Chapter 31

31

" J osie is extremely disappointed in you," Sol told Luke when he picked up the phone. "But she's open to letting you stay at the studio as a member under your true identity, if and only if you take a few private lessons with her to work on basic exercises and routines. You need to up your Pilates game."

These people seriously need to get their priorities in order, thought Luke. The more assiduous members at the studio were all suspects in a highly publicized theft—Sol's name at the very top of that list—and all everyone seemed to care about was that he took his Pilates practice seriously.

"Sol, thanks for that, but I'm not sure I'm Pilates material."

Ever since his confession to her, he'd been all soft around Sol and tried not to disappoint her even more. He was acutely aware that his admission had poured buckets of iced water into his and Sol's previously heated connection.

"I see," said Sol.

Luke's attempt at smoothness had been in vain, so he'd forgo the extreme diplomacy strategy altogether.

It wasn't as if the relationship was in such bad shape, after all. There was some bantering left between the two of them. And even if he knew he'd like to more than bicker with Sol, he could be content with that friendly quarreling while they worked at solving the case.

She added, "Pilates is too boring, right? What's your thing then? Workout wise, I mean."

"Uh, not much…" He didn't want to get into specifics about his muscle-toning workouts, frequent runs, and de-stressing and back-healing yoga classes. He'd be at risk of being perceived as vain.

"Please! At least have the courtesy to tell me you think Pilates is not enough for you, and tell me what it is that you do. I'm used to the whole workout-for-old-ladies rhetoric, which is absolutely wrong. But I know you do something. I've seen you in a tight-fitting T-shirt!"

Luke was about to protest at her use of qualifiers for Pilates, something he'd never thought, but decided to go in a different direction. He needed to know what Josie had said about the recording, but there was plenty of time to ask Sol about that. He wanted to enjoy the current conversation and its intriguing subject. Especially since Sol didn't sound mad at him at all. Perhaps things between them weren't as glacial as he thought and were veering in the direction of moderately warm.

"So, you've thoroughly checked me out," he said slyly.

"Mare meva! ?Cómo se puede ser tan creído?" she yelled at his vanity, and he couldn't avoid a smile.

"Sol, as much as I'd like to, I can only understand half of what you say when you speak Catalan or Spanish. My Italian only helps to a point. You were saying I'm gorgeous…"

"I said not such a thing," she protested, her tone furious but sexy. "And you know it."

"I do," he admitted.

"I may have been thinking it," she added playfully, and he almost choked on the fresh cup of tea he'd just brewed at the office kitchenette. "But now is not the time to talk about that."

"It's not?" She'd just upgraded their whole relationship from lukewarm to scorching hot, but she didn't feel like talking about it?

"Aren't you at the office?" she asked him.

"I am," he admitted reluctantly.

"Not the time, or the place," she concluded.

He had escaped to the office's empty kitchenette away from anyone's earshot but was very much aware of his whispering on the phone.

"Do let me know when it's the time and place to talk about it," he said huskily.

"About what? Your gorgeousness?"

"And I guess we could also tackle yours…"

"Okay, enough, Luca," Sol said. It was the first time she'd used his name in Italian. He'd insisted his family should never use it when he was a kid, asking them to only use the English version of his name to better fit in British society. But suddenly, he realized he liked Luca . A lot. "Let's talk business," she added.

"Let's," he said, even if he didn't want to.

"Josie is going to try to get the recording for you," Sol told him in all seriousness. "It's going to be hard because apparently the classes only get recorded as part of the studio's security system. She never uses the recordings, and those get stored on the cloud and deleted automatically. She did use the recording for the class of February 23 because Agatha would have died otherwise, and the system has proven useful in such occasions."

"You mean useful when an overenthusiastic member misses one class, not in case of possible theft, right?"

"Yes, the first one," Sol clarified. "Josie shares my opinion about the script not being stolen at the studio, by the way."

"Not sure if this is an opinion issue, but I hear you," said Luke.

"She's uneasy at the idea of a member stealing something from another member."

"It could also have been her," Luke said.

"What do you mean?" Sol asked. Luke thought she was being purposefully dense.

"Josie could have been the one doing the stealing," he told her.

"No! She could never. Why would she do such a thing? It could ruin her business. She's one of the best Pilates instructors I've ever worked with?—"

"Big sample?" he interrupted, genuinely curious. Once again, his desire to know Sol better was interfering with his work.

"I mean, I wouldn't call myself an expert… but I've worked with some of the best ones in LA. And you know how fitness-conscious Californians are."

"Not really," Luke said. He realized the decade Sol had been living there was what gave her Spanish-infused accent a somewhat Californian musicality. But it also gave her many traits of character he was now starting to distinguish.

"And you really don't care," said Sol. "Bottom line, Josie is the best, and please rule her out as a suspect. It just doesn't make sense."

"Right. Let's say I listen to you and come to realize you're correct," Luke said, even if he hadn't been completely persuaded by Sol's arguments regarding Josie's innocence.

"I tend to be," she said. Luke suddenly understood it was Sol's security in herself that had attracted him in the first place.

"I'm sure you are." He was loving the non-stop banter between the two of them. At times it was flirtatious, at times quasi-professional. It was a lot of fun on every single occasion. "But tell me, who looks like a thief then? I mean, from the other possible suspects?"

"I don't know! I'm not even sure who the other suspects are," Sol said.

"You were there that day. Is there any chance you remember who else was there and what happened? It would actually help me." He should have asked her that before, but he'd been too busy trying to seduce her.

"What day was it again?" asked Sol. Luke could almost hear her thinking, trying to evoke the moment. "It was a Thursday class, right? I'm always there on Thursdays."

"We've been told the class ran long," Luke told her, hoping that information would trigger her memory.

"Oh, that day, right! No wonder Agatha was upset because she missed it. I was sore for a week!"

"That sounds weirdly sexy," he said, not able to shut up.

"Stop with the flirting, Luca." He really did love when she used that name. "We've got work to do."

"Sorry," he said. "I couldn't stop myself."

"Should I continue telling you what I remember?"

"Please do," Luke said. "Do you remember who else was there?"

"The usuals, I guess. Philippa for sure. She asked everyone if she could post a picture of the class to her Instagram." Luke made a note to look for that post. "Mark was also there. He's our only guy, so he's easy to remember."

"I feel left behind," Luke complained.

"Please," Sol dismissed him. "Martha was also there. I remember chatting with her after class about how strenuous the whole thing had been. And Lashana must have also been there because they're friends and work together… Yes, now I remember talking with her days after. She told me she had also been sore for days due to that class. And that's it, I guess."

"And you, Sara, and Josie were also there," Luke helped.

"Yeah."

"What time was it when Josie finished?"

"Not sure. 6:40ish? Not later than that because I normally meet my friend Laia on Thursdays for dinner at 7:30, and I still needed to go home to shower and get changed and all that. I remember thinking, ‘If Josie is not done by 6:40, I'll have to make an apology and leave.' I hate being late. But, in the end, I didn't have to leave before the class ended."

"Would that have been an issue? Leaving early?" he asked. "We were told Sara left at half past six."

"If a member needs to leave before the class's end, they tend to ask permission out of respect for Josie. And she may advise them to do some stretching at home or whatever else she had prepared for the remainder of the session. But she's normally extra punctual and respectful of our time. She knows some members are extremely busy. Sara is one of them. I think I do recall Sara leaving early but, to be honest, by then my butt was probably on fire and I was just following the routine through the discomfort. Trying to endure the whole thing."

"Again, sexy," he said, his voice low.

"Okay, since we seem to be done with the professional portion of this chat, I feel I can ask you this now." She paused dramatically. "What are you wearing?"

This time Luke did choke on his tea.

"What?!" he asked.

"What are you wearing? Is it a pair of beige dress trousers with an ill-fitting shirt?" She sounded utterly disappointed, describing what he wore when embodying Greg Knight.

"Right now, I'm wearing a tea-stained striped gray T-shirt. Thanks to you, I've spilled my cup of tea all over myself."

"And?"

"And washed black jeans that my sister Martina insisted I should get from All Saints." He didn't add that he'd always resented Martina for insisting he buy such a pricey garment.

"I see," she said. He couldn't decipher whether she sounded relieved or still disappointed. "No slicked-back hair?"

He combed his tousled waves with his left hand. "No."

"So the way I've seen you all around London was a fluke? Your style is like the Luke I met in Barcelona? A bit grungy and distressed, indie rock with a vintage-inspired sensibility?"

"I wouldn't put it in those terms mostly because I can't. You are the writer," he said, amused by her description. Flattered too. "But I only wear certain clothes when I'm working and trying to blend in."

"Very ugly undercover attire?"

"I guess you could say that, yes." He laughed. "If you're not asking me anything else, could I—very much against my best instincts—ask you something strictly professional?"

"Sure," she said. Had he detected a hint of disappointment on her part for his unfortunate topic shift?

"Can you help me understand why Meshflixx has spent money on this case?"

"Why did they hire you, you mean?"

"Yes, especially when the script had already leaked online. According to my boss, they wanted to show the creators that they cared about the show, but I think there's something else. And you could give me a new perspective on the whole thing." He trusted Sol even if he still hadn't found definitive proof of her innocence in the affair. The only certain thing he knew was that he fancied her.

"Do you realize anything I know is public information? Whatever has been reported on this, right? I don't have a source at Meshflixx who's given me a scoop or anything of the kind. And I am not an investigative reporter. I write hot takes, reviews, and the occasional interview with a celebrity."

"I'm aware. You still have two decades in that industry and are able to see things in a different light than I do," he told her.

"Okay. But I have to agree with your boss here." Luke groaned in discontent. He hated when someone he liked agreed with Sweatshirt. "The first season of The Privateers broke several records in terms of audience for Meshflixx, and the show became their most-watched TV property in the US and the UK but also several other coveted international markets. The streamer is prioritizing international growth, so I can see how they'd like to make Sara and Bryana happy by showing them they care about the show."

"I see." He tried not to sound too disappointed.

Sol was searching online on her laptop while talking to Luke on the phone. She thought she remembered something else about The Privateers being on the news for reasons other than the usual casting announcements, trailer launches, and season renewals. She wasn't sure if the information would be relevant to Luke or the case but decided to offer it anyway.

"Here it is!" she said when she finally found an online article about what she was only vaguely recalling. "Not sure if this is anything, but when the show premiered last year, their Twitter account got hacked."

"Whose Twitter account? Meshflixx's?" Luke asked her, sounding engaged once again.

"No, no. The show's own account. The streamer's audience development team creates individual accounts for their prominent shows as a way of reaching more people. They can post a new trailer, release behind-the-scenes photos of the cast, choose GIF-able little clips from the show…"

"What did the hacker do?"

"Nothing major really. It could have been bad like posting insensitive or offensive things," Sol said. "In this case, they just put out one poll regarding the quartermaster, with a picture of Leonardo Pascual, the actor who ended up playing that character. He'd been rumored as a possible contender for the part for a few weeks but hadn't been officially contracted yet, even if there was a lot of online chatter about him. The post from the hacker was simple: Should this very beautiful man play one of the two leads in the upcoming The Privateers ? Yes won by a big margin. Meshflixx was able to recuperate the account after that. They maintained that Leonardo had been hired before the results of the poll and that the hacker's action didn't sway them in any way."

"First a hack and now this," Luke said.

"Yes. Seeing how odd things keep happening, it makes sense that Meshflixx decided to have this latest event investigated. I guess they want to ensure that everything runs smoothly going forward," said Sol.

"But they may be halting the investigation soon."

"In this industry, it's all a matter of perception and image more than anything else. They don't necessarily need to do everything they can to clear the case of the theft. It only needs to look like it."

"Right," said Luke. He was probably determining how absurd the whole showbusiness industry could get.

"How much is your agency charging Meshflixx?" Sol asked.

"To be honest, I don't know," admitted Luke. "I'm nowhere near that kind of information. I can only assume as much as they can. That's why my managers shipped me to Barcelona and like surveillance work so much. It's easy to inflate an invoice that way."

"That may not agree with Meshflixx right now," said Sol. "They just reported their financial results for the first quarter of the year, and things don't look as comfortable as before. There's pressure to bring costs down."

"Thanks for all the insider analysis," Luke said. "We can go back to flirting now if you want."

"As much as I'd love that," said Sol, and she truly would, "I need to sort out this trip to LA."

"Is it happening soon?"

"It looks like tomorrow morning."

"Will you let me know?" Luke asked. "I don't want my managers losing their minds again because you're leaving the country, but it will hopefully look less nefarious if I tell them I already knew about it."

"Okay." For a moment, Sol had misinterpreted his wishes to keep him updated regarding her trip.

"Also, let me know when you're back. I'd love to see you."

Perhaps she hadn't misinterpreted anything in the end.

"I will. Need to go now. Adeu, Luca. Talk to you soon."

Ever since Luke had made his whole confession—and scared the hell out of her by showing up unannounced at her door—she no longer felt like there was something he wasn't telling her. And she liked that.

She still wasn't sure what to think about him, other than that she evidently had a soft spot for him. She hadn't verbally teased someone so hard since—never really. In fact, she couldn't remember being so openly flirty with anyone before. It had to be just some flirtation between two early-stage friends, but nothing else. There was no way she would have been so obvious with someone she really fancied. Right?

All that would have to be a thought for another day though because at that moment, she needed to focus on her upcoming trip to LA. The sun and waves called to her.