The Star Princess (4 page)

Er, fled, actually. Dashed to her car, where she'd huddled until she'd calmed down enough to drive home. The memory alone made Ilana's breathing shallow and fast. Pride kept her from admitting that to anyone.

She slid her hand onto the passenger seat, searching for a bag of nacho-cheese-flavored Corn Nuts like a chain-smoker groping for a pack of cigarettes. The salty snacks looked and tasted like fossilized com, but they were healthier than other vices she could name and lower in calories than a container of Ben and Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream.

Eating them soothed her nerves. Nerves, she knew, that were going to be further frayed once she opened the wedding invitation.

It was time.

She opened the car door and swung her legs out, sitting there for a moment until the butterflies in her stomach settled. Then, glumly, she stood and climbed an iron staircase that scaled the outside of a renovated warehouse, her backless, red patent leather shoes clanging as she did.

On the second floor, she flung open the main door to SILF Filmworks— the film company she owned with three friends: Slavica, Leslie, and Flash— and walked inside. The scene that met her was typical, everyone busy with post-production tasks related to the short film they'd recently wrapped. Ilana had a pile of possible future projects waiting on her desk, : but she'd get to that later.

After her private pity-party.

Her shoes click-clacked over a polished, high-gloss concrete floor that screamed the truth of the studio's warehouse origins and yet made it trendy. But it also made it very hard to walk in flat, slippery-soled mules without mincing like a geisha.

Ilana clutched the envelope and bag of Com Nuts to her chest, her eyes focused on the quiet comer where she planned to indulge her bad mood. She wasn't about to feel guilty about it, either. She was entitled to a little moping. It wasn't as if she did it very often. She was impulsive, volatile, and fickle, according to a now ex-boyfriend, but not moody.

She climbed onto a tall seat that had been a bar stool in another life. A stool in a biker bar. In the bad part of town. When they'd first rented this studio, all she and his friends could afford were garage-sale and bankruptcy-liquidation furnishings. No one felt they'd made enough profit yet to justify giving up the original furniture, although they'd probably keep most of it for sentimental reasons once they moved on to a bigger and better space. "Never forget your roots," Slavica always said.

Roots. Ilana frowned. Hers had been ripped out and transplanted. Her father lived in Las Vegas, her mother and brother in space.

Space, she thought, glowering at the envelope. With the back of her hand, she shoved her hair out of her eyes, blowing away any stragglers with pursed lips. Her earrings swayed as she shook her head, fluffing out the rest of her hair. Then, taking a deep breath, she tore open the envelope. The ornate gold-engraved invitation lay open in her lap like a cracked oyster with no pearl:

His Majesty King Romlijhian B'kah

and

Her Royal Highness Queen Jasmine Boswell

Hamilton B'kah

request the honor of your presence at the Marriage

of

Ian Hamilton B'kah, Crown Prince of Sienna

with

The Princess Tee'ah Dar

Ilana read through the entire invitation, from the gorgeous royal seal on top to the last of the events on the bottom of the second page that she'd be required to attend as sister to the groom, days before and after the actual ceremony. But those events weren't what upset her; she'd been through them before. She could deal with the receptions and the receiving lines, the constant changing of outfits and the hobnobbing with galactic royalty and diplomats, some of whom even spoke English. It was the getting there that she didn't want to think about.

She sagged in her seat. The wedding was in early December. It was already July. The clock, as they say, was ticking.

Her stomach did a somersault. Quickly she tossed a Corn Nut into her mouth, careful to suck off the salt before chewing. Repositioning her backside on the stool, she crossed her left leg over her right. Her foot bobbed. Her backless shoe wobbled, clinging to her big toe. When she was anxious, she fidgeted. It drove some people crazy. But that went both ways: anyone that easily irritated drove her crazy, too.

She lifted her gaze and studied the others in the big room. These were people who knew her better than most, but even they didn't realize how thwarted she was by the idea of traveling to her brother's wedding, because pride kept her from revealing it. Ilana's friends knew her as someone who wasn't afraid of risk. They thought of her as a gutsy, take-charge chick. And that's the way she wanted it to stay.

She'd known Slavica, Leslie, and their male partner Flash since being freshmen at UCLA's renowned film school. In the five years since graduation, they'd all worked for others, but now they worked for themselves. It was something of which they were all proud.

The Holt film was a step up for them, too. Until now, their projects had been much smaller. Going big meant bucks. They could have done it sooner, but maxing out their credit cards, taking second mortgages, and begging friends and family for cash— like so many of the struggling independents they knew had done— wasn't the route they'd wanted to take. The lure was strong; it wasn't easy finding investors who'd throw tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into an independent film. Sure, they could occasionally cut sweetheart deals for crew and equipment, but there were certain costs associated with filmmaking that you just couldn't get around: production insurance, transportation, meals, sound mixing, a lab to process the movie. And they hadn't wanted to cut those comers or sacrifice quality.

Then they'd lucked out: the Holt camp had wanted this documentary made, and had agreed to support it financially without stealing the freedom to explore the actor's imperfections.

There had been a lot of pressure, making the leap to the big time, but Ilana's friendship with Slavica, Leslie, and Flash translated well into their relationship as business partners. Everything had worked out fine. So far. They'd created Dust, a documentary following the movie star and former drug addict Hunter Holt's laborious road to recovery. The film had done well at the regional festivals, and if it gained buzz at Sundance, the most prestigious of them all, it would win them notice on the national level. Everyone in the business knew that more notice meant more money. Money meant the ability to hire better actors, and access to better projects.

Things didn't always work out, Ilana had seen. Business ventures broke up friendships. And marriages. Not that she had her eye on that particular gamble anytime soon. Unlike her brother.

Brother. Wedding. Space. Flying. Nightmare.

Ah! Ilana's fingers closed convulsively around her bag of Corn Nuts, crushing it. She pressed her knuckles to her thigh. "I really don't want to do this," she said. "I don't want to go."

Leslie spoke without taking her eyes off a publicity trailer she'd created for Dust. "Do what?"

"Ian's wedding," Ilana said.

"You have to go. He's your brother."

"I know," Ilana wailed.

All that her juvenile whining won her was a moment of long-suffering silence.

When it came to her fabulously rich stepfamily, from which she stubbornly accepted no financial backing, Ilana didn't expect much pity from her friends. She had access to any party, any club. If she wanted, she could socialize with anyone from the King of England to rock stars, all because of who her stepfather was. But the idea of hanging out with people who opened their doors to her only to gain influence with her family was so obnoxious that it was a struggle to come up with words sleazy enough to describe it. Still…

"A little sympathy would be nice," she complained.

Leslie observed her with perceptive green eyes ringed in smoky gray pencil. "I don't see why you're stressing about it now. It's not like you didn't know it was coming."

"Yes, I did." Ilana agreed. "But now every detail is embedded in my brain." She dusted salt off her tight, dark-blue jeans, sucking on another Com Nut. "It amazes me. Supposedly sane people calling me to debate the merits of old lace versus new, hot appetizers versus cold"— she counted off the most recent crimes on her fingers— "whether Uncle Frank will mind sitting across from his ex-wife's godchild, and if having yellow tulips in the centerpieces will clash with white wine. And then acting as if every single person in the free world cares!"

Slavica laughed and put in, "It's called wedding fever, baby. And you'd better watch out." She lifted up her left hand. A ring twinkled in the overhead halogen lighting. "It's contagious."

Ilana snorted. "I have a natural immunity." Her parents' failed relationship would have turned even Cupid into a cynic on the subject of commitment. That's not the issue, though. Getting to the wedding is."

"I thought they had a private jet," Slavica said.

"They have a spaceship." Sweat prickled between her breasts. "A fleet of them."

Flash regarded her from where he relaxed in a chair on the opposite side of the room. His hair was jet black and his eyes were blue— a killer combination. It was probably why she'd fallen into bed with him their sophomore year at UCLA. It hadn't taken much more in those days to charm the pants off her. She was a little more circumspect now— by her standards, which never seemed to match anyone else's— but one thing she had with Flash Giordano that she didn't with any of her other former flings was a lasting friendship.

"I thought you went to a class last week," he said. His legs were propped on a sad little ottoman, one foot crossed over the other. He'd been reading a script and only now gave any indication that he'd paid attention to their conversation.

She cleared her throat. "Class?"

"Ilana… " His tone conveyed everything; he didn't need to say anything more. Ilana remembered that, growing up, her father had possessed the same knack. When he'd been around.

"You must mean Fly Without Fear for Dummies."

Flash regarded her as he flicked a pencil against his stomach. "How'd it go?"

Ilana let her hair fall over her eyes as she rummaged in the bag for another Corn Nut. "I stayed for the intro." She could fudge facts with the best of them, but lying… well, she had never been very good at it.

"How long?"

"Ten, fifteen minutes. Or maybe five."

Leslie and Slavica gave her the kind of pitying stares that only long-term friends and co-workers could.

"Okay, I don't know how long I was there," Ilana finally blurted. "It felt like an eternity."

"So, the 'dummies' stayed and you left."

"Shut up, Flash." She glared at him as she switched leg positions, dangling the shoe on her other foot. She spilled the remains of the bag of Corn Nuts into her hand. Salt sprinkled everywhere.

"But… both your parents are pilots." Slavica spread her hands and waited, as if expecting enlightenment.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Ilana said in a nasal voice, pretending to report a breaking news story. "In a horrible mishap of genetics, the 'flying' gene was found to be missing from every single strand of Ilana Hamilton's DNA."

Slavica nodded sympathetically. "That's sad."

"Sad? No. Inconvenient, yes. But I'm working on it." She was the creative twin, she reasoned. Ian had inherited the flying gene and a host of other traits Ilana lacked, such as self-sacrifice and duty, honor, country— all that. At first, Ilana had seen her brother's eagerness to devote his life to the greater good to be as pointless and boring as dating only one guy at a time. But she'd come to respect him for it. As long as he and the rest of her family didn't expect the same from her.

No, the Vash life was not for Ilana. Those royals overprotected their women, while giving the single men unlimited freedom. The men got live-in courtesans, who weren't prostitutes but members of a glorified, respected guild that had existed for almost eleven thousand years. Royal women were expected to remain cloistered virgins until they married.

Ugh. Hypocrisy in action and enough double standards to make her blood boil. True, her family was busy trying to initiate changes in the patriarchal Vash society, but it would be a slow, careful process, taking years if not generations. As it stood now, only Rom's home world of Sienna didn't require royal women to live by the old rules. There, Ilana's mother was an active pilot, commander of the space wing. But everywhere else, Jas put up with the Vash games out of love for her husband. Ian, too, respected his adopted culture. But then, he was an outsider preparing to take over Rom's role as king— he couldn't afford to appear too eager to dismantle the system.

Although her family reassured her that the Vash supported Ian, privately Ilana still worried, even feared for his life.

She frowned. The Vash Nadah reminded her of a pack of snarling dogs. That jerk Klark had been the worst of them. Lucky for him, the dude was locked up light-years away from where she could get her hands on him.

Ilana hopped down from her stool and walked to a wide window overlooking a sun-drenched parking lot in downtown Burbank. Even after five months, memories of the day her brother was attacked still unsettled her. Klark Vedla's arrogance had made her skin crawl. And yet, it was an image of Klark's older brother Ché that remained stuck in her mind all these months. Stuck, like a splinter in her foot.

Eons of arranged marriages— powerful warrior-princes joining with beautiful women— had given Ché high cheekbones, a long straight nose, and hair and skin in a striking warm bronze that made it look as if he'd overdosed on sunless tanning cream. But unlike what Ilana had seen of Klark, a self-aware, almost tolerant quality mellowed Che's supreme confidence. And curiosity, too. About her. She'd seen it when she'd met his piercing pale gold eyes.

The curiosity went both ways. What girl wouldn't wonder what such a tall, athletic, broad-shouldered body looked like without all those silly capes?