Hot in Hellcat Canyon (28 page)

She showered and flung on some clothes and just opened her laptop to do her first e-mail and news check of the day when Skype began booping and beeping.

She yawned hugely and answered.

She frowned faintly when her sister Lainie’s face filled the screen. Lainie’s mouth was wide open. So wide, in fact, that Britt could see the fillings in her back molars.

“Hey Laine. Did you mean to call me, or did the cat accidentally walk across the keyboard again?”

In the background was Laine’s living room, pleasantly cluttered. She saw one of Will’s shoes and an old afghan their grandmother had knitted on the floor.

Laine still didn’t move. Not one hair.

“Lainie?” she tapped the screen, a little worried now. Maybe Skype had locked up?

But then Lainie’s cat strolled across the room in the background and stopped to sniff Will’s shoe.

Laine still didn’t move.

“All right, Lainie, what the hell is
wrong
with you?”

“JOHNTENNESSEEMCCORD!”

Lainie clearly had been working up a head of steam in order to shout that.

Britt winced. “Yikes! Why are you
yelling
?”

“You and JOHN TENNESSEE MCCORD, THAT’S WHY!”

Britt wrapped her arms around the monitor as if she could muffle it. “Shhhhhh! What’s the matter with you . . . do you mean J. T.?”

Her sister swiveled in her chair and she saw the back of her sister’s morning hair, still in its messy sleep-bun. “MITCH!” she bellowed to her husband. “Honey, she calls him J. T.! She already has a pet name for him!”

“Oh, brother. It’s not a pet name, it’s his
name
name. Wait . . . what’s going on? How did
you
know about J. T.?”

“It’s on TMZ! Two pictures of you! And him! One of you getting out of a car at a restaurant and you’re wearing a white dress, and another of you in a bikini lying next to him on some big rock. TMZ doesn’t know who you are, but I do,” she said delightedly and ever-so-slightly inanely.

“Lainie, if you don’t stop shouting you’re going to make all the neighborhood dogs bark.” And maybe wake J. T., but she didn’t say that. “What are you talking about? We’re on TMZ? How did we get on TMZ?”

“Go look.”

“I believe you. I will in a second.”

Her mind was now whirling, and it was way too early for her mind to be whirling.

How the hell would anyone get pictures of them?

“How on earth did you wind up with John Tennessee McCord, Britt?”

“I won him over with a fart joke.”

“SHUT. UP.”

Britt laughed. Pretty much the only thing better than J. T. was sharing the news of him with her sister.

“I totally remember that bikini you’re wearing in that picture. You got it on sale that day we went to T.J. Maxx around March a few years ago. You look really pretty, Britt. And that white dress is
super
cute.”

“Thanks. I got it on sale
plus
I had a coupon, plus I got to use someone else’s discount!”

“Score! But how did this
happen
?”

“Okay, the CliffsNotes version is that he’s in Hellcat Canyon for work. Speaking of which, I have to get to work, Laine. I’ll tell you the rest later. Oh, and don’t tell Mom and Dad! Not yet!”

“You and
John
Tennessee McCord
.” Britt had broken her sister, apparently, and now all she could say were those three words and variations thereof.

“Told you it was nice up here.”

Her sister laughed dizzily. But it was clear from her expression that she had a thousand suppressed questions.

Britt showed mercy. “All right. You get one more question.”

“Okay, but it’s an essay question. And it’s this: What is he like?” Her sister had deferred to her wishes and was speaking on a hush now.

Britt hesitated for effect. She crooked her finger for her sister to get closer to the screen.

And then she leaned toward the screen and stage-whispered.

“
So
hot.”

Lainie froze again.

And then she made a little whimpering sound.

And then she leaned back blew out a long, satisfied breath. “You always were an overachiever. Way to get back on the horse, Britt.” She sounded awed.

“Jeez, Lainie, he’s not a horse.”

“You sure about that?” J. T. said from the doorway behind her.

Lainie froze again. Her head whipped to and fro on the screen.

“OH MY GOD,” she whispered hoarsely. “Who was that? Is that
him
? There? Is he there right now?”

Britt hesitated.

Then she nodded smugly.

Lainie squeaked.

Mitch’s face squeezed into the Skype frame. “Tell him I loved
Blood Brothers
! And
Faster than the Speed of Sound
! Tell him I said, ‘Daaaamn, Son—’ ”

Britt clapped her laptop closed.

She turned to look at J. T., who looked sleepy and delicious clothed in nothing but shadows.

“So . . .” she said brightly after a longish silence. “My sister just Skyped.”

“Yeah? How is she?”

“She’s great.”

A funny little silence fell.

“How much did you hear?” she asked resignedly.

“Just the horse part.” He smiled faintly. “But I already knew that.”

Another uncomfortable little moment beat by.

She ought to say,
You’re not
just
a horse to me.

But that might bring up uncomfortable questions about what he actually was to her, and it was much too early in the morning to have that conversation.

She’d prefer never to have it, actually.

“Okay, then. Well, there’s something else you should know,” she began carefully.

“I think I know it. I got a congratulatory text from my agent. He thinks you’re cute.”

He handed Britt his phone, and it was open to the photos.

Britt’s heart lurched. There she was with J. T. exiting Maison Vert. They were both smiling, her head turned toward him, his hand possessively on the small of her back just shy of her butt. Nothing said “we’re doing it” like that particular pose.

Perfidious maître d’ had probably sold them out, even after J. T. had given him a fifty!

But the second photo was much more unnerving.

There she was sprawled on her stomach, the ends of her bikini top trailing against the rock, her knees bent up, her feet crossed. He lay alongside her on his back, one knee up, the other tipped companionably against her calves. Their heads were turned toward each other. They were smiling. It was a breathtaking moment of casual intimacy violated by a telephoto lens.

She didn’t think she’d seen any two happier or peaceful-looking people. It was stunning.

It was peculiarly disorienting to watch it from the outside. Because anyone watching that would assume things about how they felt about each other.

And yet the fact that the photo existed at all was deeply creepy.

She gave the calendar on the wall an unconscious flick of a glance. It was July 31.

That wedding in Napa was just two weeks away.

“Gosh. Tell your agent thanks.” But her voice was abstracted. And a little thick.

Someone had thought it worth hiking up to that rise to get that photo, and neither one of them had noticed. They looked happy because they were happy in that moment, and they were completely absorbed in each other.

“I’m sorry about this,” he said quietly.

“Don’t be. I look great in that dress.”

He gave a short laugh. But there wasn’t much humor in it.

“I thought we were safe swimming there, otherwise I might have been more vigilant. I bet that first photographer followed us here, or was somehow tipped off about the swimming hole. How, I don’t know. They’re like wasps tracking the scent of meat. They just kind of know.”

“Yeah, I don’t think anyone in town can afford a telephoto lens. And they see enough of me as it is, in the Misty Cat.”

She was trying for a joke.

He smiled tautly.

And the silence was just as taut as that smile.

He drew in a breath. “Britt, I don’t want you to have to be part of that zoo. The photographers and sycophants and all that. That stuff is my job. It doesn’t have to be part of your world.”

“It’s okay,” she said. After a moment.

She said it automatically, because she hadn’t fully thought it through yet. Her impulse was to reassure him. But if she’d said instead, “I don’t mind,” for instance, it would have implied that she considered herself a part of it already, or that she thought he was inviting her to be a part of it.

And it occurred to her that what he might be saying now is that he never really intended for her to be part of that world in the first place. That she was, indeed, what he was doing in his downtime. She could picture a magazine cover article now: “
French, karate, blondes: what John Tennessee McCord does in his downtime
.”

“Maybe it’s just a couple of photos,” she suggested. “Maybe it won’t turn into any kind of a zoo. Maybe it doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“Maybe,” he said.

Neither of them believed it.

“I have to get to work,” she said finally. Quietly.

“I’m going to do some work on the roof over at my house today. See you tonight?”

That “see you tonight” had been implied for weeks now.

The fact that he was saying it injected that first note of caution and uncertainty in their little idyll.

“Sure.”

She took a step away toward the door, suddenly eager to run off some of this emotion.

And suddenly he curled her back into his chest and held on to her a moment.

She could feel his heartbeat against her cheek. She clung to him for a moment, too. God, he smelled amazing.

He kissed her temple.

“Tonight,” she said into the delicious wall of his chest.

But J. T. was pretty intuitive. He could probably tell she was ruffling her flight feathers, and not just to get out the door to the Misty Cat this morning.

J
. T. watched her dart out the door to work and realized he was smiling, which was a reflex when it came to watching Britt.

But then his smile faded, and gave way to the pitch black of his mood and he wasn’t quite able to parse out a single reason for it.

He’d been getting texts all morning from friends who were, frankly, simply glad to see him and to find out where he was and wanted to know if they’d see him in about a week at the Nicasio wedding.

From Linda Goldstein (with a flurry of emojis: a thumbs-up, a blonde girl, a heart, and a bikini):

She’s pretty, John Tennessee! I hope you’re happy!

And then his phone chimed in with another text.

She’s cute. Are all the girls like that in Hellcat Canyon?

Effing Franco Francone.

J. T. reflexively, angrily, texted back a photo of his Emmy.

Then, just as he was stuffing his phone back into his pocket, another text chimed in.

BTW, McCord, they cast me in a secondary role in
The Rush
. Three-episode arc. See you in Napa in a week?

Franco again. J. T. went still. Just for an instant an old reflexive gladness kicked in. Because he and Franco really had a blast working together on
Blood Brothers
. The press had loved their relationship. They had, indeed, almost been brothers.

Until Franco accused him of stealing his girl.

And J. T. had knocked him flat in a parking lot.

The press had loved that, too.

“You can’t lose her if she really loves you,” J. T. had said at the time. Staring down like a conqueror at a flattened Franco, whose nose was bleeding.

It seemed an eternity ago. What a pompous young prick he’d been back then. As if
he
knew anything at all about love.

It occurred to him, however, that he might not have been wrong.

He stared at Franco’s text.

And decided not to answer it. Yet.

He forced himself to examine his mood. Stealthy paparazzi photos were a way of life for him. All the women he’d dated before understood implicitly that they were part of the Hollywood ecosystem, the way mosquitoes and barnacles had their role in nature. Rebecca in particular was adept at making that work in her favor.

But Britt was still learning how to feel safe again in the world, and with a man. He’d earned that trust, and he cherished it.

And some asshole had stalked them with a camera.

He had a hunch Britt could actually cope with all of that. She had a competitive streak, after all.

But at the heart of the usual anger was something new: a little, cold shard of something that might be fear.

He’d seen Britt glance at the wall calendar.

As if she was counting the days until he’d be out of there.

She was a bolter. It was a built-in defense.

J. T. suspected all she needed was a reason.

Not only would this never have bothered him before, he would have been the one counting the days. An Advent calendar, so to speak, for relationship escape.

How did a woman who’d begun as a good time turn into three weeks of hot nights entwined under absurdly floral sheets, twilights with a chatty rum-swigging, nonagenarian, cat food in his basket at the grocery store, and a sense that he was finally, after forty years, where he should be?

Something soft wrapped around his ankles. A tail.

He looked down into the benevolent green gaze of Phillip.

He sighed, knelt to pet him for a while.

He could entertain Phillip for an hour at a time by aiming a laser pointer all over the place. Phillip would stalk and pounce and scramble but he never caught it, because it couldn’t be caught, of course. It didn’t really exist.

J. T. wished he was as simple as Phillip. He probably was, once.

He was starting to think he just couldn’t play the same game over and over.

J
. T. arrived at his house, happy to have any opportunity to hammer nails into things, because that might just suit his mood. The uneasy shard in his stomach didn’t go away.

But when he got out of his truck outside of the house, a new sound was mixed in with the river and squirrels and trees.