Tall Cool One (4 page)

Sam shook her head; it was a bit too late for Poppy to get all-inclusive. Honestly, Poppy and Dee deserved each other. They were two of a kind. This month they’d bond over a Chassidic rabbi from Israel and a baby shower. Next month it would be Bikram yoga and a birthing pool. The month after that, it would be something else. Whatever the latest celebrity trend, they’d latch onto it, even if that trend changed as often as Nick Lachey’s Q rating.

But Sam had known Dee a long time. She’d largely come to terms with Dee’s quirks. Dee might be wacky, but she was loyal. In this town—the village inside Los Angeles that the world thought of as glamorous Beverly Hills but which Sam knew was a treacherous pit of fame-hungry vipers—loyalty counted for a lot. A hell of a lot. When push came to shove, when you had to fit your size-eight foot into your size-seven Manolo Blahniks, she knew she could count on Dee.

Probably.

Quite Possibly a Virgin

C
ammie Sheppard was in love. Which just sucked so hard.

In Cammie’s opinion, everything about love sucked, unless she was the object of someone else’s unrequited affections, in which case love could be mildly amusing. But to be the one in love? It gave Cammie an anxious, itchy feeling, like trying on a sweater at Target. At least with a Target sweater you could laugh at how ridiculous it was and take it off. But the jones she felt for Adam Flood was something she just couldn’t seem to control. When she allowed herself to think about it, she had to call it what it was.

Love. Shit.

Standing on the crowded dining deck of Geoffrey’s restaurant in Malibu, overlooking the jagged cliffs and the broad, white sand beach below, not to mention a glorious Pacific sunset off in the distance, Cammie ruminated on how she’d sunk to this sorry state. Here she was, at a Saturday night movie wrap party given by her father in honor of his client Kyle Raye, a hot young rock-’n’-roll star who’d just finished
Taster’s Choice,
with Mandy Moore and Beyoncé. There were gorgeous guys everywhere, all clad in some variation of hip. With her looks, body, and pedigree, Cammie knew she could get any of them. But she only had eyes for this high school boy who was quite possibly a virgin—a status Cammie hadn’t had even a winking acquaintance with since she was fifteen.

Love with a virgin. Double shit.

Adam Flood. He’d been in Beverly Hills for two years, having moved from Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his parents. More an alt type than a club kid, he played basketball on the school team and had a huge CD collection that he’d burned himself. He had a reputation for being one of the nicest guys at Beverly Hills High School. But Cammie never went for nice. That is, until several weeks ago, when she’d started to feel this
thing
for him. He was just so genuine. And he seemed to bring the extremely underdeveloped, very latent niceness out in her. They’d been hanging out since they’d shared a kiss on the beach at an after-game party. But it hadn’t gotten any further since then.

“Here you go.” Adam edged through the boisterous crowd, sidled up next to her, and handed her a Coke. Cammie could bet there was no rum in it, because Adam didn’t have a fake ID. Nor was Adam the type of guy to slip a bartender a few twenties to get him to overlook the fact that he was seventeen. He was far too honest for that. In another guy, Cammie would have found such rectitude ridiculous. In Adam, she found it incredibly attractive.

Triple shit.

He offered Cammie her fitted white Italian leather DeMarco jacket. “I got this from coat check,” he explained. “I figured it might get chilly.”

“Very thoughtful,” Cammie said. She meant it. With the sun going down, the temperature would drop quickly, so she slung the jacket over her arm.

Adam gazed out at the horizon. “Fantastic sunset, huh?”

Cammie nodded and turned to study his strong profile. The fading light of day brought out the orange highlights in his brown hair. She could see the tiny star tattoo behind his ear and fantasized about running her tongue around the edges. Then she decided it might freak him out. So she demurely sipped her Coke instead.

“Hungry? I can get you something from the buffet. It’s killer.”

Cammie shook her head. “I already ate.”

That much was true. Breakfast. She’d skipped lunch because when she’d gotten on the digital scale after her early morning workout at the Century City Sports Club, she hadn’t been happy with the last digit. The one that came after the decimal point. Cammie was used to looking perfect, and she wasn’t about to settle for anything less.

The question, though, was did Adam think she looked perfect? She knew they had chemistry; she could feel the sexual tension. But Adam wasn’t acting on it. And it was driving her crazy.

“I had some seafood gazpacho. Awesome.” He patted his taut stomach.

“Glad to hear it.” She wondered what it would be like to run her fingernails up and down those abs. Right here on the deck at Geoffrey’s.

He put both elbows on the railing that separated them from the long drop to the beach below and scratched his chin. “Something bothering you, Cam?”

Yes. Every guy drools after me but you.

“No.” She shook her strawberry blond curls off her face. To her right, she caught a glimpse of an actor from
Hermosa Beach.
He was eyeing her with obvious interest. But she couldn’t care less. All her attention was on Adam. “Why?”

He shrugged. “You don’t seem like yourself.”

Cammie did a rapid-fire mental inventory of the reasons why she should seem exactly like herself. Last time she checked, she had fantastic reddish blond curls cascading down her back and a fantastic body with the best breasts money could buy. She was easily the hottest girl at Beverly Hills High School, an institution that overflowed with hot girls. And she had one of the most feared fathers in Hollywood—Clark Sheppard, a powerful entertainment agent at Apex.

She also had the trendiest clothes by the hottest designers. Tonight she was wearing an Alexander McQueen black chiffon wrap dress with a black ribbon tie at the waist. By next week, some suck-up starlet wannabe like Lindsay Lohan would be photographed in the exact same dress. America might ooh and ahh at the pictures in
Us
and
Star,
but real insiders would know that Cammie had worn it before it was even available in stores. And that it looked a lot better on her, too.

She could get any guy she wanted, anywhere, anyplace, anytime. So why the hell did she have to want
this
guy?

“Something
is
on your mind, Cammie.” Adam’s soft voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Maybe.” She cleared her throat and tried to sound nonchalant. “Tell me . . . have you ever been in love?”

She immediately wanted to bitch-slap herself for sounding so needy. Cammie Sheppard didn’t
do
needy.

He scratched the stubble on his chin again. “Maybe. You?”

“I don’t know. I wonder—if there was no such thing as love, would they have to invent it for the movies?”

Adam grinned; Cammie felt pleased that she’d been able to divert the conversation away from such dangerous turf as her feelings. She took a long sip of her Coke, pushed more curls off her face, and edged closer to the railing. The deck was getting crowded—a DJ had started spinning records, and the beautiful people were drifting outside to dance. Standing gas lamps had been fired up so that the temperature stayed comfortable, and tuxedo-clad waiters circulated around the deck offering snifters of brandy and Belgian dessert beer. Meanwhile, laser light beams danced against the side of the restaurant and over the crowd on the deck.

“I definitely believe in love,” Adam mused aloud, raising his voice over the pounding music. “I mean, take my parents. They’re still in love.”

Cammie raised her eyebrows dubiously. “Please. Next you’re going to tell me they’ve never cheated on each other.”

“Well, it’s not like they’d tell me. But if you love someone, really love them, why would you ever do something like that?”

Cammie could see that Adam meant what he said. His innocence was so un–Los Angeles that it touched her. “You really need to move out of Beverly Hills.”

“Oh yeah? Why?”

“Because if you stay too long, you’ll become as jaded as the rest of us.”

A gust of sea breeze washed over them; Adam gently pushed some hair from Cammie’s cheek. “You’re full of it.”

“Which means?”

“Which means you want to believe in love just as much as I do.”

He was right, of course. But Cammie couldn’t decide if that was good or scary.

“How do you know?” she asked him.

He draped an arm around her. “You’re here with me, aren’t you?”

True. It was all true. It was like he saw past all her bullshit. Cammie didn’t know how, but he managed it. Once again, she realized she had to change the subject.

“Here’s the star of tonight’s show,” Cammie announced. Kyle had just stepped onto the patio. He waved to Cammie, then beckoned to her in a way that asked whether she wanted to dance. Cammie shook her head and leaned into Adam.

“I feel I should point out that you just turned down a guy who’s going to be really famous in about four months,” Adam said.

“I feel I should point out that he’s got nothing on you.”

He tilted her chin up to him. “How many people know you, Cam? I mean, really know you?”

“One-half,” she whispered. “You half-know me.”

He held her closer. “The other half of me is still in the learning curve.”

Amazing. He even got that.

Another gust of wind blew some of Cammie’s curls dangerously close to her MAC lip gloss. “That’s sweet.”

Adam laughed. “Did the word
sweet
just pass Cammie Sheppard’s lips without sarcasm attached?”

“Funny.” She gave Adam a friendly punch. Just then, a jocular voice sounded behind her.

“Cammie, my dear.”

She turned to see her father, Clark Sheppard. He looked tanned and rested, and though he was dressed far more formally than anyone else at the party—an impeccable hand-tailored-in-Hong-Kong jacket with a white Yves Saint Laurent shirt underneath and a maroon and silver tie—he still looked cool and relaxed. Which made sense. The movie was still months away from being released. There were no box-office numbers yet to deal with, no pirated editions of
Taster’s Choice
available on the Internet, no crooked distributors in Malaysia who weren’t paying for their prints, no critics with vendettas ready to rip his client a new sphincter.

“Hi, Dad,” Cammie replied, on her best behavior in front of Adam. “Great party. Thanks for having us.”

“Sure.”

Cammie could see that her father’s eyes were already flicking over the crowd of dancers like a hyperactive metronome—to see if there was someone more important than Cammie who he should be talking with.

“I bought a pound of cocaine in Echo Park today,” Cammie said, her tone conversational, just to see if her father was listening.

His eyes went back to her. “Very funny. Just remember where you got your sense of humor,” Clark quipped. His eyes rested on Adam for a moment. “So who’s the date?”

“Adam Flood, sir.” Adam extended his hand. “I go to school with Cammie.”

“Nice. And will you be graduating this—hold on.” Clark’s eyes bounced twenty feet past Adam’s right shoulder. “There’s Quentin. Shit. I’ve gotta talk to him about Kyle’s next movie. I’ll check back with you. Nice meeting you, Alan.” Clark moved off and within ten seconds had his arm around the slouched shoulders of one of the hottest directors in Hollywood.

Cammie grimaced. “Sorry about my dad,
Alan.
”

“Yeah. He’s kind of lacking in the listening department. If he ever paid attention to what you had to say, he might just learn something.”

God. Adam was just so . . . so everything. The more time she spent with him, the harder she fell for him.

“I’ve got an idea,” she whispered, leaning toward his chin. “Let’s get out of here.”

She crooked her elbow, and Adam took it. Together they headed for the weather-beaten wooden staircase that led from the Geoffrey’s dining platform down the rocky cliff to the Malibu beach below. As they descended the staircase, the raucous sounds of the party faded almost to nothingness; ochre light from the rising moon illuminated the beach.

They walked north a few hundred yards or so until the music from the deck became a whisper that merged with the slap-slap of the waves on the sand.

That was when Cammie slid her arms around Adam’s neck. “Kiss me,” she murmured.

He did. Softly at first, but the kisses quickly heated into the torrid zone. Cammie tugged off his well-worn Levi’s jean jacket, placed it on the sand, and then sank down on it. So did Adam—he ended up half atop her, kissing her neck. She let her hand drift under his black cotton T-shirt and up his buff chest, then over his tight six-pack like she’d imagined just a few minutes before. With an easy and practiced flick of her fingers, the top button of his 501s was open.

He pulled back a moment so that he could look into her eyes. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” she whispered.

This was it. Her and Adam. The call of the sand, the moon, and the wild. She lifted her dress and touched the top of her white lace thong. If he wasn’t a virgin, he’d never want anyone else. If he was a virgin, he wouldn’t even
think
of anyone else. No matter what, she’d be the one calling the shots. She would make him so insane with lust that—

Suddenly Adam rolled off her and buried his head in his hands. “Shit,” he muttered.

Cammie quickly sat up, thong still slightly askew. “Meaning?”

Her heart was pounding, her mind racing. What was it? Why didn’t he want her right now? What had she done wrong?

He fumbled with his jeans and re-buttoned them. “I’m sorry, Cammie. I know I sound like a character in some lame chick flick, but this is moving a little too fast for me.”

“You mean . . . you don’t
want
to?”

“God, yes.” He reached for her neck and caressed it with his thumb. “I’m totally into this, Cam.”

Cammie exhaled. “Good. So let’s roll back thirty seconds and—”