Page 34 of His Girl Hollywood

“Oh, Joan, you won it for yourself.”

“No, I didn’t. And you’ve got the Oscar to prove it.”

“But—”

Dash raised his hand to interrupt. “I’ve had this argument with her before. Just tell her she’s right.”

Arlene laughed, but an uneasy bead of dread slunk into the back of her mind. Oscar or no Oscar, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was off her game and distracted. And that it was all Don Lamont’s fault. “Oh, all right, fine. Joan, I won you your Oscar.Happy?”

“Very.” Joan preened and sipped at her gin stinger. Arlene tilted her head at a sound in the other room. God, she really needed to get ahold of herself. She could swear she’d heard Don’s voice floating over the bar from the restaurant’s red vinyl booths into the Back Room. Now she was hearing him when he wasn’t even there? Maybe the second drink was a bad idea.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she muttered, getting up to make a beeline for the ladies’ room. Some cold water splashed on her face should set her right. And then she could go back to enjoying her evening with her friends. A few normal hours of boozing and talking shop in Musso and Frank’s Back Room—a standard Hollywood Friday night.

Lost in her thoughts, she bumped into someone in the narrow walkway that ran between the bar and the bathrooms. “I’m so—” Her apology caught in her throat as her outstretched hands made contact with a soft, if somewhat careworn sweater, and she looked up to see Don Lamont.

“I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘sorry.’” He grinned, grabbing her hands and helping to set her firmly back on her feet. “But if anyone should be apologizing, it’s me.”

The words stung, surprisingly, reminding her of how he’d apologized to her for the kiss. When she had been equally as culpable. No matter how she tried to excuse it or blame it on an overzealous acting choice.

All Don had done since the moment he’d arrived was try to make the picture as good as it could be. She’d built her walls so high, and she’d refused to climb their battlements and see the truth. That Don—no matter how he’d hurt her when he’d left and never written, never phoned—was trying his best. Wasn’t that really all she could ask for? “What are you apologizing for? It was your quickthinking and creativity that saved my neck this week. I should really be thanking you.”

“Oh.” He waved it off. “No, that was for both of us. I want this picture to be a success as badly as you do.”

He’d said that to her before. But she hadn’t really believed him until this moment. She’d assumed that he’d go running back to Broadway if the picture was a flop. He had a perfectly good career waiting for him in New York. But maybe she ought to start believing in him again. A dangerous prospect, for certain, but if they kept it strictly a professional belief, there was no harm in that, was there? Maybe they could be friends again. On equal terms, instead of the strange unevenness of his brotherly affection and her teenage longing. She could give him that and still keep her heart safe.

“No, it’s nothing to do with the picture.” He gave her a sheepish grin. “I’m sorry for crashing your party. I knew you were coming to Musso’s tonight.”

“How—”

“You and Joan settled your plans while I was in your office, remember?”

She nodded. She’d forgotten he’d heard that. The notion that he’d come here for her landed in the pit of her stomach like a stone. This was exactly the type of thing she needed to avoid. “Did you come here to find me? Because I’ve told you, Don, we’re making a film together. That’s all. How many times do I have to tell you that we can never go back to what we once were?”

A look of hurt flashed in his eyes, and she regretted being so blunt. But he didn’t seem to be taking the hint.

“Eleanor and I were at the Clover Club.”

Eleanor. The sound of her name was like being doused with a bucket of cold water. Arlene had no reason to be jealous of her.After all, at this point, Eleanor Lester knew Don Lamont better than she did. But for some reason, the reminder that Eleanor was here—that she was Don’s creative partner and lover, exactly the type of partnership Arlene had once believed she wanted most in this world—rankled. She craned her head over Don’s shoulder to see if she could spot the familiar shock of Eleanor’s platinum blond hair in the dining room. Don seemed to read her mind. “It’s me and Eddie here tonight. Eleanor was tired.”

“I’ll bet,” Arlene muttered under her breath, envisioning Don and Eleanor in a multitude of compromising positions. God, what was wrong with her? They were adults. The two of them could take whatever position they liked as many times a day as they saw fit. “So, what, then? The Clover Club wasn’t good enough for Don Lamont?” Don sighed heavily, and she realized she was doing it again. Judging him. Treating him like an interloper instead of a professional equally committed to making this picture a success. “Sorry, that was uncalled for.”

“I know you think the worst of me, Arlene. But I didn’t come here to disrupt your evening. Eddie really wanted to come here tonight. To toast our number and celebrate the first two weeks of filming. I told him we shouldn’t. I told him we could go anywhere else: the Cocoanut Grove, Chasen’s, the Trocadero. I wanted to stay at the Clover Club and eat there. But Eddie insisted we come here. I couldn’t really argue with him since he saved my neck this week. Plus it’s walking distance from our hotel.”

“Oh, that’s right. You’re at the Starlight Inn,” she said without thinking.

“How do you know that?” Don’s repentant air disappeared at her words, replaced by defensiveness. Or was it fear? She couldn’t say. Either way, it was an odd response.

“Ida, Harry’s secretary, told me,” she replied. “I wanted to talkto you that first night. After everything went so wrong. He told me where to find you.”

Don grimaced and muttered something like “Harry’s secretary sure is blabby.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know it was a secret.” She should move on, go to the bathroom and let him be. He seemed as frazzled to bump into her here as she was to see him.

“It’s not. Well, not from you anyway. But I didn’t realize that the studio was handing my address out like I’m in the yellow pages.”

“They’re not. It’s—”

Don interrupted her. “I never saw you that night. And they didn’t say I had any messages when I checked at the desk.”