“She wear you out?” I ask.
“Never,” he says, and there’s a devious little gleam in his eye. “She hit the ladies’. Thought I’d come find you. There’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Okay.” I frown, because this is hardly the best location for a heart-to-heart. “What’s up?”
“Stark,” he says. “I got the impression from Jamie that things between you two might be heating up.”
I make a mental note to strangle Jamie.
“They’re not,” I say, not sure if I’m telling the truth or telling a lie. It’s the first time I can remember not being completely honest with Ollie, but for the moment, I want to keep my complicated feelings about Damien Stark to myself.
“Yeah?” he says. “Well, good. Because I was worried about you.”
Alarm bells ring in my head. “Really? Why?”
He lifts a shoulder in a shrug. “The way he looked at you at the party. The way you looked back.”
“Okay, yeah, there was heat,” I admit. “But why is that a problem? Why did you tell me to be careful?”
He runs his fingers through his hair, and the damp strands curl even more. It gives him a mussed, sexy look.
“Just stay away from him, okay? The guy’s dangerous.”
“Dangerous how?”
Ollie shrugs. “You know. He has a temper, for one thing.”
“That’s hardly news,” I say. “He was famous for it during his tennis days. That’s how he messed up his eye.” During a fight with another player, Damien had been hit in the face with a racquet. According to the stuff I’d read, he’d been incredibly lucky that he’d suffered no permanent or debilitating injury, but the pupil of his left eye is now permanently enlarged. “But that was a long time ago, and he’s not a competitive athlete anymore. Is that seriously what you’re concerned about?”
But Ollie just shakes his head as Jamie bounces up to the bar and grabs his arm. “I’m taking him back,” she says.
I watch them slide back onto the dance floor. Dangerous.
He’s dangerous, all right. But somehow I don’t think Ollie means it the same way that I do.
“Seriously, Jamie,” I say, as she turns down yet another twisting, winding, darkened Malibu street. “Can’t we just go home?” We are completely lost. The street signs have apparently been hidden by elves. I’m sure it’s to keep the riff-raff out. And we, of course, are firmly among the riff.
We parted ways with Ollie over an hour ago after having eggs and toast and an ocean of coffee at Dukes on Sunset. Only after he’d gone did Jamie tell me that we were going on a mission to find Stark’s new Malibu house. “One of the articles I read said it had beach access. And I used to hang with this guy from Malibu, so I got to know the roads pretty well.”
I, of course, protested that she was insane. But I didn’t protest too loudly. I admit I was curious. And even though I doubted we could find the place, driving around Malibu in the middle of the night seemed just crazy enough to be fun.
Now, however, I am getting tired and a little bit carsick.
“We might as well go home,” I say. “We’re never going to find it.”
“We will,” she insists, pulling over long enough to squint at the map she’s pulled up on her phone. “If it has beach access there aren’t that many streets it can be on. And it’s not like there’s a lot of construction going on right now, especially not for the square footage that a guy like Damien Stark will want. When we get close, we’ll see it.”
“Yeah, but that’s part of the problem, isn’t it? I mean, this isn’t some two-thousand-square-foot house in suburban Texas where you can just wander through the framing and drywall. Even if you find it, there’s going to be a fence and probably security.”