Chapter 4 #2
“Yes.” April leaned over and picked up a single sheet of paper from the desk.
“This is a list of people who I trust to talk to you about Ramona.” She showed it to Sam.
There were only a handful of names on it, with contact details beneath.
“It’s not a lot of folks, and that’s because I’m fucking suspicious by nature, and I have a responsibility to protect my people.
” April reluctantly passed the paper to Sam.
“I promise this goes nowhere except to help Bex and me help Macie.”
April gave her a military salute, and Sam scanned down the short list of names. Her gaze arrested on one name, chills washing over her body.
“This is perfect,” Sam said, sliding the paper inside her travel itinerary envelope. “Thank you.”
“Just find her. Or you’ll never work in this town again.”
Sam had been so preoccupied with folding and shoving the bulky envelope back into her tiny purse, she almost didn’t hear what April had said. Then she did. She whipped her head up in shock. “What?”
“Figure of speech.” April laughed, a menacing sound.
“Sort of. I could do that. I don’t want to do that.
” Then she sighed, and her eyes went shiny.
“I’m sorry. I truly have no intention of tossing around threats, especially when you’re helping.
It’s only that I’m incredibly worried, and even though I am a single woman with cats, at my core I am the same incredibly fierce Jewish mother who raised me, and what they don’t tell you is that you can accumulate every speck of power in this town and it still won’t mend a broken heart. ”
“I promise we will do everything we can.”
Sam left the downtown building with a busy mind and a heavy heart.
When she and Bex had begun trying to figure out what happened to Jen, the stakes were easy to understand.
Jen had been their dear friend. She’d died on their watch, at their workplace.
But if Sam and Bex started taking on other people’s potential heartbreak, it would mean they carried the feelings of everyone who loved Ramona with them everywhere they went. Along with their hope.
Sam was an actor. She knew how to empathize deeply with other perspectives.
She had to do that in order to deliver performances that made her audience feel.
What Macie had asked them to do, what April expected—it was a different kind of engagement.
More personal, with the potential to introduce profound change.
It was a lot to consider.
This morning, what Sam had learned in her meeting with her people was that they had plans lined up for the next five years of her life.
Now, maybe for the first time, it occurred to her that she wouldn’t mind if she had the kind of career that invited more unexpected turns.
Bex had been an unexpected turn, after all.
“We can’t count on being alone,” Sam said firmly through the microphone in her Audi’s stereo system. “We have to throw that fantasy away. There will always be an audience, Bex, and if they don’t want to watch, they can remove themselves.”
Their hoped-for private moment last night had been interrupted by a call from Sam’s brother, who’d taken a dip in the pool and locked himself out of her house. That was when Sam had arrived at the conviction she was now sharing with Bex, who laughed.
“If they don’t want to watch what, Samantha Farmer?”
“You’re a big talker over a wireless connection,” Sam shot back, “but I haven’t seen any of those moves live.” She changed lanes and had to honk at a guy in a too-furious, souped-up Nissan who tried to cut her off at the last second.
“Where are you? I thought you’d be here by now. I called to make sure I remembered what time zone I was in and it wasn’t me who was late.”
“Ten minutes away,” Sam said. “I set up a meeting this morning because, when I looked up Ramona Watts last night, I realized we’re at the same agency.”
“Oh!” Bex said. “Good thinking. Did you get in with Ramona’s agent?”
“Yeah.” Sam turned off the freeway and had to brake as a group of kids in school uniforms crossed illegally at the top of the exit in a laughing scrum. Then she gasped when the guy behind her nearly rear-ended her. “What the fuck is the deal with traffic today?”
“Careful. You sound tired. What did Ramona’s agent have to tell you?”
Sam filled Bex in on her meeting, but she held back the contents of the list April had given her. She wanted to save it for a surprise.
“You did good,” Bex said cheerfully. “And I’m not shocked Ramona has an agent who knows how to keep her mouth shut, given what Macie told us. On a professional note, I’m jealous as hell April Feinstein reps her.”
Sam pulled onto the narrow access road that would take her to Bex’s place. “That’s what I’ve been thinking about. The people in Ramona’s life and Ramona herself.”
“What about them? Because I’m”—there was a blank moment on the line before Bex’s voice came back—“layers of privacy.”
“Do you have another call?” Sam asked. “I can go.”
“No, it’s fine. It’s not anything I need to take right now.”
Sam frowned, unsure how to interpret that. With the singular exception of the five years Bex had avoided Sam and Sam had avoided Bex and they’d both talked about the other through Vic and Frankie, Bex was not someone who put things off to deal with later. “You sure?”
“Completely sure. I want to talk to you.”
“Well, the good news is that I’m nearly to your house. I missed some of what you were saying, though. Something about layers of privacy?”
“Just that Ramona’s been in this business for a long time, and she entered it on an enormous crest of sudden fame. It would make sense that she’s”—the line cut out again, due to what Sam was now certain had to be another phone call—“and to be cautious.”
This time, Sam didn’t mention the interruption. “There’s private and cautious, and then there’s secretive.” She put in the gate code at the bottom of Bex’s driveway. When Sam reached the house and got out of her car, she spotted Bex waiting for her on the sheltered portico outside the front door.
“You’re right, there’s a difference between cautious and secretive.
” Bex shoved her phone in her pocket. “But there are miles to go before we get to Ramona’s secrets.
For now, I’d be happy if she very nonsecretively called Macie and told them, ‘My bad, I couldn’t resist taking a sudden opening at that Arizona spa I had my eye on. ’”
Bex was in another oversized sweatshirt this morning, this one paired with appallingly short shorts that meant her muscled dancer’s legs had a sudden chokehold on Sam’s attention.
She grabbed Sam’s hand and pulled her close, not shy at all, and then the only thing Sam could think about was Bex’s shower-damp rosemary-scented hair, and her own gratitude that she’d picked out such a small shirt to wear this morning because it meant Bex’s other hand snaked around her bare waist.
“Good morning.” Sam stepped out of her heels to put herself in a better position for what she hoped might be about to happen.
“No time for idle chitchat or chaste hugs, Farmer.” Bex spoke against Sam’s neck, making her shiver. “Vic’s in there, she woke me up, and she’s in a state of excitement that makes me worry about her heart.”
“Shh,” Sam said. Finally, finally, she got close enough to feel the shift when Bexley Simon went completely still, silent in a way she never was except in the hushed pause before their mouths met.
Her fingers stroked a restless arch over the skin at Sam’s waist. Her lips parted.
Sam memorized the curve of her cheek for the thousandth time, the sweep of her eyelashes, and just because she wanted to kiss her more than anything, she held her breath and let anticipation hammer through her, as loud and insistent as her heartbeat.
Six months.
Bex squeezed her waist and rose to her toes, pressing herself against Sam’s breasts. She wrapped her free hand around the back of Sam’s neck and pulled Sam’s head down until their lips aligned. “Don’t you dare make me wait.” She could feel Bex’s breath against her mouth. “Not for one more second.”
Sam was smiling when she kissed her, and then she wasn’t.
The kiss charged through them both, driven by half a year’s longing and a decade of thrilling familiarity, of laughing glances that caught and held too long until Sam’s desire for the woman in her arms threatened to immolate her just like this, from the crux of her thighs to the nape of her neck.
She would die happy if the exchange meant she got to hear Bexley moan, licking her tongue across the seam of Sam’s lips, yanking at her hair to bring her closer.
Bex threaded her thigh between Sam’s, which ruined Sam to such an extent that she backed her into one of the porch columns and lifted her up, erasing the difference in their height, giving her access to the smooth sweep of a palm from Bex’s knee to her hip, with nothing in the way and all the time in the world.
“God.” Bex arched her back, and Sam bit her to warn her not to kill her with erotic promises.
“Emergency!” Vic’s voice blasted through the security speaker by the door. “You guys need to get in here right away!”