The Notorious Pagan Jones. Nina Berry
home. We got permission from Judge Tennison to air out your house. The studio has sent over a designer with some clothes for you to choose from, with a hairdresser and manicurist on standby. Is there anywhere you’d like to go first?”
“You mean, like a record store?” She tucked the cigarettes away in her skirt pocket. Maybe one day she could face them without a drink. “I wouldn’t mind seeing what’s new from Ray Charles.”
“We could do that if you like. Or is there some sort of organizational meeting you should attend?” When she looked at him blankly, he added, “The Friends of Bill W?”
Pagan nearly did a spit take with her Coke. “A.A?”
He regarded her, his face neutral, and said nothing.
Of course, he meant well, and she had promised Mercedes. So she’d go. She really would. But certainly not with Devin Black tagging along. She’d attended exactly two meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous between getting out on bail after her arrest and being sentenced to Lighthouse. Everyone there had been her parents’ age or older. They’d tried so hard not to stare at her that she’d felt both conspicuous and invisible, like a ghost no one wants to admit is haunting their house.
“I’m fine,” she said to Devin Black. It came out sharper than she intended.
“If you say so.” He couldn’t keep a slight tone of skepticism out of his voice. “You should know that the studio has assigned me to make sure you get to Berlin without incident.”
Which meant he’d been assigned to keep her off the bottle. Resentment flared. “What I drink is none of the studio’s—or your—business.”
He didn’t drop his gaze. “We have a considerable investment in you.”
She stared right back. “You knew the risks when you brought me into this.”
Unexpectedly, a slow smile spread over his face, as if he couldn’t help it. “The risks. And the rewards.”
He slid stormy blue eyes over her, and a warm flush stole up her neck to her cheeks. She hadn’t blushed for a boy since the last time she’d seen Nicky, her first and only boyfriend. She’d forgotten how exciting it was to get flustered like that.
“The reward of seeing me look like a fugitive from a chain gang?” She made her voice tart, which helped the flush subside. It wasn’t as if she could truly be attracted to Devin Black. He was a studio minder, her jailer. He might be useful for now, but he was her adversary.
“You’re talented enough to make any role believable.” At her incredulous look, he leaned forward and said, “No, really. I remember seeing that they’d cast you in Leopard Bay as a homeless street girl and I thought, That will never work. But it was an astonishing performance. For once they gave the right person the Golden Globe for most promising newcomer.”
The role in Leopard Bay had been her most challenging, something to be proud of before her career devolved into fluff like The Bashful Debutante and Beach Bound Beverly. By then, she was too busy hanging on Nicky’s arm and getting down to some serious drinking to worry about the quality of her movie roles. If they’d all been as rigorous as Leopard Bay, her drinking problem might have been noticed—by her father, by her fellow actors, by the studio. Maybe things would have been different.
“I was more excited about getting the BAFTA,” she said. “As far as I know the British Academy can’t be bought, unlike the Hollywood Foreign Press.”
He smirked. “As far as you know. What was it like to work with Richard Burton?”
Pagan looked out the window, remembering a brooding, pockmarked face, a warm presence. “He’s even more charismatic in person, but he was sort of sad. He caught me sipping from his hip flask one day, and all he did was take it away from me very gently and shake his head.” Leopard Bay had been shot not long after her mother died. She’d started drinking in secret. “He helped me practice my Welsh accent.”
Pagan shook off the memory. Time to learn more about the mysterious Mister Black. “Where are you from?”
“New York.” He eased back into the leather seat and stretched out his long legs so that they almost touched hers. “Born and raised.”
“You don’t have a New York accent,” she said. “You sound like me.” Pagan had been coached in elocution from an early age. Once her career as a baby model had taken off, her mother had made sure she grew up trained in how to speak, move, sing, and dance. She now spoke with a nondescript American accent, instead of sounding like a California girl.
“Education drills out the quirks,” he said with a shrug. “But I don’t have your gift for mimicking accents.”
After the barest pause, he gave her another smile. It was warm. Deep. But she didn’t blush this time. That pause, that fraction of a second, before he flashed her that smile, opened up a part of her brain she hadn’t used in months, years. The smile was perfect. His eyes even crinkled at the corners exactly the way they should. But Pagan knew it was fake, because she was trained to know.
Devin Black was acting. Behind his seeming spontaneity lay an iron control.
Pagan curved her lips into a shy smile to simulate her own coy response, her mind racing. Liars were a dime a dozen in Hollywood. She herself was one of the best. But Devin Black was more than a liar. He was dangerous.
Strange forces were at work. And for her own sake, she had to unmask them.
Devin Black wasn’t the only one who could flirt to get what he wanted.
“You’re a New Yorker, so you must have been to the Stage Deli over on Houston,” she said.
The Stage Deli was on Seventh Avenue, not Houston. If Devin was indeed from New York, he’d know that. “My dad and I ate there all the time when I was shooting that musical in Manhattan. He had the pastrami sandwich five times in a row.”
Devin’s blue eyes narrowed slightly. “Katz’s Deli is on Houston. The Stage Deli’s on Seventh.”
“Oh, Katz’s!” She lifted one palm to the sky as if asking heaven to return her brain. “That’s what I meant.”
So Devin knew New York. That didn’t mean he wasn’t lying. She scooched an inch closer to him on the leather seat. “We’ll be stopping in New York on the way to Berlin probably, right? What’s the hot new thing on Broadway these days?”
He tilted his head, musing. “I was hoping to see The Happiest Girl in the World, but it closed in June.”
“I was hoping to be The Happiest Girl in the World.” She gave him a rueful smile. “Then my life turned into West Side Story in a hurry.”
“Have you heard from Nicky Raven recently?” he asked, his voice deceptively light.
Nicky. Just the sound of his name squeezed all the blood from Pagan’s heart. Born Niccolo Randazzo, Nicky sang smoother than Sinatra and could swing like Louis Armstrong. Nicky, with his thick brown hair swept back in a wave, those flexible lips that had kissed her so many times, and that slightly crooked nose lending his boyish face a tougher cast. Just the sound of his name sent everything inside her swirling upward like a dust devil.
The first time she’d seen him, he’d been swaggering past Stage 12 on the Universal lot, singing his latest hit, “Sunlight on Her Face.” His dark eyes had lighted upon Pagan as she’d walked past, and he’d stopped dead, taken her hand, and said, “Hey, beautiful. I’m gonna marry you.”
He’d asked her to dinner on the spot, and with her father’s permission, they’d dined that night at The Brown Derby. It was the first of many long, romantic evenings together.
She caught Devin Black’s assessing gaze and stifled the tumult inside her. He’d asked her about Nicky to see how flustered she would get, to test her weak spots. It was cold-blooded…and smart as hell.