Too Wild. Jamie Sobrato

to use the phone.

      She backed away from the door and crept up the stairs.

      Damn it.

      Was Travis Roth a diversion for someone to break into her apartment? No, that didn’t make sense. He hadn’t come expecting that she’d flee out the window, that they’d end up having lunch at a diner down the street…But he could have had some other plan to get her out of the apartment. Could that whole story about her sister have been an elaborate charade?

      Her mind raced from thought to thought, and her hands began to shake as the reality of what she’d likely just lost sank in.

      Jenna raised her fist to knock on Mrs. Lupinski’s door, but the door swung open at that moment and her neighbor, in mint-green curlers and a red satin robe, peered out.

      “Shouldn’t have left your window open, huh! Saw some guy climbing up the fire escape, and twenty minutes later he walked right out the front carrying a black bag full of stuff.”

      “Did you call the police?”

      “How was I supposed to know if he was up to no-good? Could have been a friend of yours for all I knew.” Mrs. Lupinski’s robe slid open in the front to reveal a black lace nightgown. The sounds of a daytime soap opera could be heard in the background.

      Jenna shuddered. She knew better than to argue with her cantankerous neighbor. “I need to use your phone. My apartment has been robbed and ransacked.” While you were up here minding your own business.

      Damn it, damn it, damn it.

      She wanted to throw up or kick something. Or both. Tears burned her eyes, but she blinked them away, determined not to let her neighbor see how upset she really was.

      The elderly woman eyed her suspiciously but stepped aside and motioned her in. Jenna had never actually been inside the apartment before, and she half expected to see a heart-shaped bed in the living room, mirrors on the ceiling, maybe a few pieces of emergency resuscitation equipment in case any of her lovers went into cardiac arrest at an inopportune moment.

      What she saw instead was a two-room flat almost identical to her own, except for the matter of décor. Mrs. Lupinski had stopped decorating sometime in the late sixties, when she’d apparently been enamored with orange-and-green flower prints.

      She pointed to a telephone next to the couch, and Jenna was surprised to note that it actually had a rotary dial. The feel of catching her shaky fingers in the small holes as she dialed 911 took her back to childhood for a fleeting moment, until an operator came on the line and she found herself recounting the relevant details of the break-in.

      The operator warned her not to enter her apartment again until the police had secured it, so Jenna was stuck waiting for them to arrive in the company of Mrs. Lupinski. Luckily, her neighbor didn’t see any need for small talk. Without saying a word, she simply planted herself in front of the TV and watched with undivided attention the plight of Rafe and Savannah, a couple who seemed to be very upset over the resurrection of someone named Lucius.

      Jenna, left to her own thoughts, didn’t want to consider what might be missing from her meager belongings. Nor did she want to contemplate whether the break-in was connected to her research of the pageant industry. If it was, and if her files were missing—

      A sense of violation rose up in her chest. How could they? How could someone have taken her things, violated her privacy, stolen her work—the thing that mattered most to her?

      It was bad enough that she’d taken to cowering behind her apartment door, afraid to venture out in public like a normal person. Now her home had been invaded, and she had nowhere to cower.

      No, she had to stop thinking this way. This was exactly the kind of fear they wanted her to succumb to.

      She shook herself mentally and her thoughts landed instead on Travis Roth. Where did he fit into this puzzle? Her gut told her he was telling the truth, and her libido told her he was an undeniable babe. But what if he were a hit man, hired to lure her away and kill her, then dump her body in a shallow grave? There was one way to find out, even if it meant calling her mother, Irene Calvert-Hathaway.

      She picked up the phone again, dialed directory assistance, and went through the motions of placing a collect call to Palm Springs. Moments later, she heard her mother’s voice on the line. It should have been a comforting sound, in light of the circumstances.

      “Mom, it’s Jenna.”

      “What’s the matter, dear? Are you dead? Did you get thrown in jail?”

      “No, Mom. If I were dead, I’d have trouble dialing the phone. My apartment was just broken into and I can’t go back in yet, but that’s not why I’m calling.”

      She heard her mother’s put-upon sigh. “I told you not to move to that crazy city. Probably drug addicts—I’ve read how they steal things to support their habits.”

      “I’m calling about Kathryn, actually. I hear she’s getting married.”

      “To an absolutely magnificent man!” Her mother’s voice had changed from nagging to dreamy in an instant. “The wedding is in two weeks. I told Kathryn to send you an invitation, but the way you two fight…”

      Yeah, yeah, whatever. No need to invite the black sheep of the family to the social event of the season. Kathryn probably couldn’t imagine her lowlife sister rubbing elbows with her country-club friends. Not that Jenna considered herself a lowlife, but she knew her lack of a six-figure income and her less than glamorous lifestyle were a major embarrassment to her family.

      While Kathryn had stepped right into their mother’s social climbing footsteps, Jenna had never been much impressed by status symbols and excessive wealth. Her rejection of the material life was a constant source of discord between herself and her family, and Jenna imagined Kathryn and their mother shaking their heads and tut-tutting every time the subject of Jenna’s rattletrap car or seedy apartment came up.

      “It doesn’t matter. Do you know anything about Travis Roth, the brother of Kathryn’s fiancé?”

      She could almost see her mother’s surgically youthful eyes narrow. “Why do you ask, dear?”

      “He, or someone claiming to be him, contacted me today.”

      “About what?”

      “First, tell me what you know about him,” Jenna said, already feeling relieved that at least there was a Travis Roth.

      “I’ve only met him a few times, but he seemed like quite the gentleman. Handsome, too. He has a stellar reputation, from what I hear. Runs the investment branch of the Roth family empire, isn’t married, lives in Carmel near his brother and their parents.”

      “What does he look like, exactly?”

      “Tall, sandy blond hair, green eyes, nice physique, in his mid-thirties.”

      “Do you happen to know if their family is connected to any beauty pageants?”

      “No, and why on earth do you ask?”

      “Never mind.” Jenna relaxed back onto the sofa, releasing a mental sigh of relief. It sounded as if her lunch companion wasn’t a fraud and knew nothing about the break-in.

      “What are all these questions about?”

      “I can’t say, but don’t worry. I’m not going to ruin Kathryn’s wedding or anything.”

      Soon after Jenna ended the call with her mother, the police arrived, checked out her apartment, took statements from Jenna and Mrs. Lupinski and dusted for fingerprints. The biggest clue the police found was a note scrawled on the bathroom mirror in red lipstick that read, “Don’t write the story, bitch.”

      The only story Jenna was working on was the beauty-pageant exposé, so she’d given the police all the information she could remember about whom she had contacted during her research and promised to let them know if she remembered anything else. They’d