“He’s still here, Miss Callie. Traffic’s a bitch this morning. You want to talk to him?”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “But would you please make a U-turn and haul his butt back over here?”
“Uh-oh, what’d he do now?”
“He hired a babysitter for me, one with a gun,” she said, not even trying to hide her outrage.
Henry didn’t have any more luck trying to stifle a chuckle, assuming he tried at all. He seemed to find their more volatile exchanges amusing. “We’ll be right there, Miss Callie,” he promised with the eagerness of a man looking forward to a barroom brawl. “Ten minutes, tops.”
She was pretty sure she heard Jason asking what the hell was going on right before she hung up and headed for the street, Hank hard on her heels.
She whirled around and poked a finger in his very solid chest. “Stay,” she ordered.
He grinned. “Personally, I would be happy to oblige you, but like I said, I have my instructions. You go nowhere without me.”
She couldn’t blame Hank for all of this and the last thing she wanted to do was get him into trouble with the producers or, knowing Jason, with the police commissioner himself. Some very high-level negotiations had probably gone on to free up Hank’s time.
“Okay, but you wait at the door,” she instructed. “You do not follow me to the limo.”
He looked doubtful but finally conceded, “As long as you’re in plain sight, I suppose that would work.”
“Make it work,” she muttered as she crossed the sidewalk to wait at the curb. As the limo cruised to a stop, she yanked open the back door and glared at Jason.
“Fire him,” she demanded, pointing over her shoulder toward Hank, who was leaning against the studio wall, enjoying the scene a little too much. Between him and Henry, who’d rolled down his window to listen more attentively, she was definitely playing to an appreciative audience.
Jason followed the direction of her gesture and asked with a look of pure innocence, “Who’s he?”
“He is the policeman who was consulting on the show. He is now the policeman who has been assigned to protect me.”
Jason gave a nod of satisfaction. “Good.”
“Good?” she repeated incredulously. “It is not good. It is lousy. If our perp—do you like that word? It’s cop lingo. Hank over there taught it to me. If our perp discovers that I’m under guard, don’t you think he’s going to guess that I am very involved in this—whatever the hell this is—and decide I’m more of a danger than ever? You’re turning me into the damned target instead of Terry.”
“And just maybe the sight of a guard will scare him off,” Jason countered. “I like my version better.”
“Are you willing to take a chance that you’re right and I’m not?”
Jason surveyed Hank from his well-developed shoulders to the tips of his boots. He seemed especially fond of the gun handle, barely visible inside Hank’s denim jacket. “He looks as if he’s ready for that possibility.”
Callie groaned. Saints protect her from macho men! “Let’s just hope his attention’s on me and not on the little starlet he finds so fascinating,” she snapped.
“It will be,” Jason said grimly, exchanging a look with Hank that spoke volumes.
Clearly the two of them were communicating on some level that a mere woman couldn’t possibly hope to comprehend or contradict. Callie gave up. She stepped back and spoke to Henry, who’d been blatantly eavesdropping, a grin on his face.
“Why don’t you take Mr. Kane and drive him straight into the East River,” she suggested pleasantly.
“I’ll give it some thought,” he promised. “Long as I can figure a way to do it that won’t ruin the finish on the car.”
“We’ll discuss this later,” Jason said to her. He was disgustingly unruffled by her indignation.
“Not with me, you won’t,” Callie said. “I’m going back inside to investigate my brains out, now that I have all this backup.”
With that, she whirled and went into the studio, leaving three men staring after her. Hank caught up with her before she’d gone two feet down the corridor.
“Maybe you’d better fill me in on this investigation business,” he said.
“Sorry, no can do,” she said, mimicking his earlier comment. “You’re just going to have to sit this one out. Maybe Lisa will keep you company.”
As it turned out, though, Hank and Lisa stuck to her like glue. The only person Callie got to speak to without the pair of them hovering over her was Terry, during their scenes in front of the camera.
“Why is that cop hanging around?” Terry whispered as they finished taping their first scene.
“Three guesses,” Callie muttered, scowling in Hank’s direction.
Terry’s eyes widened with dismay. “He knows?”
Callie shook her head. “Of course not. Heaven forbid anyone would actually give him any useful information. He was just hired to protect me from evil forces.”
“And who’s going to protect him?” Terry wondered.
His gaze traveled to Lisa, who was nibbling on Hank’s ear, causing the cop’s complexion to turn beet-red when he realized they were being observed.
“He’s been warned,” Callie replied.
“A two-by-four between the eyes wouldn’t be enough warning for a man under Lisa’s spell,” Terry predicted.
“Look, could you take your eyes off Hank and Lisa long enough to help me figure out who I ought to be questioning next? Who on the set knows the most gossip? Besides Lisa, I mean.”
“That would be me, darling,” Lindsay Gentry announced.
She had slipped up beside them so quietly, Callie hadn’t heard a thing. Clearly that was a skill that aided in eavesdropping on the good stuff. Lindsay tucked her arm possessively through Terry’s and regarded Callie smugly.
“What I don’t know, I make up,” she informed them. “It keeps the day from getting too, too boring.”
Ever since the day Terry had openly chastised her for trying to sabotage Callie’s scenes, Lindsay had behaved with cool professionalism in Callie’s presence. Callie doubted they would ever become bosom buddies, but at least the off-camera sniping and deliberate flubbing of lines
