Starstruck (15 page)

“How is Diana?” Her voice was ice cold.

“Ginger—”

She stepped toward him for the first time, placing a hand against his chest. “That’s not my name, Dane. It never was. That girl
never
existed. And we’ve never met before. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” He laid his hand over hers.

She pulled away. He watched her dart coltishly through the trees in her severe black suit, her bright hair like a bobbing flame through the green leaves of the trees.

He had let her down, he knew that. He had let them all down, all those girls who asked so little and needed so much. He had even failed Diana, in the end.

Well, he wouldn’t fail her this time. He hoped she knew that. In a strange way, it was a relief. For the first time, a girl had asked of him something he was capable of doing. All she needed him to do was to keep her secret, and Dane Forrest was an expert at that. After all, he had so many secrets of his own.

There was not the slightest doubt in Evelyn Gamble’s mind that she was doing the right thing.

In the first place, she was a Gamble. The Gambles had been dictating what was correct and proper to the gentry of Southern California since the Gold Rush, when Great-Great-Grandpa
Augustus Johannes Gamble had discovered that the real gold was in selling picks and pans to unwittingly hopeless prospectors, thereby earning his many descendants nearly a century of unimpeachable rectitude. A Gamble of Pasadena simply could not be wrong.

And in the second place, and more importantly,
something
had to be done about that Margaret Frobisher. The head on that cocky little upstart was blowing up like a balloon. Someone had to pop it once and for all, and Evelyn Gamble, by the very fact of being a Gamble, knew she might be the only one with a sharp-enough pin.

Evelyn didn’t know exactly what had happened between Margaret and Phipps McKendrick on the golf course at the Christmas dance, but the crude mechanics were beside the point. Phipps’s father was eyeing a run for the governorship. Phipps would want to follow in his footsteps—Evelyn would see to that. And there was no way he could get anywhere in the California Republican Party without the full support of the Gamble family. A Christmas engagement would be just the thing to let everyone who mattered know exactly where the family’s alliance lay.

But Margaret Frobisher, Evelyn had to admit, had thrown a bit of a wrench in the plan. Even with the weight of the entire Gamble dynasty behind her, Evelyn harbored just the teeniest, tiniest doubt that she could compete in the marriageability stakes with a gorgeous society debutante who also happened to be a movie star. She’d been sure that that little nobody Doris had been lying about the whole Hollywood thing, but after the two girls had humiliatingly called her bluff that terrible afternoon—not to mention landed Evelyn a week in
detention—she couldn’t be totally sure that the hated “Frobie” wouldn’t succeed.

Margaret Frobisher. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful—if you were into that whole regal blonde thing, and Evelyn wasn’t. Claire Prince was beautiful, and Evelyn wasn’t the least bit threatened by
her
. But Margaret had something different. Something that made people look at her, even before they knew what her last name was. Even, Evelyn thought bitterly, society people who
really
should have known better.

Well, if Hollywood wanted Margaret Frobisher, they could have her. All Evelyn wanted was to get her the hell out of Pasadena. Thirty other debutantes with their whole lives riding on not being overshadowed during the upcoming season would thank Evelyn. It was her duty, as a future leader of society. It was absolutely the right,
the only
, thing to do.

“May I help you, miss?”

A maid in a blue and white striped kitchen uniform answered the door.
Strike one
. If the Frobishers really thought it was acceptable not to have a butler, the least they could do was have someone dressed properly to answer the door.

“I’m here to see Mrs. Frobisher.”

“Who may I say is calling?”

Strike two
. Evelyn was hardly a regular visitor at this house, but she would have expected as assiduous a social climber as Mildred Frobisher to make sure her staff knew the living members of Pasadena’s most important family by sight.

“Miss Evelyn Gamble,” she said meaningfully.

“Oh!” The maid looked startled. “I’m sorry, miss, but Miss Margaret … she … she’s not home from school yet.”

Evelyn was beginning to lose her patience. “I
know
that. I go to school with her, don’t I? I want to see
Mrs
. Frobisher.”

“Oh.” The maid eyed her suspiciously. “Well, you’d better come in, then. You can wait right here in the hall.” It was so ludicrous Evelyn almost laughed out loud. By rights, she should have been shown into the parlor, even the morning room, although it was technically afternoon.
Strike three, Frobie
, she thought.
Three strikes and you’re out
.

“Evelyn! How lovely to see you, dear!” Mildred Frobisher pounced into the hallway, a tense smile plastered across the taut planes of her well-preserved face. “Emmeline, I don’t know what you’re thinking, keeping Miss Gamble in the hallway. Come into the drawing room, dear, and do sit down. Emmeline, we’ll have tea, and some sandwiches, I think. Unless you’d prefer something else, dear? Chocolate, perhaps, or orange juice?”

“Tea is fine.”

The maid scurried away. Mrs. Frobisher gave a theatrical sigh. “It’s nearly a cliché, but it bears repeating—it is so difficult to get good help these days.”

“Our staff is excellent.”

Mrs. Frobisher’s smile faltered. “Well, I’m sure your mother struggles mightily to keep them so. How is she, your dear mother?”

“She’s fine.”

“Please do send her my very best.” Mrs. Frobisher blinked, as though waiting for Evelyn to say something equally friendly in return. Evelyn decided not to oblige. “Ah! Here’s the tea.”

The maid set down the tray, and Mrs. Frobisher busied herself for a few long moments, pouring and passing and continuing to
pretend that there was nothing odd about having her daughter’s classmate, whom she had scarcely met before, drop by in the middle of a school day for a sandwich and a spot of tea. Only when the sandwiches had been repeatedly proffered and declined and the delicate porcelain teacups could not hold so much as another drop of tea or splash of milk did she address the elephant in the room.

“You’re out of school quite early today, aren’t you, dear?”

“I have last period free,” Evelyn lied.

“Isn’t that nice. I’m expecting Margaret home any minute now, although lately, she’s been a … a little …”

“A little what?” Evelyn prompted.

“A little
unpredictable
, I suppose. But I understand the two of you have become quite chummy, and frankly, I couldn’t be more delighted or relieved. I just know you’ll be a good influence on her. You’ll help her to see what’s really important, won’t you, Evelyn, dear?” She reached over and patted Evelyn’s hand.

Damn!
Evelyn was practically feeling
bad
for this woman. Whatever her feelings about Margaret, when Evelyn had first hatched this plan, she hadn’t given much thought to the collateral damage. “Actually, it’s Margaret I came to talk to you about.” She steeled herself with a deep breath.
It’s the right thing to do
. “You see, it’s come to my attention that she’s been hanging around with some … some
Hollywood
types.”

The color seemed to drain from Mrs. Frobisher’s face, but she kept the smile fixed to her lips. “I beg your pardon?”

“Hollywood.”
I just have to say it and get it over with. It’s too late now
. “She says they’ve offered her a screen test. For the pictures.”

Mrs. Frobisher let out a silvery chuckle that was terrifying
in its utter lack of mirth. “My dear, I hope you’re not taking Margaret seriously when she says things like that.”

“Well, I didn’t think she would go through with it, but then when she didn’t turn up at school today …”

“She wasn’t at school today?” Mrs. Frobisher’s face was white.

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, her father will certainly give her a talking-to when she gets home. But as for this screen test nonsense, Margaret is a very … imaginative girl. Perhaps she was just—”

“We heard her making the appointment over the telephone. I didn’t believe her at first, so she said she’d prove it. It was with this man.”

And with that, Evelyn played her trump card: the battered, pasted-together business card she had surreptitiously picked up from the floor of the phone box. Mrs. Frobisher gazed at it with a horrible expression of recognition, as though she were identifying the body of a loved one in the city morgue.

“I see,” Mrs. Frobisher whispered finally.

“Anyway. I just thought you should know.” Putting down her teacup, Evelyn got up to go.

“Evelyn, wait.” Mrs. Frobisher grasped her hands. Her eyes were unnaturally bright.
Oh God
, Evelyn thought with horror,
is she about to cry?
“I want to thank you for bringing this to my attention. It’s important. And it’s also very, very important that this information about Margaret stay between you and me. Please. You must tell no one else about this. Not your friends, not your mother. Do you understand?”

“I already told my mother,” Evelyn whispered.

Mrs. Frobisher closed her eyes for a long moment. “What did she say?”

“I don’t—”

“Evelyn, what did you mother say?”

On the way over, Evelyn had imagined the triumph of this moment. The final scoop of dirt in Margaret Frobisher’s social grave, and she was the one wielding the shovel. “She said that under the circumstances, she couldn’t imagine how it would be appropriate for Margaret to socialize with the other debutantes this year. She said you’re obviously free to bring her out if you wish, but she would certainly think twice before accepting any of Margaret’s invitations, and that she would urge her closest friends to do the same. She said this sort of thing might be acceptable in San Francisco, or even in New York, but not in Pasadena, and that with your family’s history, you of all people should understand that.” She stared into the woman’s ashen face. “I don’t know what she meant by that, your family’s history. Do you?”

Before Mrs. Frobisher could answer, there was a commotion in the hall, and Margaret Frobisher herself came bursting wild-eyed through the door. Emmeline clung frantically to her wrist, as though trying to hold her back. “What are you doing here?” Margaret cried, her eyes shooting daggers in Evelyn’s direction. She was wearing her school uniform, but her flushed, panicked face bore telltale smears of makeup that no Orange Grove girl would think of wearing before nightfall.

“I … I came to see you,” Evelyn stammered.

“Bullshit!”

“
Margaret!
” Mrs. Frobisher was on her feet, her face as white as a sheet. “How dare you speak to our guest that way?”

Evelyn was already out the door. She ran through the foyer and down the outside steps. She thought she’d run all the way
home, but halfway down the garden path, something made her turn around. Maybe she wanted to witness the havoc she had wreaked. Maybe she wanted to see if things would magically go back to normal. Maybe she was just perversely, incurably curious, but she soon found herself crouching in a bed of nasturtium outside the window, peering into the Frobishers’ drawing room through a gap in the taffeta curtains.

She had expected shouting. She had expected crying, and pleading, and begging. But she had never imagined that Mrs. Frobisher would raise her hand and strike Margaret so hard across the face that the girl went reeling. She hadn’t thought she would see Margaret Frobisher in a crumpled heap on the floor, sobbing as blood slowly seeped into her golden hair. No, Evelyn hadn’t expected that at all.

I did the right thing
, she thought as she felt hot tears course silently down her burning cheeks.
The right thing, the right thing, the right thing …

L
arry Julius hated Pasadena.

It never failed. Every time he had to come over to this godforsaken side of the mountain, the snaking boulevards and leaf-canopied drives functioned like a devilish hedge maze before a medieval chateau. No wonder he was hopelessly lost. The whole place was designed to keep people like him out.

Rolling down the car door window, Larry expelled a huge sigh. The resulting cloud of cigarette smoke nearly obscured the returning figure of his chauffeur, Arthur, scurrying out of the gas station and into the safety of the driver’s seat. “You got the directions?” Larry asked.

“Yes, sir …”

“But?”

Arthur leaned over the seat to look at his boss. His dark face
was stricken. “The fellow in there didn’t seem too happy to see someone who looked like me.”

“I doubt he’d be my biggest fan either, Arthur.”

“I mean, he
acted
like he was telling me which way to go, but for all I know he might have directed me right on out of here. Wouldn’t be the first time something like that happened somewhere I wasn’t wanted.”