A-List #10, The: California Dreaming: An A-List Novel (A-List) Read online

  California Dreaming (A-List #10)

  Zoey Dean

  There must be thousands of girls like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm dreaming the hardest.--Marilyn Monroe

  Fear of FlyingSaturday morning, 2:47 a.m.

  Anna Percy was trapped. Also, barefoot.Behind her was the slammed-shut door of the long, white-walled jetway. Ahead of her gaped the open door of her Bali-bound flight. A petite flight attendant with dark, thick waist-length hair, clad in a double-0 navy blue uniform, was calling to her in lightly accented, chirpy English.

  "Hurry! We're pulling back from the gate! Hurry!"

  Rather than hustle the remaining ten paces toward the beckoning flight attendant, Anna froze. Her last words with Logan Cresswell, the boy who had brought her here, the boy who was presumably waiting for her in the first-class cabin of this Air East Indonesia flight, flashed through her mind.

  "There's a flight back to Bali that leaves LAX at three this morning. That's three hours from now ... Come with me."Anna was not the kind of girl to break up with one guy--the exquisitely complicated but equally compelling Ben Birnbaum--only to run away to Bali with another one. Everything in her future was planned out, thank you very much. She was exactly seven days from returning to New York City after living for eight surreal months in Los Angeles. Then, she'd start her freshman year at Yale, which had been her dream ever since she could remember dreaming at all.

  Yet here she was, on the jetway. The international-departures building behind her, the plane ahead of her. Her Chanel pumps? They'd been tossed aside a few moments before, as she'd made a mad three-hundred-yard dash down the airport concourse from the TSA metal detectors to gate 87.

  After these months of attempting to reinvent herself in Los Angeles, including some admitted experimentation with things both remote and dangerous--as benign as ordering a double-double animal style from In-N-Out Burger, as scary as learning to surf on the waves of Malibu, as death defying as ascending the steps of the Getty in a pair of Prada stilettos--now she was about to do the most remote and dangerous thing of her life. A mere ninety minutes before, she'd made the snap decision to join an old Upper-East-Side-childhood-neighbor-turned-recent-romantic-interest, Logan, for a trans-Pacific flight to Bali.

  She wasn't sure Logan was even on the plane. The airline's gate attendant had told her it was against security regulations for her to confirm that he was on the flight. Anna had tried to reach him by cell, but evidently, the captain had already given the order for cell phones to be turned off, tray tables to be locked in their upright positions, et cetera, et cetera.

  "Miss! Please hurry!" The petite flight attendant's voice went up an octave and a half, and she gestured with both hands.

  Anna's heart was pounding as she covered the last five paces of the jetway. She took a deep, fortifying breath and stepped across the threshold. There, the beautiful Balinese flight attendant broke into a relieved smile, welcomed Anna aboard with a gentle bow, and thrust a ribbon-tied bird of paradise blossom into her hand while she scanned Anna's ticket stub.

  "You'll want to take your seat quickly in the first-class cabin, Miss Percy. You're the last one to board, and we'll be taking off shortly."

  Anna thanked her and pivoted left in the direction of first class. She sighed, grateful that the twenty-two-hour flight across the Pacific and the international dateline would at least be comfortable. Since she hadn't had time to pack--this trip had been the very definition of a last-minute decision--she still wore the white eyelet lace Betsey Johnson baby doll dress she'd had on earlier in the evening.

  She glanced around the cabin. There were nine rows of first-class seats, two across. Directly in front of her, another immaculately coiffed attendant in the same navy blue uniform served tall, chilled mimosas to a well-dressed elderly couple, regaling them with details about Bali's fabulous gem shopping and wondrous natural beauty.

  Where was he?

  Bald man in a tweed business suit. Not him.

  Swarthy guy with a heavily tattooed neck, wearing skinny vintage jeans and studded bracelet. Definitely not him.

  Huge man in backward Lakers baseball cap atop a Lakers uniform. Nope. Tiny woman in a maroon warm-up suit sitting beside him. Double nope.

  Short, dirty blond hair. Broad shoulders. Piercing blue eyes. Slight cleft in the chin. Faded jeans and plain black T-shirt.

  Logan.

  Anna smiled. There he was, stretched out in the second row of the luxurious white leather seats, next to the window. The seat on the aisle--her seat--held two hardcover books and a Yankees baseball cap. In that moment, she realized he wasn't expecting her to show up.

  "Please, to your seat, Miss Percy," the petite, raven-haired flight attendant whispered discreetly. "We'd like to depart."

  The flight attendant moved off. Logan didn't look up from his copy of the Los Angeles Times, open to the sports section.

  Anna was just about to move to her seat and announce her arrival when another memory struck home. It had been in a first-class cabin that she'd met Ben Birnbaum. That flight had been the one on New Year's Eve that had brought her from LaGuardia Airport to LAX. Ben had been a savior on that flight--he'd helped get rid of her deeply obnoxious seatmate, a thirtysomething record producer, by pretending to already know her. By the time the flight ended, she felt as though she did know Ben. And she also knew that she wanted to be with him.

  But Ben was in the past. Just a few hours before, he had broken her heart again, this time by kissing his old flame, Cammie Sheppard. Anna had met Cammie her first night in Los Angeles, and it had been hate at first sight. On Cammie's part, anyway. Mostly because Ben was clearly into Anna, and Cammie had been Ben's last girlfriend. But also partially because Cammie was the type of girl who needed someone to hate. At times during the last few months, their relationship had thawed to almost peaceful coexistence. At other times ... not so much.

  "Come with me."

  That's what Logan had suggested to her and it seemed like the perfect escape. Yet she'd said no. Expectations awaited her. Home to New York. Then Yale. But then she'd seen Ben and Cammie in a corridor at the new club they'd opened together in Culver City--Bye, Bye Love--having a close encounter of the third kind.

  That was enough to send her to the airport. Why not? She could always fly back to the East Coast in time to start at Yale.

  The white leather seats were so lush and roomy that Logan didn't at first notice her moving in next to him. "Sorry I'm late. The traffic on the 405 was just insane," she announced nonchalantly, flipping a lock of her long silky blond hair.

  He looked up and, in one fluid movement, rose and pulled her toward him. "Anna." He breathed her name and the next thing she knew his lips were on hers as they melted into a tight embrace.

  "Umm, sir? Miss?"

  The flight attendant tapped Logan on the shoulder, and they broke apart sheepishly. "Please have a seat. You don't want the other passengers to show you what they think of your public display of affection," she chided, winking at them as she moved away.

  They sat, belted in, and a different flight attendant began the pro forma announcement that always came as a plane was taxiing to the runway. Then the captain came on--Anna was surprised to hear a slight Southern accent--to explain that they were number three for takeoff and it was a gorgeous night for flying. She mused whether they'd be able to see Tahiti or Fiji en route. Probably not, she decided. They were flying west. It would be dark a lot of the way.

  "Hey." Logan put his hand atop hers as they waited at the end of the runway for the tower to clear the one to take off. It felt good. Safe
. If Logan wanted to hold her hand for the next twenty-two hours, she decided that would be okay. He laced his fingers with hers. "Why'd you change your mind?"

  "I have an impetuous side," she replied lightly. Then she frowned. "Actually, that's not true. I am trying to develop an impetuous side."

  This was closer to the mark. Impetuousness did not have its own chapter in the This Is How We Do Things Big Book (East Coast WASP edition.) Everything about Anna--from her natural butter blond hair, which she wore very straight and shoulder length, to her refined ivory features and slender body--seemed to denote her prim and proper upbringing. She had the carriage of a ballet dancer, wore little makeup, and favored her grandmother's diamond stud earrings over anything flashy and new. She'd rather go to the Strand bookstore than to Bergdorf Goodman (back in New York), or to the B. Dalton bookstore than to Fred Segal (here in Los Angeles). She loved literature--give her Faulkner or Wharton or Twain over a Bruce Willis movie any day.

  Her time in Los Angeles hadn't changed that. But it had changed her, freed her, to the point that she was able to make impulsive decisions like the one that had brought her here, to this very moment.

  "Me too." Logan grinned, his intense blue eyes twinkling. "Impetuosity--is that even a word?--is highly undervalued."

  "You're suitably impetuous. You got accepted to Harvard and decided not to go," she challenged.

  Anna had practically been with him when he'd made the decision. She had been at a Yale freshman gathering in Manhattan, and he'd been at the same kind of gathering for incoming Harvard students. They'd met up afterward and Logan had confided in her that he felt uninspired by what he'd heard and who he'd seen.

  "Gotta see the world first. You know, starting with my dad's new eco-resort." He shrugged playfully.

  She laughed. Logan's dad, Vaughn Cresswell, was a hotelier whose name people mentioned in the same breath as those of Marriott and Hilton. "Not exactly roughing it with a sleeping bag and two matches."

  "Touché," he agreed. "Anyway, it's a hell of a lot better trip with you along. I'm glad you're here."

  He gave her hand a little squeeze as she stared at him. Logan was tall and blond, on the preppy side. They'd known each other when they they'd been little. When Anna had been in New York a couple of weeks ago, she'd run into him in front of her family's brownstone on the Upper East Side, which just happened to be next door to his family's brownstone. She hadn't seen him in years, and was shocked to discover he'd grown from a skinny, rather quiet boy into a junior version of Daniel Craig--blond, with intense blue eyes, ears that stuck out slightly, a sexy smile, and the kind of sinewy muscles you didn't expect on an intellectual.

  Spending time with him was a bit of a shock. She'd forgotten that there were guys who shared her love of books and meandering philosophical conversation. Most of her Los Angeles peers knew everything there was to know about television and the movies, could spout off the latest box-office results and Nielsen overnights, but couldn't identify Henry James on a bet.

  "So have you told your parents about this little walkabout?"

  Anna felt a bit queasy. Her parents were going to go insane when they found out--in their own idiosyncratic ways, that is.

  Her mother, Jane, was currently in Florence, Italy, with the latest in a long line of very handsome and much younger artists whom she "promoted." In this case "promoted" meant "supported in every way possible," and "every way" probably indeed meant "every way." But Anna had to admit she chose well. Just about every artist she "promoted" got invited to the Whitney Biennial, the Whitney Museum's exhibition of the latest and best in modern art from around the world, which took place every other year.

  What would her mother think? Her mother would be apoplectic that she'd even considered ditching Yale. That is, after she recovered from shock. Then she'd scold her for traveling without luggage or toiletries.

  As for her father? She'd spent the last eight months living with him at his Beverly Hills estate. Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration. Jonathan Percy worked such long hours as an investment advisor that she barely saw him; it wasn't like they sat down together each evening for a family dinner. In some ways, her father might be more forgiving than her mother. Jonathan was considerably more open-minded than his ex-wife, and even had a lovely marijuana habit that he often indulged in the gazebo in his backyard. Still, Anna was pretty sure that his open-mindedness would probably not extend to what she was doing this very minute. The Airfone call that she'd make to him in the morning, once she'd put three thousand six hundred miles between them, was going to be interesting indeed.

  "They'll be okay with it," she finally surmised.

  "Bullshit."

  "Well, that too."

  Anna and Logan continued to hold hands as the captain announced they were number one for departure. The engines roared as the Airbus barreled down the jet-black runway, blue and white guide lights flashing by faster and faster, until the plane lifted off effortlessly into a slight breeze coming from the west, out over the inky Pacific, leaving the city behind them. Anna could see the clear demarcation of the Pacific Ocean where it touched the coastline. The pilot made a sweeping turn to the north. To the east, Los Angeles stretched out in all its gleaming, pulsing glory. To the west was the blackness of night.

  As the plane rose to its cruising altitude, Logan enthusiastically told her about his father's resort on Bali. Four-poster beds strung with dreamy-yet-practical mosquito nets; thatched-roof bungalows that opened onto white sand; lazy afternoons on the resort's private sailboat; moonlit dinners of fresh fish and tropical fruit served by a chef named Dolph, whom his father had imported from the finest four-star restaurant in Düsseldorf, Germany. As she leaned back into the pillowy leather seat and closed her eyes, Anna could visualize the lush island's aquamarine coves and a hammock tied between tree branches thick with mangoes. She felt her body relax. She had made the right decision. She was sure of it.

  With an audible ding, the seat-belt sign switched off.

  A male flight attendant lifted a small microphone and began chattily describing the flight's amenities. With the push of a button, the seats would recline into twin-size beds. Down pillows and comforters were available, as well as scented aromatherapy eye masks and shearling travel booties designed exclusively for the airline by Donna Karan.

  "Let me bring you some slippers," the flight attendant said to Anna in a hushed voice as he finished his announcement. He wasn't much taller than the diminutive woman who had welcomed Anna aboard. Anna thanked him; she was so comfortable, she'd almost forgotten she had nothing covering her toes.

  "Champagne?" The first female flight attendant was making her way down the aisle with a service cart. "We're pouring Taittinger or Mo‡t tonight. As you prefer."

  She poured them each a well-chilled crystal flute, with a fresh orchid blossom adorning the rim. Logan raised his glass.

  "Here's to adventure."

  "Impetuous adventure," Anna agreed.

  They clinked flutes and drank. Anna knew she should be nervous, upset, anxious, and second-guessing this mad, last-minute decision. But she really didn't feel that way at all. She drained half of her champagne and leaned into Logan. He put an arm around her. "I'm happy."

  Such a simple thing to say, but for Anna, who tended to overthink everything, being here in this moment and being happy was something miraculous. She smiled up at him.

  "Me too."

  They were already in Bali, out sailing at sunset. The sun was tomato red as it sank into the water, and the air was redolent with the aroma of coconuts and gardenias and salt.

  "Anna!"

  Anna felt Logan shaking her arm urgently and snapped awake. She'd been having the most delicious dream.

  "What's going--"

  "Shhh! Listen."

  Anna realized that the captain was in the midst of a long announcement to the passengers.

  "... malfunction. Now, what's caused this malfunction, we can't tell in the cockpit. And they can't tell us
from the ground, either." While his tone was light and confident, there was no mistaking the seriousness of his words. "But here's what it's going to mean," he continued. "We're going to do a big ol' U-turn and head back to Los Angeles, dumping as much fuel out at sea as we can. Don't worry about the fish, folks. It's a big ocean."

  "Oh my God!" Anna heard someone behind her exclaim.

  "There's always a chance that my hydraulics will return, and it's a fine night out there. But if I can't get the gear down, we're going to come in on our belly and that's never a picnic. Had to land a Tornado fighter this way once. I'm glad that it was only once, and that I'm here to tell you about it. They'll be ready for us at LAX, but you should all be prepared. So we'll keep you posted from up here. Our flight attendants will review the safety precautions, and I'll be back from time to time. Don't worry, folks--we'll do everything we can to get you home safely."

  Anna suddenly felt the blood run cold in her chest. She didn't know all the specifics, but she'd heard enough to be afraid. There was a problem with the plane, a serious problem that would likely force a belly landing.

  Logan gripped her hand tightly and she could tell he was trying his best not to betray his own fear. Her mind was already on overdrive. Was this the punishment she received for trying to be impetuous?

  In the back of the plane, Anna could hear people clamoring in a dozen different languages, looking for more information, translating for one another--it was the sound of panic about to erupt.

  "We could die," she said quietly, slumping back in the white leather seat and staring ahead, stone-faced.

  Logan leaned in to kiss her cheek. She hoped he'd contradict her, tell her she was silly, tell her everything was going to be okay.

  "Probably not," he replied, but his face gave a different reaction.

  Anna blinked and sat up straighter. She reached for the Airfone. "I've got to call my dad. It could be goodbye."

  Do It Again and You're DeadSaturday morning, 2:58 a.m.

  "My Eduardo, Eduardo mio. Mi querido Eduardo." Samantha Sharpe mumbled to herself in a mix of English and limited Spanish as she sped west on Wilshire Boulevard toward Eduardo Munoz's building--one of those Manhattan-esque apartment houses that lined both sides of the Wilshire corridor between Westwood and Santa Monica.