Beautiful Stranger (9 page)

Not that Cammie was seeing “successful club” in this piece-of-crap, covered-with-filth abandoned auto body repair shop. Hello—Culver City? Sure, the area could become the next big thing. But so could Cincinnati.

She herself was careful not to brush up against anything, lest the Nanette Lepore pink-and-white tartan plaid strapless wool dress she wore be sullied: The dress was brand-spanking-new. Its hem landed a mere two inches past the bottom of her creamy La Perla thong. Her impressive cleavage was on display too. Cammie knew she looked fabulous. Just because this was a “casual, friendly” outing didn’t mean it couldn’t turn into more. Adam deserved to have his nose rubbed in his betrayal of her. Without going into details, Ben had mentioned that he and Anna were less than cozy these days as well.

It was almost as if fate were
begging
her to step into the breach. And … okay, if she was going to be perfectly honest with herself—a great rarity—the fact that Adam hadn’t tried harder to win her back hurt. Wasn’t he supposed to be so madly in love with her? Was he really the kind of guy to give up that easily? Or did he think
she
wasn’t the kind of girl worth fighting for?

“My father makes me nuts,” Ben growled, bringing Cammie back to the present. “He pretended to be all interested in supporting my dreams, but he was against it from the start. Then he told me later that he’d talked it over with his step-sponsor from Gamblers Anonymous. I never even met this asshole, you understand. My father is so under this guy’s thumb … it makes me sick.”

“Well, that sucks,” Cammie sympathized. She wasn’t big on college herself. In fact, she didn’t plan to go at all. What would be the point? She was already filthy rich, and smarter about the things that really mattered than pretty much anyone she knew. Besides, it wasn’t like she didn’t have plans. She was ready to launch her career in model management, and already had her first model, Champagne Jones, who at five-foot six was never going to make the runway. She’d talked a top new designer, Martin Rittenhouse—he was utterly corrupt but just as talented—into designing a line of petite clothing around Champagne. Now she was just waiting for Rittenhouse to finish his designs so she could begin to get Champagne showcased.

Then there was her father’s business. If Cammie wanted to become a talent agent, she could walk into a gig at her father’s firm tomorrow. There was nothing that college would teach her that she didn’t already know or couldn’t learn on the job. Hell, she’d learned most of it just from being under the same roof as the relentless Clark Sheppard.

The idea of spending four years stuck in lecture halls getting writer’s cramp while some dopey professor with a comb-over and dandruff on the shoulders of his drip-dry shirt droned on about …
whatever
… was
not
Cammie’s idea of a good time. She didn’t really think it suited Ben, either.

“I even have a name for the place,” Ben went on, that wistful tone still coloring his words. “Bye, Bye Love.”

God. If he’d picked a name, he
was
serious.

“I love that,” Cammie agreed. “This wouldn’t be a club for love. It would be a club for fun, right? Check anything heavier at the door.”

“That’s exactly it. You know, even after my dad said no, I’m still getting ideas. I see vintage car seats instead of banquettes. Maybe an old-fashioned drive-in movie screen on one wall, showing nothing but party scenes.”

“Or sex scenes,” Cammie elaborated.

“No fucking
Casablanca
,” Ben went on. “I don’t care if Sam’s dad does want to remake it.”

“Or
Sleepless in Seattle
. In fact, no chick flicks at all.”

He grinned. “You’re seeing it like I’m seeing it.”

“I am.” She lifted the curls off her neck and saw Ben glance at the swell of her breasts. Underneath those curls, the well-oiled wheels were turning. When Adam did come crawling back—because in her heart of hearts, Cammie still believed he would—wouldn’t it make him nuts if she was involved with Ben’s new club? Heavily involved?
Very
heavily involved?

And then there was the joy she would get watching Anna’s face when she heard the news. Not to mention the flexing of Cammie’s guy-magnet muscles. At the party after the fashion show a few weeks ago, she had told Anna in no uncertain terms that if she and Adam were over, she and Ben would follow closely on that relationship’s haute couture coattails. The idea held great appeal for Cammie. What better way to prove that both guys she’d loved hadn’t dumped her than by proving she could make the second jealous by getting the first one back?

“So … how much did you need to finance this baby?” she asked casually, twirling one strawberry blond lock around her pinky finger. She liked how it looked against her bubble-gum pink manicure.

“Well, I’ve got half a mil I can put in without my father, but I’d need at least two more to get the place in shape, hire the right people, yada, yada. I’ve taken it down a bit from my first budget, but I still think it’ll work.”

Cammie shrugged. “That’s all?”

Ben laughed. “Cam, to most people, two million is
a lot
.”

“Ben, Ben, Ben,” she purred in her sexiest voice. “Surely you know by now that I’m not most people.”

“What does that mean?” he asked curiously, his face slightly perplexed.

“It means,” she continued slowly, leaning the slightest bit forward to reveal her sexy décolletage, “I’m in.”

He looked at her, momentarily speechless. “Wait, you’re …?”

“In,” Cammie repeated. “I have twenty times the money you need in my trust. That trust came due when I turned eighteen. I control it completely. I love the idea of your club. I think I could help you make it spectacular. Deal?”

She extended one perfectly manicured hand.

Ben looked at her outstretched fingers, clearly tempted, and then slowly shook his head. “No.”

“No?”

“No. This isn’t some little whim, Cammie. We’re talking about a hell of a lot of money and hard work, with no guarantees.”

She shrugged prettily. “So what else is new in this town?”

“I want you to be sure,” he cautioned.

“Nothing is sure, Ben,” she pointed out. “Isn’t the whole idea of this club to have fun? So fuck sure. Let’s do it anyway.”

She held out her hand again for him to shake. Instead, Ben wrapped his large hands around her waist and lifted her up so high that her pink strappy Joan & Davids were a good five inches off the ground.

“Oh yeah!” he crowed. “There is no one else like you in the universe, Cammie Sheppard.”

As he put her back down again, she lowered her eyes to half-mast, knowing exactly how sexy she looked when she did it. “Well, well, Ben Birnbaum. It’s about time you realized it.”

Baguettes, Caviar, and Champagne

“L
adies and gentlemen!” The announcer, a DJ from a leading New York rock-and-roll station, boomed his resonant voice into the microphone. “Thanks for coming out to Central Park’s famed Sheep Meadow for what I’m sure will be an amazing concert, being simulcast to eighteen countries. I’d like to give a big shout-out to our brave soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world!”

At the mention of the American servicemen and women, a deafening roar erupted from the crowd of a hundred thousand people assembled on the soft grass of the celebrated meadow. Anna had been here many times before, to hang out with her friends from the Upper West Side on beautiful spring or fall days. But she’d never been here for a free rock show, and the sight of Sheep Meadow packed with wall-to-wall concertgoers was an image she’d never forget.

It was the strangest thing. She’d been back in Manhattan for all of a few hours, but it felt instantly like home. The big buildings, the babble of languages from all over the world, even the orange glow of the sky as the city lights bounced against low clouds—it was all familiar and even comforting.

“Now, let’s give a New York City welcome to the reason you’re all here on this fabulous New York night. Ladies and gentlemen … John Mayer!”

As the cleft-chinned, bushy-haired rock star walked shyly out from the other side of the wooden stage—it was guarded by a chain-link fence and a score of New York’s finest with police dogs for security—the crowd took its enthusiasm to another level. All around the grassy expanse were drive-in-movie-sized screens, so that those too far from the stage could get a good look at what was going on.

“Better than the Hollywood Bowl?” Anna asked Sam with a grin. They were standing backstage together, behind and to the right of center stage. But there was a huge plasma screen monitor that had been erected so those backstage could watch the concert perfectly.

“Different,” Sam allowed. “Fewer stilettos, more Birkenstocks.”

Anna laughed as Mayer started his first song—the acoustic “Love Soon” from his
Inside Wants Out
CD. Cheers and shouting obliterated the first lines after the intro. Anna, Sam, and Cyn were standing with a clump of others with backstage passes at a ninety-degree angle to Mayer, and they saw him give a “What can you do?” grin and shrug, even as he played and sang. He was obviously enjoying the moment as much as the audience.

Anna was enjoying it, too, which amazed her, considering that she and Sam had just arrived from L.A. that day and that she was still reeling from the fact that things were over with Ben. Again.

Remembering the Ben debacle made her feel like puking, so she forced her mind onto other things. She and Sam had planned to take a commercial flight from LAX. But when Jackson heard that they were planning their trip, he insisted that they take his private jet. The day was crystal clear from coast to coast with the exception of some cloud cover over Nebraska and Kansas. They passed the time on Jackson’s luxurious buttery-soft white leather Italian couches watching Louis Malle’s
Au Revoir Les Enfants
, followed by a lunch of baguettes, caviar, champagne, and hand-churned French vanilla bean ice cream surrounded by Chocopologie by Knipschildt chocolates.

With each mile that was put between her and Los Angeles, Anna felt just a little better, even as Ben’s stinging indictment of all her faults rang in her ears. Yes, she’d come to Beverly Hills to challenge herself. But maybe Ben was right. Maybe it was all sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing at all. When you came right down to it, she was a New Yorker, born and bred on the sheltered Upper East Side to be exactly the person she was.

What was it that someone once said to her? No matter where you go, there you are. If her time in L.A. hadn’t changed her at all, then she had to question every choice she’d made since the day before New Year’s Eve, when she’d boarded a plane with the deliberate intent of shaking up her life. It felt now as if the only thing she’d shaken up was her heart, and her faith in her own decisions.

Well, at least for now she could lick her wounds at home. And at least Sam would be with her. After their lunch at the coffeehouse near UCLA, she and Sam had gone back to Jackson’s Bel Air estate and done some quick Internet research. The president of Peru was indeed coming to New York. He had an extraordinarily busy schedule—at least according to the Peruvian newspaper article that they ran through Babelfish to translate. So now Sam knew that Eduardo’s business trip to New York was legit. But why he hadn’t invited her to tag along remained a mystery, one that Sam promised Anna she would unravel during their weeklong stay.

The first call Anna made after they decided to come back east was to her best friend, Cynthia Baltres, whom she’d known since they were both preschoolers. Cyn had always been slightly off-kilter, both in looks and attitude. More striking and sexy than conventionally beautiful, with choppy dark hair, dark round eyes, and a definite tendency toward downtown East Village dark clothes, Cyn was the kind of girl who’d meet a guy at the Washington Square drum circle on Saturday and decide to go with him to Europe on Sunday. In fact, earlier in the summer, she’d done exactly that. Anna had found out when she’d gotten an e-mail from Cyn sent from an Internet café in Amsterdam.

Cyn had been thrilled to hear from Anna. She said she had two extra backstage passes to the Mayer concert and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Which is how they found themselves, less than eight hours after boarding Jackson’s jet at the Van Nuys airport, gazing out at the crowd on a hot New York night in August, with John Mayer running through his famous repertoire—“Daughters,” “Gravity,” and “Clarity” among the hits that Anna had actually heard before.

“You suck so hard, Anna—you never even call me,” Cyn groused as the singer launched into an emo ballad. She was wearing one of her patented Cyn outfits—skinny black Joe jeans with sky-high emerald green Gucci platform sandals. The only thing between her beige mesh Mark Posner tank top and her flesh were a set of twin belly-button piercings and the new red peace symbol tattoo below the small of her back.

“That’s not fair. I talked to you just last week!” Anna protested.

“Please, I’ve had two boyfriends and made out with an extremely handsome older gentleman at a loft party in SoHo since then.” At Anna’s widened eyes, Cyn added. “I’m kidding. Sort of. Who wants drinks? I’ll be right back.”

Cyn headed toward the open backstage bars, roadies’ heads turning as she walked past them. Mayer’s band had just started a slow blues instrumental when Anna spotted a familiar face. Olivia Macklow, a classmate of Anna’s from Trinity, sidled up next to her. With her was cherubic Molly Burton, who spoke five languages and whose father worked for the World Bank. She had straight black hair down her back.

“Well, well. Who said ‘You can’t go home again’?” Olivia asked rhetorically, appraising Anna with a smile. Anna knew she was deliberately quoting Thomas Wolfe, a novelist Anna quite liked and Olivia quite loved. Olivia lived a block away from the Percys in a classic Upper East Side town house with gabled windows and a mahogany door. They’d purchased it from Truman Capote, and Olivia liked to claim that the famous writer haunted it. Their families used to give a joint Christmas party to which their friends and family flew in from all over the world. “Can you believe it, Molly? It’s Anna! Back from the dead.”