I shook my head. “I’m good. Really. But thanks.”
“Anytime,” he responded. “Well, have a good night. And we’ll talk soon, yes?”
I nodded. “Definitely.”
He leaned in and gave me a quick peck on the cheek before walking toward the parking garage down the street.
Not exactly the way I’d hoped to end the evening just a few minutes ago, but considering the circumstances I figured it wasn’t the worst way the evening could end, either.
* * *
It was after midnight before my cab pulled up in front of my building in Glendale. I got as far as my front door before my cell buzzed to life in my purse for the umpteenth time. I pulled it out, checking the readout. Felix. Again.
I stabbed my finger at the On button. “What do you want?” I barked out.
“Jesus, don’t you ever pick up your phone?”
“I’m picking up now.”
“I’ve called ten times.”
“I know,” I gritted out between clenched teeth. “I was busy.”
“On your date.”
“Yes. As you well know,” I couldn’t help pointing out.
“And?”
“And what?”
“Details.”
“I am not giving you details about my love life,” I said, shoving the key in my front door.
There was a pause on the other end. Then, “I meant details about the interview.”
“Oh.”
“Look, Allie,” he said.
But whatever followed was lost in a blur as I entered my front door, switched on the lights, and got a look at my place.
My sofa had been de-slipcovered, the cushions slit open until their stuffing innards spewed out onto the floor. My vase of daisies had been shattered, flowers and water strewn across the coffee table. Every cupboard in my kitchen was open, the contents spilled out in a haphazard fashion that said this was more for show than an intent to find valuables.
I took a couple of tentative steps into the room, feeling my feet crunch on cereal and glass shards. My mouth hung open as I surveyed the chaos that used to be my pretty little sanctuary.
Someone had totally trashed the place.
“Mr. Fluffykins?” I squeaked out. I cleared my throat then tried again. “Mr. Fluffykins? Are you okay?”
“What?” I heard Felix ask in my ear. “Who’s Mr. Fluffykins? Are you even listening to me?”
“Mr. Fluffykins!” I called out again, hearing the fear lacing my own voice, listening for a telltale mewing in response.
Nothing.
I felt tears back up behind my eyes.
“Who is Mr. Fluffykins?” Felix repeated.
“My Cat. Oh God, what did they do to my cat? Mr. Fluffykins!” I shouted this time, springing into action. I peered under the sofa, behind the open cupboards, in the scant three inches between the refrigerator and the counter.
“‘They?’ Who is ‘they’? What’s going on over there?” I heard Felix ask.
But I was too focused to answer. To say I was frantic would be a gross understatement. Tears ran down my face, my hands shaking, my brain going over the last time I’d fed him and how I was such a cruel owner that his last meal might have been dry cat mix instead of premium Chicken of the Sea tuna.
“Mr. Fluffykins! Where are you? Mommy’s sorry! Please be okay! Please come out, Mr. Fluffykins.”
“Allie—”
“Shh!” I commanded. I froze. I thought I heard a noise. A very faint sound coming from the bathroom.
I dashed across the room and threw open the bathroom door, barely registering the mess inside as a fluffy ball of fur slunk out from behind the toilet.
“Ohmigod, Mr. Fluffykins!” I sank to my knees, hugging the cat to my chest, completely ignoring the claws digging into my arm. “Oh, Mr. Fluffykins, I’m so glad you’re okay! I’m so sorry I left you alone. I’m sorry I didn’t feed you tuna. I’m sorry—”
But that’s as far as I got. Because as I hugged my scared cat to my chest, I heard a noise behind me.
I spun around…
Too late. A loud crack reverberated through my head. I only had a split second to register pain exploding behind my right ear before the entire world went black.
Chapter Twelve
“Allie? Allie, are you okay? Speak to me, Allie.”
I heard Felix’s voice from very far away. Was he still on the phone? I tried to move my mouth to speak but only got as far as twitching my lips before I realized that hurt. A lot. I groaned.
“Allie?” Felix asked again. “Wake up.”
I didn’t wanna. Waking up sounded painful. Everything felt painful, each breath I took hammering in my head.
“Allie?”
But since it was clear Felix wasn’t giving up, I slowly tried to open my eyes. It felt as if the lids had been glued shut, and it now took an act of superhuman strength to lift them even an inch. I blinked once. Twice.
“Allie. I’m here.”
And I realized, as my eyes started to focus on the room, that he was. Felix wasn’t just on the phone, he was sitting on the cracked tile floor of my bathroom, holding my head in his hands, his sandy brows drawn into a tight, concerned line as he stared down at me. “Say something,” he commanded.
I swallowed. “Something,” I croaked out.
Relief washed over his features. “Christ, don’t you ever do that to me again.”
“To you? I’m the one on the bathroom floor,” I pointed out.
“Can you move?” he asked, concern marring his features again.
“I don’t wanna.”
“Try.”
Boy, he wasn’t gonna give up, was he?
I wiggled my fingers, toes, moved one leg. So far, so good. Nothing seemed to be broken, disconnected or otherwise harmed. Except the goose egg I could feel brewing on the side of my head.
I tried to haul myself to a sitting position, feeling my butt go numb on the cold tiles. The room wobbled in my vision as I went vertical, but after blinking hard a few times it stood still, and my stomach stopped threatening to seize up on me.
“You okay?” Felix asked.
I nodded. Bad idea. More spinning. “Where’s my cat?” I croaked out.
“I closed him up in the bedroom. He kept hissing at me.”
Good Mr. Fluffykins.
I slowly stretched my limbs, moving to a full standing position, holding onto my pedestal sink for support as I took stock of my surroundings.
Lipstick had been smeared all over my mirror, the toilet tank top thrown into the bathtub, aspirin, midol and tampons mixed into a pile on the floor right next to Felix’s feet. If I had any energy left I’d be mortified. As it was, every bit of energy I had was channeled into not throwing up at the moment.
“I’m calling you an ambulance,” Felix said.
“No! I’m fine.”
“You have a welt on your head, and you were unconscious.”
“But I’m conscious now, see?” I pointed out, doing a feeble smile to illustrate my point. “Besides, I don’t have any insurance. You know how much an ambulance will cost?”
He pursed his lips together. “We should at least call the police.”
“What’s the point?” I asked, slowly moving into the living room. I plopped down on the cushionless sofa. “The TV’s still here, the stereo. They didn’t take anything.”
“What happened?” Felix asked, sitting next to me.
“I’m not really sure.” I leaned my head back, closed my eyes, retelling the scenario when I walked in as accurately as I could. When I finished Felix’s eyebrows were drawn into that tight line again.
“You didn’t see who hit you?” he asked.
I moved to shake my head then thought better of it. “No,” I said instead. “It all happened so fast. But I’d bet anything it was the same guy who tried to run me off the road.”
Felix froze. “Excuse me?”
Oh yeah. I hadn’t told him about that.
“W
hat the hell do you mean, ‘tried to run you off the road?’” he asked, voice rising.
“It was nothing. Just a scare tactic.”
“Who was trying to scare you?”
“Well, if I knew that, I’d have a pretty good handle on who trashed my place, wouldn’t I?”
Felix sighed. Deeply. “Okay, start at the beginning. When did this road rage occur?”
I quickly filled him in on the entire incident. When I was done, Felix grabbed his cell from his pocket and began typing.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Sending Tina a message saying she’s on the Barker story.”
“What?!” I popped up from the sofa, ignoring the way the room played tilt-a-whirl on me, and lunged forward, batting the device from his hand. It clattered to the floor.
“What the hell, Allie?”
“You are not giving away my story!”
“You’re kidding, right? You just got attacked in your own home.”
“Which must mean I’m getting close.”
He shook his head. “It means you’ve pissed off some very dangerous person.”
“Who is scared I’m on the right track.”
“Who is trying to kill you. You’re off this.”
“And Tina’s on? So it’s okay for her to tackle dangerous stories, but all Allie is good for is the fluff, is that about right?”
“Do not make this about you versus Tina,” Felix warned.
“Why not? She makes everything about her versus me.”
“Okay, fine,” he said throwing his hands up. “You know what? Yes. I do see you and Tina differently.”
I should have felt vindicated to hear him say the words out loud, but instead more anger bubbled to the surface. “Why? What’s so different, huh?”
“For starters, I’ve never slept with Tina,” he said, shouting in earnest now.
“It was only one night, remember?” I shouted back. “You said yourself that it meant nothing.”
“Christ, Quick, you’re a trained reporter. I’d expect you to be better at telling when someone is lying.”
I opened my mouth to shout back again then shut it with a click as his words sunk in. “Wait. You mean… I mean… what do you mean?”
Suddenly my breath caught in my throat, his answer taking on much more importance than I wanted it to have.
Felix swallowed, the fight suddenly dissipating from his face, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I mean…it was a very nice night.”
I nodded. “Go on.”
“And one I think about.”
“You think about it?”
He nodded slowly.
“How often?”
The corner of his mouth quirked upward. “Now there’s my crack interrogator.”
“Thank you. But don’t change the subject. How often? What do you think when you think about it? I mean, do you mean maybe you’d like to do it again? Or maybe you’re interested in more than one night? Or that maybe you’re interested in me in general? Or just that—”
“Jesus, Allie, shut up,” he said. And then in one swift movement he was across the room, his lips covering mine.
They were warm, insistent, as commanding as he was in his editor’s role. Only this time I didn’t mind. I didn’t mind at all. Suddenly a year and a half disappeared, and we were transported right back in time to The Night. I felt all my better judgment going out the window, any tiny voice inside my head telling me not to do this completely drowned out by the rush of hormones Felix’s lips created inside me. A rush that started at the soft play of his mouth over mine, charging through my stomach like an army of dragonflies, and ending somewhere south of the panty line in a sensation so warm and urgent it refused to be ignored.
Not that I had any intention of ignoring it.
And from the way Felix’s hands had gone around my waist, pulling my body flush with his, neither did he.
He danced me backward toward my bedroom door. We bumped into the end table, knocking my last remaining piece of furniture to the floor, but I barely noticed, my attention focused on getting into that room before one of us exploded. By the time we finally made it Felix’s shirt was on the floor, and my tank dress was somewhere near my waist.
I pulled my door open and, as Felix made short work of his khaki’s, I grabbed Mr. Fluffykins from his usual spot at the end of my bed and tossed him into the living room amidst howls of protest.
I made a mental note to buy two cans of tuna tomorrow as I shut the door behind us.
Chapter Thirteen
I had to stop doing this. Sleeping with my boss was a bad thing. A very bad thing.
I mean, not that it had been bad. It hadn’t. It had been nice. Oh-so very nice, all night long.
I looked over at Felix’s face in the glow of the pink numbers from my Hello Kitty clock. It was just before dawn but he was out cold, snoring softly in the dark.
Felix snored.
I don’t know why, but that bit of information made me smile. Maybe because I suddenly felt like I was in on some inside joke shared just between the two of us.
I rolled over, turning toward his sleeping form. His features were soft, giving me a rare glimpse of what he might look like if he wasn’t yelling at me. His cheeks were dusted with just the finest hint of stubble, giving him a tough, manly air. His lips, a soft contrast, parted gently. It was tempting to lean over and ever so lightly kiss them.
But I was afraid to wake him up.
I wasn’t sure what was going to happen when we both faced each other in the light of day again, but none of the scenarios currently running through my head were ones I was dying to play out. Maybe he’d been serious last night when he said he thought about me, that maybe he even had feelings for me. Or maybe he’d just been caught up in the moment. The one thing I knew for sure was that Felix was my boss. We’d been down this fling road before, and it had dead-ended. Only this time, my job was on the line.
So instead of leaning over and sampling Felix’s lips like every hormone in my body urged me to, I silently slipped out from under the sheets and pulled a T-shirt over my head. I stepped into a pair of pink fuzzy slippers and shuffled out to the kitchen, hoping the vandals had left my coffee pot intact.
I tiptoed over the mess of broken dishes, finally locating Mr. Coffee. His carafe had been smashed to smithereens against my linoleum, but I pulled a cooking pot from the sink and, after taping Mr. Coffee’s sensor down, it worked fine to catch the coffee. I found the only two cups left whole—a chipped “Journalists do it on the front page” mug and one souvenir glass from the Santa Cruz Boardwalk—and sent the machine percolating, the heavenly scent of coffee filling the room.
Between the sprinklers, Gary banging on my door and Felix last night, I think I’d slept a total of seven hours in the last three days. I wondered how long a person could live on caffeine alone.
Not, mind you, that I was complaining at all about the lack of sleep I’d gotten last night. Last night had been an evening well spent. In fact I would gladly live on caffeine for the rest of my life if I could spend every night like that. I felt a goofy grin snake across my face as I watched my pot fill with coffee.
I was still doing the goofy smile when the doorbell rang out a sad little tune. Apparently my attacker had hit that on the way out too.
I quickly crossed the room and opened the door.
And my smile disappeared instantly.
Standing on my doorstep for the second morning in a row was Gary. Today he was dressed in a loud Hawaiian shirt, chinos shorts (that came almost to his ankles) and a pair of red Velcro sandals.
“Morning, sunshine!” he said, pushing his way into my living room. Then he froze, taking in the state. “Whoa. Wild party last night?”
“Hardly,” I said, automatically feeling the side of my head. Yep, a big lump was still there. I moved my hair to cover it.
“What happened?”
“Someone ransacked my place,” I said, stating the obvious
.
“Dude, you really know how to make friends, don’t you?”
“What are you doing here, Gary?” I asked, the headache I’d felt from last night slowly returning.
“I came to apologize,” he said.
I raised an eyebrow. “Go on.”
“For last night. I didn’t mean to jump your date. I honestly thought he was attacking you. I mean, when you hired me as a bodyguard I kinda figured you might be in danger, ya’ know?”
“If you’ll recall, I hired you to be my assistant. Not bodyguard.”
But he ignored me. “Anyway, I’m sorry I ruined your make-out session with that guy.”
“What guy?”
Gary and I whipped our heads around as one to find Felix, fully dressed, standing in the doorway to my bedroom.
Uh-oh.
“Whoa!” Gary said, his gaze pinging from Felix’s bed head to my lack of pants. “Dude, you don’t mess around. That was a quick bounce back.”
“What guy?” Felix asked again, completely ignoring Gary.
“Uh…”
“Guess your love life didn’t suffer for my interruption last night after all, huh?” Gary said, giving me a nudged and a wink.
Was it wrong to want to hit a guy that much smaller than me?
“Last night?” Felix asked, taking a step into the room. “When you were out with Alec Davies?”
“Um…”
“You were making out with Alec Davies.”
I shook my head. “No.” I paused. “Well, I mean, I was going to, but Gary stopped me.”
“Oh, well, thank God for Gary then, eh?”
“Was that sarcasm?”
Felix shot me a look, then grabbed his shoes and headed for the door.
“Wait, Felix—”
But he didn’t let me finish. “Don’t be late for work,” he spat out. Eyes straight ahead. Jaw set in a grim line. Shoulders tight with a restrained emotion I could only guess at.
Before I could think of anything clever to say he stalked out the front door, slamming it shut behind him so hard that the one remaining picture on my wall fell to the carpet with a thump.
Hollywood Confessions Page 14
