Map to the Stars (7 page)

When we finally discovered the loading dock, the police had it on such tight lockdown that only a chance spotting of Melba in the shadow of a parked delivery truck saved our afternoon. She rushed over to vouch for us.

“Thank God you made it! We're still waiting on the people from
Harrods to clear a path for us inside the store. We've let them know we're outta here if they can't guarantee Graham's safety.”

Mom and I were just grateful to step from the elbow-jamming streets into the cavernous calm of the loading dock. I tried my best not to be obvious about peering around for a glimpse of Graham, but I didn't spot him anywhere. That mystery was solved when he stepped out of a plain black sedan that was partly obscured behind the delivery truck.

I had wondered which version of Graham I would get this afternoon—flirty or subdued—but what I didn't expect was majorly rude Graham. He sent the most cursory of looks in my direction, coupled with a grim attempt at a smile, and turned his back on me. Like, completely.

Had I totally made up the entire scene from the plane? The one where he held my hand
and
my eyes as we made our descent? That Graham rubbed circles in my palm and called me Pickles. This Graham just made a face when he saw me as if he'd bitten into one of those pickles.

Okay, Annie, it's on
, I told myself. Two could most definitely play at this game. I made myself unusually busy getting out hair product to hand to Mom and when she motioned Graham over, I acted as if I had something extremely engaging to look at on my phone. He and Mom exchanged niceties, but not once did he offer a word or a glance in my direction. Fine by me. I reminded myself what I was really tagging along for—well, aside from the fact that Mom would never have left me back home—and that was architecture. Immediately following
this estrogen fest, I was heading out to explore the city. With the majority of its female population here, I should have London mostly to myself.

Before long, an older man and three younger women in clearly expensive business suits emerged from inside the store and powwowed with Melba and the studio executive. There was lots of nodding before Melba came over to us and spoke to Graham.

“They're ready for you now. There's a rope line pathway to the fragrance department and they've lined it with constables as well as the store's security unit. That said, Graham, if it's anything like what happened in Tokyo, we're gonna have you out of there as fast as possible. I need you to tell me you're okay with this.”

Er, what the hell happened in Tokyo? Graham, or at least the part of him I could see from the very corner of my eye since I refused to look at him, shook out his shoulders and arms like a prizefighter getting ready to enter the ring and said “No sweat” to Melba. Roddy took his place at Graham's side and the Harrods people formed the front of the line.

Mom and I hung back, unsure whether to go along or stay, until Melba gestured us toward the caboose position. Guess she was anticipating a shiny-face emergency or something. We filed through the door and into the most chaos I've ever witnessed up close. A store employee in a bright green Harrods coat held a megaphone and was using it to speak over the screaming masses. “Make way, ladies. Make way, please.”

The aisle the store had cleared was wide enough for two people
to walk side by side to start, but narrowed by pushing bodies as we moved slowly through the store. Every few feet, Roddy had to shield Graham from a line jumper.

Something I now knew firsthand? High-pitched screams in contained spaces = supremely irritating. In addition to demanding hazard pay for jet lag from middle-of-the-night flight times, I was now adding hearing damage to that list.

Plus, I was getting petted as I trailed the line. Like I was a pony or something. People's arms were coming at me from all directions, grabbing at my shirt or just stroking my back, simply because I was part of the whole entourage. It was the weirdest thing ever.

I was freaking out a little, but Graham looked one hundred percent in his element. He was calm, relaxed, and oozed charm. He smiled and waved and even blew kisses as he walked, and his clingy navy cashmere sweater and rolled-up khakis made him look more charmingly British schoolboy than friggin' Harry Potter.

Asswaffle.

It was like he had some on/off switch, and I was all too aware of how easily the off switch flipped.

It took us five solid minutes to make our way from the loading dock to the fragrance department. Fortunately it was on the ground floor because I really couldn't imagine squeezing our traveling circus onto an escalator or into an elevator. When we reached the center, Graham stopped in front of a stacked display of hundreds of bottles of his body spray, Teen Spirit. I snorted. I bet half the girls in here had never heard of Nirvana and their
Smells Like Teen Spirit
album. I only
knew it because Dad had the CD on repeat in his car. I shuddered. I didn't want to think about Dad right now. Much easier to make fun of Graham.

He was making it easy too, posing with a cardboard cutout of himself. I could only imagine the catfight that was going to erupt over who got to cart that thing home on the Tube with them.

I backed a little too close to the edge of the cordoned-off area, and before I knew it, a girl was grabbing my arm.

“Oh my God, are you with Graham?” she asked me, bouncing in place as she spoke.

“In a manner of speaking,” I answered. She did not pick up on my sarcasm.

“I fancy him so much my heart hurts,” she told me earnestly. “We're meant to be. I was born at 7:07 p.m. on March eighth and he was born at 8:08 p.m. on April ninth. I camped outside last night with my mum just to get inside the store. Please, you have to give this to him.”

I paused to give her a puzzled look while untangling my arm from her grip and accepting the painting she passed over the rope line to me. She was probably only a few years younger than me, with shiny hair and a friendly smile. And she was really pretty. Why wasn't she out getting to know a real guy? I pushed down the thought that followed, which was
Why wasn't I?
Was I no better than this fangirl, getting all dewy over some guy who only existed the way she wanted him to in her head?

I couldn't believe anyone would waste a beautiful afternoon
(especially when I was told they were in short supply in London), much less give up a warm bed and then fight insane crowds, all to stare at some guy across a wall of policemen. Constables. Whatever they were called here.

I looked down at the painting in my hand. It was good. It was a portrait of Graham and she'd captured his lazy grin perfectly. I was opening my mouth to tell her so when, all of a sudden and out of nowhere, something—actually a bunch of somethings—came sailing through the air and clocked me on the head.

Others were getting hit too and screams rang through the store.

Oh my God, was this a terrorist attack? Was it shrapnel? What was happening right now?!

I shoved the painting back at the girl, who was also screaming, covered my head with my hands, and crouched down, right as an avalanche of
something
hit like an explosion. I moved my elbows to the side of my head just enough so I could peer at the spent projectiles on the ground.

Pistachios? What the—

Someone who has never been ambushed with tiny nuts might not believe me, but it hurt a surprising amount. And actually . . . it was scary. What was scarier was the surge of the crowd pushing against the flimsy velvet ropes as panic set in all around us. The girls who had been screaming Graham's name were now screaming in terror and the fun, kind of campy atmosphere of the event before now turned chilling. I could see this situation turning very bad, very fast.

Still in my crouch and laying claim to the tiny strip of a path still
left, I moved along the aisle, trying to get to Mom, while still protecting my face with my arms. I caught a glimpse ahead of policemen/constables/whatever-they-were-called sheltering Graham with actual shields. Or maybe they had a different name for the riot gear things they were holding out in front of him. In a scene out of one of Graham's action movies, everyone started moving at once in the direction of the doors.

With little regard for anything in their path, the wave of people crashed directly into the towering stack of body sprays, which crashed to the ground in an alarming smash that left the whole first floor bathed in something that gave a whole new meaning to “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It could have been funny, would maybe even
be
funny by the time I told the story to Wynn later, but that meant getting out of here safe and sound and I wasn't entirely sure that was going to happen. I pulled my shirt over my nose as a new shower of pistachios arced across the heads of the crowd and new screams erupted. This was the crazy stuff soccer matches made the news for and I was positive I didn't want to be killed in the Great Perfumed Pistachio Trample of London.

Someone—I don't even know who because I didn't dare raise my head at this point—wrapped strong arms around me from behind and gently lifted me to my feet, before tucking me under their shoulder and racing us along the route we'd just taken from the loading dock. We were moving against the crowd's surge and for a while everything was just a blur of body parts pushing at my torso, pistachios pelting my head, and Teen Spirit watering my eyes.

And then it was quiet. Blissfully, jarringly quiet.

We'd pushed through the exit and onto the loading dock, the muscled arm around my shoulders moving me quickly through the doorway to make way for the others racing behind us. I spun back in time to see Roddy shove through behind us and slam the door closed on a crowd of girls. He planted his full weight into keeping it secured. It wasn't until then that I collected myself enough to take stock of my protector.

Graham Cabot.

He kept his hands on my shoulders as he studied my face. His eyes locked on mine and oozed concern as he asked, “Are you okay?” through erratic breaths.

Adrenaline surged through my bloodstream and my pulse refused to slow. Still out of breath myself, I asked, “What just happened?”

He grimaced and dropped his hands from my shoulders to my hips. “Hold on, I'll explain in one sec.”

For a moment he ignored me as he followed along with Melba's head count to make sure everyone was accounted for. I frantically searched the faces to make sure Mom was with us. She was.

As soon as Graham turned back to me, I asked again, “What the hell was that about?”

He gave me the tiniest of grins, almost bashful, before shrugging and answering, “Haven't you seen
any
of my movies?”

“Uh . . . ,” I started. I had. I'd seen them all with Wynn, right up to
Triton
. She would have divorced me as a best friend if I hadn't.

“My famous line? Surely you know it,” Graham prodded.

“Uh . . . ,” I started again. It must have been the adrenaline because I still couldn't form a cohesive thought, much less spew movie quotes.

“That's nuts?” Graham answered for me. Of course. It was as iconic as Leo's “I'm king of the world!” or Regina George saying, “Gretchen, stop trying to make ‘fetch' happen.”

“Right, but . . . ,” I said, still not making a connection. Graham looked like he felt sorry I had to go through life with such an inability to function as a human.

“So now, wherever I go, people say it to me. Sometimes they give me presents—gift baskets of peanuts or cashews. I have to say, throwing them is a new one. I'm sincerely hoping this is one trend that doesn't catch on.”

“But, but, that's nuts,” I said. Then I blushed as the words I'd chosen to express my disbelief sunk in.

Graham just laughed. “It
is
nuts. Crazy, too.” His face grew somber then. “But, uh, seriously, I'm really sorry you had to be subjected to all that. It's, um, it's one of the weirder sides of this fame stuff.”

He wasn't kidding. Throwing pistachios was ridiculous and I'm guessing whoever started it just thought it would be silly and fun and something to brag to their friends about later, but even something so harmless could turn dangerous fast when crowds that size were involved. Was this something he had to deal with everywhere? Because the last ten minutes were scary. Like life-and-death legit scary.

Well, maybe not the last two minutes. Not standing toe-to-toe with Graham's hand still resting lightly on my hip, as if it belonged
there.

I willed my blush away, but it came back again when I said, “Hey, um, so thanks for getting me out of there the way you did.” I mean, I had to say thanks, right? I flashed back on his steady arms whisking me away from danger and my heart sped up for an entirely different reason. Yup. My body needed a firm talking to from my brain.

Something almost tender flashed across Graham's face, but before I could puzzle out his expression, I registered that it had suddenly gone quiet in the loading dock.

I pieced together that the background noise I'd not really focused in on, which sunk in now as having been Melba chewing out the Harrods people at the top of her lungs, had stopped. Instead she was now marching in our direction and as she approached, Graham's entire body language shifted. The easy smile was swept away and in its place was a hard line. First his hand dropped from my waist and in the next second he angled himself away from me. He turned his back on me altogether as she got closer. When I said his name, he completely ignored me.

I was left standing slack-jawed, staring at the navy sweater stretched across his shoulders.

What the actual hell?

Rescue Hero or not, Graham's behavior was total bullshit. I would never have spent the night in a tent to catch a glimpse of him before all this and, if anything, the more he pulled the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act, the less inclined I was to count myself among his legion of fans.

Even though his back was to me, it made me feel better to put a
tiny stomp in my step as I made my way to Mom. The absurdity of the situation began to take over the fear we'd all just experienced and she and Roddy were having a good laugh over what had gone down inside the store.