Free Ginny Blue's Boyfriends by Nancy Kelly Page B

and asked, “Did you get fries?”
    “Nah. I’m trying to keep my girlish figure.”
    He said intensely, “Let’s do it. Let’s get some burgers and Buds and go to the beach. I’ve got the music.”
    Somehow I knew he would. But I could feel Tom’s searing interest and that of several other production people, men and women closer to my own age of thirty-something, and I had to take a pass. “After the job’s over, let’s make it a production wrap party.”
    “Bullshit,” Tom said. “We’re going somewhere that serves vodka.”
    There was a general consensus that the beach idea wasn’t on. Sean was a little crushed but accepted defeat gracefully. I kept surreptitious surveillance of him the rest of the afternoon but by the time I’d finished my day’s work he was out on a production run and I left without seeing him again.
    I placed three calls to Liam Engleston over the course of the day and he never got back to me. Jill has her own fledgling catering business since she quit the snooty catering company she was working for—the same catering company where she’d met Ian. But Ian went off to some equally snooty restaurant and dived into the purchasing and business end of the biz. Jill stuck with the food itself, which is weird, weird since she’s basically an anorexic and/or bulemic. She seems drawn to food—her enemy—and she can make the most delicious meals from the strangest assortment of items, but she rarely eats them. She shudders over my penchant for fast food, but I don’t really get why. Let’s face it: when it’s coming back up, it looks bad no matter what it is. I guess for Jill, choosing to be a caterer is a lot like a policeman swearing if he didn’t go into law enforcement, he would have become a criminal. The yin and yang of obsession. Whatever the case, I determined that Liam was out and Jill was in, and the rest of the production staff could just whine and moan.
    Just before I took off for the day the phone rang and one of Liam Engleston’s assistants, who was equally as fussy as the man himself, said Mr. Engleston would be phoning me the next day as he was too busy to talk to me today. I rolled my eyes but murmured, “That’ll be fine,” then made retching noises as I dropped the phone into the receiver. I figured I’d kill the assignment directly with Liam. I’d tried every way I knew to make it clear that we would be eating SANDWICHES and SALAD if we were lucky, but the man still acted as if he were catering to the royal family.
    Around three P.M. I let myself into my condo, suffering a slight headache, the kind that feels like it could work its way into a full-blown clanger if not properly taken care of. It’s sad to say, but I’m not as good at drinking into the night then getting up in the morning as I used to be.
    Noticing the deep silence I thought of Nate and that bad feeling stole over me once more. Grinding my teeth, I refused to go down the “poor me” road. Instead I kicked off my shoes and threw myself into Nate’s chair—was that a ripping sound from the leather?—when my doorbell rang. Swearing softly beneath my breath, I pulled myself back out of the chair and silently asked the gods why they couldn’t make sure everyone left me the hell alone until I felt better. Peering through the peephole I viewed Daphne standing dejectedly on the porch. Shit. That’s right. She wanted to stop by and talk.
    “Could this day get any better?” I muttered to myself as I threw open the door. “Hi,” I greeted her with a lot more enthusiasm than I felt.
    “Hi,” she answered dully as she entered. Uh oh , I thought as I closed the door behind her. This looked like real depression. The most frightening thing of all was that Daphne’s arms were flat to her sides, the fingers of one hand lackadaisically holding an open bottle of Chardonnay by the neck. It didn’t appear she remembered the bottle. Before I could remind her, she hiccupped twice and stumbled into the