Tate took the plastic hanger with the baby blue satin boxing trunks, opened the passenger-side window of Val’s Audi, and pitched them out onto the roadway. At a speed of sixty miles an hour, the trunks sailed away into the smoggy Georgia air. A truck behind them honked its horn in protest.
From his perch in the back of the car, Moonpie barked a flippant response.
Valerie Foster shook her head. “That’s littering, you know.”
“Fine with me,” Tate said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Those trunks had to be custom ordered from a company in Hackensack. And FedExed overnight.”
“Dock my pay,” he said.
“You pay me, remember? It’s your production company.”
“Okay. I’ll dock your pay. In fact, this whole idea is so bad, I may fire you.”
She took a long drag from her cigarette. He took it from her and threw that out the window too.
“You are in a mood today,” she observed. “Anything in particular bugging you?”
“We’re supposed to be taping shows,” he said. “We’re paying a crew just to sit around that studio while I get my nose powdered and my picture taken.”
“So. This doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that you’re getting your nose powdered and your picture taken with Regina Foxton?”
“Gina,” he said mockingly. “That’s what she likes to be called.”
“And you don’t like her,” Valerie said, glancing down at the clock on the dashboard. They were running late, and as usual, traffic on I-75 was bumper-to-bumper. She’d told that publicist, Deborah, that she’d have Tate and Moonpie at the boxing gym at ten o’clock. He’d thrown a fit when she’d told him about the plan. At first, he’d flatly refused to go. When she’d explained that the photo shoot was approved by Barry Adelman, he’d grudgingly allowed himself to be coaxed into her car for the drive down to the gym. Moonpie, once he’d been given a bacon-flavored chewie treat, had been loaded into the car without protest.
But when Val showed Tate the boxing trunks and explained the whole setup, his reaction had been less than enthusiastic. She’d love to have seen the look on some truck driver’s face when the blue satin trunks landed on his windshield, but she’d deliberately sped up and fled the scene after Tate’s little tantrum.
They’d have to come up with another idea for the photo shoot, and fast. It was a shame, really. The idea of staging a sparring match between Tate and Regina Foxton was, in her opinion, brilliant. Newspapers and magazines ate up that kind of stuff. And the best part of it was, the publicity would be free for Tate. But it would be useless to try and talk him into it now. She glanced over at him. He was in a filthy mood, all right.
He stared out the window and drummed his fingers on the Audi’s dashboard.
“She’s got a friggin’ degree in home economics. I didn’t even know you could get a degree in something like that anymore,” he said.
“You’re right,” Val said. “That’s appalling.”
Tate gave her a sour look. “We had a run-in last night. In the break room in the studio. The woman’s frightening, you know?”
“Regina Foxton? Are you kidding? She’s a cream puff.”
“No,” Tate insisted. “That’s all just a facade. I saw the real Regina Foxton last night, and I’m telling you, Val, the woman is a machine. She accused me of deliberately sabotaging her show, and then she basically told me to stay the hell out of her way. She’ll stop at nothing to get this TCC show. Last night, she showed me her true colors.”
“And which colors were those?” Val asked, jerking the Audi’s steering wheel hard left and passing a red minivan full of uniformed Little Leaguers, who all had their faces pressed up against the van’s windows. “Beige and taupe?”
He ignored that. “You know what I find most unattractive about her?”
God, would this traffic ever thin out? Val wondered. They were officially thirty minutes late. Adelman and his people were going straight to the gym from the airport. And she was sure that Regina Foxton and her entourage had been there since dawn. That would leave her looking incompetent and unreliable. Not acceptable. She glanced in the rearview mirror to see if there were any law enforcement types in the vicinity. When she saw none, she bit her lip, jerked the Audi hard right into the middle lane, then right again, and finally onto the shoulder of the road. From here, she had a straight shot to the exit ramp less than a mile ahead. She floored it.
“Jesus, Val,” Tate said, bracing himself against the dashboard.
She smiled grimly, her mind churning up believable excuses about why the sparring-match photo wouldn’t work.
“What were you saying?” she asked. “Something about what you find so unattractive about the real Regina Foxton?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “She’s ruthless. I’ve never seen anything like it. Naked ambition, you know?”
“Very unattractive,” Val agreed.