Page 33 of For Better or for Ransom

Sol sighed. He liked her piece. Things would hopefully be somewhat easier. “Thanks. So glad you liked it.” She smiled. Luke and Divya’s curious eyes were on her. They were clearly inpatient. Sol simply pointed to the food on the table so that they kept eating and let her do her thing. “Listen, I’ve heard a rumor and I hardly know what to do with it. Leonardo swore to me that he was single but I heard that he was seeing Pili Garcia? I mean, they had crazy chemistry onstage…” Divya’s initial part of the plan had been laid. Hopefully Sol had been convincing enough in her delivery.

Sol lifted her eyes from the table, and Luke’s eyes were glued to her. There were butterflies in her stomach but not because she was nervous about the bizarre request from Divya and the call with Sandro Palau. Luke’s penetrating eyes were the ones making her almost blush. She took her gaze from him and back to the table, and nervously slid her fingers between her hair, tucking a loose strand behind one of her ears.

“That’s absolute nonsense!” Sandro retorted against Sol's lie about Leonardo and Pili. “Who told you that?”

“You know I can’t divulge my sources. It wouldn’t be ethical.” Sol was also not supposed to make up stories either, but she justified the breach in journalistic integrity because they were trying to find an actor who could be in danger.

“People are such gossips!” Sandro retorted. “Leo wasn’t seeing Pili. Pili can’t even stand him. And she wasn’t his type!”

A knot tightened in Sol’s chest. She was taking advantage of a vulnerable Sandro to pry information from him. She reminded herself Leonardo Pascual was still missing and the detectives in front of her believed figuring out who his lover was could help them find him.

“But, do you know if he was really seeing someone?” She continued the attack. “This is completely off the record, by the way. To be honest with you, I just called you because I want to get my editor off my back. But I won’t publish anything. Who cares if Leonardo was in a relationship or not? It’s his business. But I thought that perhaps, if I found out that it was true, I could tell the people who are investigating his disappearance…” That last part had been harder to pull off than Sol had anticipated when she’d told Divya she’d help. Sol had only been able to do it after she’d followed the notes from the instructions Divya had given her.

“Why do you want to do that?” Sandro’s voice had switched from calm to slightly alarmed.

“Perhaps if they find whoever Leonardo was seeing, they’ll find him…”

“Leonardo didn’t run away with his lover.” Sandro’s words were certain. “At least I don’t think so…” he added. It was almost as if he’d realized he needed to add some hesitation to his previous statement.

Both Divya and Luke had stopped eating again and were staring at her with questioning faces. She tried reassuring them with a smile. There was something different about Luke though. At first, Sol had thought that he’d been lost in his thoughts about the case. But he kept staring at her in an intense way that made her heart beat faster every time she looked at him. So she took her eyes from him, again. She needed to finish that phone call.

“But do you know if Leonardo was having a relationship?” Sol asked.

Sandro sighed. “If he chose not to tell you, I can’t do it myself.”

“I understand,” Sol thanked Sandro for his time and hung up the phone shortly after that, grateful the conversation was over, and that the two detectives had saved some of the appetizers for her. “I’m starving!” She was still not looking at Luke. Her cheeks warmed just thinking about his eyes on her.

“So…” Divya glared at Sol, impatient.

“Yes, Leonardo was totally shagging Sandro.” Sol opted to devour the food on her plate. If she looked at the dish, she didn't have to worry about facing her lover. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to know what was going on with Luke, but they needed to be alone first.

“See!” Divya slapped Luke on the arm, a knowing smirk on her face.

“How can you be so sure?” Luke inquired. Sol allowed herself a glimpse of his features. By the looks of his face, he wasn’t a fan of the Leonardo Pascual/Sandro Palau couple hypothesis. Sol, on the other hand, found them adorable. The two of them were smoking hot separately but even more so if one imagined them together.

A waiter brought the main rice dish. Sol waited for her to leave to begin to enumerate her deductions.

“Sandro got a bit jealous when I insinuated Leo was seeing Pili,” she said in between bites. “Then he got all bothered when I told him I was thinking of talking to the investigators about my scoop regarding Leonardo seeing someone romantically. And at the end he pretty much confirmed he knew he had a relationship.”

“He did?” Divya was dying with curiosity.

“He didn’t say: ‘No, Leo wasn’t seeing someone’ or ‘I have no clue who Leo was or wasn’t seeing.’ He said that, if Leonardo chose not to tell me whether he was having a relationship, he couldn’t do it himself either.”

“That doesn’t mean Pascual was shagging Palau,” Luke protested. “It just means he knew the other one was shagging someone.”

Sol almost huffed. Fortunately, Divya intervened before she had to do it.

“Luke, mate. You’re smarter than this when you aren’t having a complicated day. We’ve been told Leonardo isn’t big on sharing information about his personal life. Not even with his parents. And all of a sudden he’s open to share with his cast mate that he’s shagging someone… Doesn’t it make more sense if his cast mate is also the one he’s shagging?”

Luke seemed to be about to protest, stopped to think, and then he made a gesture that meant concession.

What had Sol worried wasn’t how it was possible that her detective lover hadn’t seen something that was clear even for her, but why Divya had said that he was having a complicated day. Somehow Sol didn’t think that had to do anything with the case they were investigating.

19

Luke

After a lunch that had been flavorsome but somehow almost uncomfortable—Luke had the strange feeling that Sol had purposely avoided looking directly at him—they’d all decided to grab a taxi and move to Sol’s place. It was time they called The Single Dad Situation’s showrunner Jasper Fairbanks. Luke hoped Fairbanks wouldn’t be all cagey and bring up an NDA or some other pretext to avoid talking to the detectives. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case.