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

  It was a heady feeling to be doing sixty miles an hour on a street where traffic generally crawled along at a teeth-gnashingly slow pace, her Sirius satellite radio tuned to the blues, the windows cranked down, and the balmy late-August night air hitting her in a rush.

  "Her Eduardo" lived in one of these white high-rises, in an apartment owned by the government of Peru and reserved for members of its Los Angeles consulate staff. Eduardo was a member of the staff for the summer, compliments of his father, a high-ranking official of that mountainous South American nation. Sam had met him at a resort in Baja California during the spring, where he was vacationing from his studies at the Sorbonne in Paris.

  "Mi Eduardo. Querido Eduardo. Guapo querido Eduardo," Sam repeated.Your Eduardo.

  That was how her boyfriend--no, her fiancé--Eduardo had signed the handwritten note that she'd found on the last page of the mystery delivery she'd received not three hours before, while standing in front of Cammie's club, Bye, Bye Love. A thin Latino man in a black pin-striped suit had presented her with an artist's portfolio, saying only, "I have a delivery for you."

  She and Anna had opened it, Sam in a state of near-paralyzing shock, on a round stone table near the club. It was filled with artists' renditions of bridal gowns, each worn by a girl sketched in Sam's likeness. Her favorite was strapless, with a bodice encrusted with pearls and diamonds, and an Empire waistline. But the others were almost as dazzling.

  Until the moment she opened that portfolio, she had been absolutely, totally, utterly convinced that Eduardo was cheating on her. In recent weeks, a gorgeous Peruvian designer named Gisella had made a habit of hanging around him, and when Sam had gone to New York City with Anna a couple of weeks before, she'd encountered Eduardo and Gisella in a cozy booth at a Midtown restaurant, looking rather intimate. In a scene worthy of a cheesy soap opera, she'd dumped him on the spot, without giving him any chance to explain.

  His explanation was, of course, almost achingly simple. He had been working with Gisella in secret to create these bridal gowns. To top it all off, he'd been understanding of Sam's dramatic outburst. In his apologetic explanatory note he'd written, Somewhere in your family tree, there is hot Latin blood--of this I am certain.

  At this point, she wouldn't have been surprised to find out his teasing supposition was correct.

  Sam's stomach rumbled in nervous excitement as she reached Eduardo's new building, the Edgemont. It had a circular driveway, and a valet was on duty despite the late hour. He took her Hummer and parked it while Sam pushed through the glass revolving door and into a mirrored lobby.

  A white grand piano rested in the center of the deserted lobby. Gigantic vases of freesias, lavender, and roses adorned every available table. Soft classical music wafted from speakers hidden in potted trees. Behind the white marble guard desk stood the doorman on duty, the size of a linebacker for the Oakland Raiders, with a shaved head and thick bushy eyebrows. "Good evening. Welcome to the Edgemont," he greeted Sam as she entered. His voice was melodious, and he wore a classic black Ralph Lauren suit. That it was nearing three in the morning didn't seem to faze him at all. "May I help you?"

  "Eduardo Munoz, please."

  "Just a moment." He picked up a white telephone, made a brief call upstairs, then smiled at Sam.

  "Go on up. It's apartment 14-G."

  She strode to the gleaming gold-doored elevator and took in her reflection. After bidding goodbye to Anna at Bye, Bye Love, she'd driven back to Bel Air for a hair, makeup, and clothing detour at her father's estate. She'd hunted around in her studio-apartment-size walk-in closet for the perfect outfit, finally choosing a vintage emerald strapless chiffon party dress she'd found at Decades on Melrose that somehow made her look something approaching petite, particularly if the lights were low. She paired it with Marni wedges that lengthened her legs by four inches, then showered, did her hair, smudged in some Tarte bronzer and spritzed her cleavage with Thierry Mugler Angel. She smiled at herself approvingly. There was no way she was going to let Eduardo see her looking anything less than fierce.

  The elevator arrived with a ding, and as it took her fourteen flights upward, her heart flew into her chest. She tumbled out of the gilded box, barely registering the hallway's lush beige carpet, or the reproductions of paintings from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art that hung at twenty-foot intervals on both sides. Fourteen-G was to the left, at the end of the corridor. She stood outside Eduardo's door and knocked, her heart pounding.

  She was about to fish in her Rebecca Minkoff clutch for a breath mint when the door opened. There he stood, impossibly handsome with his inviting dark brown eyes, olive complexion, and mussy dark hair, in a white Marc Jacobs linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up and tan Ermenegildo Zegna brushed cotton pants. She hadn't seen him since their horrible breakup in New York more than a week earlier, and wanted to find the most wonderful, romantic, perfect thing in the world to say to him.

  "You asshole."

  He laughed and pulled her into the entryway. She had forgotten how good he smelled, how warm his skin felt against hers. He wrapped his arms around her bare back and spun her in a half-circle, so that she stood facing him in the foyer.

  "I love you, my Samantha," he whispered into her ear, then gently moved her long hair and kissed her neck. "Don't ever, ever, ever do that to me again," Sam warned.

  He grinned and held a hand up as if taking an oath. "On my honor," he agreed, trying hard to look solemn.

  Then he kissed her again.

  That was easy. Why had she been so insanely jealous, so certain that he was playing her? Perhaps it came from being the daughter of America's Most Beloved Action Star, Jackson Sharpe. Or maybe it had something to do with growing up as a size twelve in a town where none of the other second-generation female royals wore anything larger than a size four. Perhaps it came from knowing deep in her heart that despite the perfect caramel streaks and hair extensions put in by Raymond himself at his new salon on Rodeo Drive--who would ever have thought that neighborhood would stage a comeback?--and the brows done by Valerie, and regular oxygen-and-fruit exfoliation facials at Thibiant day spa, she was still not beautiful.

  "You look gorgeous." He tracked one large hand to the curve of her waist, then slid his fingertips to her ample hips. "Come. I've prepared a feast."

  "With pleasure. But what if I hadn't shown up?"

  He smiled at her. "I knew you'd come. And I'm glad you did."

  She slipped an arm through his as he gave her the tour of the apartment. It was one bedroom, with a wide-open combination dining room and living room with a tile floor and a picture window that looked out onto Wilshire Boulevard, and beyond that, the Santa Monica mountains. There was a glass table with four chairs, a low couch covered with authentic Peruvian pillows and a green quilt, and a flat-screen television on the wall. The kitchen was white-on-white and ultramodern. Nowhere did Sam see a feast. Which could only mean ...

  Eduardo opened the bedroom door. It looked like something out of a GQ spread. Sleek, modern furniture with a walnut finish, a king-size bed with a headboard covered in distressed chocolate leather. In the corner, a desk held his PowerBook laptop and a Bose iPod Sound Dock. There was also a candlelit table covered with a white tablecloth and laden with an astonishing spread. Two black upholstered teak chairs were placed side by side.

  "Come. Let's eat. And drink. And talk." He took her by the elbow and steered her to the table.

  After he gallantly pulled a chair out for her and helped her into it, he poured her two crystal glasses. One was fresh mango juice, the other was Stag's Leap chardonnay. There were platters of smoked oysters, Russian salads of various types, three kinds of cheese, and a French baguette fragrant with rosemary.

  This was another thing she loved about him: he actually encouraged her to eat.

  "I have a plan that I think you will like," Eduardo began, slipping an oyster into her mouth.

  "Which is?" Sam prompted. She took the glass of juice and swallowed
half of its sweet, fragrant contents in one gulp. "I'm game for anything. As long as I don't have to leave this apartment." She glanced at him through her L'Oréal Paris-mascaraed lashes seductively. "Make that this bedroom."

  He smoothed some caramel-streaked hair off her face. "I'm thinking more long term. You want to go to film school at USC in the fall. I must return to the Sorbonne for my last year there."

  "And you go back in like a week," Sam added miserably, feeling like a warm shower had suddenly run cold.

  "We could have the long engagement you envisioned when I first asked you," Eduardo continued, running his finger around the rim of his wineglass. The flickering candles cast eerie shadows against the bedroom's white walls. "But I think this will make it so much harder for us to be apart. I never want to have the kind of misunderstanding we just had again."

  The thought of what had happened in New York made her wince.

  "I think we would not have had such a misunderstanding if we had moved past being engaged," Eduardo finished.

  Sam had another oyster halfway to her mouth, but gingerly set it back on the plate. "I'm not sure what you mean."

  "I mean marriage," Eduardo said simply. "I mean ... let's not wait to be wed. Sam, my beautiful Sam ... marry me now."

  Sam gripped the countertop with her petal-pink fingernails. Now? Marry him now? Okay, not right this instant, but when he said now, he didn't mean in a year. He wasn't talking about months--he was talking about weeks. Maybe even days.

  She sat up straighter in the cushioned teak chair. What was he envisioning, a shotgun wedding in Las Vegas? She had no aspirations to get hitched at the Little Chapel on the Strip, with an Elvis impersonator preacher officiating, thank you very much. It was all ... just ... too soon. She inched closer to him and gently put a hand on his leg. "Eduardo, you know that I--"

  She was cut off by the jarring ring of her cell phone.

  "Who's calling at this hour?"

  Caller ID was useless. It was a blocked number. Sam brought her Razr to her ear. "Yes?"

  "It's Anna."

  She sounded like hell. Had something happened with Ben? "Anna! It's three-thirty in the morning. What's up?"

  "Are you watching the news?" Her voice was quavery.

  "No, I'm not watching the news. I'm at Eduardo's, and it's really, really late."

  "Turn on the news. I'm on the Air East Indonesia jet. Flight 1976."

  "What the hell are you doing on an airplane?" Sam was flummoxed. She looked over at Eduardo, as if his concerned-looking dark eyes might hold the answer.

  "I decided to fly to Bali. With Logan. It was a sudden thing. I thought it was a good decision, but now we have mechanical problems. We're an hour away from LAX and we're going to crash-land. I'm scared."

  For a brief moment, Sam thought her friend was playing a joke on her. But Anna wasn't a prankster. She was in danger. "Anna, stay calm." Sam turned to Eduardo. "Honey?" She tried to keep her voice as steady as she could, knowing her friend could overhear. "Could you go put on one of the local news channels? Anna's on a flight that's having some mechanical difficulty."

  Eduardo covered the thirty feet to his bedroom's forty-two-inch Sony plasma TV in less than a millisecond, and the screen glimmered to life. The local CBS affiliate was on with breathless coverage of the Air East Indonesia jet that was about four hundred miles off the coast and headed for LAX without functional landing gear. There would have to be a crash landing, the anchorwoman said, and then the coverage switched to a brief interview with a retired Continental airlines pilot who was pontificating on the chances of the plane coming through this landing unscathed.

  "Tell me what they're saying," Anna demanded.

  Sam's heart thudded in her chest, and she felt even more nervous than she had standing outside Eduardo's door half an hour ago. "I don't think that's a very good idea, Anna."

  "Sam, I am on this jet, and I need to know what's going on. The pilot isn't telling us much. Please?"

  Sam breathed deeply. How did you tell one of your closest friends she was about to die? "They're saying that--that--you're going to--"

  There was a slight pop as the connection was lost.

  The hand holding her now-silent phone trembled. "I lost her. They're crashing--" Tears began to flood Sam's eyes.

  "No, they're not," Eduardo declared, his voice strong and reassuring. "Don't panic. They're showing radar of the plane on the television. It's in the air. It's heading for LAX. The pilots on board are very experienced. No one is crashing."

  Sam stared at the TV as though it were some kind of oracle. In the lower left-hand side of the screen was a radar image, along with an arrow pointing to Air East Indonesia flight 1976. Eduardo was right. The announcer intoned again that the plane was maintaining its altitude and was still on course to LAX. It was due to arrive in an hour. The TV station put up a digital clock in the lower right-hand side of the screen, counting down the minutes and seconds to the plane's scheduled arrival time. It reminded Sam of the constant clock on the show 24. But this wasn't prime-time TV, and there was no Jack Bauer waiting in the wings to save the world.

  Sam stood, tottering a little on her sky-high Marni wedges. "We're going to the airport." She started toward the door.

  "I don't know if they'll let us in," Eduardo commented, but he had already turned off the television. "They might close the terminals."

  "Let them try to stop us."

  "I'll drive." He picked up his keys from the night-stand and held the bedroom door open for Sam, placing a gentle hand on the small of her back as she drew near him. "Let's go."

  Sam paused as they stood in the open doorway. "Eduardo? Wait."

  He stopped and gazed at her with his chocolate brown eyes.

  It was as if this terrible thing that was unfolding with Anna suddenly made the world seem clear in a way that had been impossible only a few minutes before. The plane could crash. This wasn't bullshit. And here was a guy whom she loved dearly, who wanted to marry her. That wasn't bullshit either.

  Who knew what the next minutes and hours would bring?

  "If Anna survives, we're getting married at the end of the week." Sam heard herself say. "If she doesn't--"

  "She'll make it," Eduardo assured her. His voice was full of confidence and his eyes shone. "She has to. She's supposed to be at a wedding a week from tonight. Ours." He draped an arm around her shoulder. "Come. Let's go."

  Ménage à BlahSaturday morning, 3:45 a.m.

  Cammie Sheppard let her bejeweled satin Cesare Paciotti platform sandals dangle from her forefinger as she watched the night auditor--a hip Vietnamese accountant named Tran, whose shaved head and steel-toed motorcycle boots belied her chosen profession--of Bye, Bye Love, close out the cash register in the main bar. Cammie was wearing an emerald green Randolph Duke beaded mesh spaghetti-strap mini-dress, and sometime during the late-night/early-morning hours she had twisted her nearly waist-length strawberry-blond curls up on her head and skewered them with a pencil. By now, tendrils had fallen from the makeshift barrette and tumbled artlessly--which Cammie knew to be the most perfect kind of artful, because it looked as if you hadn't tried at all--down her slender back.A few hours ago, the dancing, gossiping bodies of the L.A. elite had filled the club's immaculately designed dance floors to capacity. Opening night had been a smashing success. The crowd of Hollywood insiders, models, actors, and designers had met even Cammie's impossibly high standards. When your father was Hollywood's top agent, as famous as the megatalent he represented, you tended to reach for the stars. And if you were Cammie Sheppard, you got them.

  "Hey." Ben Birnbaum eased up next to her. All six-plus feet of him looked fantastic, in a black Giorgio Valentini suit over a bloodred Bye, Bye Love T-shirt, which featured a razor slicing through the center of a heart. His electric blue eyes were lively and only his tousled brown hair gave away the late hour and the long night they'd had. "We're a hit." He grinned lopsidedly, his lip swollen on the right side where her ex-boyfriend, Adam Flood,
had slugged him just a few hours ago.

  "Interesting choice of words," she noted, twirling the stool so that her bare knee playfully knocked into his thigh. "And, for the record, I always knew we would be," she purred.

  "We make a great team." He gave her a smile that reached his eyes, running a hand through his disheveled hair. "You are one of a kind, Cam."

  She stood and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Well, Ben," she began, as Tran made a discreet exit through the club's large metal door. "We really ought to celebrate."

  Her suggestion was thinly veiled: Cammie Sheppard code for Let's go make insane monkey love.

  Cammie and Ben had been a couple during her junior and his senior year at Beverly Hills High, and had spent the year doing pretty much that, everywhere and anywhere. They'd gotten a rep for it. When he'd broken up with her during that same year, she'd vowed to get him back someday, a feat that at the time had seemed simple enough. Until boring, blue-blooded Anna Percy came along. Ben had fallen for her almost immediately upon her arrival on New Year's Eve. But his fling with Anna was now clearly over, and tonight he had kissed Cammie like he had finally come to his senses, all five of which were clearly focused on her. Best of all, Anna had walked in at exactly the right moment, when Cammie and Ben his engaged in a full-frontal lip-lock.

  "We could go back to my place," Cammie added, letting the loose tendrils of her curls brush his strong shoulders. Only twenty minutes separated her and Ben from picking up where they'd left off just a year ago. She traced a delicate finger over the soft cotton fabric that stretched across his chest.

  "What about Adam?" Ben asked suddenly, pulling back to look at her.

  Cammie withdrew her arms from his neck. Damn. The last person she wanted to think about right now was Adam Flood.