Some Like It Hot (19 page)

Maybe Jack was more mature than he'd thought. He sure hadn't expected him to be man enough to apologize.

He bumped his buddy's fist with his own. “Yeah man, we're good.”

Sweet
.

From the far side of the outdoor patio, Cammie eyed Ben and Mystery Punk sharing a manly bonding moment, doing one of those primitive anthropological gestures that had long ago replaced the handshake. Ben looked hot as ever, damn him—as much as she loved Adam, part of her would always smolder for Ben. Whether that was because he had dropped her and she had something to prove because she still had feelings for him, or because he'd had the balls to call her on her considerable bullshit, she wasn't sure.

Cammie wasn't at Trieste for Ben, though. She'd come for Dee, vowing to make good on her promise to secure her a hot prom date. The weird thing was, until that very afternoon, she'd had one. His name was Zack Bronson; he was the tall, skinny, but undeniably smoking drummer for the neo–New Wave band Fluffer, which had just been signed by her father's agency. Everything had been fine until Zack had called before dinnertime to say that Warner Brothers wanted him to play a showcase in Miami on Saturday night, which meant the prom fix-up with her friend was definitely off, so have a nice life and peace out.

Asshole.

That left Cammie a girl on a mission to find a young, reasonably sane, definitely smoking-hot guy who was free the next night and would like to go to a high school prom. She could have hit any number of clubs in search of such a guy, and told herself that she'd picked Trieste because it was the flavor of the month and not because Ben was working there.

She watched Punk Boy throw back his head and laugh at something Ben was saying.
Hmm
. He was kind of cute in a skinny Johnny Rotten/Sid Vicious kind of way. He might have possibilities.

She snaked through the crowd to where they were sitting on a couple of lawn chairs under a big tree. “We can't go on meeting like this,” her voice purred.

“Cammie!” Ben sounded genuinely pleased to see her as he rose and gave her a great big bear hug. She felt the contours of his hard body and had the fleeting thought that it would be nice if the hug didn't end, though of course it did.

“Welcome home.” She smiled nonchalantly, pulling over another of the wicker chairs and turning a sexy smile on Punk Boy. “Hi. I'm Cammie Sheppard.”

“Jack Walker. How's it going?”

She could see his immediate attraction to her in his eyes. Cammie loved when that happened, much as she
expected
it to happen.

“So, you're a friend of Ben's,” he gathered, his admiring gaze fixed on her. “Lucky Ben.”

“You have no idea.” She crossed her legs smoothly, because she knew that in her pink-and-white floral Kenzie baby-doll minidress and her pink velvet Prada pumps, it was all about her legs. She was gratified to see Punk Boy's gaze head south … and stay there.

“He let you
go
?” Jack's eyes didn't budge from Cammie's bare thighs.

“Yo, let's change the subject,” Ben suggested, then took the last bite of his burger.

“Sure,” Cammie agreed easily, leaning toward Punk Boy. “And who are you?”

Punk Boy gave her the coverage, coverage being a film studio's two-page version of any story when no one wanted to take the time to read the actual book. Friend of Ben's from Princeton. In town for summer. Internship with Fox. Living in guesthouse. Hot car on loan.

Got it. It was getting better and better.

When Ben announced that he had to return to the juice bar because his break was over, Cammie made it clear that she was perfectly happy to hang with his friend. Jack launched into an epic about the new reality show he was helping to develop—
The Pickup Artist
. The gimmick was that hidden cameras would follow various guys and girls to clubs and through malls in a competition to see who had the best pickup batting average.

Cammie pretended to find this concept fascinating, though in actuality she felt certain she could puke a better idea. Meanwhile, Ben had a tiny blond waitress with a gymnast's muscular build bring over two orange sherbet smoothies, which gave Jack an opportunity to expound for fifteen more minutes on the various personalities at Fox, a third of whom were or had been clients of Cammie's father.

Finally, Jack got to the question she had been waiting for.

“I was thinking, Cammie. Tomorrow night, maybe you could show me a few of those clubs.”

Deft. Not.

“Wow, I'd love to,” she lied, then shifted to the truth. “But tomorrow night is my high school prom.”

Jack nodded. “Yeah? And you're not too cool to go?”

Cammie laughed genuinely for the first time. “I am, actually, but my
boyfriend
had his heart set, so …”

She'd calculatedly thrown in the
B
word, knowing that Punk Boy would be disappointed.

Sure enough, he sighed.

God
. Guys were so goddamn predictable.

“Boyfriend, huh?” Punk Boy sighed again. “Should have known.”

“Yes, you should,” she agreed, giggling on purpose and touching his arm. Physical connection was always good. “You know, I just thought of something.”

“Yeah?”

“I've got a close friend who wants to go to the Beverly Hills High School prom tomorrow, but her date fell through at the last minute. If you're not busy, maybe you'd want to take her.”

“Not a chance.” He shook his head. “I have a policy against blind dates.”

Cammie was momentarily stuck. Then she got an idea.

“Come with me.”

She marched over to Ben's juice bar, where he was in the midst of preparing yet another three smoothies simultaneously. As she'd suspected, Punk Boy followed.

“Ben?”

“Yeah?”

“Dee needs a prom date for tomorrow,” Cammie explained enthusiastically. “Your friend isn't sure. Tell him how cute she is.”

Ben turned off one of the blenders. “Real cute. But—”

She cut him off. “See? You just got a guy's opinion. Besides …” She moved close enough to Jack that her breasts pressed lightly against him. “We'll get a chance to dance too.”

Cammie had Punk Boy put his digits into her BlackBerry and told him she'd call him in the A.M. about the logistics. Mission accomplished. Now if only she could remember Punk Boy's name.

Mystery Punk Boy

“I
can't believe Eduardo's gone,” Sam told Anna wistfully, as they pushed through the front door of Boss Sushi on South La Cienega Boulevard. “It was amazing. I already miss him.”

“He'll be back soon, for the whole summer,” Anna reminded her. “Lucky you.”

Sam nodded.

Early in the week, they'd agreed to get together on Friday after school for prom prep. When the prom had been rescheduled, the prep date had been rescheduled too. But frankly, Anna was surprised that Sam wasn't already up in Palmdale, running preprom like a five-star general. She had assured Anna that with Monty already at the facility, plus Fee and Jazz with their handheld cameras, there would be more than enough footage to sort through.

Once inside Boss Sushi, Sam waved to some people she knew. The restaurant was dimly lit, with well-spaced wooden tables and Sinatra on the sound system. Boss Sushi was one of the city's hottest eateries, and her father was friends with master chef Tom “the Boss” Sagara and had even secured him a small role in
Ben Hur
. Once the Boss spotted Sam, he rushed out to kiss her on both cheeks and promised that he'd provide the freshest and best sushi and sashimi, no need to bother with a menu. He sat them in a booth and recommended the minced yellowtail with avocado and shiso, wrapped in Japanese radish. A black-clad young waitress with red hair cropped close enough to render her scalp visible brought them a carafe of the house wine—a gift from the Boss—a chardonnay so light and crisp that it tingled on the tongue.

“So, you're free for the whole afternoon, right?” Sam asked. She poured some chardonnay into her crystal goblet.

“Why?”

“I've got a stylist coming over with prom dresses for you, Dee, Cammie, and me. And yes, I told them to bring you size twos and fours—for which I hate you.”

Anna was a bit taken aback. She'd already planned to wear a pale blue chiffon Chloe gown. She'd worn it once before to a state dinner at the White House. (Jane and Jonathan Percy each regularly made predictably sizable donations to both political parties. No matter who won, they'd still have access.) The White House banquet had been no great shakes—chatting with one of the president's daughters had been surprisingly uninteresting. But the wife of the Belgian ambassador had asked where Anna had found the grown, which was flattering.

“Uh-oh, you're pissed,” Sam decreed. “I see it on your face.”

“No, I'm not,” Anna insisted. And she really wasn't. With Sam, she'd learned to expect this kind of surprise.

“Oh, great, then!” Sam grinned. “Whatever you were going to wear—forget it. This stylist does all the chicks on the best-dressed list every year. And …”

She peered at Anna more intently. “There's still something going on. Spill.”

“It's not the dresses.” Anna struggled with how to say what she wanted to say. “It's … your film. I know you want to be a director, and I know how talented you are, and—”

“And
what
?”

“I just … I wonder if you want to jump-start your career—to make yourself look good by making some other people look bad.”

Sam leaned back, put her hands behind her head, and laughed. “Anna. You don't have to pull your punches with me. Just say it: You think I'm going to do a hatchet job on the prom weenies. Is that it?”

Anna took a meager sip of her wine. “Yes. And I don't see what's so funny.”

“
You
are funny. You're so lucky you didn't grow up here in Hollywood, Anna. You would have been eaten alive before you graduated from nursery school.”

“Don't change the subject,” Anna warned. “It took a lot of courage for me to bring this up with you.”

Sam laughed again. “I know. And I want you to know you don't have anything to worry about, even though I don't let my friends dictate my art, especially when they have no idea what the finished product is going to look like and didn't want to see any of the edited footage and decided to jump to conclusions without even knowing the facts.”

Anna blinked slowly. “I am totally confused.”

“Okay, maybe in the beginning I was thinking about a prom-weenie hatchet job. But since then, I changed my concept for the film.”

“To what?”

Sam fiddled with a straw wrapper. “The bizarre thing is, once I started to get to know the weenies, I actually kind of sort of … like them.”

Anna's face lit up. “That's so sweet.”

“Don't let it get around. As soon as you start seeing people who are different from you as actually three-dimensional, it's a lot harder to dis them. So my new concept is a lot more … affirmative.”

The Sinatra CD ended and was replaced by Billie Holliday singing “Strange Fruit”—a song Anna adored. She leaned forward. “I am so glad that you changed your mind.”

“Look,” Sam continued. “You knew a lot of writers and painters in New York. You know that art is an evolving thing. Your first concept isn't always going to be your best concept. Last night with Eduardo … it was just so … real. Honest. Open. Authentic. When I woke up this morning. I realized that as much as Jazz and Fee want to be part of something they're not, everything they're doing for prom they're doing with their hearts. They really, truly, deeply care about this. That's what I want my movie to be about. How here in Beverly Hills, where party-giving is an art form, two high school girls can put their hearts into putting on a great party. Heart in a heartless town. That's what I'm going for.”

Anna couldn't help but grin. “Sam Sharpe, you're a genius.”

“True. Now, moving on,” Sam replied briskly. “I have a surprise. At any—”

She was interrupted by the waitress, who carried an enormous tray with plates of sushi and sashimi, and identified each as she set it down: salmon, tuna, shrimp, and eel.

“Sam!”

The voice had come from the doorway. Anna turned and was surprised to see Dee trotting toward them. With her was a gangly guy, all arms and legs, with the faraway squint of the nearsighted. He had red curly hair, nervous eyes, and a prominent Adam's apple that bobbed up and down like it was attached to a yo-yo string. His ears stuck out a little, and he wore ironed jeans with a crease.

“Here comes my surprise,” Sam explained to Anna happily. “On her day pass. With … you know, I have
no
clue who that guy is. I hope not her new boyfriend.”

She rose to hug Dee. “I'm so glad you're here!”

“Oh wow, this is so fantastic!” Dee gushed.

Anna rose and embraced Dee too, pleased to see her up and around—maybe even getting back to a normal life. “It's good to see you. You've got to be feeling a lot better.”

Dee's face was absolutely devoid of makeup. She wore Bebe khakis, a little faded olive-green T-shirt, and red Vans sneakers. Anna didn't think she'd ever seen her so dressed down before. The look worked, though … maybe even better than ever.

“Sit, sit,” Sam told Dee and the gangly guy, ushering everyone into the booth.

“This is Marshall Gruber,” Dee said, introducing Gangly Guy. “He's my warden for prom.”

“Chaperone,” he corrected, in a reedy voice. “I'm a clinical intern at Ojai.”

Sam gave Anna a dubious look. It was great that Dee could get a pass for prom, but for her escort to bear such a striking resemblance to the guy from
Napoleon Dynamite?
This was definitely not the stuff that prom dreams were made of. What about the date that Cammie was supposed to procure? Meanwhile, the waitress hurried over with more plates and another large platter of sushi.

“Dig in,” Sam instructed Dee and Marshall. “The yellowtail is amazing.”

“Oh no.” Marshall looked horrified. “I'm vegan. Just rice. Unbleached, if they've got it.”

Dee nabbed a piece of yellowtail—evidently, her own former vegetarianism had vanished along with her bipolar symptoms—and bit into it. “Freedom,” she declared, after she'd happily savored the fresh fish. “It's awesome. A whole afternoon with my friends, plus prom.”