Beneath the Glitter: A Novel (Sophia and Ava London) (30 page)

Sophia felt like she could get lost in his eyes. “I think I do,” she said, her throat dry, her voice low and husky. “But—I’m afraid.”

“Of course. That is natural. But you will not let it stop you to do what you want.” He held up a finger to her lips. “And do not say you don’t know what you want. You will, when it is time.”

They stood with his finger against her lips, his face smiling down at her, just inches apart. Sophia’s heart was pounding in her ears, her eyes locked on his.

“Sophia, are you out here?” Hunter’s voice called from the back door of the gallery.

Giovanni’s finger slipped from her lips. He dipped his head toward her ear to whisper, “You must go.” And then he turned and disappeared into the shadows between the parked cars.

“What are you doing out here?” Hunter said as she walked toward him into the puddle of light around the back door. He frowned. “Are you okay? You look—upset.”

“I’m fine.” Sophia realized she was biting her lip where Giovanni’s finger had been. She gave Hunter a smile. “It’s just—” She seized on the real reason she was outside, even though it felt thin now. “I overheard the
LA Times
critic savaging my work and I needed a little time alone.”

Hunter’s frown became more resolute. “I’ll go talk to her.”

Sophia put a hand on his arm to stop him. “No. It’s—it’s good for me. I want to learn. This is just the beginning.”

Hunter’s expression stayed fierce. His eyes went from her to where her hand was still on his arm then back to her face. “That’s—a good attitude. But I think your work is great just how it is.”

“Thank you.” She tilted her head to one side, examining him. He’d been the perfect date all night and the perfect gentleman. He was funny and charming and handsome and made her laugh and supported her and looked at her the way she wanted to be looked at. She knew she could count on him to do anything for her, be there for her. He didn’t question her. He didn’t want her to be anything more than she was right at that moment.

She put her hand against his chest and looked up at him. “Would you be interested in taking a starving artist to dinner after the show?”

“I would be very interested in doing that,” Hunter said. “Although I’m not sure you count as a starving artist.” He gestured with his chin toward her two walls. “All of your photos sold tonight.”

Sophia’s face brightened, and she immediately felt like she needed to find Ava.

The rest of the night was a blur. She hugged Ava good-bye and Hunter took her to dinner but either the rush of adrenaline or the excitement of the past few days, or both, combined to make her fall asleep at the table after the first course. Hunter was nice about it, and drove her home with her head on his shoulder. She was having a delightful dream that started at a beach but had suddenly switched to a carnival, with a lot of flashing colored lights, when Hunter’s voice, serious and urgent, cut in.

“Sophia, wake up,” he said, shaking her hard.

Her eyes snapped open. The street outside her building was a parking lot of black-and-white police cars and emergency vehicles.

“I think—” Hunter’s voice cracked. “I’m afraid something happened to Ava.”

LonDOs

Sophia’s photos

Sophia’s show

Sophia’s show selling out!

Maple bacon hors d’oeuvres

Caramel popcorn ball hors d’oeuvres

Swedish meatball hors d’oeuvres

Gallery shows

Facing Fear of Attachment

LonDON’Ts

Forgetting your phone at home—ever

26

house rules

“Are you Sophia London?” a uniformed officer asked, shining a light into the car.

Sophia blinked against it. “I am.”

“Come with me, please.”

“What’s going on? Where’s my sister? Is she okay?”

“Just come this way.”

Sophia tried to run ahead of the officers but they held her back. “What’s going on?
WHERE IS MY SISTER
?”

“Calm down, ma’am,” the officer said. “What’s important is that you stay—”

“Sophia!” Ava called, running down the stairs toward her. “I’m so sorry, I tried to call Hunter’s phone but I must have the wrong number and—”

Sophia grabbed her and held her. “Are you okay?”

“I am. I’m fine. And so are Popcorn and the kitten. But someone broke into our apartment while we were at the gallery.”

Sophia looked at her. And started to laugh.

“Ma’am?” the police officer said. He looked at Ava. “Is she okay?”

“Probably,” Ava said, taking Sophia aside. “Are you?”

“I’m better than okay,” Sophia said, wiping her eyes. “I—I thought something had happened to you. A robbery is nothing. After the week we’ve had we can handle this in our sleep.”

Ava smiled. “It’s funny, that’s kind of how I felt. I was more worried about the police freaking you out than anything else. Actually, that’s not true—I was pretty upset when I couldn’t find your kitten. Popcorn was unfazed but it took me twenty minutes to find your friend. He was curled up in the back of the closet. I’m not sure if the robbers scared him or if he just thought it was a good sleeping spot. But either way, you really need to come up with a name for him. You try calling a partially deaf, nameless cat and see how well it works.”

“Thanks for handling it, Ava. I would have lost my mind if I was the one who came home and couldn’t find him.” As if sensing that he was being talked about, Glamourpuss/Starshine/Lightning came trotting out. Sophia scooped him up in her arms. “So what did they take anyway?”

“I can’t tell yet. Things were tossed out of drawers and the pillows were pulled off the couch so the house is a mess. They don’t seem to have moved much beyond the living room. Our closet was practically untouched. The police are in there now taking photographs but when they’re done we can go in and look more closely.”

“What about the video equipment? Computers?”

“All there,” Ava said. “How was dinner?”

“I only made it through the first course,” Sophia said, rushing to add, “—not because of my date. Because I was exhausted. Poor Hunter.” She looked for him and saw him off to one side talking to the police. “I was lousy company.”

“Watching you two tonight I had the impression that you might be getting ready to end your boytox.”

Sophia nodded at her. “I had that impression too.”

A male police officer whose tag said
ELLINGTON
waved them over and ushered them back into their apartment. His skin was the color of uncooked pizza dough, his eyes were like gray pebbles, and dark brown cropped hair showed beneath the sides of his uniform cap.

The cushions had been put back onto the couch and he motioned for them to sit down then consulted his notebook. “I have here that you were at a gallery show from about four
P.M
. until nine
P.M
. Is that correct?”

They nodded.

“But according to the Internet, the show didn’t begin until five thirty.”

“We went over early,” Sophia explained. “Why?”

“Did anyone know you would be there early?”

“Probably,” Ava shrugged. “Do you think the robbery happened early?”

“We’re still just asking questions, miss,” he said condescendingly. “It’s how we do our job.”

Ava found herself not liking Officer Ellington and that feeling only increased over the next hour as his questions got more and more specific—and specifically keyed in one direction. Finally he said, “There have been a lot of break-ins that look like this one in Hollywood in the past few months.”

“There have?” Ava said. “Do you think it’s the same person?”

She felt him watching her closely as she spoke, as though assessing whether she was lying. But about what?

“Surely you’ve read about them,” Officer Ellington said.

“My sister and I have been trying to launch a business,” Sophia told him. “We don’t have time to read the thousands of e-mails we get every day, let alone the local news.”

“Sure. Right,” he said, sounding unconvinced. “Well, if you had been keeping up you’d know that in ten of the thirteen cases we were able to prove that there was no robbery; the women had staged it themselves for the attention.”

“You’re not suggesting we did that, are you?”

He pointed around the apartment. “You have thousands of dollars’ worth of computer equipment here untouched. Thousands of dollars’ worth of purses and shoes and makeup. Probably some jewelry. We don’t know what’s missing yet but I have to ask myself, what kind of thief walks away from all of this?”

“But why would we do this?”

“For the publicity. You said that you’re working on launching a business. Well…” He leaned toward them. “Frankly, if that is why you did it, you couldn’t do better than to admit it right now. I’m pretty sure no one will press charges. What do you say?”

Sophia smiled at him, a smile Ava almost never saw. It was her most dangerous smile. “You think we should confess to having faked a robbery, on the basis that you’re pretty sure we won’t get arrested? But either way it’s good publicity?”

“There are a lot of bloggers and tweeters who follow the police scanner.”

Sophia stood and Ava stood with her. “Please leave,” Sophia said, pointing at the door.

“You’re making a mistake. I see how you want to brazen it out, keep the charade going, but it’s clear what’s going on here. By your own admission, nothing is missing. You find something missing, really missing, something that will prove you were robbed, you call us.”

He flipped a card onto the coffee table.

“We’ll be in touch,” Sophia assured him.

“I doubt it,” he replied.

Sophia and Ava spent the next four hours putting things away and checking for anything that was missing. They managed to find Sophia’s phone knocked under the coffee table, but as far as they could tell, there was nothing missing.

“Maybe they were interrupted,” Ava suggested with a yawn.

“Or maybe they didn’t like our style,” Sophia offered. “Bed?”

“Bed,” Ava agreed.

*   *   *

The man in the dark jacket and the baseball cap was on their landing, going through their mail when Ava got back from taking Popcorn for a walk. She’d slept late and been awakened by Popcorn breathing hot bad puppy breath in her face. Needing to take him out she’d opted for dark glasses over eye makeup, so she was feeling a bit ninja-like.

“Freeze!” Ava commanded in her scariest voice. “Or my dog will attack you.”

Instead of growling, Popcorn bolted over and started leaping on the guy like he was an old friend.

“Do I have to keep freezing or can I pet him?” Dalton asked.

“What were you doing?” Ava demanded, looking from him to the mail he was still holding in his hand. “What are you doing here?”

“I was looking for an envelope to write a note to you on,” he said, apparently avoiding her eyes. “I remembered my pen”—he held up a Bic—“but not paper.”

“Why did you want to leave a note?” Then, like it just registered, she said, “A note to me?”

He nodded.

Everything told her that he liked Sophia, he’d told her that more or less, but Ava still wanted to spend time with him. “Does it have to be a note or can you tell me in person?”

“I can tell you but—” He looked around on the landing.

“No, you have to come in,” Ava insisted, her heart racing. “Popcorn, he wants you to,” she added, not wanting to seem too eager.

They had a long-standing No Boys in Bedrooms rule but Sophia’s door was still closed and she really didn’t want to wake her. And it wasn’t like there wasn’t a desk and a chair and lots of places to sit and talk in her room that weren’t on the bed.

Plus, Popcorn would be there, she reasoned.

Ava showed Dalton into her room and shut the door. Without waiting for an invitation he went and sat on the edge of her bed and, not to be rude, she went and sat on the edge a little away from him, with Popcorn between them. She didn’t make him feel like he’d picked the wrong place. That was just being a good hostess.

Popcorn pushed his head under Dalton’s hand and settled into his lap. Dalton smiled down at him, then looked around Ava’s room, and finally let his eyes settle on her. Looking distinctly uncomfortable he said, “Ava, I’m not who you think I am. I’ve been to jail. I’m working at Pet Paradise as part of my community service. I’m not someone you can date. That’s what I went to Sophia’s opening to tell you but I didn’t get around to it.”

Ava frowned, taking that in. “You went to Sophia’s opening to tell me I couldn’t date you?”

He shook his head. “Not that part. The other part. About how I’m a bad guy. I assumed you’d figure out the last bit on your own.”

But Ava was still stuck on something else. “So you’re saying you’re not in love with Sophia?”

Now it was Dalton’s turn to look confused. “Sophia? Your sister? No.”

“But you invited her to the party and got her a Nerds Rope,” Ava blurted.

“Because she’s your sister,” Dalton said. “And the idea of making her happy seemed to make you happy.”

“Last night you said she looked beautiful and you liked her pictures.”

“She did and I do,” Dalton said, still frowning.

“Why did you go to jail?”

“That doesn’t matter. The point is, I’m not suitable for you as a boyfriend.” He patted Popcorn then lifted him off his lap like he was getting ready to go.

“Sure. I can see that.” Ava ran her pinkie over the flower pattern of her comforter.

“Good,” Dalton said with a nod, leaning toward her.

“Good,” Ava agreed with a nod, leaning toward him.

Her gaze went from his lips, up his nose, to his eyes, where they stayed. “Ava,” he breathed.

“Dalton,” she whispered. Just as his lips teased over hers. Just once, just like that.

Ava’s heart stopped. Her knees tingled. They leaned their foreheads together and he brought his thumb up and brushed it across her lips.

Ava felt like her entire body was made of Pop Rocks.

“Ava, I can’t, we can’t do this—”

“I know. I’m going to make it right. I’ll break up with Liam right now.”