Free Out of the Box 7 - Sea Change by Robert J. Crane Page A

sorry.”
    “He doesn’t sound sorry,” Scott said. “He sounds … kinda jealous, actually.”
    “Whatever,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, “at least she doesn’t have the film crew following her around right now.”
    “Yeah,” Scott said, his face sort of scrunched up, “I wonder what’s up with that. I thought she didn’t go anywhere without it.”
    “Maybe they took my threat to heart.” Or anus, as the case may be.
    “Maybe,” he said, blowing air between his lips, then stopping suddenly when he realized how rude it sounded. “Uhm … should we mingle?”
    I thought about that for a minute. “Parties are not really my scene, as you know.”
    He frowned. “How would I know that?”
    I froze. Of course he didn’t know that. It wasn’t like he could have remembered the awful Christmas gala his family held that he’d made me suffer through only a few years ago. I remembered it clearly, of course, every bit of it, but he didn’t. “Do you suppose there’s a buffet table?” I asked to change the subject.
    “Can’t have a party without something to eat,” he opined as another guest, this one I recognized from a daytime soap that I might maybe have occasionally watched now that I was working from home—came up to give Kat her not-so-sympathetic-sympathies.
    It took three rooms of hunting to find the food, and when I found it, I was actually kind of disappointed.
    “Hi,” a woman said as she came up to me with a bright, effervescent smile.
    “Hi,” I returned, already put on my guard by her chipper nature.
    “How’d you get here tonight?” she asked.
    “I … flew,” I said, blinking.
    She threw her head back and laughed. “Out of towner, huh?”
    “Is it that obvious?” I looked back and found Scott missing, nowhere in sight. Probably threw himself behind one of the lampshades when he saw this one coming.
    “You can always pick ’em out,” she said, arching her eyebrows. “What do you do?”
    I narrowed my eyes at her. “I’m in law enforcement.”
    She tilted her head to the side. “You’re a cop? No way! My next project has me playing this role as a minor—well, it’s not really minor, it’s a very integral part—”
    “Excuse me,” I said, instead of being exceptionally rude and just saying what I meant, which was, “Get away from me before I get sick right in your face.” I wasn’t feeling sick at all, but it was starting to become a danger because I was really hungry and the so-called buffet was not looking very buffet-y.
    I pushed past her and found myself in a kitchen that looked like Kat’s, except it was black and kind of brown-toned and … I really have no feel for decorating, as anyone who had ever seen my linoleum kitchen floors would be able to attest to. Ariadne still looked a little ill every time she lowered her gaze in the kitchen. There was no linoleum here; it was a beautiful wood floor with a white-yellow tinge. I was looking in the other direction when I ran into someone, shoulder-checking them into a marble-topped counter.
    “Ow,” the guy said, flinching and grabbing at his back. I spun on him, noticing two more of the black-suited security personnel focusing on me and my little disturbance. They even had the earpieces sticking out of their ears, and it made me wonder what nightclub rope line was missing its clown-car full of bouncers for the evening.
    “Yeah, you should watch where you’re going,” I said, giving the guy I’d run into the once over.
    “I guess so,” he said, sounding genuinely remorseful as he straightened back up. “You pack a full head of steam, huh?” He had brown eyes, chestnut-colored hair, and—
    Whoooooops.
    I realized after an uncomfortable second of staring that I’d just shoulder-checked Steven Clayton. The Steven Clayton. The one who had become Hollywood’s leading man in the last couple years, the one who was two parts Chris Hemsworth, one part Chris Pratt, and a little bit of Tom Cruise before the