Blonde Ambition (20 page)
“And I would care because—?” Cammie asked lightly. “No reason,” Sam replied. “But I
am
going to figure out who did it.”
“Now that the two of you are such great friends?” Sam held Cammie’s gaze. “We
are
friends, Cammie. Just like I’d like us to be friends.”
“Well, that’s so sweet,” Cammie said with a smile. “Little Miss Anna may have you fooled, Sam, but you’re as gullible as Dee, only with thirty more IQ points.”
Sam shook her head. “You can’t play me—”
“Who’s playing you? Wake up and smell the coffee. She may look like an ice queen, but Anna is a user. She’ll use you just like she used Ben, and Adam, and God knows how many other people. Who knows why she came here? Maybe she was run out of her school in New York for that!”
Cammie saw the flash of insecurity in Sam’s eyes and felt a glimmer of triumph. But when Sam baby-stepped away, she felt something else, too. Sadness. Sam was the closest thing Cammie had to a real best friend—a friendship that had stood the test of time. That connection was one more thing Anna Percy had robbed from her.
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you …” The lights dimmed; Cammie turned and saw a big group of her friends wheeling out her four-tiered, pink-and-white birthday cake. The whole club joined in on the song, with Jared’s band providing impromptu backing. The cart with the cake stopped in the middle of the dance floor—Cammie strode over to it and blew out her candles with one impressive gust of air. When she did, the room burst into cheers and applause. Then pink-and-white balloons dropped from ceiling nets, tumbling over the guests like at a political convention.
It was a hell of a party, even though it was a week-night. At two in the morning Cammie held court at a table of fifteen of her closest friends. As unobtrusively as possible, Antebellum Daddy’s special events coordinator—a young woman named Jennifer—approached, holding a European-style portable credit card machine.
“Want some champagne?” Cammie asked, grabbing a bottle by the neck and lifting it in Jennifer’s direction.
The young woman smiled. “Maybe in a bit. But we have a minor problem. Your credit card was declined.”
Cammie laughed loudly. “That’s ridiculous. You authorized it when we planned this affair. Just try it again.”
“I did. Three times. Do you have another card? These things happen sometimes.”
Cammie frowned, opened her Prada purse, and dug out another credit card.
Declined. The table hushed as people figured out what was going on, all eyes on Cammie.
“Must be something in the air!” Cammie joked, finding another one and handing it to the events planner. Declined. And another. Declined. Cammie felt sick to her stomach. She’d run through all her major credit cards. It wouldn’t do much good to give Jennifer her gift card for Starbucks.
Adam slid into the empty seat next to Cammie, holding another big piece of birthday cake. He saw the concern on Cammie’s face. “Is there a problem?”
“No, of course not,” Cammie said. She stared down Jennifer. “Look, Jenni-poo, there is obviously something wrong with your machine.”
“Nope. In the back office I called Visa and MasterCard and American Express before I came out here. Everything’s fine.”
“Of all the—” Cammie whirled to Adam and held out her hand. “Lend me your Visa?”
Adam shrugged. “Don’t have one.”
The table broke up in laughter, both at Cammie’s discomfiture and the idea that one of their peers would live in Los Angeles without a credit card.
Cammie saw Dee across the table. “Dee! I need your Visa.”
“What for?” Dee asked sassily. Again people laughed, since it was perfectly obvious why.
Cammie glared at her impertinence. “Come on. I need it.”
Dee shrugged, fished into the back pocket of her low-slung velvet pants, and pushed her Visa card across the table, where Cammie slapped it into Jennifer’s hand. “When that card doesn’t go through, you owe me one big, fat apology.”
Jennifer looked at Dee. “The tab is over ten thousand dollars—”
“Do I need to speak more slowly or what?” Cammie interrupted. “She’s not
paying.
If mine is declined, hers is declined. Just put it through.”
Jennifer shrugged and ran Dee’s card through the machine. Within seconds a receipt for Dee spat out of the machine.
“Uh, Cammie?” Dee ventured as an even bigger crowd of onlookers gathered around the table, whispering and pointing at Cammie.
“Shit!” Cammie tore up the receipt and let it fall to the floor. Then she got an idea. “Cancel that transaction, please. And do you accept this?” It was her bank debit card. Last she checked there was enough money in her account to feed a small nation for a year.
“Sure. Run it yourself,” Jennifer said, holding out the machine for her.
Cammie did. DECLINED flashed on the little screen.
“I’d talk with my financial adviser if I were you,” Jennifer quipped, to a roar of laughter from the crowd.
“Did you cancel my friend’s transaction?” Cammie whispered, feeling defeated.
“No.”
“Good.” Cammie held the Visa receipt out to Dee. “Sign this.”
Dee flinched. “It’s a
loan,
right?”
“No, Dee, I think you should pay for this fucking party as my birthday present. Of course it’s a loan. I’ll write you a check as soon as I get home.”
Jennifer found a pen, Dee signed her name, and the transaction was quickly completed. The spectacle over, the crowd broke up, everyone sure they had a hell of a story to report the next day to anyone unlucky enough not to have been there.
Yet the story wasn’t over. A half hour later Adam had his arm around her as they left the club and walked to her car—her birthday presents would be delivered by the club the next day. Cammie had partially rallied: Adam didn’t seem too fazed by what had happened and even made some kind remark about the intricacies of the electronic banking system. To Cammie’s credit, she hadn’t made the mistake of asking him to come home with her. She knew her best strategy was to play it cool: good things come to those who wait.
But as they approached the club’s private parking structure, she saw a tow truck pull out. It had a BMW on its flatbed.
“Hey!” Cammie said, recognizing the vehicle. “That’s my car. Stop!”
She ran over to the tow truck with Adam and banged on the window. “What the hell are you doing?” She kept banging on the window until the driver rolled down the glass.
“Sorry, miss, nothing I can do,” the driver said. “Well, it’s a mistake!” Cammie yelled.
“That’s my fucking car!”
The tow truck started rolling again. Cammie stood, dumbfounded, as her BMW disappeared into the night.
Dee ending up driving Cammie home, dropping Adam on the way. As she drove, Cammie tried to make light of the bizarre end to her party, claiming that it had to be some strange misunderstanding.
“Thanks for the help, Dee,” Cammie said as Dee pulled up in front of her home. “I mean it.”
“No need to thank me,” Dee chirped. “But write me a check tomorrow.”
“Night.” She turned and headed inside. There sat her father, stepmother, and Mia in the living room, one cozy little family.
“What a weird night. What’s everyone doing up?” Cammie asked.
“Waiting for you,” Patrice said, her voice dripping icicles.
“But it’s after midnight, Patrice,” Cammie pointed out. “Don’t you turn back into a witch and go riding off on your broom?”
“See how mean she is?” Mia asked. “She’s always this mean!”
“I’m not in the mood for a late night soiree, okay?” Cammie asked rhetorically. “I had the most hellacious experience. My credit cards got declined and my bank debit card, and then my Beemer—”
“Got towed,” her father finished for her. He was sitting like a king on the Louis XVI chair at the far end of the living room.
Cammie trudged to the couch and slumped onto it. “How did you know?”
“Because I had it towed,” her father said.
Cammie sat up. She looked from her father, to her stepmother, to Mia. Mother and daughter shared a smug countenance. But her father looked like a storm cloud about to burst.
“What the hell is going on?” Cammie demanded. Her father stood and put his hands on his hips. “Of all the self-centered, bitchy, thoughtless things you’ve ever done, Camilla, this takes the damn cake.”
Camilla? He
never
called her Camilla.
“What are you talking about?”
“You fucked with my TV show.” His voice was low but filled with fury. “My show!”
Cammie tried hard to keep her cool. “I did not.” “Yes, you did,” Mia piped up. “I heard you call
Hollywood Tonight
from Dad’s home office. And you said you were that girl, Anna.”
“And I say you’re a pathological little liar,” Cammie seethed.
Mia shook her head. “Anna and Sam Sharpe said they needed to talk to me. They took me out to dinner. They told me how they thought you hurt Anna even though she never did anything mean to you. It made me think about how mean you are to me all the time. So I told them the truth.”
Cammie could feel a lump rise in her throat. She was just so tired, tired of everything and everyone. “Fine, I did it,” she jeered as she got to her feet. “You should be proud, Dad. I learned about playing dirty from you.”
Her father looked disgusted. “No, you didn’t. No one cares about this Anna. But you fucked with my TV show over some stupid teenage vendetta. I don’t care about your vendetta.
But you don’t shit where you live,
Camilla. You haven’t learned anything!”
“But I wasn’t trying to hurt you, Dad—”
He raised a hand to silence her. “Save it. Right now you have no credit cards, no bank account, and no car. If I get any madder, I’ll give your clothes away and you can shop at Costco.” He put a finger in his daughter’s face. “Don’t you ever,
ever
fuck with me again. Do you hear me?”
Cammie managed to hold her head high. “I hear you. Now you hear me. It’s my birthday. My eighteenth birthday. I’m the only child you have—even if the brat over there does call you ‘Dad.’ You don’t care about me. All you care about is your office, your work, your show. So if you want to be ashamed of someone, look in the mirror.”
Then she turned and walked to the stairs so she could cry in her room in peace.
“M
iles loves me. I’m having Miles’s baby!” the actress cried.
“Wake up, Belinda. Miles only loves himself!” the actress playing her mother insisted.
God, soap operas were awful, Cammie thought as she flipped through the channels of the big-screen TV in her bedroom.
Though it was past noon, Cammie still wore nothing more than the underwear in which she’d fallen asleep. She’d brushed her teeth because she detested morning mouth, but there wasn’t really any point in dressing. There was no way she was going to school. She couldn’t even muster the energy to see if her father had reinstated her credit cards or her bank account or brought her car home.
She picked up the framed photo of her mother that she kept on her nightstand. Then she looked at her wall and its half-completed mural of the characters from
Charlotte’s Web.
She and her mother had been working on that mural when her mom had died all those years ago. When Clark had purchased this home, Cammie had insisted that the mural move with the rest of her stuff. Yet it would always be half finished, a reminder of Cammie’s loss.
There was a knock on her door. “Go away,” she barked.
“A boy is here to see you,” one of the housekeepers called.
“Who?” Cammie called back.
“Go find out.”
Fine. Great. Just what she needed—a surly attitude from the domestic help. Cammie pulled on the first thing she found: an old tennis warm-up jacket and some drawstring pajama bottoms. Then, still barefoot, she went downstairs.
Adam stood in the front hallway. He was carrying a bunch of white daisies.
“Hi,” he said. He thrust the daisies at her. “These are for you.”
Daisies. Cammie had always thought of them as flowering weeds that the gardeners were forever pruning out of the garden. Daisies looked ordinary and smelled foul. You gave daisies to ten-year-old girls in Idaho, not to Cammie Sheppard. But these daisies were magnificent.
“You weren’t at school this morning,” Adam went on. “It was a rough night. I came to see if you’re okay.”
“You don’t have a car. How’d you get here?”
“Bike,” Adam sheepishly admitted. “Don’t let it get around.”
“That’s three miles. Uphill!”
Adam shrugged. “Strong legs.”
“That was really nice of you,” Cammie said. And she meant it, too. She asked him to come into the kitchen with her so that she could find a vase and water. Her reflection in the stainless steel refrigerator reminded her that she looked a wreck: unwashed, unbrushed, un–made up. “I look like hell.”
“Actually, I like it,” Adam mused as Cammie arranged the flowers in a handblown Belgian glass vase. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen your real face before.”
Now he revealed something from behind his back that Cammie hadn’t even realized he was carrying.
It was a small, wrapped gift.
“I didn’t want to give this to you last night with all those other gifts,” he confessed. “Prada and Yada and Whadda and I don’t know what all.” He scratched the star tattoo behind his ear. “Anyway …”
He handed her the package. She tore the wrapping open. It was a first edition of
Charlotte’s Web.
“Look at the title page,” he suggested.
She leafed to the title page. It was signed by the author, E. B. White. Cammie had done a report on E. B. White when she was in sixth grade. She knew how the author hated to autograph his own books. Where had Adam found this one?
“I remember you mentioned once that
Charlotte’s Web
made you think of your mom,” Adam explained. “So I found this on eBay.”
Cammie pursed her lips. “This is the best gift anyone ever gave me.” She put the book on the gleaming butcher-block counter, went to Adam, and embraced him. “Thank you.” She started to kiss him but changed her mind. Instead she put her head on his shoulder. He stroked her hair like he would a child’s.
