Queen of the Universe (In Love in the Limelight Book 2) Page 4

  But I don't have much time. Today, it's exactly two weeks until cameras roll. So I have to work my magic fast.

  Chapter 10

  ARLEN

  Arlen stood at the edge of Lola's property, looking down at the wildly overgrown embankment. Her strip of land, vast for Los Angeles, overlooked a canyon trying mightily to hold on to its green as the desiccating sun tried to leech it away. Arlen closed his eyes and sucked in a breath as he stood under the canopy of trees.

  The place was perfect.

  The rustling, chirping, and buzzing punctuated by the syncopated whoosh of the occasional car on the winding road below provided enough of a soundtrack to drown out his internal interrogator. All those damn questions flooding his thoughts.

  Not that it mattered. The questions would never be answered, so he should just let them go. Before they drove him insane.

  Arlen sighed and turned to face the yellow stucco house. Lola wasn't home yet. It was 7:45. They had agreed to meet at 7:30 sharp so she could show him what she wanted done to the house. Daylight ebbed as he waited. A few hours ago, she'd implored him to take the job, promising to make it as easy as possible.

  Right.

  Chapter 11

  LOLA

  I zoom up the drive, hoping like hell that Arlen is here. He better not have changed his mind. Or left at 7:31.

  Once I'm through the gate, though, the calcified tension in my bones softens with relief. The blue pickup. Yes!

  When I park alongside Arlen's truck, I can see him walking toward me from the edge of the trees. I get out and go up to him. We stop about three feet from one another.

  “I'm sorry I'm late,” I say.

  Arlen nods, acknowledging me. “Not much light left. We better start at the pool.” And with that, he turns and leads the way.

  I feel a swell of satisfaction and pride as we walk onto the patio. The intricate shape of the pool—like a series of paisley figures hooked together—rests snugly among various palm trees and other shady succulents. The space delivers all the verdant splendor I promised earlier. And the air perfumed with lavender and lemon grass is so much sweeter than the cloying paint fumes Arlen had been working in today.

  “Here it is,” I say, swinging my arm with a flourish. “What do you think?”

  Without even reacting to the beauty or tranquility of the spot, Arlen walks around slowly, concentrating on the ground at his feet. Good. A true professional, getting right to the matter at hand. I can work with that kind of mentality.

  I don't say anything as he examines the patio. Spreading out from the pool's edge and snaking up the back wall of the house, tiles form intricate patterns of flowers, fish, and mermaids. I can see Arlen noticing the chips and cracks. A month ago, when Ray had shown me the pictures of Arlen's work on Olivero Street, I knew he was the man for the job. But that was a lifetime ago. Before I knew that Arlen is meant to be Sam. In a way, it's almost sad that my crumbling house won't benefit from Arlen's expertise. But this is the way it has to be. Forget the patio and house. They could cave in around me like the House of Usher for all I care. Sam is what matters now.

  “Lola?”

  My head snaps up. Arlen's voice is loud, as though he already tried to get my attention once.

  Focus, already!

  “It's a pretty big job,” I say, charging into the conversation and taking the lead. I need to subtly suss him out and find out what makes him tick. I need to find his buttons to push, and I need to find them fast.

  Arlen gives the barest hint of a shrug with one shoulder. “I'm good with tile.”

  The guy says it like it's just a fact. Damn, he's perfect! So confident, so understated, with an air of … bleakness. So right for Sam, right for the show.

  Suddenly, the manic, jumpy tension I've been feeling all day settles into a tingly sensation that I can feel from my toes to my scalp. I've got it! I know where to go from here!

  Why is there an air of such loss about him? If I could just find out what has left him feeling so bereft—or, on the flip side, if I can find one thing that can make him lighten up—I'll have the tools that I need to turn him into Sam.

  “Lola?” Arlen breaks into my thoughts. “What's wrong?”

  I clear my expression and look up at him. “Nothing,” I say. Big smile. “I was just thinking about what a big job this is going to be. With all these tiny pieces. I mean, it would drive me balmy. How do you stand it?”

  He looks right at me. “It's what I do.”

  And that one sentence, with all its simplicity and gravity, takes my breath away. God, this guy ...

  “I know it's what you do,” I say. “But do you like it? Do you like doing renovations?”

  “First off, don't say renovations. That word is an insult to a classic place like this. I'm doing some repairs, fixing some stuff. And yes, I like it,” he answers. “That's why this is my job.”

  “But not everybody likes their job,” I reason, trying to unearth something, anything, about what motivates him.

  “What are you trying to say?” he asks, and he sounds a little mad. “That I'm going to mess up your pool because I don't like my job?”

  “What?” I squawk. “I'm not—” But I clamp my lips together before I can blurt out that I'm not talking about the damn pool. I take a deep breath. “I'm not saying that,” I assure him. “It's just that I'm a boss now. And I take that responsibility seriously. I want to make sure that everyone who works for me is happy.”

  He looks at me askance, and I'm not sure whether he bought my froo-froo touchy-feely line. “Lola,” he says. “Let me ask you something. Do you like your work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you good at it?”

  “Very.”

  “Okay. So let me get this straight,” he says, and I am pretty sure his eyes turn glacial with contempt and it's not just a trick of the fading light. “You're happy in a job you're good at but you cannot imagine that same feeling in any of the lowly peons who work for you?”

  “No!” I literally reel back from his insult and almost topple into the pool. “That's not what I'm saying at all.” I manage to catch myself from plunging in, but I notice he doesn't even try to help. “It's just that you don't look happy,” I snap.

  “Neither do you.”

  I step away from the pool but never take my eyes off him. “What?” I ask. “What do you mean?”

  “What do I mean?” Arlen scoffs. “Jesus! Do you ever take a good look at yourself?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Arlen shakes his head. “What the hell are we even talking about? I'm here to renovate your house. Your house. That's it.”

  “You're here to do repairs,” I practically shout back. “Now, what do you see when you look at me?” My demand comes out sounding like a harsh, guttural whisper.

  “If I answer you, can we just get on with it? No follow up questions?”

  I nod.

  “I see God-damned Holden Caulfield, that's what I see.”

  What? What the hell kind of answer is that? I open my mouth to protest.

  “The job,” Arlen reminds me.

  I close my mouth. “Right.” I say. “You were just telling me that you aren't going to mess up my pool.” I can hear the bitterness in my voice. Why am I letting this guy throw me off my game? Damn, the pressure is really getting to me.

  “Hey,” Arlen says, his voice lighter. “Do you know where I went to school?”

  “No.” I furrow my brow.

  “Columbia,” he says. “And I got into law school at The University of Chicago. But you know what?”

  “What?” I ask, using his story-time to calm myself and get back on track.

  “I didn't go. Know why?”

  “Tell me,” I say, smiling.

  “Because I didn't want to be a lawyer,” he answers. “So I didn't do it. If I don't want to do something, I don't do it. If I think I won't like a job, I pick something else.”

  Suddenly, he has my full attention. All I ha
ve to do is make him pick something else. Make him pick Sam. I smirk at him. “Must be nice. Do you always do whatever you want? Whenever you want?”

  He looks away, then back at me. “If I did,” he says, his voice low, “we wouldn't be standing here arguing about pool tile.”

  I can feel the naked heat of what he means and my eyes widen. I step back. “All I meant was that it must be nice to have that luxury—just picking and choosing work.”

  And in a split second I see my mistake. Arlen was trying to scare me off, to make me retreat, to get the upper hand. Damn it!

  He cocks one eyebrow. “If that's all you meant,” he says with a bland arrogance that makes me want to punch him, “then quit psychoanalyzing me and just show me the damn house.”

  Chapter 12

  ARLEN

  Arlen pulled into his driveway an hour later. Forcing himself out of the truck, he tried not to look toward the empty house, reminding himself not to remember how coming home used to feel.

  After letting himself in the front door, he crossed straight through the kitchen to the back door. He opened it wide and Nick and Nora came bounding in. They leapt into the middle of the kitchen, then turned back to jump on Arlen and lick his face. As Arlen stood pinned by the two huge dogs, he heard his phone chime to tell him he had a voicemail waiting. The call must have come through when he was in the Hills without a signal. He extracted himself from the German shepherd-malamute mutts and pressed the phone to his ear.

  “Arlen,” a voice said in clipped greeting. “It's Jon.”

  Shushing the dogs, Arlen sat down at the kitchen table.

  “I bought the tickets today,” the voice told him. “The kids will arrive on the twelfth of July. I'll call closer to the date with the flight details. Take care.”

  Arlen lowered his forehead to the table, letting it rest there with a thunk. The relief he felt just made him feel all unbuckled. Every summer and every Thanksgiving, he couldn't dampen the wild fear that this time, like Little Jackie Paper, they just wouldn't show up. And he would never see them again. If Jon ever changed his mind ...

  Arlen pushed back his chair and bolted up. Taking a deep breath, he moved quickly to feed the salivating dogs.

  This summer, at least, the kids were coming.

  Chapter 13

  RAY

  Ray stood at the bank of windows in Lola's office looking at the lights glittering across the valley. Was Lola engineering the downfall of her career over this Arlen/Sam debacle? If so, her ruin could certainly generate shockwaves strong enough to kill his career, as well.

  Ray sighed. The tiniest thought that maybe The Great Lola Scott was not in complete control made his heart pick up the pace. But he stood very still and took a long, deep breath.

  Oh, fuck his reiki breathing and trying to center himself. Lola Scott was careening off the rails. He slumped into her decadent office chair and sucked in a few more bucketfuls of air. He just had to accept that Lola Scott was officially cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

  Or was she?

  Ray didn't know. For the life of him and the soul of Tallulah Bankhead, he didn't know. He opened Lola's candy drawer and took out a Tootsie Pop. He unwrapped it slowly. Lola. Lola Scott. Ray sucked on the pop and thought about Lola.

  Lola Scott was not a dick.

  First and foremost, he remembered that Lola was not a dick. For six years, Ray had been busting his ass as a writer's assistant to some douche bag or another. Writers who made him wait all day while they played video games then made him get to work starting at eleven goddamned p.m. Then they sent him home at four and told him he better sure as shit be at his desk at ten sharp even though the damn writer wouldn't be there until noon at the earliest. The dry-cleaning, the picking up the damn kids from the damn private schools, the giving up his Christmas vacation to stay home to babysit some head writer's bitch-face sister-in-law's cat—all the senseless errands he'd been forced to do as a writer's assistant that didn't have a fucking thing to do with writing and had sure as hell never gotten him one lick further in his career.

  But not Lola. She paid him double for every scrap of overtime, and there wasn't much of that. Lola seemed not only to recognize that he was a person, but she didn't use his humanity as her own personal chew toy. Lola Scott was not a dick.

  She was crazy as a box of beetles, but she wasn't a dick.

  His life had gotten about a billion percent better six months ago when he'd randomly picked up a cell call from a number he didn't recognize. He never did that. What if his last hook-up decided to stalk him? But this day, he'd answered. Ray got chills thinking about the kismet of it all.

  “Hi. Ray? Is this Ray Collier?” The voice had sounded like that of an eager but tentative Girl Scout who wasn't sure if she was going to get in trouble or get rich from selling cookies outside the pot clinic.

  “Yeeeees,” he'd answered with theatrical wariness.

  “It's Lola Scott. Do you remember me?”

  “Let me see,” he'd said, his heart kicking into hyperdrive. The industry had been all abuzz with the news that Lola had just gotten a development deal to produce her pilot. “I'm not sure. Are you that blonde bombshell who saved Girl and Beast when I was working on it last season?”

  She'd laughed. “Does that mean you're not working on it anymore? I'd heard you're still there, still working for Jeff.”

  “Honey,” he'd said, “call me crazy, or call me the Great Carnac, but I believe I am about to be working for you.”

  But it had been weird at first. Lola had been leery of telling him what do do at the beginning, and he'd been bored to pro golf proportions.

  Thank Gaga he'd finally gotten the balls to confront her. “Lola!” He'd just shouted at her one day when she started to call maintenance herself to get the demonically possessed AC unit fixed. “For fuck's sake,” he'd said, “I am good at my job so treat me like it and LET ME DO IT!”

  And since then, it had been the dream working environment, reminiscent of a sixties sitcom. All because she trusted him to do his job.

  Now he had to trust Lola to do hers.

  Chapter 14

  ARLEN

  Arlen decided to start outside, beginning with the repairs needed on the roof. That way, he could work his way indoors as the summer temperatures rose. With luck, by the time he finished the exterior of the house and the pool, he'd be able to stand in Lola's house without going crazy. During the tour last night, he'd noticed that her subtle scent was everywhere inside. It drove him to distraction. It was so unfair that such a bossy, self-involved Hollywood maven should look so damn cute and smell the way she did. He should probably tell her that the house needed to be tented for termite fumigation before he started on the interior.

  Arlen was about to climb from the roof above her living room onto the higher roof above the second story when he noticed Lola limping up the driveway in running clothes.

  Running? She'd been out for a run? She wasn't even supposed to be here! Where the hell was her car? From now on, he had to remember to check the garage before he ventured into her lair. He needed to be much more careful. He had until just before the twelfth to finish this job, so he had to keep Lola Scott and her buzzing static to a minimum.

  Chapter 15

  LOLA

  As I hobble up my driveway, I get a good view of Arlen on my living room roof. Damn. From every angle, the man is the undeniable incarnation of Sam. As I examine him from my vantage point below, I notice that he's just standing there, looking down at me.

  Uh-oh.

  I'm not supposed to be here and he is not happy. My injured leg does not affect him in the slightest. I can see the ladder leaning against the house, and Arlen makes no move toward it in order to rush to my aid. Damn.

  “I meant to be back a lot earlier,” I call up to him between huffs. “My hamstring tightened up on me about two miles out and it's been a slow jog back.” I lift my water bottle to my lips and take a long pull.

  Arlen takes a step or two closer to th
e edge of the roof. “Are you okay?” he asks, but the question sounds like he's reading it off a cue card. “Do you need anything?” He lets out a short laugh. “Like maybe a shirt?”

  I choke once on the water I'm trying to swallow. “No,” I toss back. “I always go running in a sports bra. At least in the spring and summer. What's the point of putting on a T shirt if it's just gonna get all sweaty? It makes me hot and it's just more laundry to do.”

  “Laundry is a bitch,” he agrees.

  I move to a corner of the house where I can still see him at a good angle and talk to him. I kick my sore leg up and press the back of it flush against the wall, leaning in and feeling the stretch. I tilt my head toward Arlen. “I overslept today,” I tell him.

  Arlen looks about to walk away, but I try to hold him with my conversation.

  “So I didn't take time to stretch before I ran. Voilà. A pulled muscle. That's why I'm late.”

  Arlen just looks at me.

  “Has it ever happened to you?” I ask.

  “What?” he asks. He looks at my stretch. “I can't do that.”

  I laugh. “No, I mean pull a muscle. You work out, don't you?”

  “Not lately.”

  “But you're in such good shape,” I counter, lowering my leg to the ground and touching my toes.

  “Occupational hazard,” he says.

  I set my feet apart, touching my chin to each knee. “Is that why you like working construction so much? It saves you the price of a health club?”

  “Working construction is my job,” he says. “Lots of people have them. It's not as big a mystery as you seem to think. I better get back to work.” And with that, he disappears out of my sight.

  I walk into the house and head upstairs to the shower. Okay, so that didn't go as I hoped. Arlen didn't exactly help me into the house and settle me comfortably into a chair so we could laugh about stupid things we've done in the past and present. Why the hell didn't he just climb down the damn ladder? Clearly, he did not like my showing up when I wasn't supposed to be here. And he is disturbed by my wearing nothing but a sports bra and leggings. And he doesn't like to do laundry. So that tells me … that he's a guy. Okay. Knew that already.