Free A Date You Can't Refuse by Harley Jane Kozak Page A

quickly. “When?”
    “Oh, great. So you didn't know about it?”
    “When did it happen?”
    “I don't know. Recently. Her name was Chai.”
    “No last name?”
    “She was on
America's Next Top Model
. A few seasons ago. The seventh runner-up. There can't be too many of those walking around.”
    “I'll look into it. Anything else?”
    “Only that I bet Yuri Milos valued her too, yet she came to a bad end. So there goes half the argument you just made a minute ago.”
    “One-third of my argument,” he said, correcting me.
    I looked right at him. “So you didn't know her?”
    He turned to me, but it was too dark to read his expression. “I just said I didn't.”
    “It occurred to me that she might have worked for you.”
    “I told you we were unable to place anyone inside the household. Anything else?”
    I shook my head. I wanted him to pooh-pooh my fears, but he wasn't a pooh-pooh kind of guy, he was a worst-case-scenario guy. So I sucked it up and shook his hand and he left me at the pool, in full possession of my anxiety. After a moment I waved to the hot-tubbers and walked back down the path for a last night in my own bed.

NINE
    I was on the road to Calabasas by seven-thirty a.m., which gave me something in common with half of Los Angeles, slogging along on the 101 North. The other half, from what I could see, was on the 101 South. “Get used to it,” I told myself. “Traffic is now your life.”
    Yes, there'd been bad feng shui at the Oakwood Garden Apartments, but as I'd packed in the predawn hours, listening to the drone of a television through an open window, I was stricken by nostalgia. Whatever heartache or loneliness the residents might feel, whatever restless spirits inhabited that earth, not one bore the combination of secrets weighing me down like a bunch of sandbags. Only one person was in on my clandestine life, and my only connection to him was a frozen yogurt place on Mulholland Highway.
    And I had my doubts about him.
    Coming to a dead stop just before the 405, I used my time calling everyone who needed my change of address. With the exception of Simon; even if I wanted to tell him, contacting him required a series of steps so complex that I hadn't yet tried them. Now that I'd heard Bennett Graham's yogurt arrangements, I wondered if such security measures were second nature to these people, taught in FBI 101.
    My other loved ones had mixed reactions to my move.
    “Ah
, Calabasas,” Fredreeq said. “You let me know if you come across any black people there. We'll alert the news media.”
    “A gated community and no cell phones?” Joey asked. “Sounds like rehab.”
    “Calabasas!” my Uncle Theo said. “The word means ‘pumpkin,’ you know. I'm not familiar with Palomino Hills. Your mother once lived in Calabasas, in a treehouse. Before she met your father and me. She was studying Wiccan. I doubt the coven is there anymore.”
    I tried to imagine Palomino Hills rolling out the welcome mat for Wiccans. No.
    Only my brother was indifferent to Calabasas. “I'll be needing more books,” he said. “I'm almost done with
Cutting Through String Theory
. Do you have bookstores there?”
    “Yes, P.B. I'm still in America.”
    I'd used up half my cell phone battery before the 101 North disgorged me onto Valley Circle. At 8:55 I left a message on the MediasRex voice mail, saying I was fifteen minutes away, relieved to confess to a machine and not a person that I was late for my first day of work, thus letting down the team. Also, I was in moving-day clothes. Bad call.
    The guard at the gate of Palomino Hills was even less affable today, unable to choke out so much as a hello. I decided to make it my goal to win him over. With a smile, I nodded to the backseat. “I'm moving in. Hence the suitcases. My name's Wollie, by the way.”
    He didn't acknowledge me, but did show interest in my car, writing its license number on his clipboard before waving me through. Wordlessly. He could've worked