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2
“You knew all along I wasn’t a stripper, didn’t you?”
Bobby Tom closed the study door after them. “Not for certain.”
Gracie Snow was nobody’s fool. “I believe you did,” she said firmly.
He gestured toward her blouse, and once again she saw the laugh lines crinkling at the corners of his lady-killer eyes. “You’ve got your buttons mixed up there a little bit. You want me to help—? No, I guess you don’t.”
Nothing was going the way she’d planned. What had Bobby Tom’s friend meant when he’d said he hoped this one wasn’t pregnant, too? She recalled a remark she’d overheard Willow make about one of their actors who’d been involved in several paternity suits a few years ago. They must have been talking about Bobby Tom. Apparently he was one of those loathsome men who preyed on vulnerable women and then abandoned them. It grated her to admit someone so immoral had fascinated her even momentarily.
She turned away to straighten her buttons and gather her composure. While she put herself together, she took in her surroundings and found herself facing the most colossal display of ego she had ever witnessed.
Bobby Tom Denton’s study was a shrine to the football career of Bobby Tom Denton. Blown-up action photographs hung on every surface of the marbleized gray walls. Some of them showed him in the uniform of the University of Texas, but in most of them, he wore the sky blue and gold of the Chicago Stars. In several of the photographs, he was off the ground, toes pointed, his lean body curved in a graceful C as he snatched a ball out of the air. There were close-ups of him in a sky blue helmet emblazoned with three gold stars, shots of him diving for the goal line or maneuvering down the sidelines, one foot positioned in front of the other as gracefully as a ballet dancer’s. Shelves displayed trophies, commendations, and framed certificates.
She watched him settle with lazy grace into a sling-shaped leather chair behind a granite-topped desk that looked as if it belonged in a Flintstones cartoon. A sleek gray computer sat on top, along with a high-tech telephone. She chose a tub chair resting beneath a group of framed magazines covers, several of which depicted him standing on the sidelines kissing a glamorous blond
e. Gracie recognized her from an article she’d seen in People magazine, as Phoebe Somerville Calebow, the beautiful owner of the Chicago Stars.
His eyes drifted over her and the corner of his mouth curled. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, honey, but speaking as something of an expert, it seems only right to tell you that, if you’re looking for a night job, you might think more on the lines of clerking at a 7-Eleven than taking off your clothes professionally.”
She’d never been very good at icy glares, but she did her best. “You deliberately set out to embarrass me.”
He worked equally hard at looking crestfallen. “I wouldn’t do that to a lady.”
“Mr. Denton, as I suspect you know very well, I’m here on behalf of Windmill Studios. Willow Craig, the producer, sent me to—”
“Uh-huh. You want a glass of champagne or a Coke or something?” The phone began to ring, but he ignored it.
“No, thank you. You were supposed to be in Texas four days ago to begin shooting Blood Moon, and—”
“How about a beer? I’ve noticed a lot more women are drinking beer than used to.”
“I don’t drink.”
“Is that so?”
She sounded priggish instead of businesslike, perhaps not the best posture for dealing with a wild man, and she tried to recover. “I don’t drink myself, Mr. Denton, but I have nothing against those who use alcohol.”
“I’m Bobby Tom, sweetheart. I don’t hardly recognize any other name.”
He sounded like a cowboy just coming in off a trail drive, but from watching him give that football quiz, she suspected he was smarter than he pretended to be. “Very well. Bobby Tom, then. The contract you signed with Windmill Studios—”
“You don’t look much like the Hollywood type, Miz Snow. How long have you been working for Windmill?”
She busied herself straightening her pearls. Once again the phone began to ring, and once again he ignored it. “I’ve been a production assistant for some time.”
“Exactly how long?”
She surrendered to the inevitable, but she did it with dignity. Lifting her chin half an inch higher, she said, “Not quite a month.”
“That long.” He was clearly amused.
“I’m very competent. I came into this job with vast experience in management as well as excellent interpersonal communication skills.” She was also a whiz at making pot holders, painting ceramic pigs, and playing Golden Oldies on the piano.
He whistled. “I’m impressed. What sort of job would that have been?”
“I—uh—ran the Shady Acres Nursing Home.”
