Page 8 of Scripted for Love and Poison (Sol and Luke Mystery #2)
T hey had reached that unavoidable point in awards ceremonies in which Sol was officially tired.
They were two and a half hours in, and most of the main awards had yet to be announced, but she was bored, hungry (Sol had deemed the provided food not desirable), and would much rather have stayed in and watched the whole thing from bed, in her pajamas.
The bought-in-a-hurry shoes were killing her even while seated, and the dress she was wearing couldn’t be described as comfy athleisure.
Even the continuous comings and goings of famous, beautiful people inside the venue was starting to get old. She no longer cared if Jennifer Aniston was wearing a stunning black bustier with matching pants. Or if Jonathan Bailey was himself stunning.
“You’re getting tired,” Luke leaned in and whispered. He’d learned to read her so well.
“I wish we’d stayed at the hotel, ordered room service, and watched from bed, to be honest,” Sol told him in a hushed voice that would not be overheard by their neighbors. “Or we could have skipped the whole watching and still stayed in bed.”
They looked at each other, and she could feel the longing in Luke’s hungry eyes. Between the disastrous holiday break, work, the franticness before their trip to Los Angeles, and jet lag, they hadn’t had sex often those past few weeks, and that was uncommon for them—and unacceptable.
Sol had almost interpreted this sudden lack of sex as an ominous sign that the last sentence in her story with Luke could have been already written, like the last sentence of her book. But his mischievous eyes told her a completely different thing.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Absolutely. We’ve done the fancy, glamorous party already. No need to stay till the end. The longer we wait, the harder it’s going to be to get a ride back to the hotel. And I have a sudden urge to get to the hotel.”
“I’m also feeling the urge, but I thought this was important for your work,” Luke said, and she needed him to stop sounding so reasonable.
“I’ve already said hi to everyone I like, like Travis, and even a few people I don’t like, like Jason and Claudia.
The real reason I wanted to come wasn’t to attend this but because I wanted to show you the city where I lived for so long.
And I still haven’t been able to do it. I’m sure you’ll end up loving Los Angeles. ”
Luke gave her a skeptical arch of his eyebrow.
“Plus, Simon Smith is clearly not here, or Claudia would have found out about it. Nothing escapes her. And we haven’t been able to get a word out of Victor Lago all night, even though judging by all he’s drunk, he should be quite talkative.”
“No, but I’ve caught him checking you out at least a couple of times,” said Luke, his eyes flicking to their table neighbor.
“I don’t think he’s been checking me out more than any other woman who isn’t his partner,” said Sol. She’d also noticed Victor’s eyes on her and a few other people. “But in any case, we haven’t neglected our promise to Julie.”
“What about Greta Gerwig?” Luke asked. “We still haven’t spotted her.”
“I want to believe she would tell me to go ahead and leave with my sexy partner.”
“Let’s go then,” he practically growled. They were already standing up to leave, taking advantage of one of the many commercial breaks during the ceremony, when they heard a shrieking yell, audible even in the crowd.
They remained frozen for what felt like a few minutes but was only one or two seconds.
Sol experienced all the symptoms of a burst of adrenaline: heart pounding, blood pumping, a cold sensation that traveled through her body, and sweat.
And then she saw Luke going in the direction of the scream.
She was going to complain, because he was leaving her behind and she’d been very specific about her need for his support to be able to move, when she realized the terrifying source of the scream had been Emily.
Luke was not abandoning Sol but simply going around the table to assist. The whole room was in a frenzy around them, and everyone seemed to be on the move, either trying to figure out what had happened or running away from the source of that scream. There was complete chaos.
Sol saw Luke talking to Emily, who was pointing to a passed-out Travis. His head had landed on top of his plate on the table.
“What happened to him?” Luke asked.
“He was nibbling on some of the food on his plate, and suddenly his head collapsed on top of the table,” Emily said. Her hands were shaking, and she kept clutching the pearl choker at her collarbone, making the pale skin around it red with the friction.
Luke took Travis’s vitals and was quick to lift the critic’s head from the plate. He untied the bow tie around his neck and undid the first two buttons of Travis’s shirt.
A paramedic team that had been standing by for emergencies at the entrance of the hangar arrived at the table.
They put an oxygen mask on Travis as they worked quickly to stabilize him.
Before the commercial break was over, the critic had already been taken away on a stretcher.
It wasn’t only that his life could be at risk—the show must go on.
Luke had a short conversation with the paramedics, relating what happened, then he made his way back to the seat next to Sol.
“Did Travis’s face look extremely red and blotchy to you just now?” Luke asked Sol in their usual whisper .
“Perhaps, why?”
“And is it me, or is there a faint bitter almond smell in the air?”
“Now that you say it, yes,” Sol admitted, paying more attention to the aromas that surrounded her. “Why?”
“Because I’m not sure that was a heart attack or a stroke. I think Travis may have been poisoned.”
Sol’s eyes widened in shock and surprise. “I told you not to eat anything!”