Looking for You (19 page)

He nodded, but he couldn't help
thinking that it was hard to screw up something that was already so incredibly screwed
up.

"I can't believe you're a
princess," Laurel exclaimed for the hundredth time.

Gwen sighed and set aside the drawing
she'd been working on. "I keep telling you, I'm not a princess."

"That's not what the newspapers
are saying." The teenager sprawled on the beanbag next to her, looking
introspective as she played with strands of her hair. "It's awesome, if
you think about it. All girls want to be a princess, and you actually get to be
one. Like, my little sister always wants to wear a tiara, but it's always those
cheesy plastic ones. You get to have the real thing."

"No, I don't." Actually,
her mother
had
bought her a tiara
once. It's been ugly and uncomfortable. She'd gotten in big trouble when she
threw it into the pond behind their house. "Don't tell me you want to be a
princess."

"Heck no. I want to be an
international skateboarding star and be on the cover of
Thrasher
."

"
Thrasher
?"

Laurel rolled her eyes. "A
skateboarding magazine."

Gwen smiled faintly. "Am I being
uncool?"

"Totally." The girl flopped
onto her stomach. "So why'd you keep the whole princess thing hidden all
this time? Because you want to be normal?"

"Exactly. If you saw all the
reporters lined up outside my store, you'd understand." The newspaper
people and photographers were camped outside Outta My Gourd. They hadn't found
her flat, and unless some industrious person followed her, she didn't expect
they would.

But being cooped up at home was
overrated, so she'd been spending a lot of time at the Purple Elephant. It was
only a matter of time before the media descended on her there, though.

"My mom was interviewed for a
magazine a couple months ago," Laurel said. "The guy was a total
jerk. He kept trying to look down her shirt. It was disgusting."

Gwen knew her mom was a big Internet
mogul and, as the breadwinner, absent a lot, but that was the extent of her
knowledge of the woman.

"So you just ran away?"
Laurel put her chin in her hand, staring at Gwen. "And you've never gone
back? Do you miss your family? I'd miss my sister if I up and left. I'd have to
take her with me, even though she's a pain in the butt a lot of times."

"I—"

"Have they called you? This is
totally like one of those TV shows where the person finds her long lost brother
or something. And finds out she's super-rich." She gasped. "
Are
you super-rich? You'd have to be if
you're a princess."

"I—"

"But you know what?" The
teenager wagged a finger. "I don't think you're really a princess, because
everyone knows Princesses like bling, and you are the un-blingy-est person
ever."

She waited for the girl to continue,
but Laurel just stared at her expectantly. "Are you finished?" she
asked.

"Duh."

"No, I haven't been back. Yes,
I'm probably somewhat rich. No, I don't like bling, or anything that goes with
being rich, which is why I left."

"Then why'd you tell the press
where you were?"

Trust a kid to get to the point.
"I didn't."

"Who did?"

She thought about Rick, and her heart
cracked a little more. "It's not something you need to worry about."

Not that Laurel was going to back
down. Laurel was synonymous with
tenacious
.
"Did you tell someone?"

She'd never told anyone
anything—until Rick.

But she'd been wracking her brain,
trying to remember if she let something slip that could tie her to the de la
Roche empire. She'd mostly just told him about Mamie Yvette, but she'd been
careful not to mention her grandmother's name or any identifying markers that
could lead him to her family.

It was awful when she put it that
way. That wasn't the way she wanted to live, especially with someone she
lo—

She cut that thought off before it
could form, but the echoes of the sentiment were resonating in her chest.

Was it possible?

She laughed humorlessly. Possible,
likely, and definitely. She'd felt
wretched
since she saw that article. Because of the beastly reporters—yes. But if
she wanted to be honest, she was more miserable because she thought Rick
betrayed her.

"You look like you're going to
hurl," Laurel pointed out. "You're not, are you? Because I'm just
leave if you are."

"No, I was just thinking about
the person who sold me out to the media."

"Who was it?"

"Remember the guy I came in with
that one time?"

"The
hawt
one?" she exclaimed, sitting up. "Tall dude? Leather
jacket? Looked at you like he was going to eat you up?"

Gwen felt herself flush. "He did
not."

"Yeah-huh, he did." The
girl goggled at her. "You think
he
sold you out?"

"Well." She frowned.
"Yes."

"No way." Laurel shook her
head vehemently. "You're totally delusional."

"You talked to him for two seconds."

"And, apparently, in those two
seconds I got to know him better than you do." The teenager looked at her
with a combination of pity and scorn. "He was totally into you. He
wouldn't have sold you out."

"But—"

"No, really. It was someone
else, because that guy was
really
into you. Like, he'd totally learn how to skateboard for you, and he wouldn't
stop until he was worthy."

Frowning, she tried to picture Rick
on a skateboard.

Actually, she could, if it were
important to her.

"He really didn't tattle on you.
It had to be someone else." Laurel tapped a finger to her lips.
"Someone who had something to gain."

Someone who had something vested,
like a certain hungry-eyed reporter.

As soon as she thought it, she knew
she had it right. She wasn't sure how she knew, but there wasn't a doubt in her
mind. That day Camille Bernard had come in to pick up the gourd she'd made,
she'd been acting strange.

The article had been released just
days later.

"You thought of someone,"
Laurel said.

"Yes."

"You want me to go with you to
talk to him?" The girl cracked her knuckles. "I've got a baseball
bat."

Gwen's lips quirked. "Thanks,
but I think I'm okay handling it."

"And your boyfriend?"

She drooped. "I don't think he's
my boyfriend anymore."

"He would be if you wanted him.
He was pretty much drooling over you."

"No, he wasn't." Was he?

Laurel leaned forward, intense.
"Do
you
like him? And I mean,
the kind of like where you hug him even when he smells rank."

"He smells nice all the
time," she replied without thought.

"See? You
like
him. You wouldn't
like
someone who didn't
like
you
back." Under her voice, she added, "Unlike some people."

"Your parents?" Gwen asked
sympathetically.

"You don't even know." The
girl sighed dramatically.

She bet she did know, but that was a
discussion for another day. For now... "You really think he likes
me?"

"Dude," was all the girl
said.

That seemed to sum it all up.

Camille was staring unseeingly at a
blank Word doc, wishing she could go home and bury herself in her covers, when a
shadow fell over her desk.

She looked up to find a colorful
gourd artist staring down at her.

Gwendolyn dropped a copy of the article
on her desk. "Congratulations on your story. Well done. We need to
talk."

Her nerves flared. "Should I
have you frisked for weapons?"

"You should have thought about
that before you printed that article." The woman turned and walked down
the row of cubicles.

Hopping up, Camille hurried after
her. The last thing she needed was an angry princess talking to Mac. Not that Mac
would care—not when he was being patted on the back for
"discovering" Camille.

She caught up with the woman.
"There's a conference room this way."

Camille was aware of the curious
stares they were getting, as well as the excited whispers when people recognized
Gwendolyn. The woman just kept her head up, her bearing proud and strong.

It made Camille feel like crap.

She followed Gwendolyn into the
conference room, taking the chair at the head of the table. Camille was tempted
to sit all the way at the other end, but gathered her courage and sat next to
her. It wasn't easy, because the bubbly gourd artist hadn't come. Today, the
woman represented was powerful and in command. She could have been the CEO of a
Fortune 500 company—or the heiress of a wine dynasty.

"It was you, wasn't it?"
Gwen asked.

She didn't even pretend not to
understand. "Yes."

"How did you figure it
out?"

"A hunch." Wincing, she
added, "And I had your fingerprints analyzed."

"The gourd." Gwen nodded
thoughtfully. Then she leaned forward. "You don't know what you've
done."

Camille swallowed. "I reported
the truth. I didn't report anything that wasn't the truth."

"You were reckless. You had
power, and you abused it. You ruined a person's life."

A part of her withered, hearing that
out loud, but she went with the justifications she'd been assuring herself
with. "That's not the way I see it. You stand to gain millions, being back
with your family."

"You don't have the complete
story. Did you ever think to ask why I left?" Her gaze blazed with
intensity. "Did you think that maybe my family was abusive, or that I'd
been harmed in some way?"

She felt herself pale. "Were
you?"

"Fortunately, no. But that could
easily have been the reason. You assumed I left because I was a spoiled brat.
Let me assure you a spoiled brat doesn't run away from money. In fact, if I
were the person you painted in the article, I'd have run back the moment I
found out I had an inheritance. My privacy was what was important, and you
destroyed that."

There was truth to that. Camille
didn't know what to say.

"I don't know why you locked on
me and exposed my life in this way. I was harming no one. But whatever. That's
not why I'm here."

She swallowed. "It's not?"

"No, I came to save you from
yourself." Gwendolyn leaned across the table. "This isn't you,
Camille."

Dylan had said the same thing.
"How would you know who I am?"

"You're a gifted writer."
She nodded to the newspaper. "The piece was beautifully written. Shouldn't
you focus your talents on something that brings joy instead of ruining people's
lives? Because that's an expensive price for your soul to pay."

The truth was one thing, but it was
the look of kindness that killed Camille. She hunched in her seat, trying to
protect herself from it. Only there was no evading it. "I don't understand
why you're doing this."

"I don't either." Gwendolyn
frowned. "I should have trashed your name all over the Internet and egged
your car."

"I don't have a car."

"Then it's good I didn't waste
my money on eggs." Gwendolyn stood up and started to walk out. Then she
turned around. "My grandmother once told me that sometimes people were
born into impossible situations. That we need to break out of who we were and
what we did to find who we really are. That's why I ran away, to find myself.
To be happy."

It was a pretty speech, and Camille
wanted to scoff at it, but even though Gwendolyn was angry there was a glow of
contentedness to her, and that made Camille silent with jealousy.

Because she wasn't happy—not at
all. She'd written the article, but it was a hollow victory because the one
person she wanted to show it to wasn't returning her calls.

She didn't know if Dylan would ever
call her back. Frankly, she couldn't blame him.

Impulsively, she turned to Gwen and asked,
"It worked? It cured your unhappiness?"

Gwendolyn stood up, her gaze direct.
"Of course it did. I discovered who I really was, and I found my true
home. Not because I ran away, but because I walked away from the image everyone
wanted to mold me into. Think about it."

Camille watched the woman leave,
wondering if she had that much courage in her.
Wanting
to have that much courage.

Her apartment door buzzed. Gwen's
stomach fluttered with nerves, but she lifted her head, smoothed her skirt, and
went to let them in.

Eve came in first, looking concerned,
with Olivia following behind.

Gwen cleared her throat as she let
them in. "Thank you for—"

Eve threw her arms around her and
squeezed tight. "You poor thing!"

"Well. Okay," she said
carefully. Looking over Eve's shoulder, she saw Olivia's caring, direct gaze.
She searched for any sign of hurt or betrayal in it, relaxing when she didn't
find anything more than sympathy. "You guys don't hate me?"

Eve's brow furrowed as she held Gwen
at arm's length. "Why would we hate you?"

"Because I lied to you."

Olivia shook her head. "You
didn't lie."

"I didn't?"

"No." Her friend smiled gently.
"You didn't talk about your past, but you didn't misrepresent who you are.
Did you?"

She wasn't Geneviève de la Roche any
longer, in any shape or form. She'd left the Grape Princess behind ages ago.
"I'm completely Gwendolyn Pierce."

"There you go." Olivia gave
her a quick, hard hug and then let her go. "Why don't you make tea while
Eve breaks out the madeleines she made."

Eve held up a little bag.
"Chocolate chip."