Page 14 of Scripted for Love and Poison (Sol and Luke Mystery #2)

“ W here are you?” Sol said when he finally picked up the phone.

“Literally no idea.”

“You don’t know where you are?” Had she managed to lose her perfectly considerate and gorgeous Italian British lover in the immensity of Los Angeles?

If so, Sol would never forgive herself. There was no chance she’d ever be able to replace him or forget him.

And did that make her feel uneasy? Certainly it made her feel less independent and self-sufficient than a few months before.

“Not really.” Did he sound cagey? “But thank gods for technology. I’m requesting an Uber now to go back to Lola’s place. We’re meeting back there, right?”

“I thought we could do something different,” said Sol.

“I think Lola said her husband was going to cook something special for us tonight.”

“You need to stop sounding so reasonable.” Sol’s voice thinned with irritation. “I was hoping we’d spend some time together. Alone. ”

“You found us a place?” She relished the enthusiasm and insinuation in his tone.

“I didn’t,” Sol admitted, defeated. “Unless you don’t mind a shared room in an Airbnb by the airport.”

“I think I’d rather stay at Lola’s for another night if that’s the only option and they don’t mind us cramping their living room. But we can’t just disappear. The husband is cooking. Should I get a bottle of wine or two?”

Sol let out an exasperated sigh. “The husband is always cooking! I can’t believe we’re arguing because you’re hungry and think a dinner is a better option than spending some time with me.”

“What are you talking about? I just want to be courteous to your very nice friends, who’ve taken us over and given us a roof,” he said, and he really needed to stop sounding so sensible, or she was going to flip.

“I’m not even hungry. I just interviewed the chef who cooked at the awards ceremony, and she fed me a bunch of stuff. ”

“You took food from someone who may have poisoned someone else?”

“I mean, when you put it like that. I wasn’t the only one eating. She was also trying all the stuff.”

“Such a relief!” Sol didn’t even try to mask her discontent.

“I guess this is not the moment to offer you full disclosure and tell you the chef may have been chatting me up for most of the interview.”

“Seriously?” Sol said, the bite in her remark perfectly audible.

“Would it have been better if I didn’t tell you about it? She didn’t mention that some of the food had hard liquor in it, and I’m a bit pissed right now. Hence the oversharing. ”

“Most definitely better if you hadn’t said a single thing,” she said, feigning absolute indifference when all she wanted to ask was whether he’d flirted back.

Was he only telling her that because he wanted to make her jealous?

He’d most definitely achieved it. “Listen, I need to let you go. Claudia is calling me back. And I’ve been trying to talk to her all day,” Sol said instead of coming clean.

“Right, see you at your friends’?”

“Sure.” She hung up, fuming.

“Claudia, thanks for calling me back,” Sol said when she picked up her former editor’s call. She tried breathing deeply. She needed to relax. The conversation with Luke had spiked her heart rate and angered her to inexplicable levels.

“I only have a couple of minutes before I get into a dreadful planning meeting,” the editor said. “I need awards season to be over!”

“Don’t we all?” Sol commiserated. “Listen, I checked your job offer. It sounds interesting.”

“So you said the other day,” Claudia said, her tone just shy of icy. “Yet somehow I had the impression you couldn’t be less interested .”

“It’s not that,” Sol said, and for once she’d have liked to not always be so transparent and direct. “You caught me by surprise.”

“You didn’t want the beau to know you may be leaving him and moving to Los Angeles for the right opportunity, eh?”

Sol remembered how much she disliked her former boss. Claudia always assumed she knew what everyone was thinking and feeling, and she was an absolute busybody.

“It’s not that,” Sol cut in. That wasn’t the reason she hadn’t cared about the position, and she wasn’t talking about Luke right then. Not when she was furious with him, and not with Claudia. “It’s just that I’ve heard some rumors.”

“You’re a veteran journalist and a smart, old woman and you’re listening to rumors ,” Claudia said. Why was everyone so adamant in reminding her that she was no longer young?

“Precisely because I’m a veteran journalist and a smart, old woman, I listen to rumors. It doesn’t mean I always believe them, but I consider what small fraction of truth they may hold. Is it true that you fired Travis?” Sol finally let out the true reason for that call.

“Ah, those rumors,” Claudia said, displeased, but she didn’t offer anything else. Sol was tempted to do the nice thing and fill in the silence, but she knew well not to do it. She wasn’t giving Claudia an easy way out of an uncomfortable conversation. “We had to let him go.”

“You told me he was retiring.”

“He’s sixty-nine!” Claudia said, and Sol couldn’t help thinking the editor was being a cretin and a bit of an ageist, especially considering she couldn’t be far behind Travis age-wise.

“He should have retired years ago. We offered him a very nice buyout during the second-to-last round of layoffs, and he wouldn’t take it. ”

“But he’s such a great writer and has a devoted following,” reasoned Sol.

“Which is why we didn’t lay him off when we could,” said Claudia. “But he makes a lot of money, which we cannot keep paying.”

“I see, you’re looking for a cheaper replacement.”

“Cheaper, perhaps, but the position still comes with an eighty-thousand-dollar salary, full benefits, the comfort of a staff position where you don’t have to hustle for assignments every single day, and the prestige of Performance Weekly .”

Both Sol and Claudia knew well that even if the magazine wanted the experience and responsibility Travis had for far less money, something like what Claudia was offering was rare and coveted for a mid-level critic like Sol, who still had decades of career ahead of her and not many prospects at present.

“As I said, it’s a very interesting position and an attractive one ,” Sol admitted. “If you’re still serious about the offer ...”

“I am,” Claudia said. “Mainly because the last thing I want is to interview several candidates only to find out I can’t stand the ones whose writing I actually like and vice versa. I know you’re a good writer and relatively easy to be around.”

“When should I give you an answer?” Did she feel a pang of guilt because she was having that conversation?

“A couple of days ago, when I offered you the job the first time,” Claudia deadpanned. “But the end of the week will do. I’ll start interviewing candidates on Monday if I haven’t heard from you.”

“Sounds good,” Sol said, and she let the editor go back to her busy afternoon.

She’d prefaced the conversation with Claudia using the job offer as an excuse to talk to her and ask her about Travis. She wanted to know why she’d lied and whether Claudia could have been involved in any way with Travis’s poisoning.

But Sol had been sidetracked when she’d truly realized what was being offered.

Should she not even contemplate the position?

She was well aware how rare a television critic opening was.

Was she being smart by avoiding working with Claudia a second time?

It had been an absolute nightmare the first time around.

She hated the editor’s bossy, snarky style.

And was she simply closing herself to that opportunity because the idea of running into her ex from time to time if she moved back to Los Angeles terrified her?

Was the Californian city off-limits for good because David still lived there?

Had she been that scarred by her marriage to him?

And, of course, there was also the difficult-to-ignore man in her life right now. But was Luke an important enough reason to stay in London?