Blonde Ambition (17 page)

“Did you know she was going to be here? Is that what this is about?” he asked.

“No, Adam. Not at all. Anna’s interning for my dad, so she and I are bound to be invited to the same functions. But I didn’t want to let her get in the way of my seeing you tonight. I hope that’s okay with you.”

“Of course it is. I didn’t mean to wig out on you.” “Don’t worry about it. And whatever you do, do
not
worry about Anna’s new-
new
-
new
boyfriend,” she counseled.

“What happened to Ben?” Adam asked, a muscle jumping in his jaw.

“Beats me.”

Adam shook his head. “I don’t get her. First she wants to be alone, then she wants to be with Ben, now she wants to be with this dude… .”

At that moment Cammie saw Anna staring at them over The Notebook’s not-very-tall shoulder. So she narrowed her eyes in a way that said, “Guess who’s with the better guy?” then rested her head against Adam’s broad, muscular shoulder.

Danny reached a hand out to Anna and helped her into one of the horse-drawn carriages that were lined up on the street outside the hotel—a special touch for the party. Giddy from two martinis and Danny’s sense of humor, Anna had readily agreed to a carriage ride. It would be fun. And it meant she wouldn’t have to look at Cammie with Adam. The sight of them together had come close to ruining her evening. He was a great guy. She was a scorpion. Anna knew that it was only a matter of time before Adam got stung.

The carriage driver gave them a cashmere throw— Danny and Anna settled under it as the coachman urged his two horses forward. Horseshoes click-clocked against asphalt.

“Warm enough?” Danny wrapped an arm around Anna.

“Fine,” she replied. The apple martinis had a powerful kick, and Anna wasn’t much of a drinker. “Right now it’s probably absolute zero in New York. But here in La La Land, you can eat oranges off the tree in January.”

“I hate New York. I’m such a California guy, I’d turn into the Iceman in that kind of weather.”

“Ah, yes. But would the Iceman cometh?” Anna teased, impressed with her sudden bawdiness.

Danny raised one eyebrow. “That, my dear, has yet to be determined. And did Anna Percy just let fly with a risqué pun?”

“It must be the air in California. Or the martinis,” Anna allowed. “Or both. They’ll never let me back in New York City again. Anyway, I never liked that play. All those drunks nourishing illusions and wasting their lives.”

“You know a better writer than Eugene O’Neill?” Danny asked.

“You!” Anna said, a bit drunk herself. “Let’s talk about your novel.”

“The one I haven’t started? Let’s talk about yours.” The carriage turned south, heading toward the pier. “A woman goes to battle against a giant eunuch of a white whale,” she began solemnly. “I call it:
Moby Dick-less.
”

Danny laughed really hard. Which got Anna laughing, too. She turned to him, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. His hand lifted her chin. Then his lips were on hers in the sweetest of kisses.

I don’t love him, Anna thought. But right at this moment, I’m happy. What’s wrong with that?

So she pulled Danny close and kissed him back.

Mo-Theo

“Y
o, I know you from somewhere?”

Cammie was just returning from the ladies’ room when Mo Bad called to her from his perch on a thronelike yellow wicker chair.

“Yo, no,” Cammie replied, and kept on walking. Adam was out there alone, which made Cammie nervous. She wouldn’t put it past Anna to blow off The Notebook and go back after Adam.

“Seriously,” Mo said, sidling up to Cammie. “I seen you somewheres, you know what I’m sayin’? You lookin’ hot, girl.”

“They teach you to fake that ghetto crap at Harvard-Westlake?” Cammie asked with a sweet smile.

Mo scowled. “Where you be thinkin’ I’m from, girl?”

“Whatever.” Cammie stood on the toes of her Jimmy Choo boots and scanned the area for Adam.

“You lookin’ for that tall dude you was grindin’ on befo’?” Mo asked.

“Actually, I’m looking for Jesus,” Cammie replied. “I just had a spiritual epiphany. Not that you have a clue what that is.”

“Shee-it,” he drawled. “Sudden awakening, like that. You be judging me by my speech and shit.”

Cammie folded her arms and stared him down. “Do you have any idea who I am? My father’s firm is your agent.”

Mo grinned. “For real? That’s cool. You got a name?” “If you’ll drop the I’m-Tupac-reincarnated routine, I’ll tell you.”

He shrugged. “Fine by me,” he said in a perfectly normal voice.

“It’s Cammie.”

“Nice to make your acquaintance, Cammie. My name is Theo, but don’t let it get around. And you really are one beautiful girl.”

“Thank you, and no, I’m not interested.”

“Too bad. I was going to invite you and your boyfriend to a rave.”

Cammie almost laughed out loud. “Excuse me? A rave? What would you know about that? And hello— 1999 was a few years ago.”

“Not this kind of rave. Take my word for it.” Mo-Theo was a good head taller than Cammie. “An’ I see your guy.”

“Where?” she demanded.

“Near the front door. Talking to some tall, skinny blond chick.”

Tall, skinny blond chick? It had to be Anna.

“In a T-shirt?”

“Affirmative,” Mo-Theo said. “Why don’t you ditch him and come with me to this party?”

Cammie made an instant decision. She wasn’t going to allow Adam to get reeled back into Anna’s poisonous clutches. “The second half was right,” she told Mo. “Lemme get my boyfriend. We’d love to come.”

Mo put on his oversized leather Fubu jacket and they headed for Adam. But when they got there, Cammie was relieved to see that it wasn’t Anna at all— just a tall, skinny blonde with bad skin who she’d never seen before in her life. Adam introduced her as Sherrie, one of the production assistants on
Hermosa Beach.
And Sherrie proceeded to launch into a long and involved story about her upcoming wedding in Houston to a guy she’d known since kindergarten.

Cammie felt a little better. Then she realized that Anna Percy herself could reappear at any moment. “Guess what?” she asked Adam when Sherrie took a breath. “We’re going to another party.”

Adam checked his watch. “It’s kind of late, isn’t it?”

Mo-Theo laughed. “Is this boy for real?”

It wasn’t unusual for girls at Beverly Hills High to hook up with hot guys from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks, which was why Cammie could attest to have attended a goodly number of parties in east L.A. Personally, Cammie found the rich-white-girl-hooks-up-with-the-Latino-son-of-Mexican-immigrants thing kind of played. But she dutifully followed Mo’s 1995 Dodge Viper to the Echo Park neighborhood, where they parked outside an abandoned redbrick building in a dirt parking lot already jammed with SUVs and European sedans.

“Are you sure this is cool?” Adam asked, checking out the low-rent environs.

Cammie made her voice as manly as possible. “Don’t worry, Adam. I’ll protect you.”

He laughed and draped an arm around her shoulders as they followed Mo across the street to the brick building. Mo rapped on the heavy metal door. It was opened by a scowling bald guy who had to be at least six-foot six, three hundred pounds. When he saw who was there, the scowl changed to a welcoming nod. “Yo, Mo, wazzup?”

They shared some kind of fist bump, then the big guy waved them all inside. Down a flight of stairs they entered a huge basement room. It teemed with young bodies dancing to pounding hip-hop. Red strobe lights blinked on and off. In a glass booth a DJ rocked out to the tunes he was sampling. The air was heavy with smoke from Columbia’s finest and cigarettes.

Before she could say no, Mo dragged Cammie into the middle of the dancers. Not that she could have heard herself say no. Adam followed, and Cammie flirted with both of them as she danced, mesmerized by the sweaty groove. It was fun in a mindless, exhibition-ist sort of way.

Mo leaned close. “Yo, you wanna do some E?”

E as in Ecstasy, as in MDMA. Ugh. Cammie was no stranger to felonious substances but had seen too many girls do E and decide instantly that they were madly in love with whatever boy happened to be in their immediate vicinity. She was much too much of a control freak to find that attractive.

She shook her head no; Mo responding by taking her hips and gyrating them against his. Cammie decided that she’d had enough of her father’s client: she turned to Adam and threw her arms around his neck, slithering up and down as she danced. He stayed loose and sexy, didn’t try too hard. And he seemed to be getting into it as much as Cammie was. The beat segued faster. More bodies pressed onto the dance floor. Nearby a girl took off her top and flung it into the crowd, then French-kissed the girl she was with.

Cammie turned around and danced with her back to Adam. The next thing she knew, she felt his arms around her waist from behind. He was still dancing but holding her fast. She looked over her shoulder; he seemed mesmerized by the dark, smoky, sexy room. She lifted her face to his and kissed him. He tasted salty as he turned her all the way toward him. She felt his hand under her butt, lifting her higher as he kissed her back; she wrapped her legs around him and just let herself go with the feeling. God, she’d been right. Adam Flood was hot! Really, really hot. He knew just how to kiss her and touch her and tease her. All she wanted to do was to rip his clothes off and—

“Cammie? Oh my God,
Cammie!
”

Suddenly Adam put her down. The spell was broken. Standing with them now, her eyes shining, was none other than Dee. She looked even more waifish than usual in a semi-transparent baby doll dress that showed off a pink bra and thong. “Wow, this is so cool!” Dee cried. “What a coincidence! How’d you get here?”

“The
Hermosa Beach
party!” Cammie yelled over the music.

“You were there? Me too!” Dee exclaimed. “Isn’t it like the most awesome thing ever? I mean, I feel so in tune with everyone here. It’s just so soulful!”

Cammie nodded. It was hard to tell whether Dee was on one of her New Age rants or had found her way to the E that Mo-Theo had mentioned.

“Wow, Adam, hi!” Dee gave him a huge hug. She looked from Cammie to Adam and back at Cammie. “Are you two … you know!”

“She’s having my baby,” Adam said with mock sincerity.

Dee took him seriously and clasped Cammie’s arm. “Wow! Wait until I tell your sister!”

“What sister?” Cammie spat.

“Mia, silly,” Dee said. “She’s here, too. We met at the party, and these really cute guys invited us to come with them, and here we are!”

“You brought Mia to this place?” Cammie yelped.

“Come on, we went to parties like this when we were fourteen,” Dee reminded her. “You
gave
parties like this when you were fourteen.”

“Where is she, Dee?” Cammie demanded. She knew that her stepsister was used to parties in the valley, where frat bizkits, aka frat boy wanna-bes still in high school, got drunk and threw up in someone’s swimming pool. Mia was not ready to handle
this.

Dee put her little fists on her hips. “How could I possibly know, Cammie?”

Cammie spoke directly into Adam’s ear, shouting to be heard over the music. “We have to find my stepsister!”

“Who?”

“I’ll explain later.” She swung back around to Dee “Where’s the last place you saw her?”

“Back there. Don’t worry, she’s totally safe!” Cammie and Adam pushed through the gyrating bodies to look for Mia—Cammie told Adam to start by looking for red hair. But there was no sign of the young girl. They found themselves in a narrow hallway with a long line to use one of two functioning toilets. Cammie pounded on the bathroom doors—each opened to an irate partygoer, but neither was Mia.

“What now?” Adam asked.

“Outside!” Cammie declared. They found a fire exit at the end of the corridor and pushed it open.

There, on the ground, was Mia.

Glassy-eyed and out of it, Mia had mascara tracks running down both her cheeks. One of Cammie’s favorite sweaters was half on and half off her shoulders.

Cammie grabbed her arm. “What did you take?” Mia’s head lolled. “Huh?”

“Who the hell are you?” A scruffy guy in his early twenties suddenly appeared, a half-consumed pint of Jack Daniels in his left hand.

“Her sister, you shit,” Cammie told him. “She’s fourteen.”

The guy faltered. “Whoa. She told me she was
eighteen.
” “Get her out of here,” Cammie ordered Adam, who lifted Mia and carried her around the building to Cammie’s car.

“What are you doing?” Mia asked dreamily.

“What did you take?” Cammie demanded. They reached her car, and Adam leaned Mia against the hood.

“A couple of beers and a joint—what’s the biggie?” Mia asked.

“No E? You didn’t shoot or snort anything? You sure?”

“I don’t do that stuff,” Mia mumbled. “God, make a scene, why don’t you? Hey, where’s Dee?”

“Forget Dee,” Cammie snapped. “We’re going home.” Cammie opened the door, and Adam hoisted Mia into the backseat. Not only did Mia stop protesting as soon as she was horizontal, she fell asleep even before Cammie was out of the parking lot. Cammie fumed over Dee for a full five minutes before she explained to Adam exactly who Mia was.

“Wild child, huh?” Adam peered back at the snoring girl. “She looks about ten right now.”

“Wild valley girl, the worst kind. God, what if we hadn’t shown up?” Cammie asked.

She could feel Adam studying her in the dark. “You really care about her, huh?”

“No. I don’t even like her.”

“Then … ?” There was a question in his voice.

How could she explain? Cammie was hardly the type of girl to go around saving people from themselves. “I’m not getting all maudlin here, but after my mom died, I … I had some problems,” she began. “My mom was really … She was great.” Cammie swallowed the lump that welled up in her throat. She wasn’t about to start crying, that was for sure. “By the time I was in middle school, I thought I was hot shit and all grown up. I looked for attention in a lot of really stupid, fucked-up ways. I’m lucky I lived through a lot of it.”

“And?” Adam urged.