Heart of Glass (3 page)
“You’re not worried about this at all?” Anna couldn’t help asking. She actually had a book in her Fendi bag—the paperback of
Everything Is Illuminated
—but hadn’t been able to do anything but watch Cammie give herself a manicure.
“Please,” Cammie scoffed. She’d been reapplying rose lip salve. “This is some asshole’s vendetta, not an arrest.” Cammie found some gum in her Louis Vuitton hobo bag and curled the stick into her mouth without offering any to Anna. “He called my father right afterward. To gloat.” “Was your father upset?” “Only that I didn’t have a gun to put Gibson out of his misery. What a pathetic loser. He thought he could show my dad and me how powerful he was. Trespassing. You gotta be kidding.” She gave Anna a cool once-over. “You’re dressed like a girl with no bodily functions. Does Ben really get off on that prim-and-proper shit?” “Ben and I aren’t exactly together anymore,” Anna admitted cautiously. It had been a couple of weeks since Anna had told Ben that she needed time to think about their relationship—such as it was—and then had turned down Ben’s graduation-night invitation in favor of an evening with Caine at a jazz club. The night had been fun. Really fun, in fact. There really didn’t seem to be any point to hiding this from Cammie. In fact, Cammie probably knew already.
“Really.”
Anna heard the interest in Cammie’s voice. Well, maybe she didn’t know. But Ben and Cammie had once been Ben-and-Cammie. He was, in fact, the only guy who had ever dumped Cammie Sheppard. Anna knew that part of Cammie wanted Ben back, if only to prove that she could win him over so that she could be the one to drop him. Anna knew she shouldn’t care, but she did. Even the mere thought of Cammie with Ben added an extra knot to her already-nervous stomach.
“Yes, really.”
“So what prompted you to—”
The door opened, and the two high-powered attorneys walked back in, trailed by a movie-star-handsome man clad in an impeccable charcoal-colored Giorgio Baroni suit, crisp white shirt, and a red patterned tie. Anna automatically stood.
Cammie didn’t. Instead, she yawned.
The man in the Baroni suit held out his hand to them anyway. “Anna Percy? Camilla Sheppard? I’m Andrew Levitan, the DA who’s been assigned to your case. I’m sorry, but we’ve got a bit of a situation here.” “Andrew—I hope you don’t mind that I call you Andrew—having the pregnancy test come back positive is a ‘situation’ to be terribly sorry about,” Cammie declared. She still held her nail file in one hand. “This is just two cute girls walking over some has-been’s semi-private sandbox. So do the right thing. Make the charges go away, I can go for my facial, and you people can go do . . . whatever it is you do.” “Have a seat, Anna.” Andrew motioned politely to the chairs at the conference table. “I’m confident we can work all this out to both of your satisfaction.” Anna sat; Levitan and the lawyers did too. When Mr. Lodge flashed her the world’s quickest thumbs-up, Anna felt a bit of relief. Maybe this was going to work out after all. Maybe the DA would drop the charges—“I’m afraid I can’t drop the charges,” Levitan told them. “I got the order from high up. This is one of those things where the complainant—Gibson—can make a lot of noise. But I do think your lawyers and I have worked a way out of this. If you girls are willing, I’d like to put you into a brief community service program. If you complete the program successfully, we can get this case dismissed in the interest of justice.” Cammie leaned toward the handsome young DA, putting her impressive cleavage—the best that money could buy—on serious display. “Andrew—that’s your name, right? I choose what—or who—I do. ‘Community service’ isn’t on my list.” Andrew smiled gently. “This won’t be anything like graffiti removal on the 405 freeway. You can thank your lawyers’ powers of persuasion that I’ve got something else in mind.” “I’ll do it whatever it is,” Anna insisted, and fixed her eyes on Levitan. This was no time to put up with Cammie’s snarky behavior. If she wanted a police record, that was her problem. Cammie could go to trial for all Anna cared.
“Actually, I think when you both hear what I have to say, you’re going to be thanking me. You’re not ordinary defendants. You’re not going to do ordinary community service.” Levitan leaned in close to them and smoothed his red power tie. “And the best part is, nobody is even going to know you’re doing it.”
“Joe’s Clams?” Anna asked, as Caine pulled his electric blue Ford F-150 pickup truck into the half-full parking lot. “We’re going to Joe’s Clams for dinner?” Caine laughed. “Best seafood in the Marina, in my humble opinion. You got a problem with that?” Anna hesitated. “No . . . it’s fine.” “My brilliant powers of observation tell me you’ve been here before,” Caine teased as he turned off the engine. “Let me guess. You’ve been here with what’shis-name?”
“Ben,” Anna filled in. “Good guess. Yes. His father’s yacht is docked near here. But it’s really fine. The food is great. Especially the crab cakes.” “His father’s yacht. Huh. My father didn’t have a yacht. He didn’t even have a rowboat.” Caine bounded out of the pickup, flashed around to Anna’s side, and helped her step down to the pavement. Just as she had the first time she’d seen him, when he’d been sent by her father to rescue her after a fender-bender in a slightly dicey section of town, Anna was struck by how unlikely a young investment banker this guy was. His arms were covered in intricate tattoos, and he wore his dark chocolate hair short and spiky. There was stubble on his chin and a gold hoop in each ear. The only clue as to the nature of his work was the white button-down Brooks Brothers shirt he wore rolled up to his elbows, along with conservative woolen trousers and black cowboy boots. “He did have a canoe once. Great for fly-fishing.” “I didn’t mean anything by that.” Caine had told her a little about his modest upbringing in the Pacific Northwest.
Caine laughed and nudged his shoulder into hers. “Don’t sweat it. Hey, did I mention you’re the first felon I’ve ever dated? It’s kinda hot.” Anna laughed. Caine was six years older than her, and possessed a maturity and ease that she found refreshing. Plus, as far as Anna could tell, he was scrupulously honest, which was more than she could say for Ben. When she’d gotten tired of Ben hiding the truth from her—the latest time had been during the week before graduation, when it turned out that an old girlfriend of Ben’s from Princeton was basically stalking him—Caine had been right there.
Yes, Ben had done his best to apologize, and Anna had found herself falling under his familiar spell. But she had resisted, and since graduation, she and Caine had seen each other quite a bit.
Still, walking into Joe’s Clams made her think about Ben. Their very first night together, when he’d abandoned her on the pier, and the only landmark she’d been able to remember was this clam shack. God, she’d been through so much with him. . . .
Anna pushed those thoughts aside as Caine ushered her to a corner table and ordered two Anchor Steams and a basket of fried oysters for them to share. The place was exactly as Anna had remembered, with a nautical theme, its warped wooden floor covered in peanut shells.
When the beers arrived, Caine lifted his bottle to Anna. “To my favorite felon.” “Hopefully not for long.” “So what’s the deal on the community service, again? I wasn’t really tracking in the middle of that traffic jam.” Anna grinned. “The DA offered us this amazing deal—he basically said we should never have been arrested or charged, but now that it had happened, he had to follow through with something. Anyway, there’s this foundation he knows called New Visions, which does benefit work for at-risk girls and teens. They’re doing a charity fashion show in a couple of weeks at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Some sort of big fund-raiser. Cammie and I are supposed to help plan it.” “Trust Anna Percy to get ‘community service’ planning a charity fashion show.” “I know!” Anna exclaimed. She took a swallow of the beer—it was ice cold and delicious. “I mean, that’s the kind of thing I might want to work on anyway. It actually sounds like fun.” “There’s this song my grandmother used to sing—something about how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” Caine commented, as he opened a package of crackers and ate one of them.
“You didn’t grow up rich. You told me last week your father runs a garage in Oregon. And yet you went into investment banking. Which means that if you follow in
my
father’s footsteps—” “I’ll eventually be joining the leisure class, playing golf in those nasty-ass pastel pants, and—God forbid, don’t tell my father—voting Republican. Man, my life is gonna suck.” Anna laughed and whacked his arm. “I don’t think you have to change your essential self just because you make money.” “And how would you know that, exactly, Anna Percy, since you’ve always been overprivileged?” Caine took another pull on his Anchor Steam.
Anna didn’t like to think that her worldview was colored by her family’s status, but how could it not be? She and Ben had talked about that once, she recalled. Ben felt that the more money his plastic surgeon hero of a father made, the more shallow and avaricious he became, and he wanted to be nothing like his dad. Of course, one of the things Ben didn’t talk about was what exactly he wanted to do with his life. Yet didn’t Ben take the luxuries in his life for granted? He’d taken her out on the yacht that very first night, and—“Yo, Anna, where’d you go?” Caine asked.
Anna flushed and leaned forward. “Sorry.” “Thinking about him, no doubt.” “It’s just that he was my first real . . . my only—” It felt too awkward to say out loud.
“Got it,” Caine replied quickly; it was clear from the look on his face that he really did.
“Is there anyone in your past like that?” Anna asked. If they were talking about Ben, it was only fair for her to hear something about Caine’s past. He hadn’t volunteered much. “Or is that too personal a question?” “No, it’s okay. There actually was someone, back at Stanford. A girl named Bernadette. We were snow-boarding buddies.” Caine’s voice got soft. “Funny. I haven’t thought about her in a long time.” “What happened? How long were you together?” “We met senior year at Stanford. She was a serious boarder. Loved the deep stuff. Back country.” He hesitated. “You sure you want to hear this?”
Anna nodded. “Please. Go on.”
“She went to Switzerland for spring break and hooked up with a guy on their Olympic snowboard squad. Never came back to school. Don’t know what she’s doing now. Know how she broke up with me? E-mail.” Anna gulped. “That had to hurt.” “It did.” He took another long pull on his beer. “I didn’t plan to fall in love with her, but I did.” “Well, maybe love isn’t something you
can
plan.” Caine studied Anna’s face intently. “In some ways, she reminds me of you.” “How so?” She heard her own voice, faintly nervous.
He smiled and looked her straight in the eyes. “She was blond like you, but it’s not just the blond hair. More like . . . something in her soul. I always had the sense that she was watching herself. Like you.” Anna was amazed that he knew this about her.
“I
do
do that. And frankly, it’s exhausting.”
“No kidding. I think you took that whole ‘lead an examined life’ thing you learn in philosophy a little too seriously,” Caine teased.
“You know what? I agree with you. That’s why I have decided this summer to simply have fun. That makes sense, doesn’t it?” “Works for me,” he agreed. “And if the cops come to slip the handcuffs on you again—” “What?” Anna raised her eyebrows.
Caine grinned. “I have some fur-lined ones we could try instead.”
S
am was beyond irritated when Marty Martinsen called from his private jet to say that he’d just entered American airspace, and that he’d flown in from Malta due to a budget crisis on the set of
Ben-Hur
. She knew it was Marty’s way of telling her to vacate the Malibu beach house immediately. Sam really liked his place, and, more importantly, she’d liked being twenty miles north and west of the stepmother from hell, aka Poppy Sinclair Sharpe, mother of the month-old stepsister she hadn’t anticipated ever having, Ruby Hummingbird Sinclair Sharpe.
Why did people go insane over babies? Their appeal in general was utterly lost on Sam—although from time to time, she did find herself having warm feelings toward Ruby Hummingbird. Then she remembered who the baby’s mother was. The best she could usually muster was studied diffidence.
Evidently America’s Most Beloved Action Hero, aka her father, didn’t share her indifference. Whenever he was around his new daughter, he turned into a doting, cooing wack job. He claimed to want to prioritize his family over his career—that’s what he’d told
Entertainment Weekly,
too. This particular day, he’d even planned to leave things in the hands of his assistant director and director of photography and take the day off for “family time.” However, Jackson had been called an hour ago and had learned via speakerphone that there was an emergency on set: his redheaded starlet, Amelia Rodgers—playing the lead hooker in a Roman brothel—had just had an ugly on-set fight with the cinematographer, who up until forty-eight hours ago had also been her boyfriend. Now Amelia had locked herself inside her trailer and refused to come out.
Poppy hadn’t taken the news that her husband was abandoning the ship of his estate on this day reserved for the family very well. But he still got in the production helicopter when it arrived to take him to Palmdale.
Well, at least Sam’s boyfriend, Eduardo, was“
Hola, amiga. ¿Cómo estás ahora?
” Eduardo. He’d come up behind her, lifted her hair, and kissed the back of her neck. Instantly, Sam’s pissiness with her father and the at-best-two-digit-IQ, dyed-redheaded bimbo he now called his wife melted away. She leaned her head back so that Eduardo could reach her lips. She kissed him upside down, then turned around so he could kiss her right side up.
That this incredible, sweet, smart, and beyond-hot guy was crazed for her never failed to amaze Sam. Eduardo Muñoz was five-ten, with smooth copper skin stretched over taut muscles. His close-cropped hair was dark, his eyes even darker. In Lucky jeans and a plain blue tennis shirt, he had an ease in his own skin, self-contentment in a land where “look at me!” neediness tended to ooze from peoples’ pores. In addition to the looks thing, Eduardo was also well read, insightful, and trilingual. Born and raised in Peru, a student of international relations in Paris, he spoke English and French as easily as his native Spanish. He could, Sam was certain, get a million girls who were thinner and prettier than she was. Yet for some unfathomable reason, the gods had smiled upon her, Sam Sharpe, a pear-shaped, far-from-perfect-looking girl who lived in a place where looking less than perfect was considered a moral affront on par with cruelty to animals.
