Unknown - Cat_In_A_Hot_Pink_Pursuit

Rafi visibly struggled not to say that in her case such a reaction would be justified. While he dawdled, Rome burned. Or at least Savannah’s baser instincts.

“Then you’ll just have to keep watch all night on this side of the mirror,” she purred.

Yes, she purred. She had doubtlessly been called upon to purr a line or several in every one of her B and C movies, and probably a few Ds, Temple thought. Or were those cup sizes: before and after augmentation?

As Rafi looked around in horror at his frilly dutystation-to-be, Savannah took charge. “You can sleep—or catnap rather, for you certainly don’t want to miss another intrusion—on the chaise lounge.”

He regarded this bejeweled pillow-heaped upholstered torturous curl of feminine furniture as if it were a medieval iron rack.

“I’ll do whatever it takes to prevent any further incursions,” Rafi said, through his teeth, “but I’ll sleep in the hall right outside the door. Just a scream away. Yours or theirs.”

He nodded at the languid Persians.

Savannah pouted but didn’t object. Temple supposed luring any man any nearer at all satisfied her vanity and reduced the fuss and muss of actual intimacy. But Rafi’s resistance to the siren of soft porn surprised Temple.

Was he possibly tiring of the superfeminine stereotype? Then again, he’d hooked up with Molina years before, so he must have something of a soft spot for hard women.

Scratch a male chauvinist and find a … masochist secretly in search of a dominatrix? Interesting.

“Good.” Savannah snuggled down in her many decorative bed pillows, dragging the Persian sisters with her. “You girls can leave now. I have a bodyguard.”

The Teen Queen candidates pitter-pattered out, the young and the sleep deprived, a herd of blonde bunnies.

Temple regarded her bunny slippers, a Christmas gift from her mother. They belonged with the herd. The rest of Temple/Xoe did not.

“You want me to take the chaise lounge?” she asked Rafi in a West Side Story teen-gang accent, using Savannah’s misnomer.

“No. I can handle both sides of the door, girly. Take yourself back to your bunk bed.”

“My little sis is probably having hysterics,” she conceded.

When she ankled out into the hall, Louie was making like Saran Wrap on her ankles again.

Everyone had accepted him as some stray mascot thathad adopted the house. Cameras lingered lovingly on his liquid feline progress through the rich environs and the gathered Teen Queens. He strutted like a sultan with a private harem.

Temple decided she could do worse than to adopt the attitude everyone else had.

Mariah was waiting at the door to their room, as ordered, but barely.

One foot and an elbow and an inquisitive nose were in the hall.

“What happened? Who screamed?”

“Savannah Ashleigh and her cats.”

“Oh.” Mariah instantly diagnosed a false alarm. “That airhead gives Clairol a bad name. Every time anything male crosses her path, including that black cat there, she swoons. I thought that went out with corsets.”

“No one told Savannah. And corsets are back in, since Madonna. But Miss Ashleigh is a judge, so good little contestants don’t want to be caught on camera dissing her.” Temple looked up. “Although I’m betting all the cameras are trained on Savannah Ashleigh’s bedroom after tonight’s scare.”

“I need a shower,” Mariah declared. She looked in Temple’s direction and sniffed. Pointedly. “Where have you been? Smells gross. Let’s go.”

This call for a private talk was about as subtle as Emeraude perfume, but Temple retreated into the bathroom with Mariah for a quick consultation. She actually relished the moisture falling hot water would pump back into her desiccated sinuses. That “secret” passage had been as deserty dry as a pharaoh’s tomb.

“No!” Mariah, red faced and dewy from the makeshift sauna a few minutes later, was rapt. “A secret passage.”

“Packed with recording equipment. Nothing Gothic about it. Just high-tech snooping.”

“And with that bodyguard guy. He looks hot.”

Temple wasn’t ready to hear this from Mariah but allowed for teen exaggeration. “He’s just a middle-aged private cop,” she said carefully. “Nothing glamorous like a Day-Glo boy.”

“My mom hates those guys.”

“Day-Glo boys?” Temple asked, startled. From Max to boy bands? Where would Molina’s prejudices end? “No, private cops.”

Maybe, but her mom hated this particular private cop even worse.

“He’s right, though,” Temple said. “All the pranks here smell like producers’ tricks to up the ante on the competition.”

“Cops have no imagination,” Mariah said authoritatively.

Nor did cops’ kids, thank goodness.

“Is that cat going to sleep with us?”

Temple considered Louie. And the fact that Mariah had seen him once, months ago, with Matt, and didn’t know he was Temple’s cat. Or, actually, he wasn’t Temple’s cat. She was Louie’s person. As such, he would sleep with them.

“Probably,” Temple said. “He’s an outcast. Savannah would never let him bunk with her precious Persians.”

Giggles were Mariah. “I’d love to see that! Her cats sure are pretty, though. Mine are kinda scrawny and stripey.”

“They’re delightful. I remember them as kittens. They were the cutest things.”

“‘Cute’ doesn’t cut it.” Mariah had suddenly plunged into one of those teen dives on a bungee cord to self-esteem hell.

“Look. I’ve been ‘cute’ my whole life, and I survived it.”

“Yeah … but.”

“I am not a ‘yeah … but.’ I am a real girl. Remember, your police professional mom hired me to look after you.”

“She did, didn’t she? That was weird. My mom doesn’t depend on anybody but herself.”

“Maybe that’s a problem.”

Mariah reared back. She had bought into Supermom herself.

“She can’t be everywhere,” Temple pointed out. “And you gotta admit some strange things are happening here.”

“But none of them are really real, are they? They’re all threats but no action.”

“You’ve got a point. This is a ‘reality’ show but the action is strangely unreal. You might even say surreal.”

“What does that mean?”

“Surreal?” Temple smiled at Midnight Louie, now sprawled out in the vast wasteland between her and Mariah’s sides of the gigantic bed. “Surreal is sort of like saying this big black cat here is our personal bodyguard.”

“Who’d want a cat for a bodyguard? I’d want Enrique Iglesias. Who’d you want?”

Temple considered. “Not Kevin Costner.”

“Who?”

Oops. Already over a decade out of date. “Ummm.” Nobody Mariah might know came to mind. “The Pink Panther.”

“The Pink Panther? Who’s that?”

And that gave Temple an opening to tell a fairy story about a world long ago and far away and very funny. She took them both miles away from the Teen Queen Castle with its secrets and strangers and perplexing puzzles that seemed to lead nowhere.

Chapter 29 Home Sweet Harassment Molina couldn’t believe it. Only five days at the Teen Queen Castle and Temple Barr had phoned to report four incidents of threats and harassment. All of it sounded pretty amateur, but even one loose cannon in that hothouse situation was bad news.

She certainly had time to think this whole thing over at home. The house felt incredibly empty without Mariah in it, so empty that she hadn’t been able to sleep. This did not bode well for the coming teen dating years.

The competition house was being watched around the clock. It would have been hard enough to send Mariah off on her first independent stay away from home under normal circumstances. To do it under the wacky auspices of a reality TV show was way worse. To have edgy little acts of violence surrounding the Teen Queen competition made it a mother’s nightmare.