If I Loved You

by Kress, Alyssa

  That he'd done so was mortifying, though he hadn't had a choice, really. Pattie had been justified in wanting to know Zane's true employment history. But— But—

  Zane forced his attention back to his computer screen. Lonny Domino, Lonny Domino, Lonny Domino. She was a B-actress with some horror flick credits, none more recent than ten years ago. Wouldn't that be the same time frame as Savannah's career? Had they been rivals?

  Could Savannah have printed some derogatory story about Domino, the way she'd printed one about Dale Gooden—another actor?

  Zane speared his fingers into his hair. It was no good. He couldn't concentrate. Damn.

  He'd told Pattie his whole sad story...and she'd listened. She'd really listened.

  Zane got up from his chair even as a sense of imbalance rocked him. The sensation hit him every time he remembered the expression on Pattie's face when he'd told her he'd quit his job at Savik Engineering. She'd looked insulted, as if someone had pointed out to her an entirely obvious matter. Well, yeah, she'd said. Of course. The implication being: don't treat me like a dummy.

  A chuckle escaped Zane, even as the imbalance swayed him again. He whirled from the computer and stalked toward his kitchen. There he threw open the refrigerator door. He stared blindly at the mixed cans of organic juice and beer on the top shelf.

  Dammit, Pattie hadn't merely listened, she'd understood. No, more than that. She'd agreed. Quitting his job had been the right thing—the only possible thing—to do.

  Zane closed the refrigerator door. Of course, other people had agreed with him about quitting his job, important people like his sister and her husband, Jim. But somehow it was different that Pattie approved.

  Zane sucked in his lips. Why did it feel like he was falling into a high dive every time he thought about it?

  Shaking his head, he left the kitchen and absently returned to his computer set against the far wall. There was no good reason for the high dive sensation. All right, Pattie agreed with him. Big deal. All that meant was they might share some of the same values, the same morals.

  It didn't mean they were friends or anything. It didn't make them...involved.

  Zane sank back into his office chair. He spread his hands over his keyboard. Doing the right thing. That's all he was up to here at his computer. Maybe helping himself sleep at night, to boot.

  He didn't like Pattie.

  Squinting at his monitor, he told himself he wasn't going to think about the woman any more. He would not think about her ginger brown eyes or her long taut limbs or the way she'd looked at him when she'd thought, for a second, he was married. Almost as if she were crushed. Oh, boy.

  He would not, he would not, he would not.

  ~~~

  Pattie was in the backyard with Tristan, her cell phone to her ear, when she heard Zane's big feet going up the stairs toward her front door. In a minute he'd see the note she'd taped there, explaining they were in the backyard.

  Her heart began to pound. Stupid heart. Why should it pound?

  Meanwhile, Tristan zoomed a big yellow dump truck over the unkempt lawn, not yet aware his hero approached.

  "A memento," whined a male voice from the phone at Pattie's ear. "Something to remember her by. You promised me."

  "Yes, Norman. I know I promised." Pattie ran through the things she wanted to get done that day, things she needed to do quick, before a certain nanny cottoned onto her plans. She measured these tasks against keeping her promise to Savannah's erstwhile fan to give him a souvenir of the actress. "It just can't be today."

  "Not today?" Norman's nasal voice acquired an angry twang.

  "I haven't had a chance yet to go through her things, find something really special." Even as she spoke, Pattie listened for the sound of Zane's feet returning down the stairs. Her heart pounded harder. Because of the secrets she was keeping, she told herself. Not because she was excited about seeing Zane again.

  "This is bullshit, Pattie," Norman suddenly decided. "Total bullshit. You're jerking me around."

  "I'm not jerking you around." Hell, she was doing Norman a favor. She didn't have to give him a darn thing of Savannah's, and she didn't have time for the whole discussion, especially now that she could hear Zane's approach.

  Her heart picked up yet more speed and her skin started to heat, just as if she was nervous. About Zane. Totally idiotic. Why should she be nervous about greeting the aeronautical engineer she was employing to watch her toddler nephew? So what if he used to make jet fighters? And so what if he was a kind of hero, sticking his neck out to warn the Air Force about a dangerous defect in an airplane design?

  Although, really and truly, it was more the fact Zane had told her all of this—including the fact he'd been married—that bothered her.

  He'd opened up to her. Under duress, perhaps, but still, there was something almost...intimate about it.

  Yes, that was definitely what made her nervous, if she confessed to being nervous at all.

  "Look, Norman," she said, hoping to end the conversation before Zane came through the gate. "We can talk about this later..."

  "Bullshit!" Norman shouted, and cut the connection.

  Frowning, Pattie moved the phone from her ear to stare at it, wondering what had got into Norman. She straightened abruptly when she heard the wood gate from the courtyard open.

  Zane walked through. He wore chinos, a white polo shirt, and an air of quiet confidence.

  Their eyes met.

  Pattie's stomach performed a strange maneuver, making her feel like she was going over the top curve of a rollercoaster.

  She snapped off her phone and drew in a deep breath. Here was a man who'd once been in love with a woman, had made a commitment to her. God. Why was there something strangely exciting about that?

  Relief came from a predictable source. Tristan streaked across the grass, straight toward his idol. "Zane!"

  Laughing, Zane swung Tristan into his arms. "How's my best pal today, huh?"

  "T'e'fic!" Tristan claimed.

  Pattie couldn't help smiling at Tristan's diction, his vocabulary outstripping his enunciation. The kid wasn't always so terrible. He'd let her read to him again last night, had insisted on it, in fact. Reading was apparently becoming a regular routine with them.

  "Hold me," Tristan demanded.

  "I am holding you," Zane laughed.

  Pattie cleared her throat. "I'm glad you're here." Immediately, she blushed. That hadn't come out right.

  But Zane appeared offended rather than flattered. "Of course I'm here." His tone was gruff and he kept his gaze on Tristan. "Why wouldn't I be?"

  "Right. Um— See, the thing is I have this errand I have to run, like, immediately." Omitting to describe the nature of her errand caused an unexpected niggle of guilt. She couldn't have found the address of the rock-thrower—and thus her name—if Zane hadn't helped. Pattie coughed into her hand.

  "So you're leaving?" Zane hefted Tristan. "Good. I mean—that's what I'm here for."

  "Right." Pattie frowned. "The house key is under the Tiki god. I'll try to be back before lunch."

  Tristan was playing with the button on Zane's collar.

  "No hurry," Zane claimed, gently stopping the boy from tearing his button off.

  Of course there was no hurry. He was employed as her nanny precisely so she could take off and do what she wanted. Yet she heard herself chatter. "I'm going to the offices of the Rattler." As if he had to know—or cared.

  But for the first time since coming through the gate, Zane turned to look at her. His expression was questioning, as if, maybe, he did care.

  Pattie blinked, and nearly blurted out the truth. She caught herself just in time. "Uh, Bree, the editor, said she needed to meet with me right away." A total lie. "She probably wants a check for next week's print run." Almost certainly the truth, but hardly a relevant one.

  Zane frowned. "That's right. You mentioned the paper operates at a loss. How bad is it?"

  Pattie lifted a shoulder. "Fo
r the time being it's worth paying the Rattler's printing costs. As you've noticed, the paper tends to bring the roaches out of the woodwork."

  "True." Then Zane gave Pattie a look that, for some reason, deepened her sense of guilt.

  For heaven's sake! Why should she feel guilty about taking care of her own personal business? Worse yet, while he was looking at her and she was looking at him, the air lying between them changed, getting all thick and gooey.

  Weird. This was so completely weird.

  Pattie took a step back. "So...goodbye." It was oddly difficult to tear her gaze away. After that, she hurried for the gate. Away. She wanted to get away as quickly as possible.

  ~~~

  The office for the Hollywood Rattler sat in a decaying block of Santa Monica Boulevard, perched above an "Organic Massage" parlor and next door to a Russian pawnshop. Pattie fed coins into the parking meter for her car and, skirting a spilled Snow Cone, made for the heavy glass entry door. She then started up the narrow stairs leading to the newspaper office.

  The first time she'd visited the office of the newspaper, she'd been surprised by the size of the mere two rooms. Tiny. Since then, she'd learned that most of the work was done by computers, and printing was done by a separate company altogether. Bree didn't need space for staff, either. The writers all worked freelance and sent their articles via email.

  The outer office housed a desk with a big monitor. Piles of old issues of the Rattler listed atop a filing cabinet.

  Bree, having apparently heard the door open, hurried out from the other room. A stocky woman in her early sixties, she halted and frowned when she saw who was there. "Pattie." In her gravelly voice, it sounded more grouse than greeting. "Did I know you were coming?"

  Smiling breezily, Pattie reminded herself she was the boss. Abrasive Bree had a way of setting a person in the wrong. With her dyed blond bob of hair and her serviceable shirt-skirt combination, Bree seemed to want to symbolize the generation of women who'd chosen career over family. Often enough, Pattie had been forced to listen to Bree brag about her various stints at newspapers around the country, including her oft-cited job at the L.A. Times.

  Pattie's task today was to enlist Bree's cooperation without disclosing too much sensitive information. "No, you didn't know I was coming by," she told the older woman, "but I had a question, one I wanted to ask you in person."

  "Oh." Bree crossed her arms, her mouth curving caustically. "You want to know about this month's earnings."

  "Actually, that's—"

  "No." Bree held up a hand. "You have every right to ask."

  "Well, I'm sure I do some other—"

  "We've done pretty well this month, considering. I've got our regulars, the massage parlors and dating services, and if you look in this week's edition you'll see I lined up a new customer, a retirement community. You wouldn't believe how the old geezers go after dirt."

  "Yes, well, that's all very nice—"

  "But, look." Bree leaned her hip against the desk and shot Pattie a sober look. "None of that's going to put us on the map. See, I know this business. I know what it takes to generate excitement in advertisers. A nice, juicy story. And Savannah had one. I know she did. Have you been able to find out any more about that?" Bree looked at Pattie expectantly, as if the Rattler's poor earnings could be laid at her door.

  Pattie tilted her head. "Actually...maybe I have discovered something about that big story."

  Bree's gaze sharpened. "Sit down. Tell me what you've got."

  Pattie looked around and found a functionally upholstered chair on her side of the desk. As she sat, she asked, "Does the name Lonny Domino ring a bell?"

  "No." Bree's bright gaze stayed steady. "Should it?"

  Pattie soothed an inner prick of disappointment. Bree couldn't possibly remember every story the Rattler had printed. "Domino was an actress, popular around the same time as Savannah. I'm thinking they knew each other."

  Bree shook her head. "Some actress from a dozen years ago? That couldn't have been the story Savannah was working on. Someone that out of circulation wouldn't get an advertiser hot."

  No, but if the story had been nasty enough, it could have made Lonny Domino plenty mad, just like Dale Gooden had been. Mad enough to throw a rock through a window. Maybe mad enough to have done something even worse.

  "Is it possible the Rattler already did a story about her?" Pattie asked.

  Bree snorted. "If we did, then for sure she's not the big story Savannah was working on."

  "Right, that would rule her out," Pattie agreed. "So, could you check?"

  Bree's brows pulled together. "If we ran a story?"

  "Right. One way or another, it could...tie up a loose end for me. About Savannah. You know, I keep wondering what was going on with her at the end there." Pattie paused, calculating the most helpful angle. "Who might have got her involved with those dangerous drugs."

  Hunched over on a corner of the desk, Bree rubbed a hand over her mouth. "You know, I've been thinking about that, too."

  "Oh?"

  Bree regarded Pattie narrow-eyed. "I've been wondering if there might be a connection between the big story Savannah was working on and whoever supplied her the drugs she OD'ed on." Bree shook her head. "But none of that could involve this small fry Lonny Domino chick—not unless Savannah had gone off her rocker."

  "Well...I'd like to check."

  Bree sighed. "That'd take forever. Yeah, all the papers are on the computer, but I'd have to pull up each edition separately in order to search."

  Pattie stared at the other woman. "You're kidding." Her businesswoman's brain had trouble fathoming this. "There's no central database?"

  Bree shrugged. "We're a newspaper, not a research facility."

  "Still—" Pattie stopped herself with a shake of the head. "You're right." Appropriate software was available, but why pour more money into the paper? "I can do the search myself." She simply had to know if Savannah had savaged Lonny Domino in print, and what she might have written. This could be gold. Zane had been right to insist they get more information before confronting the suspect.

  Zane. A hit of guilt struck Pattie, but she shook it off. Why should she feel guilty? Looking this up without telling Zane wasn't wrong. He only thought he was involved. Pattie had never agreed that he actually was.

  "Just show me where to find the files on the computer," Pattie told Bree.

  Bree grumbled, but put Pattie on the computer in the front office.

  For twenty-five minutes, Pattie called up every edition of the Hollywood Rattler for the last four years. In each, she searched for the name Lonny Domino.

  She found nothing.

  Pattie sat back in the desk chair and stretched her hands behind her neck. She frowned at the "no results" printed across the computer screen.

  If Lonny Domino had been involved in Savannah's death, it hadn't involved anger over a defamatory article.

  As she sat there, Pattie's eyes widened. Her arms swung down. Whoa. If the paper had never done an article about Lonny Domino, that could mean Lonny had been paying Savannah blackmail in order to keep some scandal secret. The very fact there was no article could mean Lonny actually did have a motive for murder.

  Excitement lit inside her. This could be the answer.

  "Find anything?"

  "Huh?" Bree's voice made Pattie jump. Struggling to keep her face bland, she said, "Oh. No. There are no articles on Lonny Domino."

  "Told you it was a wild goose chase." Bree looked pleased. "And I'm positive this Domino character couldn't have been connected to Savannah's big exposé, either. Like I said, I think that story's what got her involved with the drugs." Bree looked into the middle distance, meditative. "Maybe Savannah got too close to the fire she was hunting. Maybe the folks she thought to expose decided to expose her to scandal instead. Maybe they got her hooked on drugs..."

  Bree was circling close to Pattie's alternate theory, that Savannah had voluntarily ingested the drugs which had kille
d her. Although in Pattie's theory, her darkest, most feared scenario, the overdose had been intentional. Savannah was weak, needy. Was it possible she'd been weak and needy enough, under some unknown duress, to have taken the easy way out, to have taken her own life?

  Guilt threatened to assail Pattie. If Savannah'd been that weak, it was partly Pattie's fault.

  She got up from her chair. "Listen, I gotta run now. Told the nanny I'd be back before lunch."

  Bree's expression returned from deep speculation straight to the here-and-now. "Before you go...will you be giving me a check for next week's print run?"

  Aw, heck. Another five hundred bucks. Indecisive, Pattie regarded the other woman. If she'd found the answer to Savannah's murder, she wouldn't need the newspaper any more.

  But Lonny Domino was still only a suspect, not a sure thing. Besides, Pattie could hardly tell Bree she was out of a job right now this minute, out of the blue.

  "I'll see that you get the check," Pattie promised with a sigh. "But right now, I better get going."

  Grabbing her car keys, Pattie hustled out the door and then rushed down the narrow stairs.

  On her way home. Where she'd have to face Zane.

  She nearly tripped on the last step near the bottom. Damn it. Why trip? Why feel the least bit nervous about facing Zane? True, she wasn't going to tell him a single thing she'd learned today, but so what? She didn't owe him squat.

  As Pattie stepped outside and around the puddle of fully melted Snow Cone, she might have wondered why Zane even wanted to be involved in her affairs, but she'd already figured that out. Considering the whole whistleblower episode in his background, he obviously owned a major white knight complex.

  He certainly wasn't worming his way into her affairs because he liked her. Please. He clearly felt just the opposite.

  So it was no big deal to lie to him—that is, to withhold information. Relaxing, Pattie punched the button to unlock the doors of her Rav4. She was even smiling as she climbed inside.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Zane felt like a fool. He stood on Pattie's second floor balcony with his arms crossed over his chest and watched for her car. Tristan was safely occupied eating the lunch Zane had provided him, a nice, time-consuming meal, with individual pasta elbows to pick up, squeeze, and giggle over.