinkie is … degrading.”

      “Barging into my apartment without invitation is rude.”

      “I knocked.”

      “You pounded.”

      “You lied.” Maybe not the best thing to say to your new boss on the first day, but I was steamed and fueled by two shots of whiskey.

      “If this is about your position with Chameleon, you might want to rephrase that last statement.”

      He was right. I knew it and he knew it. Damn. Rattled, I drew on the film-noir atmosphere and channeled Sam Spade. “People lose teeth talking like that,” I drawled in my best Bogie impersonation. “If you want to hang around, you’ll be polite.”

      He looked at me as if I’d grown a second nose. If he were Arch, he would’ve come back with, “The Maltese Falcon. 1941.” The sexy Scot could quote as many movies as me, maybe more.

      Beckett leaned forward and sniffed. “You’ve been drinking.”

      “Pops said whiskey would take off the chill.” Yeah, boy, ain’t that the truth. I was burning up.

      “I’ll fix you some coffee.”

      “I’m not drunk, Beckett. I’m mad. At you.”

      “Got that when you barged in, Twinkie.” He tossed the capped aftershave onto a worn leather ottoman and readjusted the towel that rode dangerously low on his hips.

      I dropped my umbrella and purse on the hardwood floor, peeled off my cold, wet jacket and chucked that, too.

      We stared each other down for what felt like an hour and probably amounted to three seconds. Absurdly, it felt like a game of chicken. I refused to buckle first, but when his gaze slid down my body, lingering on my chest, I panicked. Was he thinking about the time he’d seen me topless? “You misled me,” I said, inwardly cursing him a pig. At the same time, my own traitorous gaze raked over his lean, mean form. What was it about a man in a towel and the smell of deodorant soap and woodsy cologne?

      “I didn’t do anything except agree to a trial run.”

      Startled, I glanced back up and found him watching me with a knowing smirk. He thought I was checking him out, which I sort of was. Busted. Could this day get any worse? “But you knew what I was thinking. I mean, that day, when I asked you for a job.”

      “I did.”

      “So?”

      “You thought wrong.”

      I stamped my foot in frustration. He talked in circles, just like …

      Oh, no. “Arch put you up to this, didn’t he?” I whirled and paced, my mind tripping over rapid-fire thoughts. “I knew he wasn’t happy about me grifting for you, with him, but I didn’t think he’d go behind my back and …” I sneezed.

      “Bless you.”

      “Thank you. I didn’t think he’d sabotage my future,” I ranted without missing a beat. “He knew how important this was to me. I’ve been studying and practicing and … I even stole, I mean distracted … dammit!” I stopped in my tracks, tongue-tied with a zillion curses. All of them directed at Arch Duvall. “No wonder he didn’t call me back. He’s avoiding me. He …” I faltered, realizing I’d just shot myself in the foot.

      “Looks like you weren’t the only one who was misled.”

      I could feel myself blushing from bleached hair follicles to painted pink toenails. My skin actually sizzled. “Okay. I might have been a little less than truthful back on the island when I intimated there was nothing between Arch and me other than friendship.”

      Beckett raised a brow. “Really?”

      His sarcasm grated big-time. I planted my hands on my hips, straightened my spine. If I could stand up to several marketing and entertainment executives, I could handle one arrogant Fed. “I slept with Arch. We had a fling. There. I admitted it. Are you happy now?”

      “Did you get him out of your system?”

      My skin prickled with a nervous rash. But I didn’t scratch. That would be what Arch called a “tell.” I nodded and delivered a firm, “Yes.”

      “Until you get better at lying, I’m not putting you in the field.”

      How did he know? I didn’t scratch! Furious, I stalked