Page 60 of Marlowe Banks, Redesigned
Marlowe: Just as friends. Okay?
Angus: I promise not to flirt
Marlowe: Right. And I promise not to breathe
Angus: Consider it character research. Bill Greg for your overtime
Marlowe: Not sure he can pay enough to make it worth my while
Angus: Now who’s flirting?
Crap. Trouble confirmed.
Her thumbs hovered over her screen. The safest bet was to claimshe’d forgotten a commitment or needed to get some rest. She wasn’t going to date Angus. He wasn’t one-night-stand material, either. He’d made that clear on Sunday. She liked that about him. She wasn’t sure she was one-night-stand material, either. Besides, she was hoping to be back in New York sometime next month. Even if she and Angus were simply building a friendship, getting closer to him now would only make leaving L.A. harder.
On the other hand…
Marlowe’s apartment was so painfully empty, so devoid of shared memories. She’d had such a good time with Angus on Sunday, and even today, laughing and chatting between takes. Besides, didn’t Babs say she should seize the choices she was offered? And who was Marlowe to deny Babs’s instructions?
Marlowe: Tell Jeeves he has your place to himself for the evening
Chapter Twenty-three
“Quiet neighbors,” Angus said.
“Old joke.” Marlowe glanced past him to the cemetery across the street.
He craned around from her crumbling cement stoop, following her gaze. He’d swapped Jake’s dark and dusty clothes for his usual white tee, faded jeans, and bright canvas sneakers. He also wore a red Pizza Boys windbreaker and ball cap, and he carried a pizza box to match. Marlowe wore a lightweight cotton dress with a short, flared skirt and a row of buttons that ran from the sweetheart neckline to the hem. The style lines provided the illusion of curves, which was as close as she’d get without Babs’s help. She hoped the dress looked like something she’d thrown on without thought, though she’d agonized for hours about what to wear. She didn’t want to imply anything remotely date-like, but she didn’t need a repeat of last weekend’s pinnacle of unattractiveness.
“You brought pizza?” She nodded at the box.
“Not really.” He lifted the lid to reveal an array of gourmet-looking tacos, each one individually garnished and crisscrossed with a different sauce. “Got the feeling this was more your speed,but they were willing to pack the tacos in a pizza box so I could complete my ingenious disguise.” His brows waggled above the rims of his aviators.
Marlowe breathed in the scents of fresh cilantro, grilled onions, and spicy mayonnaise.
“You’re making it really hard for me to not like you,” she said.
“Give me a few minutes. I’ll say something idiotic and it’ll be easy again.”
Marlowe took the box, sliding him a dubious look. While she carried the tacos into the living room, he hung his hat and jacket on a hook by the door, beside the New York Yankees cap he’d loaned her on Sunday. She liked seeing his things in her space, even though she wasn’t sure she should.
“Have any trouble on your way here?” she asked as he studied an owl painting. It had a distinctly vintage palette of avocado, pumpkin, and mustard yellow, with eyes made of dingy glass beads. The painting was one of four, all equally hideous.
“I called my security company. They’re dusting for squatters. Those SUVs you saw on the weekend are gone. For now.” He leaned away from the owl painting, and then tilted his upper-body right and left. “Do the eyes follow you everywhere?”
“Even into my nightmares.”
“And the yak?”
“Come smell for yourself.”
Angus joined her by the sofa, his face immediately pinching into a grimace.
“I think he’s past the point of resuscitation.” He set a hand under his nose as though he was blocking the smell. “Can I stick around anyway?”
“You showed up with tacos. You can stay as long as you like.”
He smiled at that, and something in his eyes told her he was reading more into her statement than she meant. Something in her chest told her that was okay.
