Birds of California(54)

“We got you one, too, even though you don’t deserve it,” Erin chimes in.

“Like I always say, you’re a couple of classy broads.” Sam picks up the pint glass and drains the beer in two long gulps, feeling edgy and out of sorts. He’s worried his conversation with Russ is sticking to him in a way Fiona is going to notice, that she’ll be able to smell it on him like cheap drugstore cologne. “What did you guys talk about?” he asks.

“Same stuff girls always talk about,” Fiona says immediately.

“Gel douches,” Erin deadpans, and Fiona grins.

“You know what?” Sam says. “I deserved that.” He looks down with some surprise at his empty glass. “Another round?”

By the time they say goodbye to Erin an hour later, Sam has that slightly woozy feeling of being buzzed in the afternoon—confused by the sun, by the fact that it’s still daylight. “I was nervous,” he explains when Fiona looks at him with raised eyebrows, “so I drank a lot.”

Fiona nods like, No shit. “What were you nervous about?”

Sam opens his mouth, shuts it again. He could just say it, he thinks, a little sluggishly. He could just tell her the truth. “A lot of things,” he says.

Fiona thinks about that for a moment. “Yeah,” she says finally. “Me too.”

Sam pushes her up against the driver’s side door instead of answering, cupping his hand around the back of her neck and putting his mouth on hers. Fiona makes a quiet sound of surprise. He’s expecting her to tell him to keep it in his pants—she doesn’t strike him as a person who encourages PDA, particularly in broad fucking daylight—but instead she lets him do it for a minute or two, fitting her hips against his and widening her stance so he can slip his thigh between hers. Sam groans against her mouth.

“Okay,” she gasps finally, pushing him gently away. “Enough.”

Sam nods, backing off and tucking his hands into his pockets. It isn’t enough, though. It isn’t enough by a long shot.

“Come on,” she says, “I’ll drive you back to my house so you can pick your car up. Maybe I’ll even let you feel me up for a couple of minutes when we get there.”

But Sam shakes his head. “Wait,” he says, lacing his fingers through hers and squeezing. “There’s actually one more place I think we should go.”

“I will tell you, Samuel,” Fiona says twenty minutes later, slowing her car in front of a wall of dense green shrubs high in the lush quiet of the Hollywood Hills, “I’m confused about what I could possibly have said or done in the time we’ve known each other that would have made you think I’m the kind of person who likes surprises.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sam points. “It’s this one right up here.” He unbuckles his seat belt and leans over her, breathing in the smell of her hair as he reaches an arm out the driver’s side window and enters the code into the keypad. A moment later the sleek, minimalist metal gate swings open.

Fiona peers out the windshield as they creep up the driveway, eyes narrowed like she’s trying to squint through a blizzard. She hangs back as he gets out of the car and unlocks the front door, like possibly she’s getting ready to do a runner. “Whose house is this?”

“My agent’s,” he admits.

“Who else does he represent besides you?”

“Rude,” Sam says, but he’s smiling as he shoos her inside.

Fiona looks around in wonder. Russ’s place is like something out of an HBO show: all wood and stone and metal, soaring ceilings and sharp modern lines. The floor is polished concrete, the furniture severe and architectural and frankly uncomfortable-looking. The back wall of the house is made entirely of glass. “He just . . . lets you hang out here?”

“I know this is probably hard for you to understand,” Sam tells her, “but most people like me.”

Fiona shrugs, not quite looking at him. “It’s not that hard for me to understand.”

Sam laughs, nudging her forward through the cavernous house. “Was that a compliment?”

“Enjoy it,” she shoots back. “It’s the only one you’re going to get from me today.”

“I’ll be sure to write about it in my diary.”

He leads her through the sliding door out to the pool deck, where the air is fragrant with hibiscus and citrus and enormous succulents spill from terra-cotta pots. The water is still in the rosy afternoon sunlight, a view of the hills down below. It looks like the kind of place no one should actually live in. It looks like a place where you could hide for a long time.

Fiona slips her shoes off and dips a toe in the pool, then looks at him with naked suspicion. “You’re sure the cops aren’t about to come?” she presses.

Sam smiles. “I am sure the cops are not about to come.”

“Because that’s all I fucking need, you realize. Fiona St. James arrested for trespassing at luxurious mansion in the Hollywood Hills.”

“Darcy Sinclair would love that.”

“I already sent Darcy’s kids to private school six times over,” she reminds him. “I’m not inclined to do her any more favors.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m just saying, it seems like at the very least I should be getting residuals checks.”