Read The Only Girl in the Game for Free Online Page A

socko months he had pushed her far enough out of it, close enough to the edge so he made that one last effort and dropped her.
    “Who needs you?” he said. It seemed an apt summary of the whole thing.
    But when you know you can’t go back, you have to make do with the little bit you have. She made a connection with a local agent-manager, a shy confused guy who had no idea how to sell talent, but knew how to build up the talent he was trying to peddle. So he added three factors—four if you add the looks and the figure and the sexy wardrobe: the true and husky voice of limited range, the piano playing—which was at best an accompaniment with chords, a la the late Dwight Fiske—and her knack of writing wry little lyrics and the music to go with them … a talent Jackie had scorned. Jackie had beaten timing into her. The little agent made her work with a mirror, made her concentrate on the mobility of her face until she had fifty clown faces to match the husky naughty lyrics. And then he showed her around, but she was nervous and could not put it over.
    Max Hanes saw something in the package. And he knew she was broke and desperate and beautiful in her own special way, and he knew most of the things that can be done to desperate people, and he talked to her and learned what would work best with her.
    That’s how they install the button. That’s how they wire you for chimes.
    See what you did to me, schoolgirl? See where you put me? Many thanks, little sophomore. Many, many thanks.
    She clambered up out of the pool seal-sleek and spectacular. As she walked smiling back toward Hugh Darren, she yanked her bathing cap off and fluffed her midnight hair, and then, on impulse, clowned for him, making a big wet Marilyn Monroe mouth, with the chin up and eyes hooded, and giving her hips all the roll and swing she could manage.
    “They could pass laws about you, even in Vegas,” he said.
    “It was all for you, dear.”
    “The bystanders suffer, though. One of my younger lifeguards just walked into the ladder on the slide.”
    She winked at him, toweled her face and shoulders dry, and clambered lithely back into the sun chaise with a sigh of contentment. “Just a bawdy impulse, I guess. Didn’t mean to destroy poolside morale. Just thought, mmmm, there’s ol’ Hugh and I’ll walk him a girl-type walk.”
    She lay back, her face turned toward him. He sat on the towel beside the chaise, his gray-blue eyes level with, and less than a foot from, her dark blue eyes. And with that magic that was but a month old for them, they were suddenly enclosed in their own area of special and personal privacy.
    “It was girl-type,” he said. “I will give you that. Yes.”
    “Some days your eyes look green, even.” And she did something with her lips that so specifically invited his kiss that she saw his inadvertent leaning toward her.
    “Oh, fine,” he said, scolding her in a mocking way. “We establish this poolside routine and some other routines of meeting here and there, and now you are giving me the walk, and trapping me into the kiss. So why don’t we just have the information tattooed across our foreheads so nobody will be in any doubt at all?”
    “You have made me see it all, Mr. Darren. I have been unfair to you. I have been undermining your authority. I am causing your employees to whisper about you behind your back. The only decent thing I can do is to … sever our clandestine relationship right here and now.”
    “Hey!” he said. “Hey, now!”
    “You’ve made me see the error of my ways at last.” She did that thing with her mouth again.
    “Stop that, dammit!”
    She produced a tragic sigh. “Here it is Wednesday, the only night I have off in the whole week, and I was all set to be sly and sneaky and sort of skulk around so as not to completely destroy your reputation by having anybody see one of the entertainers sneak into your room. But now it is all over.Indeed. Forsooth. Verily. I shall spend the