He took a step forward, and then he remembered he was her secret lover, not her husband. Hell, he wasn’t even her boyfriend. He had no right interfering unless she asked him to. And she wasn’t asking; she was kissing the guy back.
“California.” Chai stood next to him. He looked as happy as Klein felt. “They’re very friendly there.”
“So I hear. Who is he?”
“Daniel Dimato. The director. He just arrived, along with the rest of his crew and cast.”
“You don’t sound happy. I thought this was going to do wonders for Pleasant Ridge.”
Chai straightened and wiped the pout off his face. “It will. When this is over, I’m going to remodel Longstreet Avenue. People will come from all over just to see it.”
“Oh, that should be fun.”
“Do I detect sarcasm, Sheriff?”
“I doubt it.”
As Isabelle was beckoning him to join her, Klein left the mayor stewing over the comment.
“Daniel Dimato,” Isabelle said, “I want you to meet Sheriff Gabe Klein. He’s been such a help to me.”
“Sheriff—” Dimato held out his hand.
Klein glanced down and was surprised to discover the insignia of the U.S. Marines tattooed on the man’s forearm. His grip was firm and his gaze met Klein’s squarely. “Semper fi, man.”
“You were a marine?”
“Don’t sound so surprised. If we all became cops when we got out, the U.S. of A. would be overrun by the establishment.”
Klein scowled. The guy spoke as if he had lived through the sixties. But unless Klein missed his guess, Dimato had been born too late to do much but goo and ga through the end of the decade.
“Relax, Sheriff. I’m kidding.” He glanced at Isabelle. “He does laugh, right?”
“He laughs a lot, and he’s funnier than you, Danny. In fact, you two probably have a lot in common.”
Klein and Dimato looked at each other. “Us?” they said at the same time.
Isabelle chuckled. “Yes, you.”
“I could have been a marine,” Chai interjected.
“What happened?” Dimato asked. “Did Daddy say no?”
Klein blinked. Dimato caught on quick. But then, marines had to.
“I had responsibilities at home,” Chai said; however, his face had gone pink. “And right now, as well. Good luck, Mr. Dimato.”
Chai made a quick exit.
Dimato turned to Klein. “Can you imagine him in the corps?”
“Yeah, I can,” Klein said. When Dimato gave him an incredulous stare, he quirked a brow. “I can imagine how much fun he would be to watch.”
Dimato grinned and slapped Klein on the back. “Me, too.”
In another world—one where Dimato didn’t call Isabelle “my angel”—Klein might have liked the guy.
“Chief? Hey, Chief!” Virgil’s voice burst through the walkie-talkie. “The town has run amuck.”
“Amuck?” Dimato murmured. “Who is that guy?”
Klein ignored him. Virgil was often hyper, and even more often an alarmist, but Klein didn’t like the panic he heard in the old man’s voice.
“Whataya got?”
“You name it—2-88 for certain. Several 4-15s. More 6-47s than I can count. There’s a 10-33 on the next street over and a 10-34 next to the museum. We’re going to need 11-84 at the corner of Longstreet and Lee. That’s a code twenty, Chief.” The walkie-talkie cut out.
“What in hell did he just say?” Dimato asked.
“I’m not sure.” Klein’s head was whirling. “Vagrancy? Maybe a stray horse? Littering?”
“No, that’s a 4-25,” Isabelle offered.
“How would you know?” Dimato appeared as confused as Klein.
“I got arrested for littering the first day I came to town.”
“What?”
“Forget about it, Danny.” She gave Klein a smile. “I didn’t mind.”
Dimato gave Isabelle a sharp, suspicious look that Klein didn’t care for. But he didn’t have time to put anyone’s mind at ease.
“I’ve got to go,” he said. “Code twenty is assist officer, urgent. I think.”
“I’ll come with you.” Isabelle took a single step toward the door.
Dimato held up a hand. “No can do, sweet cakes. You need to get to wardrobe. Then I want you to do a run-through with me on the script.”
Klein hesitated halfway to the door. His eyes met Isabelle’s. Hers were wide and uncertain. He made a right-on gesture with his fist and forearm. Her answer was a weak thumbs-up, but she straightened her shoulders and faced Dimato.
“Danny, about the script…”
Unreasonably proud of her, Klein slipped out the door.
“WHAT ABOUT THE SCRIPT?” Danny asked. “You got your copy, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“And?”
She took a deep breath and plunged in. “It stinks, Danny.”
Belle had met Daniel Dimato in the autumn of her nineteenth year. He’d directed the first music video she’d been in. He’d taken her out to dinner, told her she had talent, then tried to seduce her.
She didn’t hold it against him. Just as he obviously didn’t hold her refusal against her. At first Belle had been embarrassed whenever she ran into him. But after the first couple of uncomfortable encounters, he’d taken her aside and said, “Sweet cakes, if everyone in our business stopped talking to everyone they’d tried and failed to nail, no business would get done at all.”
He had a point. In the years since, they’d carried on a mutually satisfactory working arrangement. They had a rapport. Belle hoped that was still true after she finished speaking her mind.
“Stinks, how?” Danny sat at Klein’s desk and thumped his snakeskin boots on top of the blotter.
“I was promised a different kind of show than this script indicates.”
“How so?”
He seemed genuinely puzzled, and her unease increased. “The script as written makes me out to be a bumbling bimbo babe.”
“It’s funny.”
“Not to me.”
He frowned and sat up. His boots clicked as they met with the floor. “What did you think this show was going to be like with you in the lead, Isabelle?”
“I thought—” She broke off, swallowed and tried again. “I was told by the producers that the show would be the new Picket Fences. Serious and funny. Intelligent humor. Not adolescent.”
He shook his head. “They must have wanted you pretty bad.” He looked her up and down, then winked. “And I can’t say that I blame them. But they lied.”
“Lied,” she echoed, feeling the world slip out of control all around her.
“Like rugs. Does it mention in your contract anything about the show’s tone?”
She shook her head, and he shrugged. “You’re the jiggle, sweet cakes. Exquisite, classy, top of the line—but jiggle all the same. Why would you think any different?”
“Why?” She sighed. “I have no idea.”
“Right.” He brushed his hands together, dismissing her concerns like dust. “Now, hustle on over to Ruby. She’s set up in one of the empty shops on Main Street.”
“Longstreet Avenue,” Belle corrected listlessly.
“Whatever. The one next to that funky Civil War Museum. Is this place as full of rednecks as it looks?”
That snapped Belle out of her apathy quickly enough. “You better watch your mouth around here, Danny boy.” She let her down-home Virginia drawl thicken. “Or you’ll find yourself in more trouble than you care to.”
He blinked at her, shock spreading over his features. “That’s perfect. How did you do that?”
“Got me. All I know how to do is jiggle.”
She escaped from the station. On the street chaos reigned. A town of just over a thousand did not handle the sudden addition of over a hundred easily. She didn’t see Gabe in the crowd anywhere. He was no doubt handling a 10-lord-knows-what in another location.
Besides, she didn’t want to see him now. She didn’t want to explain that she’d failed. That no one but Gabe Klein saw her as anything more than what she was.
Only a few weeks in his company and she’d come to believe it, too. Amazing how easily a woman who needed to feel better about herself could become delusional. But Belle had learned long ago to listen to her mama. She just hadn’t lately—and therein lay her mistake.
She wasn’t smart, but she was pretty—on the outside. She’d make do with what she had. There were worse things. Although the thought of performing that script the original way made her stomach roll and pitch.
She walked past Lucinda’s. Maybe the roll and pitch was hunger. Just her luck, today was brownie day.
Ten minutes later Belle reached wardrobe. She’d slammed one brownie while still in the store, finished the second on the street in two bites. She was making her way through the third when Ruby stepped out of the back.
Belle swallowed. She’d worked with Ruby before. The woman could have passed for an army nurse. Maybe Danny had stolen her from the marines. But Ruby knew how to sew, an increasingly lost art in this day and age. She also knew how to browbeat models and actresses so that they could fit into whatever she’d designed, in time to face the cameras.
With a snarl, she snatched the brownie from Belle’s hand and tossed it into the trash. Then she spun on her heel and marched back the way she had come. Belle followed.
“There—” Ruby snatched a length of khaki material from a rolling coatrack and shoved it into Belle’s hands. “Put it on.”
Belle glanced around for a dressing room. There wasn’t one. “Uh—”
“Since when are you shy? Off.” She waved at Isabelle’s clothes. “On.” She pointed at the costume.
Two weeks in Pleasant Ridge and Belle had reverted to the innate modesty that it had taken her nearly a year of concentrated effort to suppress. In her day-to-day life, stripping to her skivvies and beyond in front of the wardrobe mistress and unknown others was no big deal. Or at least, it wasn’t supposed to be. So Belle gritted her teeth and did what she was told—but she didn’t like it.
The material Ruby had used for her sheriff’s uniform was not the crisp cotton blend of Klein’s but rather the stretchy, confining spandex of a swimsuit or biking shorts. The pants clung to her like a second skin, and the shirt was cut so low that her cleavage was the first thing anyone would notice. But the most disturbing thing about the costume was that she couldn’t get the pants zipped.
“What have you been doing?” Ruby demanded. “Sitting on your butt and eating brownies for breakfast, lunch and dinner?”
Belle ignored that. “Your measurements must be wrong.”
“I don’t do wrong. The costume was made to the measurements you sent me.” She pulled a tag off the hanger and shoved it at Belle. “See?”
Ruby was right, which made Belle even more nervous. How could she possibly have put on enough weight in two weeks to pop out of her uniform? Of course, with a uniform like this, a single pound was a disaster.
“Take it off before you rip it in two.”
Belle didn’t think there was any danger of that, but she yanked the uniform off, anyhow. She hated spandex.
“Do you want to measure me before I get dressed?”
“What for?”
“To fix the uniform.”
“What needs fixing is you. Here.” Ruby handed her a box of pills. “Use these for the next few days. By the time we shoot, you’ll be ready.”
With a heavy feeling in her belly that was more than just brownies, Belle contemplated the package. Diuretics.
She could already feel the dryness in her mouth that would follow several doses of the anti–water-retention aid. But she’d be able to dump a few pounds quickly, and in her crazy world that was what counted.
The disgusted expression on Ruby’s face made old insecurities revive. The woman had looked at Belle and found her lacking. Belle had failed at the simple task of fitting into a costume. How was she going to manage anything if she couldn’t even manage that?
She wished she had the luxury of throwing a snit fit, threatening to walk if she didn’t get her way—on the uniform and the script—but she didn’t.
Just this morning her mama had called. Her father needed another operation, and he needed it quickly. Belle was scheduled to get paid as soon as they began to shoot the pilot. If she got fired, her family would suffer, and that she could not allow. So she’d better fit into that disgrace of a sheriff’s uniform and she’d better do it quick.
The dream had been nice for a while, but it had been only a dream. Reality had intruded and wasn’t going to go away.
Belle shoved on her clothes, pocketed the pills and headed for home.
KLEIN HAD DRAGGED THE mayor out of his office and put him to work on crowd control. Well, he hadn’t actually dragged the mayor, but he’d imagined it. Several times in several different ways. The fantasy kept him from going crazy during the long afternoon in a town gone mad.
Long about suppertime things slowed down. All the California visitors had settled into their temporary homes. The hotel-motel was full. Every spare apartment was rented. Even unused storefronts had been snapped up. All the parking spaces on Longstreet Avenue were taken, and in a field beyond town they’d parked trailer after trailer and motor home. Pleasant Ridge resembled a tourist mecca, and he hated it.
Klein groaned and rubbed the small of his back as he climbed the stairs to Isabelle’s apartment. He’d been on his feet all day and what he wanted was a glass of wine, a hug and then a kiss. Not necessarily in that order.
He used the key Isabelle had given him after their first night and slipped into the darkened apartment. The place was so quiet; maybe she hadn’t returned yet.
In the back of his mind all day had hovered a question: Had Dimato liked her script as much as Klein had? The guy seemed to have a few brain cells. If Dimato didn’t recognize her brilliance, Klein would be surprised.
A muffled shuffle from the bathroom made him glance up just as Isabelle came into the room. She raised her head and then she stiffened, eyes darting to the kitchen table, the countertop, then back to him. The fear on her face made him nervous.
“What is it? You look like hell.”
Her skin was pale, her hair sweaty and tangled; her hands shook when she reached up to rub her eyes.
“I’ll be all right.”
He crossed the room and pulled her into his arms. Her skin was clammy, and she shivered.
“You’re sick.” He led her over to the couch, and she sat down at his urging like a child. “What’s the matter?”
Her eyes flitted to the table again. Klein strode over and picked up a packet of pills.
“No!” she cried.
But it was too late. Anger bubbled in his belly as he read the label.
He’d wanted to give her a chance to confide in him, to trust him, but the time for patience was past. Klein tossed the pills on the floor and ground them under the heel of his boot. Then he grabbed the laxatives off the counter and did the same thing with those.
He lifted his gaze to hers. “Anything else around here I need to know about?”
She shook her head, wide-eyed.
“Good. Now we’re going to talk.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HE KNEW THE TRUTH that no one else had ever discovered. He knew just how ugly she was beneath her skin. Now he’d never touch her again. Belle waited for Klein to sneer at her weakness and walk out the door.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he sat down next to her on the couch and drew her against his side, just as he always did.
“Talk to me.”
“I—I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve never told anyone.”
“So many secrets, Izzy. Why do you think you have to keep everything locked inside?”
She stared at him with her mouth hanging open. He’d called her Izzy. As if nothing had
happened. As if everything was still the same. As if he hadn’t just discovered the monster inside her.
“What set you off?”
How could he sound so calm when her head, her stomach, her heart whirled in weary confusion?
“Set what off?”
“Anorexia, bulimia. One or the other—I’d say the latter, since you don’t look so thin you make my teeth ache.”
Hearing the words made her cringe. What if the entire world found out? What would happen to her then?
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Obviously, since you never have. But maybe you should, hmm?”
He smoothed her damp hair away from her face and kissed her brow. She wanted to turn herself over to his care, to let him make everything all right. But she’d been self-sufficient for so long, and now nothing would ever be all right again if she lost him.
“How can you touch me now that you know?”
“I’ve known all along.”
She stiffened. “You have not!”
“All right, maybe not from the first. But I started to suspect when Lucinda brought you the brownies, and you kept staring at them as if they were poison.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“Then there was the jogging and the dancing. The whole control issue.”
“So?”
“The tossing out of a perfectly good cherry turnover.”
She rolled her eyes.
“Cutting your food into itty-bitty pieces. One night you ate lasagna and garlic bread. The next day you didn’t touch a thing. I’m not blind or stupid. Binge and purge, Izzy.” He shrugged at her surprise. “I looked up eating disorders on the Internet.”
“When?”
“The afternoon before we first slept together. Why do you think I came over here in the first place? I wanted to talk about it, but I got a little distracted. And then—” he shrugged “—I wanted you tell me on your own. To share it with me by your choice and not mine.”
He had known and still he had slept with her? He’d known, yet he’d continued to come to her again and again, day after day? She just couldn’t fathom that.
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