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“He went by the name Daz Stanza back then. He had aspirations of being an actor and thought it would be a cool stage name. Thank God he eventually listened to Quinny and me when we convinced him it was terrible. But the bastard is lucky, I will be forever associated with that movie, while he got off scot-free.”
“I didn’t realize you and Mr. Quinn went so far back,” Iris said, sipping her coffee.
“Yeah, he and Dazza are my best mates. They have been since we were kids. Quinny has a good head for business, and he managed both Dazza and me when we were starting out.”
“I feel like that’s something I should have known.”
“Not many people know. Quinny kept it on the down-low. He had his reasons back when we were up and coming, and after all these years there’s no point in revealing how close we really are.”
Iris mulled over his words, while Trystan watched her in that unnerving way of his. This time she called him out on it. “Why do you keep staring at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, like you’re mentally taking me apart to see what makes me tick, before very methodically putting me back together again.”
He cleared his throat and lifted his shoulders, his cheeks going red, and this time Iris was the one who stared as she tried to figure out what had triggered that reaction. He replied before she could work it out.
“I-I like looking at you.”
She gaped at him, jaw going slack, eyes popping, head tilted.
“I don’t understand,” she admitted, and he grinned.
“Nothing to understand, Hughes,” Trystan said. He sliced off a piece of omelet with the side of his fork and popped it into his mouth. He chewed slowly and deliberately, while Iris waited impatiently for him to elaborate. “I just like looking at you. You have a very interesting face, and I enjoy the way your individual features fit together.”
“And that’s why you keep staring at me?”
“Why else would I be doing it?”
“I don’t know… to unsettle me?”
He chuckled and took another bite of his omelet.
“From day one, I found you—I don’t know—enjoyable to look at. Your face is so expressive, with those doe eyes that project your every thought and feeling, and that mobile mouth that looks like a furled rose on the brink of blossoming, and I’m quite helpless to do anything but stare in absolute wonder.”
“I have a question,” she announced, choosing to ignore the inflammatory comments that had sent butterflies aflutter in her stomach. “I presume I’m allowed to ask questions without you immediately assuming I’m in interview mode?”
His lips twitched at her dramatic announcement and he waved a hand in her direction, inviting her to continue.
“Have you been able to contact Mr. Quinn this entire time?”
“The other evening—after movies—was the first time I’d tried. I didn’t reach him then,” he admitted. “He really is on a retreat. But he does periodically check his phone. Today, he answered immediately when I called—he’d been trying to return my call, but I’ve been a little distracted, as you know. I think he was hoping to hear I was ready to go back to work. He’s been pushing for this big publicity tour to promote Cryo Cop.”
Cryo Cop was Trystan’s upcoming movie—his and Trish Nesbitt’s—and it was premiering in a couple of months. Iris had had every intention of questioning him about the lack of publicity around the much-anticipated release in her now never-to-be interview. But it was Trish Nesbitt’s last movie and that, along with Trystan’s apparent disappearance, had already created a lot of buzz around the film.
Iris mulled over his words for a moment—they rang with sincerity—and she found herself believing him.
“I heard you accuse Mr. Quinn of using me to get you out of a rut,” she said. “Why would he do that?”
“Because he’s a meddling bastard who thinks that I just need to be shaken out of my funk before I’ll be ready to start working again.”
“And he thought I could do that?” Jeez, how deluded was Mr. Quinn? And why Iris? She was a perfectly ordinary woman, possessing none of the charms of the other women toward whom Trystan regularly seemed to gravitate. Then again, maybe she was looking at this the wrong way. Maybe that wasn’t the kind of diversion he meant— maybe he’d always intended for Iris to antagonize Trystan. Especially if he’d known who her father had been.
“To be fair,” Trystan said slowly, as he lifted his cup and took a long sip, leaving her hanging. He lowered the cup and eyed her squarely. “You’ve already done it. Have been doing it, are doing it right now. You’ve dragged me kicking and screaming out of—how did you put it?—out of the sads. And, for a gloriously satisfying instant, straight into the mads. With you here, all I’ve been able to think of was how much you annoy me, amuse me, entertain me. And I resented the hell out of you for that because I’m supposed to be here to wallow in my guilt and grief and misery. Not come up with flimsy excuses to keep spending time with you. And certainly not spend hours fantasizing about what it would be like to shut you up by kissing that perfect mouth.”
Uh, what?
“But…” How did she even respond to that? This was not something the Iris Hugheses of the world ever expected to hear from the Trystan Abbottses. In the end all she could come up with was a single-word question, “Why?”
