Nicola stared into his eyes. This had definitely taken a turn for the weird.
Seamus took his hand from Nicola’s back and clinked his glass against hers, breaking the moment. He let the silence stand between them until it almost blocked out the endless thump of Amber’s music.
“I only have one more question for you,” he said earnestly, breaking the silence.
Nicola nodded.
“How much time is left on your man-free year?”
“Six months,” she lied.
“The clock starts now.” He smiled and gave her a wink. Then he saw someone across the yard and waved. “Look, love, I’m really sorry but I have to go chat someone up for a minute. I’ll be right back, yeah?”
“Sure.” She shrugged, surprised that she was sad to see him leave again. He lifted her hand and kissed it with a flourish. “My lady, I will see you again soon.” And then he was sucked into the crowd.
Nicola tried to find somewhere to stand. Amber’s endless remix was still playing. She spied an aging rocker woman with a taste for plastic surgery deep in conversation with a celebrity blogger; a troupe of dwarfs all hitting on models while a female dwarf dressed as Britney Spears did shots with the drummer of a nineties metal band.
“This is a nightmare,” she muttered to herself. It was ridiculous that this could be someone’s job. She had handled PR for the local CBS affiliate in Dayton. Which meant sending DVDs to the local paper and hoping they’d get a write-up for a Sunday movie or a Survivor finale. Now her job was to show up at bizarre parties, make sure that someone knew the agency sent a gift, and mingle a little bit. Thinking it over, she determined her job was probably done here and she could leave. This sounded like a great idea.
But as she tossed her cup in the trash and headed through the living room, the heavy wooden doors to the outside world opened and two policemen entered. They went up to the DJ booth and the music stopped. The sudden roar of conversation dried up quickly as one of the cops took the DJ’s microphone.
“We are looking for the owner of a 1995 Toyota Tercel. If you are the owner of a 1995 Toyota Tercel parked up the hill, please identify yourself. You’re parked in a driveway and we will have to tow your car if you don’t move it right now. Can the owner of a 1995 Toyota Tercel please raise their hand?”
It seemed like every single person at that party was waiting to see who owned such a piece of shit.
“It’s blue,” said the cop.
“Kind of a turquoise,” said the other one.
She took a deep breath and walked over to the cops. The music resumed, and Amber’s Auto-Tuned voice was singing “I want a hot hot hot connection / I’m looking for your big resurrection” as the cops walked out front with her.
“Don’t worry, this time we ain’t gonna ticket you, but we need you to get that car out of Jenna Jameson’s driveway right now. She’s having a fit.”
As they marched up the hill to her car, she could still hear Amber singing, “I don’t want a missed connection / I want your hot direction.”
A strange chill had fallen over the canyon. She fumbled in her purse for her keys, avoiding small talk with the cops. As they drew nearer to her car, Nicola slipped on a pebble and felt the tape tear off her loaned Louboutins. She felt sick as the pebble gouged into the gorgeous red soles.
“Great.” Nicola slumped against the Tercel, which was barely six inches into the porn star’s twenty-foot-wide driveway.
“You’re not having a good night, are you?” asked the cop.
“No, just a typical Hollywood one.”
CHAPTER 4
THE COP AT THE OTHER end of the hallway finally fell asleep in his chair. Billy got up and walked gingerly past four hospital room doors to get a closer look. Yep. The regular rise and fall of the cop’s chest, coupled with the adorable baby-kitten snores that were starting to huff out of his nose, confirmed that he was in dreamland.
Too bad. He was cute.
Nobody had been in or out of the room that was currently housing the unconscious body of movie star Ethan Carpenter for at least twenty minutes. Billy wasn’t sure if this was a good or a bad sign. He went to the door to Carpenter’s room and pushed the handle, expecting it to be locked. To his surprise, the door clicked open and he entered the room.
He flinched at the sight of Ethan, shirtless with sheets covering him below the waist. A tube was taped inside his mouth, and wires were taped to his temples and chest. A drip tube fed into his arm. Under the fluorescent hospital lights, the heartthrob looked ashen and closer to forty than the teenagers he regularly played on-screen. Billy surveyed the wall of small screens that pulsed and beeped as they monitored Ethan’s vitals.