.

long moment’s silence followed as Dixie stood, frying pan in hand, and stared him down.

      Billy’s goofy smile started to slip. ‘Why do you always got to ruin things with your worrying, Dix? Why can’t you just be happy for once? Has that always got to be too much to ask of you?’

      ‘Billy, tell me what you’ve done.’

      He eyed her.

      She eyed him back.

      ‘Here’s me, trying to give you a good surprise,’ he muttered.

      ‘I’ll cook the steaks. I promise,’ Dixie said. ‘But first just tell me what’s going on.’

      A dramatic sigh and then he relented. ‘OK, well, come out to the garage then, because I got it in the toolbox.’

      Curious, Dixie followed him.

      The garage door had been put down, which was maybe only the third time it had been lowered since they’d moved into the house. It took Billy a moment of fumbling to find the light switch, then he had to get out the little stepladder so that Dixie could climb up into the flatbed of the pick-up from the side, because with the garage door closed, there wasn’t enough room to let down the tailgate. Just behind the cab was a built-in toolbox where Billy usually stored his gear, but the gear was lying out all over the open flatbed. Once they were both up in the back, Billy unlocked the toolbox and lifted the lid. Inside was a little boy, maybe seven or eight, bound up with duct tape, a dirty rag tied over his eyes.

      Dixie yelped with shock.

      Billy grinned. ‘Know who that is? It’s Spencer Scott’s son.’

      Chapter Nine

      Spencer spent most of the afternoon shut in his study, doing things on the internet. Just after six, he switched the computer off and that was the first time he noticed how quiet the house was. None of the usual squealing tyres, gunfire or explosions.

      Coming through the French doors into the hallway, Spencer went to the door of the screening room and looked in. Nothing there but the boy’s mess. Dirty plates, a Coke can on its side, countless open DVD cases. This annoyed Spencer. He liked things orderly. Everything in its place and all that. Here was one more important reason the kid shouldn’t be in Montana. He messed up everything he touched. Spencer felt just about as much annoyance with Sidonie, however, because she knew how much clutter upset him.

      Sidonie’s official title was ‘personal assistant’. PA. A good title, that, Spencer thought, because it covered everything. Including making sure the place was tidy. Sidonie knew how he felt about things like this. That’s why she had the frigging job. So where was she? Why hadn’t she done it?

      Crossly, Spencer stomped down the hall and through the kitchen to the small room at the back of the house which Sidonie used as an office. She was in there, sitting behind the desk piled high with scripts. She looked up.

      Sidonie was wearing her glasses, those black-rimmed ones that made her look like a school teacher. Her long blonde hair was bound up so casually that more tousled strands had escaped than were held in. She wore a plain black tank top with no bra and the shortest of short-shorts, showing off tanned legs as long as the Missouri River. It was her bare feet, however, that turned Spencer on. He loved clean, youthful feet. He loved it too when she dressed like that, all fresh and natural, but with just the slightest hint of streetwalker.

      Indeed, this intuitive sexiness was what got Sidonie here at all. When Spencer had first met her, she was just another of the flawlessly beautiful girls who worked on movie sets while waiting to get famous. He was down in Mexico at the time filming Intimations, and Sidonie was assistant to the assistant make-up artist or something equally insignificant. She was drop-dead gorgeous, but then they all were, their plastic-surgery-and-orthodontics perfection so commonplace that Spencer seldom registered girls’ actual faces. He wouldn’t have been aware of Sidonie either, except that whenever she leaned over to wipe the make-up from his face, he noticed perspiration on her skin. It was never wet or runny, just a dewiness, as if someone had misted her, and it was always pristine. Unwiped, unsmeared, untouched. Mixed in with the usual young woman’s scent of shower gel and shampoo, this faint musky smell always gave him the sense that she was up for it. Spencer would get hard just sitting there in the make-up chair.

      And she was up for it. Sidonie not only bathed him in her sexy smell as she worked, but she let him touch her. Just enough for him to know she liked it. Just enough to make him slip her the key to his trailer.

      Not that Spencer didn’t slip most of the girls his key at one point or another. That was the culture of the movie set, all these luscious ripe things trading the currency of desire to buy their dreams. Sidonie could have been just one more faceless fuck, except that she proved to be that little bit more aware than the other girls. She didn’t just fuck. She observed. She paid attention. So afterwards, she would bring him coffee. That’s what impressed him. A good lay and then she got him coffee without his asking for it. And she remembered what kind of coffee he liked and exactly how he liked it.

      He hadn’t expected it to turn into anything more. He wasn’t doing relationships these days. After the fiasco with Phoebe, Spencer had got the snip, so he knew for certain that would never be an issue again. Even so, Phoebe had left him paranoid. You just couldn’t trust people.

      Plus, Sidonie wasn’t all sunshine and flowers. When he’d first met her, she had a coke habit that must have kept half of Columbia in riches and a boyfriend named Raoul next to whom a junkyard dog would look civilized. And she was stupid. Spencer had found that was generally true of all really beautiful girls. God obviously couldn’t give any one person everything. So, if you got the to-die-for bone structure and lips like swollen labia, you also got the brain that thought Shakespeare was the name of a porn star. Sidonie’s saving grace was that she knew she was stupid, so she didn’t try to bullshit about having Harvard degrees; and she’d already learned that the best way to hide stupidity was to keep your trap closed. After his experiences with Kathryn and Phoebe, Spencer was more than happy to trade intelligence in a woman for one who knew when to shut up.

      He got so used to being with Sidonie in Mexico that when he came back to LA, he missed her. At first he thought it was just not having the routine he was used to, but when he woke in the night, it was her scent he longed for. He couldn’t stop himself wondering where she was, or worrying who else might be having her.

      It took a bit of work to track her down. By the time he found her, Sidonie was in Croatia, working on Matt Damon’s set. Jealousy influenced Spencer’s decision to fly her back first class, although he never told her that.

      Still, it was just a job he was offering her. Spencer was very clear about that right from the beginning, because he didn’t want Sidonie to have any misconception. A job, not a relationship. Personal assistant. Very personal, yes, but she was still simply an employee. With perks. So, yes to travelling with him. Yes to staying in his house. Yes to sex. No to the red carpet. No to eating out in restaurants with him. No to being seen anywhere in public that the media might interpret as a date. Spencer had his lawyer draw up a contract spelling it all out so that Sidonie would always know exactly where she stood.

      Sidonie took it all in her stride. They’d been together two years now, and if she’d wanted something different from her life, it never showed. Spencer admired her for this. While Sidonie might not be book smart, she was canny. Most of the beautiful girls who came to Hollywood ended up typists or druggies or working on the street. Sidonie had about her a natural shrewdness. She recognized a good deal when it came along.

      ‘Where’s the kid at?’ Spencer asked.

      Sidonie had been reading through scripts Spencer’s agent had sent over to see if any of them were worth Spencer’s consideration, and she was completely barricaded in by the stacks. Bleary-eyed, she sat back in her chair, stretched to ease tight muscles and pushed the glasses up on her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve been in here since before three.’

      ‘He’s left a mess in the screening room,’ Spencer said. ‘Clean it up. It looks like a pigsty.’

      She