Free Hollywood Tiger: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance (Hollywood Shifters Book 3) by Zoe Chant Page B

bent intently over the laptop.
    “I have to say, though I’m no expert, these contracts look legit,” he commented. “One point two mil for a screenplay that sounds like something me and my buddies wrote when we were in high school? Damn!”
    “About that,” Mindy said, and repeated her conversation with Emma Gordon, ending with, “Aren’t internships usually unpaid? And even if they are paid, for one point two million, surely she would already have an agent and be in the Writers’ Guild, wouldn’t she? Whether or not she’d signed a non-disclosure agreement. She sounded confused, or maybe it was only me.”
    “That makes two of us,” he said.
    “One thing I do know,” she stated. “And this isn’t just Haskell, though I notice he does it in exactly the same tone, with exactly the same creepy smile, which is to say ‘Trust me,’ right before he utters a big fat lie. They all do it! The word ‘trust’ has almost lost all meaning, like the word ‘value’ hammered at you day and night from commercials trying to sell you something you don’t want and don’t need. It’s got so that anyone who says ‘trust me’ is a red alert.”
    He gave her a rueful smile. “I hope I haven’t said that to you.”
    “Of course you haven’t,” she retorted.
    “And I won’t.” He held up his right hand. “Trust me!”
    She dug her elbow in his side, knowing she was doing it as an excuse to press up against him.
    Dennis gave that lovely rumbling purr of a chuckle deep in his gorgeous chest, then said, “But this much I am sure of, you’re right about something shady in that screenwriter’s story. I’ve listened to Mick enough for my bullshit detector to be at Defcon Three. Tell you what. Let’s shoot this stuff over to Sloane, go get some dinner, and I’ll drop you off at your car. We’ll let the experts hash this stuff out.”
    She agreed, and grabbed up her clothes to change in the bathroom. There was obviously at least one other bathroom in the place, because when she came out, dressed again, there he was in jeans and a loose shirt over a tight black tee that hugged his chest and abs. God, he was handsome, she thought, staring up at him.
    He smiled lazily down as he asked, “What kind of food do you like?”
    “Anything,” she said as he led the way out to the garage where the Lexus waited.
    “Well, that narrows it down to all of L.A.,” he retorted with good cheer as he held open her door for her. “Let’s try this. Do you like live music? Middle Eastern?”
    Mindy waited until he got in the driver’s seat, then said, “I love folk music, ethnic music, really, everything but rock that feels packaged. And live is my preference—I usually don’t tell people this, because I know it sounds snobby, and of course I’ll listen to anything if someone recommends it. But that summer in Hawai’i, I first got addicted to traditional Hawai’ian music when I heard it played live. Then someone introduced me to Polynesian music, then Malaysian, and well, you get the idea.”
    “It was Greek that hooked me,” Dennis said as he wove down the narrow, winding road between discreetly hidden Hollywood houses. “On one of those tiger cruises. Lucked into a concert by Domna Samiou. She talked about the roots of the music, some of it more than two thousand years old. My buddy JP unearthed some CDs his father had collected on tours with his orchestra. For a while there I wouldn’t listen to anything newer than five centuries old. God, what an obnoxious ass I was.”
    “I think obnoxious assery pretty much goes with the territory when you’re a teen. What’s your favorite kind of music now?”
    “No single favorite. But the types I like best go with dance. Lately I’ve been listening to some Georgian, and a year ago when I saw a Chhau celebration, I started hunting down recordings,” he said.
    “I’d love to see both,” she said as he turned onto Hollywood Blvd. “What’s the oddest to Western ears