Christine Rimmer - Bravo Unwrapped

“You be sure to come and talk to me before you put down a single word,” Tony warned, turning his bald head this way and that, hamming it up for the camera as Lupe snapped shot after shot. “I got all the best stories—and I can tell you where all the bodies are buried…if you know what I mean.” He wiggled his bushy white eyebrows.

“Tony, you know you’re the first one I’ll come see.”

The old guy nodded, looking gratified. “I’ll hold you to it, see if I don’t.” He winked again at B.J.—and then at Lupe, too. “I like a pretty woman. Which one of these is yours?”

Buck sent B.J. a far too intimate look. She pretended not to notice.

“Well?” prompted old Tony with a chuckle.

Lupe blew a midnight strand of hair out of her eye and brought her camera into position again. “Leave me out of it. I’m just here to take the pictures.”

“Ah,” said Tony, turning to size B.J. up. “You, then.”

“No. I’m not his—and he’s not mine.”

“You sound real definite about that,” said Tony. “Maybe too definite. So definite I’m wondering who you’re tryin’ to convince.” Tony did some more chuckling.

Buck stepped in and made the introductions. “Tony Dellazola, this is B. J. Carlyle and Lupe Martinez.”

“Well, I am pleased to meet you both—so Buck. Tell me. You still livin’ in New York City?”

“That’s right.”

“Never been there, never will. It’s not healthy, folks livin’ all on top of each other that way. Like rats in a maze. They start chewin’ off their own tails.”

“Hey.” B.J. couldn’t let that remark pass. “I’m a New Yorker. You couldn’t pay me enough to live anywhere else.”

“And I like a good-lookin’ woman who knows her own mind,” declared old Tony. He pulled a toothpick from his shirt pocket, stuck it between his yellowed teeth, leaned back on the bench and asked Lupe, “What d’you need all those pictures for?”

Lupe kept shooting and let Buck answer for her. “We’re here to do an article for Alpha magazine.”

Tony snapped to attention. “What’s that? I’m gonna have my picture in Alpha magazine?”

“Could be.”

Tony thought it over. “Well. I suppose that’s okay with me. Alpha’s a fine magazine. Classy, you know? And those Alpha Girls…each one prettier’n the last, all of ’em wearing a nice, big friendly smile—and not a whole lot more.” He gave yet another cackling chuckle and then grew serious again. “You’ll send me a free copy so I’ll know I was in there?”

“Absolutely,” said B.J.

Buck thanked the old guy and they moved on, crossing the street and heading down the other side, back toward the bridge to Chastity’s place.

“Quite a character,” Lupe remarked once they were out of earshot.

Buck said, “He was sitting on that bench all day every day back when I was a kid. I swear, he looks exactly the same today as he did then. He’s gotta be ninety by now. Glory’s his great-granddaughter.”

“Glory.” Lupe looked pained. “You mean the screamer?”

Buck ignored Lupe’s question. He seemed faintly bemused. “Glory was maybe ten years old when I left town. And now look at her.”

“Yeah,” said Lupe, “hanging around your mother’s B & B, terrorizing the clientele.”

Buck shrugged. “No one to terrorize. It’s the slow season. For tonight, I think we’re the only guests—and whatever she was screaming about, Glory does have a valid reason to be there. She lives downstairs, in an add-on apartment in back. She’s the maid.”

Lupe shuddered. “Remind me to lock up my valuables when I leave my room.”

“Relax,” Buck said. “Glory’s a good kid. Yeah, she’s got a little drama queen in her. Like all the Dellazolas. They’re a big, rowdy family and generally, with them, the one who screams the loudest gets the most attention. But they’re sweet and harmless, really—and honest as the day is long. Every last one of them.”

Back at the Sierra Star, all was quiet. They went in the front door to find the fire still burning cheerily in the fireplace and nobody in the living room or the front hall. Lupe headed for the stairs. B.J., oh-so-casually, fell in behind her, hoping to reach the safety of her room without Buck suggesting another outing—one with just the two of them this time.

She made it halfway up.

“B.J.”

With a sigh, she turned and looked down at him. Their eyes met. Zap. There went that disgusting hot little thrill coursing through her.

Really, he was much too attractive—an attractiveness consisting of more than mere good looks. He had a certain…energy about him. An energy that radiated off him and kind of filled up the space around him with excitement, with a sense of expectation.

And why, oh why, was she thinking about how attractive he was? She really had to watch herself or she’d be falling into bed with him all over again.

And she wasn’t going to do that. She really, truly wasn’t.

He said, “I want to take you to dinner.” He glanced beyond her at Lupe, who had paused at the head of the stairs. “Lupe, you’re officially not invited.”

Lupe shrugged. “So I’ll check out the club scene.”

“Bars, Lupe. They’re just bars.”

“Leave me my fantasies, at least.” She turned for her room.

Buck waited until the photographer disappeared from view before insisting, “Dinner. In an hour. We’ll walk over town.”

More eating. So not her favorite thing lately. And eating with Buck, as well. That would mean an hour, at least, of sitting across from him, counting his eyelashes, thinking stupid thoughts like how no other man smelled like him, or laughed like him, or looked at her in such a dangerously delicious kind of way.

She was in trouble here.

No doubt about it.

Then again, there was the interview. She should concentrate on that. The sooner she got the material she needed, the sooner she could get back into her Manolos and away from Buck and New Bethlehem Flat. “I’ll bring my tape recorder.”

“One hour. No excuses.”

She turned and left him without actually saying yes, though both of them knew she’d be ready. On time.

In her room, using the push-button phone, B.J. called Giles, who was still at his desk, bless his ambitious little heart, though it was well after seven at night in New York.

He listened patiently to her long list of notes and suggestions, then told her that everything was going fine. “Not a crisis in sight.”

“That’s not normal.”

He laughed. She pictured him tossing those thick blond locks of his and felt homesick—for the city, for her office, for her own world where she could so easily avoid dealing with Buck.

“B.J.,” Giles chided. “You worry too much.”

“Call me. The minute there’s any kind of problem, any time you need advice…”

“I will, I will.”

“Use this number.” She rattled it off. “Cell phones don’t work here. And forget the Internet. It’s not happening, either.”

“Okay, okay.”

“If I’m out of the room, you can leave a message. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Makes sense to me. And I mean it. There is zero to worry about.”

The call was over too quickly, leaving her standing in her cozy little room at the Sierra Star B & B, staring out the window at the rough, silvered reflection of the moon on the river, wondering what she was doing there—and silently vowing to pull the damn article together fast and get the hell out of New Bethlehem Flat.

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