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  "To miss your prom ... I could never ask you to do that," Eduardo insisted.

  Whew . Evidently her gaffe had blown right past him. Anyway, even if she didn't give a shit about prom, she did care about making her prom movie. Her directing talent was what made her different, unique, special--or at least it would one day, and the sooner the better. Sam found few things more pathetic than children of stars whose only claim to fame was riding the coattails of a rich and famous parent.

  "You will go to prom with your friend Anna?"

  "Anna has a date," Sam explained, feeling increasingly sorry for herself. The music ended and Eduardo held Sam at arm's length so that he could look into her eyes.

  "But this is terrible. I see you are sad. What can I do to help?"

  He looked so stricken that Sam wanted to reassure him. "I'll be fine," she insisted. "Really."

  "You will go, yes?" he prodded.

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  "Yes."

  "With your other friends, perhaps?" Eduardo prompted. "I can't stand to think of you alone."

  She felt torn. Part of her wanted to tell him about Parker. She doubted Eduardo would be mad or jealous, because there was nothing to be mad or jealous about. But she couldn't bring herself to say the words, maybe because she knew how her own mind raced with jealous fantasies whenever she wasn't within a hundred feet of Eduardo. Was it possible that he was the same way?

  "I'll have lots of friends there," Sam assured him. "Don't worry about it."

  They headed back to their table and ate some more, mostly with Eduardo feeding her. That she was with a boy who wanted her to eat never failed to amaze her. He held some wine to her lips to wash down a bite of grape leaves and followed the wine with a kiss. Then he dipped his finger in the wine and ran it over her collarbone and into the décolletage of her baby-doll top. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to the bliss.

  "I have a surprise for you, Samantha," he whispered.

  "What?" she asked, eyes still closed.

  "I will be returning to L.A. in a month. For the rest of the summer."

  She opened her eyes. "Really?"

  He nodded. "I will be an intern at the Peruvian Consulate here until the end of August. My father was able to arrange it."

  "That's ... fantastic!"

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  He laughed and pulled her into his arms. "I was hoping for that reaction. Long-distance love is difficult."

  Love? He had just used the L word. If it were the Big L, with him here all summer, they would both have the chance to find out. All summer? It would be just like Anna and Ben.

  "You are so beautiful, Samantha. I want to make love to you," he whispered.

  Whoa. Talk about saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment.

  She glanced downward at his Randolph Dukes and couldn't help it. As he kissed her again, she wondered what was underneath.

  "Is that what you want, too?" he asked huskily.

  One part of Sam was ready to head back to his hotel. Another part ... the truth was, she felt shy. It was ridiculous. She'd had sex before; usually while drunk and/or high, always with all the lights off. She'd never made love . That seemed so much more intimate, and scary.

  "I don't know," she admitted.

  His strong arms encircled her again. "We do not need to rush. You will let me know when you are ready, Samantha. A month from now, I will take you dancing and we will have our own private prom."

  She felt like looking around for the girl who had inspired these feelings in Eduardo, because it was so hard to believe it was her. She knew she should bring up Parker and prom right now, but it felt so out of sync

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  with the moment. It would come across like some over-the-top moment from Days of Our Lives.

  Besides, they'd have the whole summer to talk about it. About everything.

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  MAC Matte RedAnna gave her car to the valet and eyed the endless line that snaked down Hollywood Boulevard on the wrong side of Trieste's red-velvet rope. Just like at New York's trendiest clubs, there was nothing about the building but the line out front to indicate that this was Hollywood's club of the moment. The outside of Trieste looked like an industrial warehouse. There wasn't even a sign, just some worn numerals above the door.

  She knew she could walk right in; Ben had assured her that her name would be on the guest list. She was glad she didn't have to wait, glad she didn't have to endure the humiliating process of having someone look her over to decide whether or not she was cute enough or rich enough or famous enough to be allowed inside, but the whole thing made her uncomfortable, too.

  She'd been to pretty much every club in New York by the time she was fifteen; in fact, a professional-quality fake ID had been her best friend Cyn's birthday present to her that year. Her sister, Susan, was a party girl, and Anna had gone clubbing with her any number of times.

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  Somehow she usually ended up feeling apart from everyone else, almost as if she were outside a movie scene she was observing. Maybe it was because she was always keeping an eye on Susan. If she didn't do it, who would?

  Relax. Your sister is at the Kripalu Center in Massachusetts and totally sober. Your boyfriend works here. You're fine."I'm a friend of Ben Birnbaum," she told the door guy, a short, skinny guy in his early twenties with a ratlike face and dirty blond hair gelled to a point atop his head. He was dressed all in black--black T-shirt, black jeans, black jacket, black wingtips sans socks. A huge bald man stood next to him.

  "Now you're a friend of mine," the skinny guy told her with a deviant grin, his large front teeth bucking over his lower lip. He motioned her forward.

  "Hey, you didn't even check to see that she's on the guest list!" a girl in line yelled, pointing a savage index finger at Anna. She had a pumpkin-shaped head and wore her dark hair in some variation of a mullet. Her short, thick legs were encased like sausages in skintight jeans; her enormous breasts spilled out of a cheap red-sequined T-shirt.

  "Take a look at her," the doorman commanded. "She's on the list even if she isn't on the list. And you, Great Pumpkin? You might as well go down the block to Bar-Bar. There's no line there, if you catch my drift."

  Anna wanted to kick the obnoxious rat-faced man in his black-clad shins. But she settled for a whispered

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  "You are an ass" in his ear as she slipped into the club, and felt better for having done it.

  A bored-looking girl with sexy, cropped black hair and sequined, black-rimmed, cat-shaped eyeglasses stamped the back of Anna's hand with a Day-Glo green stamp, then directed Anna toward the juice bar. To put herself in the spirit of things, she'd deliberately chosen the kind of sexy outfit that the old Anna never would have worn. She'd donned a white Hermes silk crepe chiffon blouse with a loose-gathered neckline that allowed the blouse to fall off one shoulder or the other, and a fitted gold-and-white Philosophy by Alberta Ferretti cotton bias-cut skirt that ended a good two inches above her knees. She'd piled on a few beaded necklaces her father had brought back for her from a business trip to India (this would be the first time she'd ever worn them), and had finished off the outfit with aqua Balenciaga sandals that tied at the ankle with ribbons. She'd parted her hair on the side so that it fell over one eye and, on a whim, had dug out her MAC matte red lipstick and rubbed some onto her lips. When she'd assessed herself in the mirror, she'd felt satisfied that a new Anna was looking back. Ben had e-mailed her that morning to say that after a quick stint at the door, he'd be working the juice bar at the club for the rest of the night; why didn't she stop by for a while to keep him company? Though she'd e-mailed back that she really wasn't a club person, she'd decided sometime in the afternoon that her attitude was both ridiculous and knee-jerk, based on the Anna she used to be. She would go to his club; she'd surprise him.

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  She headed into the cool, dimly lit nightclub. It turned out to be an interlocked series of themed spaces. The first was about the si
ze of two basketball courts and decorated to look like a massive hospital emergency room. Bottles of alcohol were suspended in medical supply bags over the longest bar Anna had ever seen. The sexy waitresses wore open white doctor's coats over bikinis with stethoscopes around their necks and served drinks to customers in beakers instead of cocktail glasses. Extra wide gurneys dotted various conversation areas instead of couches; some held couples in serious mack mode. Under the techno-pop music, Anna detected an echoing heartbeat throb.

  She didn't spot anything resembling a juice bar, so she asked a passing white-coated doctor-cum-waitress who looked as if she were channeling Jennifer Aniston in her Rachel-haircut days.

  "Juice bar?" Anna mouthed, over the pounding music.

  The waitress pointed toward the far wall, where Anna saw an opening that led to another room. She mouthed, "Thank you," and started to wend her way through the packed bodies, managing to avoid stepping on any open-toed female shoes or having any beers spilled on her blouse. Guys were checking her out much more than usual--it had to be the sexier look. When a drunk club-goer with a frat guy's broad face leered at her and licked his lips, for a brief moment she felt humiliated and wished she were in her usual, more conservative clothes. Then she realized he was the asshole and mentally gave him the finger.

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  The next room, which turned out to be the main dance room, had been decorated to look like a cave, with stalactites dangling from the ceiling and stalagmites emerging from the floor amid the dancers. Giant backlit images of 3-D bats were painted on the walls. The floor was some special kind of glass, lit from below; its color changed from bloodred to sea green to snow white and back again. Not that any of the hundreds of people in the cave were paying any attention, as just about everyone was dancing. Anna had to creep along the walls to make her way through.

  At the far end, she pushed through two swinging doors and found a short, wide passage filled with fresh air--a delightful change after the sweaty musk of the cavernous dance hall. This passage opened into the night, where Anna was surprised to find a large outdoor patio circa mid-twentieth-century suburbia. Life-size cardboard figures of President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, and other world leaders dotted the conversation areas as if they were invited guests. Strands of tiny white lights were strung through the branches of a dozen leafy trees. Plastic lawn furniture was arranged around individual barbecues, where chefs in old-fashioned aprons grilled burgers and hot dogs. In the center of everything was a plastic-sided aboveground backyard swimming pool common to that era, with a dozen people splashing around in it (mostly in their underwear). A voluptuous redhead was swimming in a sheer white mesh bra that had clearly been worn to be

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  seen in that pool. At the far end of the patio was a small stage with band equipment. The band, sporting early Beatles haircuts and Nehru jackets, was sitting at a picnic table on a break.

  Anna spotted Ben at the juice bar, where he was dumping a cupful of strawberries into a blender while two Hollywood writer types--both guys in their forties, both in baseball caps--waited for him to fix their drinks. When Ben saw her, his face lit up. He held up five fingers, meaning, she figured, that was when he'd get free.

  She sat in a lawn chair and watched him work, as two cute girls sidled up to the juice bar. Anna tried not to think of how many times a night girls had to be hitting on Ben. A lot. Ten smoothies later, someone from the kitchen mercifully relieved him, so he was able to ease over to Anna.

  "Mango-Papaya Ben Special," he pronounced as he sat down and handed her a tall, frosted glass filled with something thick and orange. "Try it. Ten bucks a pop to the general public."

  She took a sip. It was fantastic. "No alcohol?"

  He shook his head. "You're in the no-booze room. We get all the AA types." He took the drink from her and tasted it, then handed it back. "Damn, I'm good."

  "Hey, I'll be the judge of that," she teased.

  His eyes flicked over her. "You look fantastic." He reached out and touched the chunk of blond hair that flopped over Anna's face. "You should wear your hair like that for prom."

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  She smiled. "Saturday night. I'll try to remember."

  "What are you talking about, Saturday night?"

  "Sam sent an e-mail to everyone," Anna explained. "Sam's dad is shooting on Friday night, so they moved prom to Saturday. It was a last-minute thing. I was so sure you had to be on her e-mail list."

  Ben rubbed his forehead wearily. "Shit."

  She couldn't understand his reaction. What difference did it make, really? He'd told her that Saturday night would be his night off until the middle of June, but that he could get her prom night off, too.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Saturday night is Maddy's prom."

  "Jack is taking her."

  "He was."

  " Was? " Anna echoed, alarmed.

  Ben exhaled loudly. "I found some photos that Jack took of her, wearing ... not much. She thinks it's some big romance, but the guy just wants to get laid."

  "So you're going instead?"

  He looked sheepish. "I didn't think it would be a problem, I was just trying to help the girl out."

  It was a long moment before she could absorb what he was telling her. "You're playing knight in shining armor to Maddy's damsel in distress."

  He shook his head. "Damn, I can't believe your prom got changed. The odds of that are nonexistent."

  "Evidently not."

  He cocked his head at her. "Wait, are you mad? "

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  Mad? Yes, she was mad. Was she overreacting? Well, too bad. She felt how she felt, and for once she was going to be up front about it. She opened her mouth to tell him off, but he spoke first.

  "You don't really think I'm going to take her to her prom instead of taking you to yours, do you? I'll just explain to her what happened. She'll understand that you're my priority. Anyway, she idolizes you."

  Anna shut her mouth, extremely glad that no words had actually come out, because she would have sounded like a small-minded shrew. Of course she was Ben's priority. Of course he'd still be taking her to prom. Embarrassed at her own reaction, she shifted mental gears. Maddy would be really disappointed if Ben couldn't go to prom with her now. She couldn't very well reinvite Jack after blowing him off.

  Ben was right; Maddy was just a clueless kid who needed a little help. Well, Anna was willing to help her out, too.

  "I've got an idea. What if you take Maddy to her prom early, for a little while, and then pick me up later on?"

  The admiration on his face made her feel wonderful.

  "Really? You'd do that?"

  "Sure."

  "You are the best, Anna." He gathered her into his arms and gave her a soft kiss. "How did I get so lucky?"

  She kissed him back and then rested her head on his shoulder. Love could make a girl act in strange and

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  bizarre ways. So what if it was Ben-to-the-rescue with Maddy? He did that because he was such a caring guy. She loved that about him. A niggling voice asked her why he felt the need to do it quite so often. She told the voice to shut up, and kissed her boyfriend again.

  For the next hour or so, Ben mechanically made ten-dollar smoothies for an ever-growing number of partyers at the juice bar. Anna hung out for another thirty minutes and then went home. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing, because the young actress who played the daughter on that WB show with the rapid-fire dialogue about the hip mom innkeeper and her school-bright/street-dumb daughter kept hanging around the bar, flirting with Ben. He didn't mind. Flirting wasn't cheating, and cheating was something he had zero interest in. The only other time he'd felt that way had been in the very early days with Cammie, and that was only because she was hotter than any other girl on the planet except for maybe Anna. He'd quickly learned that a little Cammie went a long way; he was glad that episode of his life was way behind him.

  He had three blenders going at all times, and still the line
of thirsty people didn't seem to dwindle. The only consolation was a growing pile of cash in the tip jar-- actually, a goldfish bowl with a swimming goldfish at the bottom separated from the money by a layer of Plexiglas. Not that he needed the money, but it was nice to be rewarded for a job well done. He'd taken the job

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  at Trieste to get some real-life experience in the club business and hoped that this summer gig might lead to a management position. If he had to make smoothies, though, as part of his training, he was more than game.

  Ben expertly snapped off one of the blenders and poured a banana-coconut smoothie for the former star of a seventies TV show that, in the past few years, had been made into two movies with a new trio of babes. The former star still had the same famous, flowing blond hairdo, but her way-too-much-plastic-surgery face was a little scary. He almost recommended to her that she have a consultation with his father.

  "Hey."

  Ben looked up from the sliced white Jersey peaches he was dropping into another blender.

  Jack was staring at him. He was alone, casually clad in jeans and a Princeton T-shirt.

  "What's up?" Ben asked tersely.

  "We need to talk."

  Ben shrugged, then added pitted Okanagan cherries to the peaches. "I'm working, man."

  Jack ignored that comment. "What is this about you taking Maddy to prom?"

  "Suddenly you care about a high school prom?" Ben turned on the blender.

  "Suddenly I'd say it's none of your business. What are you trying to do, run the world?"

  "I'm making it my business." Ben snapped the blender on, then leaned close to Jack so that he could be

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  heard over the whirring of the Blendec. "Admit it, dude. You just want to get laid and we both know it. Go play some other girl who's in your league."

  Jack shook his head. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about."

  "Sell that to someone who's buying." Ben turned off the blender, poured one reddish thick shake into a tall fifties Coca-Cola glass, dropped in the extralong licorice straw, and handed it to the bearded guy with thick curly dark hair--Jerry Garcia, risen from the dead, so to speak--who'd been waiting patiently.