Facing the Music (Rosewood 1)

Blake frowned at her. Judging by the odd expression on his face, he was no longer concerned with fishing but focused entirely on this guy coming to see her. “Who’s coming?”

“My friend Malcolm. You’ve probably seen him in a couple of movies. He does a lot of guy-friendly action flicks. He was in that cop movie—Outlaw Justice—this past summer.”

“Malcolm Holt?”

Ivy smiled. “That’s him. I can get you an autograph if you’d like.”

Blake didn’t seem impressed. Or interested in her offer. “Is he staying at Miss Twila’s while he’s in town?”

Ivy opened her mouth to respond, but her answer was stolen by the positively jealous expression on Blake’s face. She was eating breakfast with Blake while she was half-naked, but he was jealous of Malcolm. “I think so,” she lied.

The truth was that he was staying at her cabin, but she didn’t think Blake would take that well at the moment. She and Malcolm were friends. Former lovers, according to the tabloids. But there was nothing Ivy could say right now that would make Blake feel better about her hanging out with a sexy movie star. Some secrets weren’t hers to tell.

“We’re probably going to spend some time in Birmingham, too,” she elaborated. “I’m doing interviews with the local news affiliates on Tuesday morning, so we’ll probably stay at a hotel Monday night and come back Tuesday afternoon.”

“When does Malcolm go back to Hollywood? Is he staying until the concert?”

He hadn’t even arrived yet and Blake was trying to send him packing. “Wednesday. I’ll drive him back first thing in the morning. He wanted to stay for the concert, but filming on his current movie resumes on Thursday.”

Blake nodded thoughtfully, chewing a bite of pancakes. “Okay. Well, once you’re done eating sushi and drinking champagne with movie stars, you’re going fishing with me.”

Ivy opened her mouth to argue with him, but Blake was probably right about her upcoming agenda. Malcolm was very fond of sushi. He might insist on some authentic southern food while he was here, but odds were that while they were in Birmingham, there would be sushi. And champagne. They’d made a habit of drinking champagne together on the occasions when their schedules lined up. It seemed indulgent and celebratory and they both loved that.

As much as she didn’t want to go fishing, she would. There was precious little time left to spend with Blake. That hadn’t been an issue when Malcolm made his plans to come out, but there was nothing she could do about that now. Instead, she would make the most of what time she could with Blake. If that meant fishing, so be it.

“Fishing on Wednesday,” she said. “It’s a date.”

Thinking of you. Thanks for a great night.

Nash looked down at his cell phone and cursed softly, drawing looks from a couple sitting at the table beside him. He had another text from Cheryl. She was apparently unfamiliar with the etiquette of the woman waiting to hear from the man after a date. Of course, he had no intention of contacting her ever again, but she didn’t know that. Even so, it was the seventh text he’d received since he took her home the night before. That was a little much.

He should’ve known he would have a problem when she’d looked at him on her front porch with those smitten eyes. She wanted him to kiss her. She was a nice-enough-looking lady, but he couldn’t take his ruse that far. It had already gone far enough.

It seemed that in his attempt not to be a total jerk and just use the lonely woman to get into the dance, he’d been too nice and encouraged her ideas about their “relationship.” He’d danced with her and brought her punch. He even took dance photos with her under the balloon arch, although by the time they arrived in the mail from the photography company, he would be long gone.

Despite her blowing up his phone, the night had gone fairly well, he thought. He was able to avoid the fireman who had threatened him in the diner. No one else recognized him as a reporter, most importantly not Ivy or Blake. Cheryl never seemed to notice that they danced only when Ivy and Blake danced. She would rest her head on his shoulder during the slow numbers, unable to see him slip his cell phone out of his pocket and snap a shot of the famous couple nearby.

Thankfully, he’d only have to avoid Cheryl for a few more days. There weren’t any more public activities with Ivy until the concert on Saturday. Not being able to return to the ice cream parlor for his favorite flavor was a small price to pay for the photos he’d nabbed at the dance.

Nash had uploaded his shots from his memory card first thing in the morning and went downstairs to shop them to a couple of sites while he ate breakfast. He sold some before he finished his second cup of coffee in Miss Twila’s breakfast room. No one could pass up the chance to plaster Ivy and her latest romance all across the Internet. Especially knowing the man she was kissing was the same man from both last week’s viral video and from that song.

It was a far more enticing story than the horse debacle of the previous morning. Nash had several shots of that disaster playing out, but he’d opted not to shop those. Despite what most people seemed to think, he had an honor code under which he operated. Selling those photos didn’t seem right. Ivy had nearly gotten killed and several people might’ve gotten hurt if that horse had made one wrong step.

Now, the shots he got of that sneaky little blonde with the firecracker were another matter. Nash hadn’t noticed until he went through his pictures on his laptop later, but he’d snapped two shots in the moments before Ivy’s horse reared up. In the first, on the fringe of the picture, a woman was squatting down behind the crowd. She had a lighter in one hand and she was holding something in the other hand. In the second shot, the item was more easily identified as a small firecracker. She was tossing it into the street just as Ivy and Blake were riding past her. In the next picture, as the horse panicked, the blonde was gone.

Nash had seen the same blonde at the dance and asked Cheryl who she was. She’d said Lydia Whittaker’s name with such distaste, he’d let the subject drop. That was all he needed to start, anyway. From there, he could figure out what she had against Ivy and who would be willing to pay the most for those pictures.

Blake had been furious after the parade, and Nash had no doubt he would be interested in the photographic proof of the guilty party. Of course, there was also the blonde herself. Lydia looked like the kind of woman who had plenty of money and would pay to keep those pictures from becoming public. Blackmail was a dirty word, but sometimes it paid better than the gossip blogs.

“What are you doing?” a woman’s voice asked from over his shoulder.

Nash turned to see Miss Twila, the older woman who owned the B and B, standing behind him with irritation twisting her face into a wrinkled frown. She seemed like a sweet old lady, but that was far from the truth. She’d tossed a couple of reporters out since he’d gotten there. Nash had kept his cameras and equipment in the trunk of his rental and tried to keep a low profile. He had only brought his computer downstairs to email out some pictures because it was the only place the Wi-Fi worked.

“Good morning, Miss Twila,” he said with a smile, closing his laptop. Hopefully she hadn’t seen what he was doing.

“That was a picture of Ivy and Blake kissing on your computer.” She pointed at it accusingly. “You’re not a real reporter. You’re another one of those gossipmongers, aren’t you? You should be ashamed of yourself, stalking that poor girl and putting every private moment of her life on the Internet for everyone to see. I won’t have you conducting your sleazy business in my inn. Pack up,” she said, snatching his breakfast plate away, half-eaten. “I want you out of here by checkout time.”

“Where’s Ivy?” Grant asked, salting the eggs that Ruth had just brought him. “I haven’t seen her since the dance the other night.”