Some like it hot: an A-list novel Read online

  "It was fun last year," Dee recalled wistfully. "What was that charity thingie we raised money for? MS?"

  "I think it was AIDS," Cammie mused, apparently over her pique.

  Dee nibbled on a fingernail. "No. Was it global warming? Or maybe the African drought?"

  "The point is," Sam interrupted, "we're going this year, Dee. All of us."

  "Yeah, but what charity?" Dee asked.

  "None," Cammie replied. "That's what's great about it." Dee pointed at Anna. "You and Ben?"

  Anna nodded.

  "There was a time when I was jealous of the two of you," Dee admitted. "Wow, I was such a toxic bitch."

  "It's okay," Anna assured her.

  Dee pointed at Cammie. "And you're going with Adam. And ... Sam?"

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  Sam grinned. "Eduardo called. He's flying in from Paris."

  "How fun." Dee's tiny shoulders sagged. "I'll still be stuck here." She polished off the last of her juice. "Unless ..."

  Anna could almost see the wheels turn in Dee's head. She excused herself and dashed out the door to parts unknown.

  Five minutes later, Dee was back.

  "I'm sprung!" she sang out.

  "You're shitting me," Cammie marveled. "Just like that?"

  "Not sprung-for-good sprung. I mean I asked Dr. Verheiden if I could get a day pass for prom--actually, a night pass--and he said yes!"

  Anna grinned, remembering how out of it Dee had been in that Vegas hospital room, how she'd claimed to hear voices in her head. Anyone who had seen this girl then would have had a hard time imagining that she would ever recover. Yet here Dee was, more normal than Anna had ever seen her. Not only was it an incredibly inspiring story, but she could like this girl, she decided.

  Suddenly, Dee's face clouded.

  "What is it--are you okay?" Sam asked, instinctively moving toward her friend.

  "I'm fine," Dee answered. "But ... what am I going to do? I don't have a date."

  No date. Of course not. Why hadn't they thought of that before?

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  "Well, we'll all just kind of go as a group then," Anna suggested brightly.

  Cammie shot Anna a withering look. "Are we acting out scenes from Saved by the Bell ? This is Beverly Hills , Anna. Ignore the boring, tight-ass, beige girl to my right," she suggested to Dee. "I'm not only going to find you a date, I'm going to find you the hottest date in southern California."

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  Prom Means Sex

  Ben sat on his bed, sorting through a plastic box of CDs he'd brought home from Princeton. Jack had burned them for him--assorted bootlegged concerts, songs by some of the alt bands he loved that he'd downloaded from the Internet.

  Being home was weird, because in some ways, Princeton now felt more like home. He could be completely himself there, not the dutiful son of the "Plastic Surgeon to the Stars." Whatever or whoever he was had no complicated psychological tethering to who he'd been as a kid, the mistakes he'd made, his mother's depression, or his father's gambling addiction. He was his own man.

  The fact that his mother had gone on a redecorating spree in honor of his father's Gamblers Anonymous sobriety contributed to the weirdness of being back home. Without even mentioning it to him, his mother had changed everything, including his bedroom. Gone were his childhood dark maple furniture and his bulletin board covered with high school paraphernalia. In their

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  place was a resort motif inspired by his parents' recent second honeymoon, at Round Hill in Jamaica. The new furniture was pale, sun-bleached wood; his new high-top bed boasted a white cotton quilt and various down pillows in white, eggshell, beige, putty, and cinnamon. Gone was the wall-to-wall carpeting. The natural wood floors had been stripped and sanded; atop them were various white cotton throw rugs. Bamboo baskets of various sizes held all the things that used to be on his bulletin board. The bulletin board itself resided someplace in a South Bay landfill. That his mother had done all this without asking him, or even telling him, made Ben quite pissed. Evidently you really couldn't go home again.

  But okay, it was good that his dad wasn't gambling away the family fortune anymore; even better that his mother appeared to be coming out of her depression with the help of a great therapist and some well-chosen pharmaceuticals. Being around them this summer would be a hell of a lot easier than it had been during the nightmare of a summer that followed his high school graduation. Plus, his bud Jack was in town. Jack made Ben laugh. He was a dog with the ladies, but a charming dog. Ben knew more girls who referred to Jack as "the asshole" than girls who knew his last name, but most of them smiled when they said it. He had, however, also been known upon occasion to be quite the heartbreaker; Ben knew, because more than one girl had called to cry on his shoulder.

  The best part of being home, of course, was Anna.

  Ben tossed his green Princeton T-shirt into the

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  wicker basket that held his laundry, then lay back on his bed recalling everything he and Anna had done on his father's new yacht. That such heat came from a girl who seemed so pristine was just so damn sexy. When he'd gone away to school, he hadn't been looking for a heavy relationship; he had actually run away from them at Princeton. There were so many girls who were hot in so many different ways--why would he tie himself down to one at this point in his life? Freshman year, running around with Jack, sampling different girls who were up for a good time, had been a blast. There was no way he'd planned to give that up.

  Then he'd met Anna on the plane on New Year's Eve. Everything had changed. Sure, he still had his issues with the whole monogamy thing, because that seemed a short step away from the we're-together-forever thing, and he definitely didn't want to go there at this point in his life.

  Anna, though, had been irresistible; and the more he got to know her, the more irresistible she became. She was this fascinating combination of innocence and experience, and for all her wealth, she was totally unpretentious. Most of the girls he knew were so jaded. But Anna had no artifice, no faux cool to hide behind.

  The idea of hooking up with other girls lost all appeal for him. The times he and Anna had fought had sucked; they were a black cloud hanging over his head. When they'd gotten back together, he'd been so afraid of screwing it up again that he'd held on too tight; he knew that now.

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  There was a soft knock on his door. Before he could ask who it was, it cracked open. Maddy stuck her head in.

  Ben sat up. "Hey, what's up?"

  "Oh gosh, I'm bothering you, you don't have a shirt on, you were getting undressed, I should have asked--"

  "Maddy--take a breath." He motioned her in. "It's just a chest."

  "A nice chest," she said, and padded in. She wore that silk robe she seemed to have on half the time, and, as far as Ben could see, nothing else. From the neck up, she still looked like dorky Maddy.

  Ben carefully kept his gaze on her face as she sat in the new wicker chair at his new antique bleached wood desk. "Do you have to shave your chest to get it all hairless like that? Do lots of guys shave? Or do you wax?"

  That was just such classic Maddy--clueless, but sweet, which made it a lot easier to have this girl with that body in that robe in this bedroom.

  "You came in to ask me about hair removal, Mad?"

  "Oh no. Actually, I came in to tell you about Jack."

  "What about him?"

  "Well, last night, after we met you guys at the marina, we took a drive."

  Oh, shit. I should have seen this coming."Go on," Ben prompted.

  "He's really nice and funny and everything," Maddy continued. "We went for ice cream at Bethanee. I couldn't get any but I had a lick of his: chocolate, with pecans and peanuts and little, tiny marshmallows--"

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  "What about the drive, Maddy?"

  "Oh sure, right, sorry." She patted her stomach. "I love being thin--well, thin ner --but I kind of miss eating. So anyway, we ran into these girls I know fr
om school; they were total bitches to me at the beginning of the year because I was so fat. And they still call me fat even though I'm so much smaller. I guess compared to them I still am fat, because they all wear size zero or something. Plus, you know my hair was, like, all frizzy from being near the ocean and everything? And I wish I knew how to do makeup, but I never wore any because I didn't want people to notice me. Which is stupid, because at three hundred pounds everyone noticed me. So, anyway, they walk by and one of them goes, 'Nice 'do, Porky.'"

  "Bitches," Ben declared. "Ignore 'em."

  "No, wait, I didn't get to the good part yet." Maddy leaned forward, eyes shining. "Jack leaned over, right in front of them, and he kissed me."

  Ben couldn't decide what he felt. What Jack had done was cool. But Maddy was so clueless that she had probably misinterpreted it and now thought she and Jack were engaged or something.

  "You should have seen the looks on their faces," Maddy went on. "Jack is a hottie, kinda. Not like you, but, you know, cute."

  " And? "

  "And, you know, it's almost prom, and ... he said he'd go with me!"

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  Ben nearly groaned aloud. Everyone knew that prom meant sex. Especially Jack Walker.

  Ben had known Maddy forever. She was the closest thing to a little sister that he was ever going to have. The idea of someone actually taking advantage of her innocence appalled him, even as he realized the temptation to stare at her in that robe. What the hell, maybe he was just a sucker for underdogs. The way Ben saw it there was more than enough cruelty in the world, and way too much every-man-for-himself. Beverly Hills was full of people like that; he'd grown up with them. It had helped him figure out what he didn't want to be.

  "You guys are going as friends , right?"

  "Oh, you!" Maddy laughed gleefully. "Anyway, I'm so excited! Jack has to be a great guy because he's your friend, so I know I can, like, totally trust him! I just wanted to say thank you."

  She crossed the floor to his bed and hugged him hard. Was it his imagination, or did her hug linger just a little too long? He felt her huge breasts separated from his naked chest by the thinnest of silk. Way ... weird.

  He pulled away and tried to make it seem natural. "Hey, that's great, Maddy."

  She didn't move.

  "We'll talk about it more tomorrow, okay?" He hoped she'd get the hint that he wouldn't mind if she departed.

  She did, waving a happy good-bye from the doorway before disappearing down the hall. Ben got up and shut the door.

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  Shit . Maddy thought Jack had to be a good guy because she trusted Ben. The truth was, when it came to girls, Jack was anything but trustworthy or good. Maddy was definitely not prepared for Jack Walker's moves, and Ben had no clue what to do about it.

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  Her Notorious New PlaymateCammie sat across from her father at one of the round glass tables in the piano bar at the Bel Air Grand Hotel. Her dad was entertainment ü ber-agent Clark Sheppard, who had come to meet his daughter straight from the office. He was dressed in one of his custom-made-in-Hong-Kong single-breasted gray vent-less suits, a light blue dress shirt, and an elegant lavender tie. The bar was close to full at this hour: tourists having post dinner cocktails, actors and Hollywood types stopping off after the day's shootings. Cammie recognized Vince Vaughn and a couple of his friends watching the Dodgers game on the bar TV

  Cammie was in a funk so deep it hadn't been repaired by the two Grey Goose cranberry martinis (all the rage on the west side of Los Angeles, these consisted of a Grey Goose martini into which exactly seven ripe cranberries were added prior to the shaking process--the shaking bruised the cranberries but didn't crush them) she'd imbibed.

  After her blowup with Adam on the beach, she'd

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  actually called him to apologize--not for her feelings, because she still thought he was out of line for having enlisted his parents' help without clearing it with her first, but for the way she'd handled it. She shouldn't have stormed off like she had.

  Adam's response had been so him --understanding, accepting. He still thought that if his parents could find out anything about what had happened to her mom it would be a good thing. But that was her call, not his, so he wouldn't push it. They were still on for prom, right?

  One part of her was pleased by his response. Another part of her wished that he had the balls to call her on being a total bitch and a half. One day, she really would push him too far. On purpose, maybe. God, what kind of a girl did something like that? What was it about her that made her want bad things to happen? Maybe danger and love and sex were all confused in her mind, some deep psychological shit like that.

  She ragged on Sam for seeing Dr. Fred. Maybe she needed to see him herself.

  She'd thought about her mom all day. Her father hadn't even acknowledged his dead wife's birthday when she'd seen him briefly that morning. So she called him at Apex on the way home from Ojai and asked if he'd join her for a drink later. She'd suggested the Grand, figuring she could see and book the biggest suite there for prom night and then meet her dad in the piano bar.

  The suite she'd found barely met her minimum standards; it was the kind of place that was written about in

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  Zagat guidebooks as "quaint" and "venerable" and "charming," which actually meant that there was no bidet in the bathroom and that the shower had only one head. Still, the Mayer suite on the top floor was the nicest in the hotel, named for the movie mogul Louis Mayer, who'd had it decorated to match the grandest Art Deco suite in his film Grand Hotel , one of the all-time Hollywood classics. She and Adam could simply adjourn up here when they tired of the proceedings in the ballroom.

  Drinks with her father? She'd expected him to disappoint her, and he wasn't letting her down. Clark's movie-actor cleft chin bobbed as he rattled on about his day, the various exciting projects that his agency was handling, and all the people in the business who had fucked him this week. Like she cared. Why couldn't he talk about anything personal?

  "So this is sick," her dad was saying, oblivious to Cammie's disinterest. "There I am, with Harvey on one line and Renee's manager on the other, and I'm telling Harvey I can bring Renee in for five mil less than her quote, and I'm telling Renee's manager that Harvey will meet her quote plus a dresser and a makeup artist for her publicity tour, plus a private jet."

  She drained her martini. "Don't tell me, Dad. You made them both happy."

  Her father smirked and twirled the stem of his martini glass. "Nothing makes me happier than to dick Harvey. He's screwed me so many goddamn times--"

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  His sentence was interrupted by a discreet chiming tone from his cell phone. "Hold on a sec, babe." He checked the number. "Gotta take this."

  Cammie shrugged and glanced around for the waiter-- she wanted another drink. Meanwhile, her father launched into a conversation that quickly escalated into a heated negotiation. Three minutes later, he muttered good-bye to whomever was on the other end, snapped the phone shut with supreme anger, and stood up from her chair.

  "Gotta go back to Apex for a conference call," he barked, angrily flinging a fifty-dollar bill on the table. "Harvey's dicking me again. I'll see you at home."

  "No, you won't." Cammie kept her tone even and conversational.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Just that you won't get back till after midnight. I've seen this movie before."

  He gave a snort of disgust. "Can you hit the guilt thing some other time, Camille?"

  "Today was Mom's birthday."

  A beat. He sat back down again abruptly. " That's what this is about?"

  "You didn't remember, which doesn't surprise me."

  "Shit." He ran a hand through his perfect silver hair. "I'm not big on birthdays of the living, Cam. Let alone the dead. You know that."

  She looked away. "Right."

  "What was I supposed to do, send her a card?" He leaned toward her. "I'll a
lways care about your mom,

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  Cammie. But I'm married to someone else now. I've moved on with my life."

  Cammie felt something clench in her stomach. "Gee, Dad, I guess I didn't get that 'moving on' memo."

  "Look, I get that this is hard for you, okay?" He stood again. "If I get home at a decent hour, I'll knock. We'll talk. Okay?"

  "Whatever."

  "'Whatever,'" he echoed with disgust. "What are you, twelve? You can't come up with something better to convey your disgust with me than 'whatever'? "

  Cammie raised cold eyes to him. "How about fuck you, then? That better?"

  "Excuse me while I earn a living." He walked away.

  Gosh, she sure loved these family-bonding moments. How dumb could she be, after all these years, still harboring a secret hope that he'd suddenly turn into a decent father? It was stupid for her to feel hurt.

  The pretty, pug-nosed waitress with auburn hair razor cut to her chin set another cranberry martini in front of her. "From the gentleman at the bar," she announced, handing Cammie a napkin. "There's a note on this for you."

  She unfolded the napkin: You're the most gorgeous girl in this place. May I share a drink with you?

  Cammie always enjoyed the "you're the most gorgeous girl" thing; there was nothing that could lift a girl out of a funk than a hot guy telling her how cute she was. She had on a canary yellow eyelet lace Twelfth Street by Cynthia Vincent silk tunic with an uneven

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  handkerchief hem. It was supposed to be a top, but it barely cleared the bottom of Cammie's yellow silk La Perla thong. She wore it with nothing but miles of tanned leg and Michael Kors cork sandals with gold braiding. She glanced lazily over at the bar. She vaguely recognized the twentyish actor at the bar--he'd been in that Orlando Bloom movie set in the desert. The guy sitting next to him gave Cammie a quick wave. She vaguely recognized him from a medical show on TV where he played the young rock 'n' roll rebel doctor. His sandy-colored hair was short and curly, and he wore a short-sleeved gray T-shirt over an olive-green long-sleeved T-shirt, with Levi's. Very Justin Timberlake.

  She lifted the cranberry martini to her lips and gave him the smallest of smiles.