Chapter 6 Never Sleep on the Assistant
Never Sleep on the Assistant
Sam pressed her forehead against Bex’s. Both of them were panting. “How likely is this to be an actual emergency?” she rasped.
In response, Bex turned her head and yelled, “Go away!” loudly enough for Vic to hear her through the thick walnut of the entry door.
“I would if I could!” Vic yelled back over the intercom. “I would go far, far away! But you guys have to come inside, because a woman is in peril!”
“In a few hours, we could be in Mexico,” Sam rasped. “There’s a resort I’ve been to. The beds are enormous.”
Bex slid down the column out of Sam’s grip, then put her fingers lightly against Sam’s cheeks.
She looked into Sam’s eyes for a long moment before she let her hands fall away.
“Come on,” she said, releasing Sam. She grabbed the front door handle before turning back.
“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Macie said they talked to your security guy last night? But you don’t have security. Unless—”
“It’s Fergus.” Sam sighed. “He decided to move his paragliding and outfitter’s business from the Oregon coast to Malibu, and he’s crashing with me while he looks for a storefront to rent.”
Sam hadn’t thought twice about giving Fergus a key to her house.
Because their shared father had a talent for brief relationships that ended in unplanned pregnancy (until he had a vasectomy shortly after Sam joined the world), all four of her brothers had always been in and out of the family home—going back and forth to their moms—and so were the other women her dad dated and their kids.
Sam had never known anything but the people she loved moving into and out of her life on an unpredictable schedule.
As a teenager, she would’ve cried tears of joy to see into a future where her brothers willingly spent time with her, or at least spent time at her place.
But as much as she loved all of them, she couldn’t help but feel like the beloved proprietor of a favored bed-and-breakfast. Fergus had been in the guest room for a week now, and she’d spent two hours in his undistracted company.
“Ah.” Bex stepped into the foyer. “I see.”
“Indeed.” They walked through the open-concept living room of Bex’s California ranch, a homey Mission with Spanish tile and skylights studded between the heavy beams gridding the ceiling.
Sam loved Bex’s house. It never changed.
Every one of its spacious five thousand square feet felt like home and had since Bex first invited her over in their Craven’s Daughter days.
“Is this one of Fergus’s businesses you’ve ‘invested’ in?” Bex asked.
“What can I say?” Sam smiled as they pushed through the French doors at the back and settled themselves around the poolside table, where Vic was vibrating with the need to talk to them. “I’m a sucker for older brothers with medium-sized ideas they have no money to see through.”
“What took you so long?” Vic’s hair was in rollers. She wore a bikini top and pajama bottoms. “We have to get out Bex’s notebook and make a plan!”
“Sam, could I grab you something to drink? Did you eat yet?” Bex had her back turned to Vic and Vic’s energy. “I have those orange-glazed muffins from Deliah’s, and there’s still agua fresca.”
“No drinks!” Vic barked. “No food!”
Bex’s annoyed dimple made an appearance.
“As it happens,” Sam said, wrapping her arms around Bex’s waist and pulling her down onto her lap on the sofa, “I had breakfast at the agency. Where April Feinstein, Ramona’s agent, gave me a list of people we can contact. One of them is someone we know.”
Bex perched her hands on Sam’s shoulders, beaming with delight. “Who?”
“Haris Ahmadi.”
“Oh, shit.” Vic collapsed to the ground with her hand over her eyes. “This is bad. Bad, bad.”
A wrinkle appeared between Bex’s eyebrows that Sam associated with this particular dramatic mode of Vic’s. “I know that name, but I can’t quite place it,” Bex said.
“Allow me to set the scene,” Sam replied.
“It’s the Craven’s Daughter reunion special.
A young production assistant comes to retrieve us from our picnic on the steps.
It’s clear that he knows your sister Frankie, who is also a PA for Cineline.
After the live part of the episode wraps and we expose a murderer, Haris fills a small but essential role in our escape by leading us out the side door at Frankie’s behest.”
“Oh, that Haris Ahmadi.”
“I am embroiled in a genuine moral dilemma!” Vic shouted from the ground.
With a sigh, Bex slid back off Sam’s lap, though she left her legs draped over Sam’s thighs. “What is wrong with you?” she asked her sister.
“It’s real! Like, Sam has just identified Ramona’s former assistant.
Ramona’s agent trusts this person. This person presumably likes Ramona.
They know how to keep their mouth shut. No doubt they have insider knowledge of her private life.
This person might have kept her day diary and had her passwords.
Although it was a while ago. Probably nothing this person knows is useful anymore.
Or maybe we can get it from another source on the list.” Vic stuck out her bottom lip. “That’s what I will have to do.”
“Why does she keep saying ‘this person’?” Sam asked Bex. “We’re still talking about Haris, right?”
“I think so, but it’s hard to think when I’ve literally never been more annoyed in my life.
” Bex sat up and crossed her legs in a way that conveyed this annoyance while also managing to expose another few inches of dancer thigh.
Sam thought of the suite in Mexico. A bed with a sheer canopy blowing in the ocean breeze.
“Fine! I’ll clarify, but only if you promise to protect me from Frankie. I don’t want to die.” Vic pulled out her phone and started furiously texting.
“What does your sister have to do with anything?” Bex asked. “Who are you calling?”
“Frankie.” Vic glanced at Bex from beneath lowered lashes. “I told her to tell you, but she didn’t want to yet.” Vic scanned an incoming text and thumbed in a reply.
“Want to what?!” Bex asked this at a volume that could probably be heard by people in the bars on Sunset.
“Her road trip isn’t exactly the lone voyage that she implied.” Vic winced when her phone hummed with an incoming text.
“Who is she with, Victoria?” Bex leaned forward. “Tell me right now.”
“Haris,” Vic blurted. “He’s her secret boyfriend. He met up with her in Philly, because he has friends there from college who he was visiting. He’s traveling the rest of the way to L.A. with her. And he visited her a bunch of times when she was doing her internship in New York.”
Sam considered this new information. The one time she’d met Haris, his interest in Frankie had been so blindingly obvious that it might as well have been painted in neon letters on a billboard. Frankie had behaved as though she barely tolerated his existence.
Now that Sam thought about it, she should have guessed that Frankie’s behavior meant Haris’s feelings were not one-sided.
“I can’t believe Haris’s relationship with Frankie is bigger news than the fact that we know someone who used to be Ramona’s assistant,” Sam mused. “Though I shouldn’t be surprised by the assistant thing. I forget that even though L.A. is a big city, Hollywood’s a small town.”
“You know how Frankie is about romance,” Vic said pleadingly.
“The lengths I went to to figure out who she was dating in high school should earn me a spot with the CIA. I only know he’s with her because he always texts me when he’s with Frankie so that her family knows.
He’s very protective, but he also respects Frankie’s privacy. ”
Bex wound a long lock of curly hair around her finger and gave it a tug—something she did when she was trying to get a handle on her feelings. “But Frankie invited me to drive home with her!”
“She knew you’d say no. You hate road trips. You don’t like having to eat and go to the bathroom on other people’s schedules.” Vic looked at her phone, then back at her sister. “Okay. Haris is caught up with the situation. Be cool.”
The sound of a FaceTime connecting intensified the wince on Vic’s face. “Don’t be mad,” she said to the screen of her phone.
“Why would I be mad?” The voice coming from Vic’s phone was cheerful, but Sam had been acquainted with Franklynn Simon for too long to be deceived.
“Because now everyone knows about you and Haris,” Vic said.
“We know nothing!” Bex yelled. “Clearly!”
Sam couldn’t fail to hear the hurt behind Bex’s defensive humor. Frankie and Bex were a lot alike, and they’d spent more than a few of the difficult years after they lost their parents at odds with each other. Bex had a tendency to take Frankie’s silences as an indictment of her parenting.
Bex’s first priority was her sisters, above everything else.
Above what she wanted for herself. It was why she hadn’t been ready to respond to Sam’s declaration of her feelings when it was clear Craven’s Daughter would likely be ending soon.
Bex was about to lose the security the show provided, with its (relatively) family-friendly schedule and steady paycheck.
She hadn’t known what would come next. Frankie had taken off to college at a rough time in their relationship, and Vic was only just starting high school and was a precocious, fearless honey badger of a human.
Sam hadn’t given Bex time to answer yet another demand on her heart before she walked away, hurt that Bex hadn’t fallen into her arms instantly.
It meant they’d wasted nearly five years they could’ve been together. Sam was determined not to mess up like that again.
“Here’s Haris,” Frankie said, still using the same deadly helpful tone. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to answer your questions.”
“Um.” Haris cleared his throat. “Just the ones about Ms. Watts, actually.”