Chapter 38

38

T he following morning, she woke up with the sun and found a new voicemail from Luke the moment she disabled Airplane Mode on her cell phone. She listened to the audio message in bed.

"Ciao, I wanted to call you mid-morning and hear your voice, but I have an awful day at work. Not sure when I'll be done. But text me and we can meet for tea again. There are a couple of things I'd love to whisper into your ear." That last sentence was uttered in Luke's signature gruff tone, and Sol had to fan herself. "Also, please don't take this the wrong way. Traditionally, sex is optional when having tea. But biscuits aren't."

It made her feel giddy and hot all at once, and she wasn't able to listen to it in one go the first—or second—time. But, when she did, she promptly added some McVitie's dark chocolate digestives and Walker's shortbread fingers to her Waitrose online grocery order to be delivered that afternoon.

It was only then that she faced the stark reality of having to write an article while being very much sleep-deprived and majorly absent-minded.

During the long flight back from Los Angeles, she'd emailed the editors at Conceit Fair and explained the Richard Fynn situation. She'd already gotten the okay from Fionna for her proposal of a new angle for the article where Sol would expose a bit of the director's uncooperative attitude during the chat. The editor also replied to Sol's email with a submission date. The piece was due in two days.

Sol had always been a procrastinator who needed the right type of encouragement, and a tight deadline was exactly that, even if that would mean working through the weekend. She soon found herself in a writing groove and making progress.

She cringed in her detailed recollection of the interview with Fynn when she relistened to it, which she only did to verify that the AI system she'd used had transcribed everything accurately.

Every time she felt too dejected about the terrible interview, or when she needed to be persuaded to keep focused, she relistened to Luke's message. It mostly made her horny, but it also had a way of reminding her to stay concentrated.

The sooner she was done with the Richard Fynn story, the sooner she'd be able to direct her attention elsewhere.

Plus, she needed the mental clarity and space to do some thinking because a few questions kept popping into her mind every time she allowed herself to get off track.

What exactly did she want between her and Luke? What did he want? Was it just sex? Was there a chance of something else? Did she feel like starting something else though? Hadn't she agreed to be done with committed entanglements? Was he aware that he was too young for her? Plus, wasn't joblessness, financial uncertainty, and the possibility of never finding a staff position again—journalists would start being replaced by AI bots any day now—enough burden already? Did she need more instability in her life?

Those were all questions that Sol needed answers to, but trying to find responses meant she needed to be finished with the Richard Fynn portion of her haphazard career.

···

By mid-afternoon, she was about done with a first draft that needed lots of edits and rereads on her part when her cell phone buzzed and she saw a text from Luke.

Luke (Ear Whisperer): Sorry to text you for work-related non-tea reasons. But yesterday you distracted me so much that I forgot to ask you something.

She bit her lower lip to prevent herself from bursting into a full smile. Her heart still skipped a beat though. She was delighted with the notion of having distracted him.

Luke (Ear Whisperer): Did you ever remember if there was anyone else in class on the day of the theft?

Luke (Ear Whisperer): Still trying to figure out who the mystery person is

Sol hadn't really thought about it, even if she'd promised Luke she'd do it. She returned to her work assignment, deciding to text Luke later and tell him if she recalled anything.

Luke had stopped by the office after an early surveillance shift that had been beastly. His alarm had been set at six in the morning and he wasn't good at functioning with less than six hours of sleep a day, even if he'd gotten accustomed to it since being hired by T&T.

He was aware that he was partially responsible for his lack of sleep. He'd left Sol's place at two the previous night. He'd been so pumped up—and drenched in lust—that he almost involuntarily started walking home.

It had been a gorgeous night, and he never got to enjoy the city so late anymore. London after midnight was a different place, a calmer, dreamier one. He'd started the walk not taking the most direct way home but the route filled with the most beauty through Southwark and the City. He'd taken in the views of the moonlit Tate Modern from the Millennium Bridge and promised himself to never fall out of love with his hometown. It was easier with not a single tourist in sight. He'd stopped at the Christchurch Greyfriars Garden to simply experience the silence and serenity.

The enchantment had lasted past the dormant Smithfield Market, as he walked through some of London's most labyrinthine streets. It was one of Luke's major senses of accomplishment to never get lost in that part of town. Even if he sometimes got distracted, he could always find his way, no devices needed.

But when he'd realized that the whole trip to his studio on foot would still be more than an hour, he'd taken the night bus. Part of his devotion to the city came from its convenient public transportation, after all.

All in all, he'd gotten a bit more than three hours of sleep and was trying to remedy his acute lethargy with a strongly brewed tea he was preparing at Thompson & Thomson's kitchenette. But P's arrival put an abrupt end to Luke's reminiscing of his nighttime walk and, more explicitly, his flashing back to the heated, kiss-filled session with Sol in her kitchen.

"Did you hear?" the senior partner asked. It was one of Thompson's many aggravating qualities to always assume everyone else was privy to all the gossip he was.

"No," Luke answered. He'd long stopped pretending he was in the loop when he wasn't.

"I just met with Meshflixx," P went on. You didn't even have to prompt Thompson for him to start babbling. "The case is almost done."

"Didn't they say the same last week?" Luke tried not to sound too bored about the news.

"This time it is almost done ," P said dramatically, as if that made anything clearer.

"Are they going to be upset because we haven't got a suspect?"

"Oh, we'll figure something out, won't we?" As if coming up with something concrete wouldn't require hours of interviews and further investigation when the agency's team devoted to the Meshflixx case had been deployed to the cases of at least three new clients. "One of their top executives shared with me in a confidential manner that they're currently developing a second project with the Daniels sisters. They want the whole mess with The Privateers to be behind them."

It baffled Luke that the way of dealing with a script leak would be to ignore who leaked it, but he preferred not to voice his dissent again .

"What's the new show about?" he asked, genuinely curious. If he ever found the time to watch it, he'd probably like The Privateers , so he was interested in anything else the creators of the series would do. If only because he'd gotten to know them indirectly in those past few weeks.

"A prequel of some sort," said Thompson disdainfully, as if the idea of a new TV show preceding the story of an already released and successful series sounded preposterous. Luke was convinced that his manager's only two acceptable forms of entertainment were reading The Sunday Times and counting the days until the start of the horse racing season at Ascot. "Something about the origins of a character who is a quartermaster on a ship or other. But you haven't heard it from me," he added, chuckling.

"The quartermaster is the character played by Leonardo Pascual," said Luke. "Is that why they wanted us to follow him? It's not like we've found any link between him and the case."

"Let's not jump to conclusions." Thompson left the room with the same suddenness and in the same bizarre way in which he'd entered it.

Luke texted Sol the moment P was out of sight.

Luke Contadino: Apparently this is classified information but Meshflixx is planning a prequel of The Privateers starring the quartermaster.

She replied almost immediately.

Sol Novo: Weird

Luke Contadino: Why?

But instead of explaining herself, Sol sent him a link to an interview with Bryana and Sara Daniels from January of that year.

Luke Contadino: Do you want me to read the whole thing?

Sol Novo: Mare meva Luca! Call me then

He did as he was told, and she picked up after a couple of tones.

"Hola," she answered. "Before you say anything, we're not going to talk about last night. Not because I don't want to but because I'm on deadline and need to go back to writing. But you needed to ask me something work-related, so ask away and we can hopefully plan something for tonight."

"Something like tea?" he asked.

"You really can't help yourself, right?" He could practically hear her eye roll. "Something like tea, yes."

There was silence on the phone for a few seconds while Luke let Sol proceed with the conversation. If he wasn't able to flirt, he preferred her to talk.

"I sent you a link," she finally said.

"I saw."

"You're awfully quiet."

"You basically told me not to seduce you for the duration of this phone call. This is me not seducing you," he said as deadpan as he could.

"Unrelenting." She sounded like she was smiling.

"I don't see how."

"Since you don't seem inclined to read the article I sent you, let me summarize it, I guess."

"I'm ready for the summary," he said impassively.

"Okay, you win." She sighed. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but stop the non-seducer bit. It's driving me crazy."

"Thank you for acknowledging that you prefer me when I'm being naughty. But I promise to be on my best behavior. I know you need to work, and I don't want to interfere."

"That has to be one of the sexiest things that anyone has ever said to me," Sol said.

"Intriguing. Also, understood. It wasn't necessarily the type of conversation I had in mind for tonight, but I'll make sure to continue supporting you in your career in a very vocal fashion, " he told her.

"Going back to the article," she said. "It's an in-depth interview with the Daniels sisters. They talk about their plans for the future of The Privateers , rave about the actors and all the usual promotional stuff. They also talk about their process as scriptwriters and TV showrunners and are adamant about the fact that they cannot work on two projects at the same time. So I'm not sure how they'd do a second season of The Privateers , which still hasn't started filming, and a prequel. And I don't know if I mentioned this before, but come May 1, we could be facing a writers' strike. So I don't see much of this happening anytime soon. Who gave you the scoop?"

"The scoop?" He'd only gotten about half of what she'd just told him.

"Who told you about the prequel?" she replied patiently, or as patiently as he'd ever witnessed her.

"My boss. He says a Meshflixx exec told him in confidence."

"Do you believe your boss? Is he the type to be well-connected at Meshflixx and know high-ranking executives privy to that kind of information?"

"I honestly don't know," he admitted. "But can I go back to something you just said? About a strike?"

"You really know nothing about Hollywood," she said, clearly displeased.

"I know I liked the second season of Bridgerton more than the first one." Maybe that would make him sound more cultivated.

"Now, that is actually the sexiest thing I've heard," she said. "But let's not digress into Bridgerton territory."

"We can do that with tea," he said. For the first time in that whole conversation, he was aware of using his husky voice. He caught the timid moaning sound Sol made on the other side of the line.

"Writers' strike, right," she finally said. "All you need to know is that the Writers Guild of America, which represents the screenwriters of pretty much anything with a US-based production company, is renegotiating their contract with the alliance of TV and movie producers. And if they don't come to an agreement, which at this point looks like they won't, they'll call for a strike of all its members, meaning they will stop writing. I won't get into specifics about why it'll happen because frankly, I don't think you care or that it matters for the case. But I'm not sure about the second season of The Privateers , let alone this prequel show, happening any time soon."

"Isn't The Privateers a British show though?" he asked. Everything she was telling him made sense, but he still needed extra information to comprehend it.

"Yes. But any project in the jurisdiction of the American writers' guild would get impacted by the strike. Both Daniels sisters and half the writing staff of The Privateers are from the US and most likely members of that guild. This is not an exclusively British show. I think they shoot and produce here for its locations and for tax purposes."

"I see," Luke said, but he wasn't sure he was getting the whole puzzle yet. That had been the norm with that particular case. He was starting to wonder if it was his total lack of knowledge and plain ignorance when it came to the Hollywood industry—or if there was something else on top of that. Something he was ignorant of.

He hadn't found a way of asking her about the controversy around the show's opening credits yet and wondered if that would be the right time to do it.

"Are you working tonight?" she asked him instead.

"Miraculously not," he said.

"I can offer you biscuits." He decided to drop the controversy subject for another moment. "But I feel I should earn them first. I've been sitting all day. Want to meet for a walk?"

"A walk?" asked Luke, amused. "You're so Californian sometimes!"

"I'll deny having ever said this, but you should be more in touch with your Mediterranean side, Luca." She spoke with the same mirthful tone he'd used. "Californians meet for hikes . But a leisurely stroll in the city in the late afternoon or evening is as Mediterranean as you can get. I'm sure you've heard of the passeggiata ?"

"You know I have. I wasn't aware you also spoke Italian though," he teased.

"I don't, even if I'd like to believe I dabble," she admitted. "But we have similar words in Catalan and Spanish—and we certainly share the habit."

"Allora, andiamo a fare una passeggiata," he said.

"Meet me at six at Winchester Palace and we can take The Queen's Walk and do some sightseeing along the river—if you don't mind the tourists."

"Oh, I do mind the tourists." He felt almost obligated to complain. "But I can ignore them. Ci vediamo dopo, Sol."

"Adeu, Luca."