In Too Deep (24 page)

And adding insult to injury was the mind-boggling fact that Drew’s mother, Allegra Van Allen, happened to be an internationally acclaimed, award-winning artist. Not only was she talented, she was also witty, intelligent, and still unbelievably beautiful. What more could his father possibly want in a woman?
How could he not love her anymore
? Drew wondered, his mood darkening even more than he thought possible. Their seemingly happy relationship was now a total and complete mystery to him. As he sat there silently contemplating his rapidly melting ice cubes, Drew couldn’t stop himself from wondering the obvious: Had they been faking it all these years?

“Do you love her?” Drew blurted out, taking a sip of his ice water, hoping the cold liquid would cool him off enough so that he could be rational.

“Who—Madeline?” Drew’s father chuckled as if the question were totally preposterous, picking up his full glass from the bar and knocking it back in one swallow. “Of
course
not.”

“Then,
why
?” Drew asked, now more confused than ever. Why would his father risk everything—his home, his family—for some woman he didn’t even love? It didn’t make any sense.

“Listen, Drew. Of course I love your mother—of course I do.” Robert Van Allen turned to his son, putting his empty glass on the bar with a sharp click. “But we have an . . . arrangement.”

“What
kind
of arrangement?” Drew turned to look at his father, needing at last to see his face. His dad was always the person Drew went to when he had a problem, the one person Drew trusted implicitly—and he was a liar. As complicated as his dad wanted it to be, the truth was that it was plain and simple. His father had lied to him all these years.

“Your mother does as she wants—and I do the same. Usually discreetly and
without
the intrusion of TV cameras,” his father said with a grimace.

“So, Mom . . .” Drew’s voice trailed off into nothingness. The sounds of the pinball machine in the back of the bar suddenly seemed very loud, the smoke hanging in the air chokingly thick.

“True intimacy,” his dad began, stroking his salt-and-pepper beard thoughtfully, his blue eyes focused on Drew’s face, “is letting another person see you completely—faults and all. I’m not perfect, Drew—far from it—and I’ve never been able to be completely faithful to any woman. But your mother accepts me anyway—and we’ve made it work all these years.”

“That’s what you call making it work?” Drew said slowly, unable to keep the disgust from his voice. “Sorry, but I don’t see it,” Drew said, pushing his melted ice away and folding his arms over his chest—more for protection than anything else. Drew felt like he was going to shatter into a million sharp pieces if his father said even one more word.

“You’ll see what I mean someday, Drew,” his father said knowingly as the bartender refilled his drink. “You’re just like me, you know.”

Drew flinched at his father’s words, the anger that he’d tried to stuff back inside him rising to the surface and spilling out before he could put it in check. “I’m nothing like you, Dad.” Drew stood up and faced his father head-on. “
Nothing
.”

Robert stood up from the table, reaching out for Drew’s shoulder, trying to comfort him, trying to calm him down. Drew’s own arm snapped out, on its own accord, knocking that instinctual fatherly gesture aside as if it had been a shove, a punch. Drew felt as if his head were in the oven at one of his father’s restaurants, a lump of meat being broiled with a flash of incendiary heat. His pulse thudded behind his eyes and he stepped forward, not knowing if he should run, scream, punch his dad in the face, or if he should sit back down in the booth and never stand up again. Robert’s eyes looked soft, worried, when he looked into them—trustworthy eyes, the eyes of his dad. Robert reached out again and grabbed onto Drew’s shoulder, pulling him forward.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “you shouldn’t have seen that, shouldn’t have found out this way.”

Those words, the unbelievable reality of the cheating father they referred to, stood in such sharp contrast to the feeling of those familiar arms around Drew’s shoulders. It was so tempting to believe those arms, to believe that what he saw, what he now knew, changed nothing. But the last thing Drew wanted right then was for his father to be right. He was nothing like him.
Nothing
, he repeated to himself, breaking away from his father’s embrace. He stepped back and looked up to see his father’s face wet with tears. He turned his back and walked toward the door.

Nothing.

But somewhere deep inside a voice rose up inside him, a voice so quiet Drew could almost pretend he hadn’t heard it at all. More than anything, Drew wanted to shove that little voice back inside him, hold it down, and suffocate it with a pillow. That smug, irritating, inquisitive little voice that wondered if maybe, just maybe, his father was right after all.

there’s got to be a morning after . . .

Madison awoke amidst the snowy perfection of her
white Porthault sheets and Siberian goose-down pillows plumped like whipped cream beneath her head, her green eyes opening slowly as she surveyed the clean, modern perfection that was her room. She placed her hands behind her head, the events of the evening flooding back into her brain.
God, what an unbelievable fustercluck
, she thought, shaking her head from side to side on her pile of pillows as she remembered Sophie’s tear-streaked face as she ran down the block and out of sight.

The night had gotten worse from there on. Antonio completely disappeared at some point in the evening—presumably with Edie in tow, which made Madison feel like she might just barf up the seventy-two or so glasses of champagne she’d managed to pour down her throat last night all over the snow-white rug covering her bedroom floor. That Antonio could possibly prefer decrepit Edie to her was not only unbelievable, it was also kind of nauseating—which wasn’t exactly helping her hangover . . .

As she was contemplating whether to order some fruit and a bagel from Mangia, or stick with black coffee and Tylenol, her bedroom door swung open, and Edie entered the room clad in a midnight blue silk La Perla robe, her crimson pedicure shining like rubies against the white carpet.

“Rise and shine!” Edie trilled, walking over to the row of large windows behind Madison’s bed and flinging the heavy, white silk drapes open, flooding the room with sunlight. Madison growled unintelligibly, shoving her head under the pillow.

“I hate you,” she said crankily, as her mother plucked at the pillows covering Madison’s matted blond hair, pitching them softly to the floor.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” Edie said cheerily.
A little too cheerily
, Madison thought suspiciously as her mother sat down on the edge of the bed, crossing her smoothly waxed legs. Edie was always a total nightmare in the A.M. If she was in this good of a mood before she’d even taken her morning Valium, then something
must’ve
happened last night to make her very happy indeed.
I really
am
going to throw up
, Madison groaned silently as she curled on her side, trying to get as far away from Edie as possible without actually getting out of bed.

“I had a long talk with Antonio last night.” Edie dreamily ran a hand through her silky blond bob—even at the crack of dawn, her mother’s hair was predictably perfect. It was completely infuriating, kind of like Edie herself. “And I want you to know that I’ve thought long and hard about it, but you’re a Macallister—there’s no way I’m going to let you parade yourself down a
runway
.” Edie’s blue eyes widened as she reached out, patting Madison’s leg beneath her comforter. “I don’t want you to end up like some common hotel heiress with a sex tape before you’re twenty-two, and your own
revolting
perfume they won’t even sell at Saks!”

“Whatever.” Madison moaned, pulling the comforter up around her shoulders and wishing Edie would just disappear. “I don’t
want
to model anyway.”

“Well, thank God for that!” Edie said with relief, standing up and pulling the tie of her robe more tightly around her minuscule waist. “Now I have to get back to bed.” Edie giggled, covering her mouth with one hand like a schoolgirl. “I’m not exactly alone—if you know what I mean!”

Madison sat up in bed and glared at her mother, wishing she had a bow and arrow she could shoot at her—or a gun. Wasn’t it bad enough that Edie stole Antonio from right underneath her nose? Did she have to bring him home and rub the whole thing in her face, too? “Get out of here!” Mad yelled, picking up a pillow from the floor and lobbing it across the room where it struck Edie squarely in the face.

“Was that really necessary?” Edie replied in a voice so syrupy that Madison almost wanted to drag her mother down to Serendipity and throw ice cream on top of her. “Some people have no manners,” Edie continued, kicking the hurled pillow out of her way as she opened the door, stepping out into the hallway. “No manners at all . . .”

Madison flopped back down on the bed, closing her eyes and wishing she’d never woken up. The day had just started and already it was a total suckfest. She found herself wondering what else could go wrong when she actually made it out of The Bram. Maybe I should just stay right here today, Madison thought as she rolled herself up in her sheets like a tamale.

Just as she was sliding back into sleep, her phone erupted in a series of beeps and chirps that made her want to hurl it out the window unanswered. She opened her eyes and reached down to the floor to retrieve it, glaring at the tiny screen. Unidentified caller? Even though it was probably a telemarketer or some other annoying bullshit, she pressed TALK anyway—she really needed someone to yell at this morning, and telemarketers were easy targets.

“Hellllllllo?” she said, mid-yawn, clapping a hand over her mouth.

“Is this Madison?” a perky female voice inquired.

“In the flesh,” Mad said crankily, kicking the covers from her bare legs and sitting up. “Who’s this?”

“This is Melanie, from Pulse—we’ve met a few times over the last couple of weeks?”

“Uh-huh,” Madison grumbled, already bored with the conversation. She had less than nothing to say to some redheaded troll who was clearly in need of a date—not to mention a makeover of epic proportions.

“We were watching the footage from Sophie’s party last night,” Melanie continued, “and your . . . performance really jumped out at us. We’d like to talk to you about the possibility of creating a reality series based on your life . . . and your friends’,” Melanie said in a rush. “Is there any way you could come down to our office on Monday—say around three?”

Madison’s mouth fell open as she contemplated what she’d just heard. Her mind raced as the future this call could make possible played itself out in high-def—the free clothes, the red carpet, the promotional events in Paris, Tokyo, fucking Sumatra. She’d be presenting awards to her biggest pop-star crushes at the Pulse Video Music Awards before she finished high school. And then a crossover to the big screen . . . a fashion line . . . a
fabulous
perfume that wouldn’t even sell at major department stores like Barneys or Saks because it was
too good
.

She caught her breath and willed herself to stay calm, to keep her voice—which wanted to start screeching her impending divadom from the top of the Chrysler building—at an even keel. “Monday,” she said into the phone, her voice ringing with feigned uncertainty, “I
guess
I could do Monday. I’ll have to move a few things around, you know, but I should be able to make it.”

“Wonderful,” Melanie exclaimed, her voice immediately filling in the slow, calculated coolness of Madison’s words. And Madison suddenly found that perky voice to be anything but annoying—her mind was talking to her at just the same pitch, speed, and candor. She was completely, unbearably excited. “So we’ll see you Monday at three?”

“I’ll see you then,” said Madison, pulling the phone away from her ear, her finger hovering around the END button.

“Oh, and Madison,” she heard Melanie’s voice, tiny and small, float up to her from the phone, held at arm’s length. She moved it back to her ear. “Could you bring Casey along with you? I’ve been trying and
trying
to get a hold of her, but I just can’t seem to get in touch. You see, the producers want to do something with
both
of you . . . wouldn’t that be exciting?”

Madison quickly rewound the highlight reel of her soon-to-be-future, quickly Photoshopping Casey into each frame: Casey walking with her down the red carpet, flashbulbs popping as they stopped to glare at one another under the assault of white lights; Casey with the new Marc Jacobs calfskin bag that she wanted slung carelessly over one arm; Casey handing a gold trophy to Justin Timberlake, and air-kissing each stubbly cheek; Casey being as famous, as loved, as
cool
as Madison Macallister. The bright white of her room suddenly went gray as a cloud passed between her windows and the sun, a shiver running over her body. “I’ll let her know,” she said into the phone, through tightly clenched teeth.

“Thanks, dear. You must just be so excited. The two of you are going to be
amazing.
We’ll see you on Monday.”

On Monday indeed.

And now a special excerpt from the next book
in the Elite series . . .

SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE

Coming from Berkley JAM
July 2009!!!

plaza suite

Madison Macallister tossed her platinum blond hair back from her shoulders and snuggled more deeply into the cable-knit, ivory cashmere sweater that hung to her thighs. Her legs, encased in Habitual dark washed skinny jeans that were so tight they appeared painted on, looked even longer and more stem-like than usual due to the stretchy denim that hugged every morsel of flesh from her nonexistent waist to her delicate ankles.
Skinny jeans are better than a fucking corset,
Mad thought as she leaned ever so slightly across the table and reached for the gleaming white-and-gold porcelain teapot. Not that she needed one—with her statuesque figure, glowing skin, green, slightly upturned eyes, and endless legs sheathed in winter white, knee-high suede Marc Jacobs boots, Madison Macallister was an icon of Upper East Side teen perfection—and she intended to keep it that way. And now that there were cameras in her face on a daily basis, obsessively roaming over and recording every inch of her envied and celebrated body, she couldn’t afford to be careless about what she shoved in her mouth . . .