Liars Like Us

14

Dani says, “Why are you quiet? What’s happening? I’m dying over here.”

“I’m gonna FaceTime you so you can see everything. If I get arrested, call that attorney friend of yours.”

“He’s an immigration attorney. Are you being deported?”

I don’t bother answering her sarcastic question before disconnecting, then calling her back on FaceTime. When she answers, I tell her to shut up and point the screen toward the driver’s window.

The police officer taps on the window. The driver rolls it down. The officer looks at the driver, then looks at me hiding in the back seat like a fugitive. “Miss?”

“Um. Yes?”

“Are you Emery Eastwood?”

After swallowing around the rock in my throat, I nod.

“Step out of the car, please.”

Though tinny because it’s coming over the phone, Dani’s voice is still perfectly audible. “Ask him why he pulled you over! He can’t pull you over without cause!”

The officer removes his mirrored sunglasses and stares at me. I slide a little lower in the seat.

“Miss Eastwood, step out of the vehicle. Now.”

The way he says those words sends a chill straight down my spine. I imagine years of orange jumpsuits, bad food, and communal showers in my future and whimper.

He opens the back door of the car and stands aside. The driver cranes his neck around and looks at me with obvious fear, as if he just recognized me from the FBI’s Most Wanted Fugitives list.

Dani shouts over the phone, “This is the United States of America! She has rights!”

The officer leans down and pins me in a ferocious glare. “I’ll give you five seconds, Miss Eastwood. Then I’m coming in to get you.”

With Dani shouting at the top of her lungs and the driver staring at me in horror, I slide across the bench seat and climb out of the car.

The officer gestures toward the black sedan. “Mr. McCord would like a word with you.”

We gaze at each other as the midday traffic zooms past on Santa Monica Boulevard until I regain the power of speech. “So…he called you to come get me?”

He glances at the phone in my hand, which I’m holding beside my head so Dani has a front-row seat to my imminent arrest. Then he says, “You can’t film me.”

Dani hollers, “Oh, yes, she can! The Constitution guarantees it, buddy!”

The officer sighs heavily and looks up at the sky like he’d rather be anywhere else on earth doing anything else but this. Against my better judgment, I feel sorry for him.

“Okay, fine. I’ll talk to him. But if I wind up dead in a ditch somewhere, it’s your fault.”

Without waiting for a response, I march over to Callum’s car, purse slung over my shoulder and phone in hand.

Callum’s driver opens the back door for me. I can’t tell for sure because his sunglasses hide his eyes and he’s got a good poker face, but I think he’s trying not to laugh.

I sit next to Callum. The driver shuts the door behind me, then strolls over to the police officers and lights a cigarette. I watch through the windshield as the three of them start to chat and laugh like they’re having an impromptu get-together of fraternity bros.

“Hello again,” says Callum.

Pretending I’m accustomed to having billionaires use the local police force to kidnap me from taxis, I smile blandly at him. “Hello. Are you going to tell me why the cops snatched me from the back of my Uber?”

“You left before you got your salad.”

He gestures to the brown paper bag on the floor beside his feet, then laces his fingers together and rests his hands in his lap, right over a big bulge that I am definitely not looking at.

Then he says, “What’s that shouting?”

“That would be my girlfriend Dani. I’ve got her on FaceTime on my phone.”

He glances at the phone in my right hand, which I’m hiding next to my thigh.

Dani chooses that moment to holler, “I can’t see anything! Emery, what the f**k is happening? Are you riding his d**k or what?”

If a person could die of embarrassment, I’d already be six feet under.

I lift the phone and point the screen in Callum’s direction. When he smiles, Dani inhales sharply.

“Hello, Dani.”

“Uh, er…hi.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Um…uh-huh.”

Honestly, the power this man has to render women speechless is astonishing.

I turn the screen toward me so I’m looking at Dani’s slack-jawed face. “I’ll call you back in a minute, okay?”

With her eyes wide and her nose pressed to the screen, she mouths Holy s**t.

“Indeed.” I disconnect and turn back to Callum.

Somehow, he’s grown even more handsome in the short interim since I last saw him. I’m tempted to ask him about his skincare routine but get distracted by the way he’s looking at my mouth.

Why is he looking at my mouth?

Now I’m a cliché, because butterflies explode in an ecstatic, fluttering burst in my stomach. I’d give myself a bracing slap across the cheek, but don’t want to look like a lunatic.

“Your face is red again.”

“And you’ve got more spinach stuck in your gums.”

“You also forgot your engagement ring.”

“If you reach into your suit pocket right now, I can guarantee I’ll draw blood.”

His intense gaze drifts up from my mouth to my eyes, where it electrocutes me. He murmurs, “Are you threatening your fiancé, darling?”