Page 11 of Scotlander

She gave an airy little Perhaps to disguise any excitement she felt that he wanted to know whether or not she was single.

Instead of pressing, he began addressing the practical elements of their situation. He asked where her work was, her apartment, whether or not she could go back out to Covina and get her car tomorrow or if he should send one of ‘his people’.

She responded with the same rat-a-tat-tat style. Burbank. Angelinos Heights. One of ‘his people’ would be amazing but not necessary, oh okay, go on, then.

‘Can we go to your apartment?’ he asked next. ‘Take a shower?’

She blushed again and began to stammer something about taking things one step at a time before he cut in with a very dry, ‘Separately. Take showers separately.’

She filled the car with screeches of awkward laughter. ‘I know. Hahahaha. Psych! Your face!’ Ohmigawd, kill me now.

He waved a hand between them and said, ‘If our next stop is TiTs, we’re going to have to arrive smelling of roses, not whiskey and butterscotch schnapps. I’m happy to go to my club downtown if you prefer, but this way would be faster.’

‘Wait. You’re coming to my office with me?’ That was weird. And also completely unnecessary. This was the modern era. She didn’t need a man to swoop in and explain to her bosses that she needed to fly to Scotland this Friday even though— Ohhhh, fiddlesticks.

The week after next was Sweeps Week. The hallowed week during which the national ratings services measured the size of TV audiences in order to figure out advertising rates. For the next two weeks, the network owned her down to her cell structure. There was no way on god’s green earth she could go on Val’s non-refundable, once in a lifetime, will-fulfilling Outlander experience.

‘I can’t go.’ She told him why.

‘Yes. You can.’

‘Yeah, right. You haven’t met my boss.’

‘Yes, I have.’

She gave him a side-eye. ‘Do you do all of your stealth work from some sort of secret bunker hidden in the subterranean depths of the Disney Studios?’

‘No. Palm Springs.’

Where living in a secret underground bunker made sense. But – she didn’t know why this hadn’t occurred to her earlier, but – what was he doing living a two-hour drive away from his dying sister and not visiting? She’d definitely invited him to her wake, so he knew.

Before her hackles could fly up, he tapped the side of his nose. ‘People owe me favours and my sister has charged me with seeing that you fulfil her wishes, so it is my chivalrous duty to accompany you into the lion’s den.’

‘Even though it’s a lioness’s den?’

‘Where you go . . . I shall follow.’ His full lips quirked into a gorgeous Latino-Dread-Pirate-Roberts-type smile. He may as well have been tumbling down a hill calling out, ‘Aaaaas youuuuuuu wiiiiiiiiiiish!’ If she hadn’t been sitting down, she would’ve swooned. But also . . . wasn’t it interesting that he saw it as his mission to help her fulfil the Wishes Letter? Did that mean she was on duty to ensure he fulfilled his? She filed that little nugget away for later. Their long-haul flight was going to be one long Q&A session.

Two showers, four cups of coffee and one trip into the valley later, you could’ve coloured Willa Extremely Impressed.

‘You’re good,’ she said, as she and Gabe left the studio’s administrative offices weighed down by a pair of freshly delivered ‘bereavement baskets’ filled with soothing eye gels, a microwaveable body wrap, and an astonishing array of calming essential oil candles.

‘I know,’ he said without an ounce of braggadocio.

Frankly, she was a little shell-shocked. ‘You told them the truth.’

‘Which’ – he gave her a bemused look – ‘you see as a bad thing?’

She was about to launch into a little speech about how no one had known about the situation with Valentina because no one really cared about Willa’s personal life when his eyes began to twinkle. ‘When you went out to explain to the new intern about how to put show segment entries into the system, I promised your boss an exclusive with Britney and another with Rita Ora and Zendaya taking a barre class together.’

‘Sweet cheeses!’ she shouted. ‘How did you manage that?’

He gave her a look.

Ohhhhh.

‘Zendaya?’ she prompted. The star was scandal free as far as she knew.

‘Non-disclosure agreement,’ he retorted, sealing those lovely lips of his with a finger zip.