The A-List Page 6

  “You are not,” Dee said supportively.

  “Look at Ben’s date! Grace Kelly—and we’re totally talking circa Rear Window, pre–Princess of Monaco here. She’s a size four at the most. And she’s like three inches taller than me.”

  “Kiss-kiss,” a voice sang out, and Cammie Sheppard came gliding over. Her signature “I-just-got-out-of-bed” strawberry blond locks fell halfway down her back, looking stunning against her pale green Balenciaga leather corset dress. She did a three-sixty to show off the velvet ribbons that laced down to the top of her perfect, heart-shaped behind.

  Sam took in Cammie’s fabulousness and felt depressed all over again. Cammie had bee-stung lips and deep-set honey-colored eyes. Naturally slender, her legs went on forever. True, she’d purchased the 34C breasts and had her ordinary brown hair chemically transformed into that riot of fiery curls, but so what? The total package screamed goddess. “Oh my God.” Cammie reeled as she took in Sam’s bridesmaid dress. “You look like an Oscar in drag.”

  “Cammie,” Dee chided, “someone needs to clear her chakras.”

  “Dee, why don’t you just tattoo ‘New Age loser’ on your forehead,” Cammie snapped, “and save us all the agony of having to hear your voice.”

  Dee pouted. That remark was mean even by Cammie standards. Maybe she was PMSing or something. On the other hand, she knew that meanness was in Cammie’s genes. Her father was an über-agent at Creative Artists Agency, notorious for being a son of a bitch in a business where the title really meant something.

  “I’m changing as soon as the ceremony’s over,” Sam told Cammie. Down below, she watched Ben take two flutes of champagne from a geisha-garbed drag-queen waiter (Poppy had gushed to Sam that He-Geisha was the caterer of the moment) and clink glasses with the mystery wench.

  “Ahi roll?”

  A he-geisha had appeared out of nowhere, offering a tray of sushi. “No thanks.” Sam waved him off and took Cammie’s hand. “Okay, don’t freak, but Ben’s here.”

  Cammie’s doe eyes lit up. “Why would I freak? If he’s really naughty, I might even take him back.”

  Dee and Sam exchanged a look, and then Dee pointed discreetly toward the main floor of the rotunda, where Ben and his mystery date were chatting up some of Ben’s friends from high school.

  Cammie’s alabaster cheeks went blotchy. “Who the hell is that?”

  Dee folded her arms. “From the point of view of the Zohar, that isn’t the healthiest response you can have.”

  “One class at the Kabala Center doesn’t make you Madonna,” Cammie blazed.

  “Six,” Dee said, wounded.

  “Whatever. I saw Ben’s sister at Yoga Booty yesterday, and she specifically told me he was coming solo.”

  “Sam?”

  The girls turned to find the wedding planner, Fleur Abra, tapping impatiently on her Lucite clipboard and glaring at Sam.

  “What?”

  “What are you doing up here?” Fleur demanded, momentarily clicking off the walkie-talkie radio headset she wore. “You’re a bridesmaid. They’re taking photos in the East Hall right this minute. Get down there.”

  “I don’t really photograph well.” Sam went back to Ben-watching. The mystery girl took Ben’s arm. This event was supposed to end up like Circle of Friends, meaning that while Sam wasn’t the thinnest or the cutest, she’d end up with the guy anyway. However, at the moment, it didn’t look like the mystery girl had been clued in to Sam’s plot line.

  Well, Sam figured, that would just give the plot more dramatic arc. She’d just have to hang in there and be sweet and wonderful and plucky and—

  “Sam!” Fleur interrupted Sam’s mental rally. “These are your father’s wedding photos. You should want to be in them.”

  “I’ve already been in a set of my father’s wedding photos, Fleur. Seven years ago. I think that’s a lifetime quota.”

  “Don’t you even care how your father feels?”

  “He won’t notice,” Sam said, her eyes still on Ben and the beautiful girl.

  “I’m sure that isn’t true,” Fleur said, sucking in her bony cheeks. “What is the matter with you Hollywood brats? Do you think that the whole world has to revolve around you all the time? Are you deliberately trying to ruin this day for your father and Poppy? Is that what you want?”

  Before Sam could respond, Cammie moved in. “What’s your name again? Fluoride?”

  The wedding planner pressed her lips together in a thin, angry line. “Fleur. You can call me Ms. Abra.”

  “What she wants, Fluoride,” Cammie continued, ticking things off her fingers, “is (a) for her father to still be married to her mother and her mother to come back from her fling with the Dalai Lama; (b) Heidi Klum’s legs; (c) world peace; and (d) a bridesmaid’s dress that doesn’t look make her look like Bigfoot playing dress-up. So unless you can make those things happen, I suggest you get the hell out of my friend’s face.”

  Fleur’s recently reconstructed nostrils (Sam knew cocaine damage when she saw it) quivered indignantly as she marched off. Sam smiled gratefully at Cammie. No one could tell someone off the way Cammie could tell someone off.

  “Thanks,” Sam said.

  “Don’t mention it.” Cammie extracted a compact from her Prada bag and checked her pale pink Stila lip gloss. “So, what I think,” she told her reflection, “is that we should go down there and make a grand entrance. I’m just dying to meet Ben’s little friend. Do I get backup?”

  Sam and Dee agreed to flank Cammie in her hour of need. They each popped the Kate Spade mint that had been handed to them upon entry, tossed their hair, and, in Sam’s mind, looking not unlike the trio of hot and nasty girls in Jawbreaker (the movie sucked, but the clothes had been to die for), headed for the circular stairs that led down to the rotunda. Time to meet, greet, and compete.

  Eight

  6:01 P.M., PST

  Just as Ben felt the touch of Anna’s hand on his arm, a slant of afternoon sun on reddish golden tendrils across the rotunda caught his eye. There was only one girl in the world with hair like that. Cammie Sheppard. And she was heading right for him, with Sam and Dee in tow.

  Ben couldn’t help but notice that Cammie still moved like walking sex. She was the hottest girl he’d ever known in his life—Cammie Sheppard could make the Iceman cometh. Even when he hadn’t liked her, he’d loved having sex with her, after which he hadn’t liked himself very much. But he was over her now. He wasn’t about to let his life be ruled by the head below his waist.

  As Ben watched the approach of the unholy trinity, it occurred to him that he should have prepared Anna for this moment.

  “Anna, see those three girls?” he said quickly, cocking his head toward the advancing army. “The brunette is Jackson Sharpe’s daughter. The other two are her best friends. They were a year behind me in high school, we all hung with the same people, and—”

  Too late.

  “Ben!” Dee squealed.

  “Hey, Dee,” Ben said easily.

  She stood on tiptoe to hug his neck. Sam threw her arms around him. Cammie was confident enough to be last. She made sure that there was pelvic contact when they kissed.

  Which was not lost on Anna. There was something about these girls that put up Anna’s defenses. She slipped an arm through Ben’s. “So, introduce me to your friends,” she told him.

  He did. The girls told Anna how thrilled they were to meet her. How much they loved her dress. How cute her shoes were. Anna said she’d forgotten how chilly it got at night in Los Angeles; cool enough for a jacket but obviously not for her winter coat. Cammie immediately volunteered to lead a shopping expedition to Fred Segal.

  “You don’t wear fur, do you, Anna?” Dee queried. “Because it’s like I can still hear the animals screaming when I look at their little pelts.”

  “You’re wearing leather shoes, Dee,” Cammie pointed out. “Those are made from their little skins.”

  “Eew,” Dee whined.

  “So Ben,
” Sam began, “I thought you were coming alone to the wedding.”

  “I was. But I called the wedding planner from the plane and told her assistant there’d been a change of plans. She said it was fine.”

  “I hope it’s not too inconvenient,” Anna added.

  “It is so no problem,” Sam assured her.

  “Firecracker shrimp?” a he-geisha offered. There were no takers.

  “I love the waitstaff,” Anna commented. “It took me a minute to realize they were men.”

  Sam lifted a champagne flute from a passing he-geisha’s tray. “Not all,” she confided. “One of them is a woman. We’re supposed to wonder who has what equipment under those kimonos. Like anyone cares.”

  “If I get bored enough, I’ll do hands-on research.” Cammie winked, flashing a Cheshire cat smile at Ben.

  The way Cammie was looking at Ben and the way he was avoiding looking back put Anna’s girl-dar on red alert. Any idiot could see that the two of them must have been an item. Cammie Sheppard was one of the most beautiful girls Anna had ever seen, luscious in a way that made Anna feel prepubescent. Plus she seemed to have Cyn’s self-confidence. Cyn, though, was a sweetheart, and Anna had a strong feeling that Cammie was, well … not.

  God. What if Cammie and Ben were Cyn and Scott all over again? But then Anna smiled. She was the one with Ben, not Cammie. This time she’d gotten the guy.

  As the three girls continued their banter, Anna leaned gently toward Ben. He eased an arm around her waist. If her earlier confession about the girl on the plane not being the “real Anna” had fazed him, he didn’t show it at all. Anna hoped that was because he’d taken it all in stride.

  “So, Anna. We’re all dying to know how you and Ben met,” Dee gushed.

  “At Princeton,” Ben said instantly. “There was a kegger at the Lambda Chi house after the Yale football game. Some drunk linebacker was hitting on her—”

  “And Ben came to my rescue,” Anna said, delighted to play along with the new and improved how-we-met story. It was like a secret code that only they shared. “We ditched the party, took off in his Jeep, and drove to the beach.”

  “Long Beach,” Ben added.

  “To watched the sunrise,” Anna concluded.

  Dee sighed. “Stuff like that never happens to me.”

  “Ben Birnbaum, I am truly impressed,” purred Cammie. “I’ve always known you to be more the take-no-prisoners/do-her-against-the-wall type.”

  Cammie was referring to an experience she and Ben had shared one night backstage at the Viper Room. Too much Cuervo Gold could make a girl lose her inhibitions. Not, Cammie realized, that she had very many of those to begin with. Ben had been quite a different Ben back then. At least, so it seemed to Cammie.

  “I guess Anna brings out a different side of me,” Ben said.

  “That’s so sweet, Anna,” Cammie oozed, then mentally added, Die, bitch.

  “How long have you two been together?” Dee asked.

  Ben cocked his head at Anna. “What is it, three months now?”

  “Two and a half,” Anna corrected. “But it feels like—”

  “Dee, baby!” A short guy in his midthirties, clad in a black leather tuxedo jacket and black jeans, interrupted them. He held out his arms to Dee, who squealed, took a running leap, and jumped into them.

  “I heard Bobby and Whitney were being psycho again. Daddy didn’t think you’d make it,” Dee said, hugging the man again. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

  Which was more than either Anna or Ben could say. Anna’s jaw headed south as she watched Ben’s face go as white as his French-cuffed shirt. Because Dee was in the arms of none other than Anna’s seatmate from hell, Rick Resnick.

  Then Rick saw Anna and Ben. A malicious grin split his face. “Well, well, well, if this isn’t a friggin’ movie moment. Annie-bo-bannie and the frat brat!”

  Dee looked confused. “Do you guys know each other?”

  Rick wagged a finger at Anna. “I met her on the plane from New York.”

  “Look, don’t be an asshole about this,” Ben muttered.

  “Me an asshole?” Rick asked. He turned to Dee. “That’s when the frat brat met her, too.”

  “Wrong,” Sam said. “They go to Princeton together.”

  “My lily-white ass they do,” Rick hooted. “I’m telling you, they met on my plane. She was sloshed and looking for a good time, he made a move; next thing I know, badda-bing, badda-bam, they’re going at it in the first-class john.” He pumped his fist for graphic emphasis.

  Heat rose to Anna’s face. “That’s not what happened. We didn’t … I didn’t …”

  Cammie’s face lit up. “Oh my God, it’s true.”

  “We don’t owe them any explanations,” Ben muttered to Anna.

  “Ben, how could you?” Sam cried, milking the moment for all she was worth. She put her hand to her heart. “You brought some B-list slut to my father’s wedding? God, she probably did you for the invite!”

  If there was one thing Anna knew she was not, it was a “B-list slut.” She also knew that anything she or Ben might say in their defense would make only make them look guiltier. She’d thought getting caught on the plane was humiliating, but it was nothing compared to this moment.

  An image sprang into Anna’s mind of the damn Cupid statue in her father’s gazebo. Cupid was the Roman god of love. At that moment Anna wished with every fiber of her being that she was Cupid. Because Cupid could grow wings at will and simply fly away.

  Nine

  6:24 P.M., PST

  At the main entrance to the planetarium ushers escorted the guests to their seats along aisles strewn with rose petals—real ones this time. The seats had all been reupholstered for the occasion in gold silk hand-painted with curlicues of red roses.

  Cammie Sheppard took all this in with little reaction. She sat with her parents in the tenth row, scratching a French-manicured nail against one of the painted roses on her seat cushion. “If this shit comes off on my dress, I’ll sue them,” she told her father.

  Clark Sheppard proudly patted her knee. “That’s my girl.”

  Her stepmother, Patrice, shot Cammie an evil look. That was nothing new. Cammie knew Patrice loathed her. Which was fine with Cammie, who loathed Patrice right back.

  Cammie’s real mother had been an elementary school art teacher who died in a mysterious boating accident when Cammie was only eight. That night Cammie had been at Dee’s house for her very first sleepover. When her father had come to Dee’s the next day and broken the terrible news, Cammie hadn’t believed him. How could her mother be there one day and gone forever the next? They’d been painting a Charlotte’s Web mural on her bedroom wall together; surely her mom would come home to finish the project.

  But the mural was never finished. Cammie would never let anyone touch it, either. The half-completed panorama still adorned one of her bedroom walls. She never spent the night at anyone else’s house, either. She was embarrassed to admit it because she knew it was irrational: She feared that if she spent a whole night away from home, her father would die.

  When Cammie’s mom died, her father had been a junior agent at William Morris. The family was living in an area called “Beverly Hills adjacent,” meaning in the shadow of true power and wealth without actually possessing it, which galled the hell out of Cammie on a regular basis.

  Two years later her father married Patrice Koose, a has-been actress on the William Morris roster who longed for a comeback. Her father had finagled Patrice the role of Natalie Portman’s mother in a low-budget indie flick about a mom who fought for her daughter after she’d been sold as a sex slave to Russian gangsters, which won her a Golden Globe nomination. After that, it seemed to Cammie that every has-been in Hollywood flocked to her father for representation. It began with the oh-my-God-I-thought-she-was-dead has-beens, followed by the please-she’s-over-forty-for-God’s-sake has-beens, followed by the thirty-year-old-on-the-verge-of has-beens. And after that, Creative Artist
s Agency, otherwise known as CAA, the most powerful talent agency in Hollywood, had wooed Cammie’s father and his clients away from William Morris with an offer of a corner office. The big bucks started rolling in, and Clark Sheppard moved his little family to a mansion in the zip code of good and plenty, 90210.

  Cammie had wanted to move, since compared to that of every kid she knew, her house was a piece of shit. However, she’d wanted the Charlotte’s Web mural that still adorned her wall, the last tangible evidence that her real mother had existed, even more. So she threw an impressively operatic screaming tantrum. Her father had responded by insisting that the builders of their new home incorporate the mural into her new bedroom, and they had.

  The night that Patrice told her new husband she hated children and the best she could offer was to stay out of Cammie’s way, Cammie happened to be listening to their conversation through a bathroom vent. So in essence, Cammie was raised by a string of nannies. The upside to this was that she never had to study in Spanish 1, 2, 3, or 4. Cammie decided that if Patrice was going to ignore her, Cammie would do likewise. In her mind, Patrice was just that bitchy woman who lived in her house.

  Cammie had kept her end of the bargain. Her step-mother, on the other hand, had taken every opportunity she could to make Cammie’s life a thing of misery. Nothing was off-limits: the guys she saw, her brains, grades, clothes.

  Patrice eyed Cammie’s cleavage and sniffed. “A little obvious for a wedding, Cammie. You look like you’re peddling it at Hollywood and Vine.”

  Jealous cow. Cammie made her wrist limp and quickly shook it back and forth. “What’s this?”

  “I have no idea,” Patrice replied coldly.

  “Your neck wattle. Time for a little touch-up, Patrice. But I’m sure you’ve got Dr. Birnbaum on speed dial.”

  “You’re a bitch, Camilla.”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  Clark Sheppard chuckled. Typical. Cammie knew her dad liked to pretend that their sparring was all in fun. Cammie crossed her arms and turned away from her stepmother. A couple of rows in front and a little to the left, she could see Ben and Anna seated together. Ben’s mom and dad, Dr. and Mrs. Dan Birnbaum, had joined them. Ben and Anna were deep in conversation, and Ben cut his eyes back toward Cammie for a moment. She gave him a slow, sultry smile.