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“She was on the phone to lover boy.” Ravinia yanked her arm from his grasp. “I heard her side of the conversation, or at least part of it. She said she’d see him Tuesday at Casa del Mar and to give her a week. She said she won’t be able to stand it any longer.”
“Huh.” Rex handed a valet his ticket and watched as the valet hurried off in search of the car, “What else? Anything?”
“You know a producer named Frank Milo?”
“I think I’ve heard of him,” Rex said thoughtfully. “He’s got a couple hit TV shows.”
“Dragonworld?”
He stared at her as if he didn’t believe this backwoods girl who’d been locked inside a lodge in Oregon could know anything about Hollywood. “Yeah, maybe. But I don’t get it. Is that who Kimberley was talking to?”
“Nope. Auditions are just going on. It was the talk in the bathroom.”
He muttered something under his breath and shook his head.
“But now you have some time,” she pointed out with a lift of her chin, “when nothing’s going to happen with her. So, you can start helping me.”
“If I believe you.”
“I don’t lie.”
He made a sound in his throat she couldn’t quite decipher, and then said, “You and I haven’t written up a contract.”
“What kind of contract?”
“A business contract. That’s how this kind of thing works. I give you a contract with my rates, and you sign it and give me a retainer.”
The valet showed up with the gray car and Rex handed him some bills.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out that he was annoyed with her, so before he could leave her on the street, which Ravinia sensed wasn’t that far out of range, she slid into the passenger seat and dutifully buckled up. “And after I sign this form, you’ll find Elizabeth?” she clarified.
“I’ll try.”
She hesitated. “What’s a retainer?”
He rubbed the first two fingers of one hand against his thumb. When Ravinia regarded him blankly, he said, “Money,” as if she were dense.
She threw him a dark look.
As they pulled away from the curb, Rex looked in his rearview mirror. “Well, you were right about one thing,” he admitted and she twisted, craning her head to peer out the back window. “That’s Dorell now. Her husband. He must be meeting her.”
“I was right about everything,” she corrected.
His answer was a snort.
Forty minutes later, Rex walked Ravinia into the motel office of the Sea Breeze Inn, a two-level motel on Santa Monica Boulevard that looked like it could use a little less sea breeze and a little more TLC on the peeling paint and cracked pavement of the parking lot.
“I can book my own room,” Ravinia said testily.
He didn’t know what the hell he was doing with her. It was like she was the daughter he’d never had and he felt responsible for her in a way that defied description. One minute she seemed streetwise and sly as a fox, the next naive as a lamb.
“Yeah, but will you?” he asked.
“I have money. I just don’t like using it.”
“I’m not leaving you on the street so you can sleep in the park.”
“Fine, fine. We’re here, aren’t we? I’ll take the room.”
