Silverbridge Read Free Page B

to listen to him read me the phone book.”
    Tracy smiled. “I know. That voice! Anyway, you’re on your own for dinner. I suggest you order all the best stuff from room service. The movie company is paying, remember.”
    Tracy was very popular with the moneymen in Hollywood because her modest requests for perks added very little to a movie’s budget. Instead of asking the studio to pay for a limo, a cook, a private camper for location shots, and personal makeup, hair, and clothes persons, she only required that the studio pay the hotel, food, and travel bills for her secretary. She was perfectly content to use regular studio personnel for the rest of her needs.
    “Filet mignon, I think,” Gail said.
    Tracy nodded. “Perfect.” She glanced at her watch. “We had better get a dress unpacked for me to wear to dinner.”
    They both knew the “we” was a courtesy, and Gail would unpack the suitcases. She said, “Why don’t you take a shower while I’m getting the clothes out?”
    “ Terrific idea. Thanks.”
    Tracy went into the bathroom while Gail hung a garment bag on a hook in the closet and began to take dresses out of it. “How about the blue Escada?” she called through the door to Tracy.
    “Fine,” Tracy called back over the sound of rushing water.
    Gently, Gail took a deep cobalt blue dress out of the garment bag and laid it on the bed. Then she went to another suitcase to see if she could find the matching shoes.
     
     
    J onathan Melbourne sat in the dining room of the Wiltshire Arms sipping a Glenlivet and waiting for Tracy. He had socialized and worked with many beautiful women in his life, but there was something about Tracy that was particularly striking. She looked so … so … healthy, he thought, picturing her in his mind. She was slim, not skinny, with a beautiful slender waist, and her flawless skin had a natural glow. Her shoulder-length auburn hair was threaded with a gold that looked amazingly natural, though Jon was quite sure it couldn’t be.
    When she came in the door, every eye in the dining room turned her way.
    “I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” she said, as the waiter seated her.
    “I haven’t been here long at all.”
    She looked around the small, elegant room. “This is charming.”
    “It’s not as opulent as L’Aigrette,” he said, referring to the restaurant in London he had taken her to. “But it’s more comfortable.”
    She smiled, showing the perfectly even white teeth that Jon associated with all Americans.
    A waiter came to ask what Tracy wanted to drink and, as she gave her order, Jon took another sip of his scotch and watched her. Her hair glowed under the light from the chandelier, and, in profile, the tilt of her nose looked delightfully insouciant. She turned away from the waiter to look back at him, and Jon said, “That dress is lovely. It matches your eyes.”
    A faintly ironic expression came over the eyes in question. “Why else do you think I bought it?” She picked up the handwritten parchment menu and frowned. “This writing is so elegant that I can’t read a word of it.”
    “Their veal is supposed to be outstanding,” he said.
    The cobalt eyes looked at him reproachfully. “Do you know what they do to those poor little baby calves?”
    “Please don’t tell me,” he replied hastily.
    “If you knew, you would never eat veal.”
    “I’ll order something else,” he promised. He remembered that she had eaten fish the night before, and asked curiously. “Are you a vegetarian?”
    She gave him a rueful look. “No. I tried to be once, but the dreadful truth is that I don’t like vegetables very much. It’s difficult to be a vegetarian when you don’t eat vegetables, so I went back to eating meat.”
    “But not veal.”
    She smiled. “But not veal.”
    The waiter appeared, and once again Tracy ordered fish. After the waiter had collected their menus and left, she said, “I’ve been wanting to tell you how wonderful your