Blonde Ambition (7 page)
Ben readied the boat while Anna enjoyed the salt air from the bow. She heard Ben start the engines and watched him untie the moorings; then he eased the yacht out of the slip and they cleared the marina. Soon the engines opened up, and they were steaming out into the endless Pacific. Finally Ben killed the motor and joined her, snaking his arms around her from behind. Tall as she was, he was taller, and his head rested just above hers.
“Nice?”
“Very.”
He turned her around. His hands traveled down to her waist, then lower, holding her fast. “Remember this?” The kiss he gave her heated her right through the down vest and jeans she’d pulled from her closet. And yes, it did remind her of the last time they’d been on this boat together, when she’d felt as if her entire life was new and wonderful and dangerous.
“It’s warmer down below. In the cabin,” Ben suggested, his voice low.
He led her down the steep steps and into the cabin. He kissed her until she couldn’t breathe. Removed her down vest. Her Ralph Lauren Blue Label cashmere turtleneck. Her handmade white silk camisole from a darling little shop on the Boulevard St. Michel in Paris. Slipped her out of her jeans. Then Ben pulled off his own sweater and gently kissed Anna onto the bed’s ruby velvet quilt. And then …
And then …
The emotions of her last time on this boat came flooding over her. She was powerless to fend them off. Anna put her hand gently against Ben’s chest. He was breathing hard. There was a question in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I keep thinking about last time.”
“New memories, Anna. We’re making new memories,” Ben whispered, reaching behind her back for the narrow clasp of her lace bra.
“I want that, too, Ben,” Anna insisted. “Just … not this place.”
He flopped over onto his back, a forearm thrown over his forehead. “Don’t you think that if I could go back and do everything differently, I would?”
“I’m not trying to punish you. I’m just telling you how I feel.”
He rolled onto one hip and gazed at her. “I’m not much good at saying how I feel. In fact, I suck at it.”
“I read somewhere that women bond facing each other and talking and men bond facing a sporting event and yelling for their team,” Anna said, apropos of nothing but her own discomfort.
“Good to know I’m not unique. If there was any way I could make it up to you, you know I would.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Let’s get under the covers,” Ben said. He slid the quilt down on one side and both of them climbed in. Ben lay on his back; Anna put her head somewhere in the vicinity of his heart.
“I wish we could just sail out into the Pacific,” Ben murmured into her hair. “Keep going and never come back.”
“Does Princeton offer a semester-at-sea program?” Anna joked.
“Don’t know and don’t care.”
Anna lifted her head so that she could see his eyes. “When are you going back to school?”
“Soon.”
Soon? Anna knew that Ben’s second semester had started and that he’d missed a few days of it already. It wasn’t like a person could take freshman year at Princeton casually. She wondered if that was part of the reason she was holding back: her knowledge that soon he’d have to leave.
“How much school have you missed?”
Ben groaned. “Anna, we came out here to get away from stress, not bring it with us.”
He was right. Why, why, why couldn’t she learn to just
be
in the moment?
“Sorry,” she whispered, then leaned down to kiss him. His arms circled her. She kissed his neck, down his chest. She heard him groan.
“Don’t start what you’re not going to finish,” he said hoarsely.
Anna was determined to stay in the now. Not the past, when Ben had abandoned her on the boat. And not the murky future, when he’d leave for college.
She raised herself over him and whispered in his ear: “Race you to the finish.”
He rolled her over and pinned her down with his strong hands. He smiled down into her eyes. “You’re on.”
Anna awoke with a start. The same boat, the same bed, the same no one beside her. Oh my God, it was happening all over again! She threw off the covers, not thinking about how naked she was, and jumped out of bed …
Just as Ben came down the cabin stairs with two steaming cups of fresh-brewed coffee from the boat’s tiny galley. “If you greet me in that outfit, I’ll bring you coffee anytime.”
“I thought you were …”
She felt too stupid and couldn’t finish the sentence. “Gone? You really thought that?”
She didn’t answer him. Instead she crawled back into bed. He handed her the coffee and sat next to her. “I’m so sorry, Anna. I swear to you, it will never, ever happen again.”
He looked so sad, so earnest. She nodded and gratefully sipped the coffee. What they’d shared for the past couple of hours had been amazing. She’d fallen asleep with a contented smile on her lips. How could she wake up with the same old fears?
A memory, long buried, flitted into her mind. Of her father, there one day and then … gone. Her mother wouldn’t talk about it. In fact, it was nearly a year until she informed her daughters that she and their father had gone through a very civil divorce and Jonathan Percy was now living in Beverly Hills, California, his hometown. She wanted to tell Ben about this. Yet something stopped her. For all her insight into “bonding,” Anna knew little about intimacy. God knew she hadn’t learned it from the
This Is How We Do Things
Big Book, East Coast WASP edition. Sharing something so personal was number one in that apocryphal book’s “Thou Shalt Nots.”
So she didn’t. Instead she sipped her coffee and tried to enjoy the moment for what it was.
Ninety minutes later they’d docked at Marina del Rey, secured the boat, and made their way back to Ben’s parked car. Ben cranked the heater, gallantly making sure that the vents were pointed at Anna as they pulled out of the marina’s parking lot. “Have fun?”
“It was wonderful,” Anna assured him. She kissed her fingertips and touched them to his cheek as her eyes flicked to the clock on his dashboard. Nearly midnight. Theoretically there was school the next day.
On the boat ride back to the marina Anna had filled Ben in on how she’d be interning for Clark Sheppard at the Apex agency. And now, as they drove back to Beverly Hills, she found herself thinking about it … as well as the look Cammie had fired in her direction when Clark had summarily dismissed his daughter from his office.
Evidently the subject was on Ben’s mind, too. Out of nowhere he said, “Listen, watch your elegant ass around Cammie Sheppard, okay?”
“I have no interest in giving her a moment’s thought.”
“She’s capable of pretty much anything.”
“You’re aware that she still wants you back,” Anna pointed out.
“She knows I’m not interested.”
Something made Anna press the point as Ben sped north on Lincoln Boulevard toward the 10 freeway. “You’re the one who said she’s capable of anything. She could hop on a jet and show up at Princeton.”
“Don’t care, Anna.” He pressed a button on the dashboard, and cool jazz filled his Nissan’s interior.
“Sorry about the sound system,” Ben apologized. “This is a rental car, remember.”
“It doesn’t matter. The sound. But going back to school—you must think about it,” Anna said. She twisted around so she could see him.
“Only because you keep bringing it up.”
“But school is—”
“Can’t we just be here, now? Can’t we?”
She sat back. Why wouldn’t he talk about Princeton? It wasn’t like it was a state secret. The crisis at his house was over, he’d told her. Why was he still hanging around Beverly Hills?
“What happens when I do go back, Anna?” he asked, staring hard at the road.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, the Contessa and the Southern-Fried Chauffeur.”
Anna’s jaw flapped open. “Are you talking about Django?”
“The way he looks at you—”
“Ben. We’re
friends.
”
“Close friends?” Ben probed. “Close personal friends?”
Heat came to Anna’s face. “I don’t deserve that.”
His hands gripped the steering wheel. “The idea of being on the other side of the country, being without you, and he lives right there, it’s just …”
Anna put a slender hand on Ben’s thigh. “Django and I are
friends,
” she said again.
He nodded, then cranked up the music. They didn’t talk again until they reached her father’s house, where he parked in the circular driveway and took her into his arms. “Hey. Sorry about before. I just care about you so damn much.”
“It’s okay.” She kissed him softly. “It’s forgotten.” He walked her to the door and kissed her again. She thanked him for an incredible evening, then watched him drive away. And out of the corner of her eye, she couldn’t help noticing that the lights in Django’s guest-house were still illuminated.
“S
o I was wondering if you might stop by the
Well
office sometime this afternoon so we could do an interview.”
“I don’t know … ,” Anna said, stifling an unintentional yawn. “I mean, I just—”
“Come on,” cajoled Juliet Dinkins, editor in chief of the Beverly Hills High newspaper, the
Well.
“The whole school already knows that you’re working on
Hermosa Beach
anyway. It’s not like it’s some big secret.”
“I didn’t tell anyone.”
Juliet laughed. “Welcome to L.A.”
Anna had been eating lunch alone at one of the picnic tables in the quadrangle. Tired from her late night with Ben, she hoped the yogurt and fruit she was about to eat would help perk her up. She had been reading
Love and Death in the American Novel,
the seminal—in more ways than one—collection of essays by the late literary critic Leslie Fiedler and spooning vanilla yogurt into her mouth when Juliet had come running over to her, steno notebook in hand.
“Look. I’ll make it easy for you. I’ll give you the questions in advance,” Juliet said, her lustrous dark hair glinting in the noonday sun. “Is it true that Clark Sheppard picked you from out of a thousand applicants? What exactly are you going to be doing? What kind of connections did you use to get this gig? What’s it like on the set of the show? Is Scott Stoddard, the star, really gay, or is that just a rumor? Can we come down to the beach to do an interview with the cast?”
Anna shook her head, thinking that this was insane. She hadn’t told anyone about her new gig at Apex—not even Sam. But word had spread like wildfire, which meant the most likely explanation was that Cammie had gotten the news from her father after Anna departed. Surely Cammie would have demanded to know why Anna was in her dad’s office. Surely Clark Sheppard had told her.
However the word had leaked, kids were coming up to her—kids she didn’t even know!—all through her morning classes to either offer congratulations or wheedle favors. There were plenty of young actors at Beverly Hills High; each of them instantly realized that Anna could be their ticket to a guest TV appearance or, at the very least, an audition.
“I can’t answer those questions,” Anna told Juliet. Juliet’s eyebrows shot up. “Can’t or won’t?”
Anna polished her apple on her camel-colored cashmere sweater. “There are dozens of kids at this school who’ve been on TV or in a film. I just don’t see why my internship is of any particular interest.”
“Come on, Anna. Anyone with a pretty face, buff biceps, or a parent in the business can be on TV,” Juliet said. “But
Hermosa Beach
is supposed to be the hot new show. There are billboards for it all over town. You’re working on it, and for one of the most powerful people in this town. In other words, Anna, you hit the Powerball jackpot, even if you’re too naive to know it, which I somehow don’t think you are. So about the interview—”
“Juliet, listen. I haven’t even had my first day on the show yet,” Anna interrupted. “And I can’t do an interview without clearing it with Mr. Sheppard.”
Juliet stood. “Whatever. If you don’t cooperate, I might have to do the story without you. And you know how misleading that can be. It might even come out wrong—like maybe you got the gig because you’re doing ‘Mr. Sheppard.’”
“Because that’s just the kind of smut Beverly Hills High is apt to allow into their newspaper …”
Juliet shook her hair off her shoulders. “You may have made it to the top of the Beverly Hills High social ladder in record time, but never doubt my ability to get things done my way,” she said as she smiled confidently and walked away.
Unbelievable. A high school newspaper editor was threatening to do a libelous exposé on her? What was wrong with this town?
As soon as Juliet was gone, Sam rushed over and sat down. “She wants to interview you,” she guessed. “For the paper.”
“More like she wants to write something juicy enough for her tear sheets to make an impression when she applies for her next summer internship,” Anna guessed.
“She’s a barracuda. But if you give her the interview, she probably won’t bite hard enough to draw blood.”
Anna almost laughed. “Am I supposed to find that reassuring?”
Sam waved an airy hand. “Don’t even worry about it. I can sit on her if you want. I know things she definitely doesn’t want known by the general public.” Sam leaned closer. “So how’d you pull this one off?”
“I went to Apex to talk to Margaret—”
“You were so sure she was going to fire you.”
“She did, he didn’t. I think it’s some kind of power struggle. Anyway, Cammie’s dad walked in; ten minutes later he was asking me to intern for him.”
Sam looped some glossy, perfectly-streaked-by-Raymond chestnut hair behind her ear, exposing her new eighteen-karat-gold double-tier drop earrings with aqua-marine and peridot from the Lauren Harper Collection. “So, how pissed off did that make Margaret?”
“On a scale of one to ten, I’d say she was pushing eleven,” Anna admitted.
“Good!” Sam laughed. “Guess who’s pushing twelve?”
“Cammie.” Anna groaned.
“Right on the first guess.”
Anna spooned some yogurt into her mouth. “I’m not getting involved in her latest drama. If she’s angry at anyone, it should be at her father, not me. Besides, according to her father, she wouldn’t want my job even if she could have it.”
