“Louie, no!”
He looked up with a lazy blink of green eyes but his toes stopped doing the Watusi across her upholstery, which was tough but not impervious. That might describe Louie himself, or even Temple as she liked to think of herself. Small but sturdy. Petite but persistent. Spoken for but not blind.
Meanwhile, Louie was yowling from the couch for more personal attention. She went over and attended to him, rewarded by a hoarse meow of contentment and a purr loud enough to mimic a light plane engine passing overhead.
“That’s a good boy,” she told him, scratching his tummy while he twisted and flipped from side to contented side. “You should stay at home for a while and get some first-class petting instead of roaming all over the city and getting into trouble.”
Only belatedly did Temple realize she could have been advising her often-AWOL significant other, the Mystifying Max Kinsella.
Like Louie, Max always managed to be there when she really needed him, but the times in between were stretching longer and longer … like Louie on the sofa right now.
Her doorbell rang. Actually, being a fifties’ vintage doorbell, it didn’t just ring. It chimed. It yodeled. It caroled a multinote phrase.
She opened the door before it had rung through its sonorous sequence.
“Oh. Hi.”
Matt was on her doorstep, towel like a flyboy’s white scarf hung around his neck, no longer dripping as far as she was able to discreetly see, but still all tan and bare. Bare. Oh, my.
“Electra corralled me for errand duty in the lobby. Seems you forgot to get your mail yesterday.”
“Wonder why?” Temple murmured, taking the four or five envelopes he held out. “Something bad in the neighborhood? Like a meltdown at Maylords Fine Furniture? Glad that’s a done deal. Come in.”
“I might drip.”
“It’s okay. Area rug. Right by the door. See?”
“I never noticed that before.” He was smiling at her, the implication being why would he look down any farther than her face.
Well …
Temple decided to flip casually through her mail, such as it was. “Speak of the devil. Oriental rug cleaning service advertiser. Political flyer. The usual suspects for shredding to keep my address safe and secret.”
He quirked a smile at her tepid witticisms. “I have to go out of town next week.”
“Speaking engagement?”
“Amanda Show, in Chicago.”
“What day? I can record it for you.”
He shook his head. “Not necessary. I long ago overdosed on my own image on TV. Just wanted you to know I’d be away. And—”
“Yes?”
“I’d like for us to have dinner when I get back.”
“Dinner?”
“Someplace nice. Maybe the Bellagio.”
“Someplace expensive! Every restaurant at the Bellagio is.”
“Money’s no object.” He was smiling now. “The company is.”
“Oh. Any special … reason?”
“Only that we don’t get a chance to just sit down and talk.”
“About what?”
“Just … anything.”
“Un-huh. Well, sounds fine. Just let me know when.”
“I’ll be back in several days. Any special time you’re free?”
“Pretty much all the time now,” she heard herself saying, wanting to retract the brittle tone as soon as it passed her lips.
“Fine,” he said after a pause. “I’ll let you know as soon as I get back. I might even stay over a few days more.”
“This trip is more than a quick TV gig, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I’m finally doing what my mother wanted. I don’t know if unlocking the past is a good idea, but I’ve got an appointment in Chicago that might lead to my father. My real father.”
“So you could have news when you get back?”
“Maybe. But that’s not why I want to have dinner.” She was not going to ask the obvious question. “So, good luck.”
“I’m hoping for that.” His unexpectedly brown eyes, unusual in a natural blond, crinkled a bit. At her. “Thanks.”
She was swinging the door shut even while wishing it was going the other way. From the living room, Louie let loose a long, abandoned howl.
She started toward him, still flipping through envelopes over and over. Dinner? Bellagio? Just to “talk”? Were they talking “date”? Oh, my.
Temple stopped dead, between her entry hall and living room. Louie yowled unanswered. A bold return address had caught her attention completely.
This was it. A response on the “LV PR Job of the Year.” She ripped open the envelope to scan its contents. And rescan them. Again. Stamped her size five feet in their Via Spiga slides to wake the dead, i.e., the unfortunate tenants in the room below her, who were probably off at work anyway.
Temple stared at the form letter in her hand.
She couldn’t believe it.
“We thank you for your interest but—”
She’d lost the hottest PR account in town to … Crawford Buchanan, fellow freelance flack and part-time gossip guru for KREP-AM radio! Pronounced KREEP in her book, as anything relating to Buchanan was.
Nattering Nabobs of Negativity! This was so unfair. She had the background—former TV news reporter, former PR director for the prestigious Guthrie Repertory Theater in Minneapolis, current PR rep for the classiest hotel in Vegas, the Crystal Phoenix. What was there not to prefer over Awful Crawford? Plus she was a girl, andyou’d think that would be an advantage on an account like this for once!
Temple stared at the hot pink headline over the bad black-and-white news.
CALLING ALL TEEN QUEENS! The letters were an inch high and as curly as her natural red hair. TV’S HOTTEST NEW REALITY SHOW HITS VEGAS! FROM ‘TWEEN IDOL TO LEGALLY LIVE BAIT! THEY COMPETE FOR THE GUY, THE GOLD, AND THE GOOD LOOKS!
And the sleaziest PR hack in Vegas, not to mention the biggest lecher on Las Vegas Boulevard, would be handling all the publicity, not to mention the contestants if he could.
Temple shook her head. She hadn’t been entirely at ease with being head flack for a reality TV show anyway. Especially one that would turn the twenty-four-hour spy cameras on vulnerable young women of tender years. If you could find any of that breed around these days.
She deposited the letter in the wicker wastebasket near her living room sofa.
The position paid spectacularly well, and she certainly could have done a better job with it than Crawford, even with one manicured hand tied behind her back, but que sera, sera. She was probably better off out of it. The potential PR headaches were as big as the payoff.
The possibilities unscrolled in her mind.
Number one, permissions. You don’t put underage kids on TV without parental permissions up the wazoo. Then, too, how do you run a peep show involving minors without getting hit with child endangerment or abuse charges? More parental permissions.
Then there was the financial tangle of who would benefit from any resulting prizes or payments. Kids, or parents? Not to mention the ugly matter of stage parents who push their kids into this kind of media exposure for their own needs, otherwise known as JonBenet syndrome. One thing that ugly unresolved investigation had never made clear was where that offbeat name came from. That answer might explain a lot.
Kids tote a heavy load of parental expectations, Temple mused. Cats too. Maybe Louie hadn’t really wanted to be a TV commercial spokescat.
Nah. Louie had been born to attract attention, unless he was sneaking around, up to feline mischief, and then he was Mr. Invisible.
Chapter 5
Mail Call
Lieutenant C. R. Molina was doing a surprise inspection of her clothes closet and not liking what she saw. Not that any of her wearable troops were out of uniform and disorderly. Quite the contrary.
A row of black, navy, and brown pantsuits in serviceable twill for winter alternated with a row of taupe, navy, and charcoal gray pantsuits in sturdy cotton for summer.