Beautiful Stranger (12 page)
“More than my dad did,” Ben commented as he replaced the roof on the model.
Frankly, Cammie had been surprised at her father’s immediate yes. It seemed to her, though, that ever since she’d signed sixteen-year-old Champagne to a modeling management contract and convinced Martin Rittenhouse to design a new line of petite clothing around the girl, her father’s attitude toward her had changed. It was as if now that Cammie was taking some initiative for her future, Clark Sheppard decided that she was worthy of support. Talk about conditional love. But she made a mental note anyway to invite Champagne and Martin to the opening—models and hot-shit designers always carried a certain cachet, even if Rittenhouse was little short of a felon, albeit a talented one.
“You’re a go-getter,” her dad had told her with admiration in the deep, commanding voice that had scared many a studio head to death. “Chip off the old block.”
Cammie had been pleased by his reaction, and, at the same time, irritated with herself for wanting or needing his approval.
Ben gestured to the model. “I’d say this is it. So what do you think of the performance space?”
“I think it’s a fabulous idea,” Cammie told him. “But you need something more to make it really special. First, charge more. A lot more, to get in there. A hundred bucks, with unlimited champagne.”
“I kind of wanted to stay away from the only-the-rich-can-afford-to-get-in thing.”
Cammie shook her blond curls out of her blue eyes. “The less you charge, the less prestige you have, and the less success,” she decreed. “You want to be overrun with kids from the Valley, also known as the Kiss of Death?”
“No …”
“So charge big. You can always put the hip-but-poor on the guest list. In fact, you should, so the place gets talked about.”
“Good point.” Ben folded his arms thoughtfully. “How about we do entertainment each night by themes, with a different subject each night. Politics, or the battle of the sexes?”
“Asshole former boyfriends and girlfriends,” Cammie suggested.
Ben regarded her. “Did you have anyone particular in mind?”
“Both names start with an
A
.”
“Anna’s not an asshole,” Ben insisted, his voice low, “if that’s who you’re referring to. And neither is Adam, for that matter.”
Cammie raised a well-plucked eyebrow. Having Ben defend Anna was definitely not in her game plan. “She didn’t support your dream, did she?”
Ben sighed. “No, she didn’t. Not like I wanted her to, anyway.”
“And Adam … he dissed me.”
“Dissed you how?”
Cammie didn’t want to go into the details. Not here, not now. She suspected that if she told Ben she’d given Adam an ultimatum about getting his ass back to Los Angeles, he would take Adam’s side.
“It’s private,” she finally declared.
Ben whistled. “You, not spilling details? I’m impressed.”
“People grow up, Ben. Are you the same guy you were back when we were together?”
“Nope,” he confirmed.
“Well, I’m not the same girl I was then, either. So let’s just leave it at that. Now, how about if you finish the tour?”
Ben turned his attention back to the model, taking the top off once again and pointing to what used to be the main repair area of the shop. “My idea here was that this space—it’s the main nightclub area—could be transformed every week into something new. You know that club people have the attention span of gnats. I’ve already talked to the Los Angeles Art Institute, and they’ve got a senior industrial design class whose professor swears they can come in on a Sunday and have a whole new look in place for the following Monday night.”
“Great!” Cammie exclaimed. “We just have to be careful. One bad design could kill you.”
“I can have them do models like this.”
“But it’s all in the execut—hey, I’ve got an idea. How about Trash It Night?”
“Excuse me?”
“Call it Trash It Night. If you hate the design that goes up, let people pay to come in, give them sledgehammers, and let them bash the shit out of it.”
A slow smile spread across Ben’s face. “That’s genius.”
Ben Birnbaum, Princeton student—well,
former
Princeton student if he really stayed in L.A. with this club—calling her, not-college-bound-at-all, a genius? Cammie smiled sweetly. “Why, thank you. It took you long enough to figure that out.”
Ben replaced the model’s roof again, then took Cammie’s hand in a gesture that Cammie hoped was slightly more than friendly. “Let me take you back inside and show you what I’ve got in mind for music.”
“After you, fearless leader.”
“I thought you owned the majority share,” Ben reminded her.
“True. But this is your dream, all the way. I just want to help you make it come true.”
He touched her cheek. “Thank you.”
She could see how much this meant to him.
Score ten points and a big shot at getting Ben back
.
“The sound system will be outrageous,” Ben exulted as he opened the rear door for her. “I’ve got the guy who designed Rain at the Palm in Las Vegas designing it.”
Cammie looked around the interior of the dilapidated space. And though it was still decrepit, without a single fixture, speaker, or clubgoer, she could actually see the club in her mind’s eye. Filled wall to wall with actors, singers, and models, the chef from L.A. Farm making his famous feuilleté of salmon mousse in the kitchen, and Sarah Silverman performing for exactly fifteen people who’d paid a hundred dollars apiece for fifteen minutes of comedy. Sarah wouldn’t be performing because of the money, either. She’d be doing it because Bye, Bye Love was so cool that performing in the little theater was worth
more
than money.
That is, if the music was good. If the music sucked, or even if the music was ordinary, it was over.
“Who’s our DJ going to be?” she asked suddenly.
Ben furrowed his brow. “I haven’t given that a lot of thought. I’m not sure.”
There was a workbench next to the door to what would be the club kitchen. Ben sat, and indicated that Cammie should sit too.
Cammie nibbled on her lower lip so long that she could taste her own MAC lip gloss. They were going to charge a hefty cover, but the club couldn’t hold that many people. They had to go for exclusivity. Which meant their music had to be better than anyone else’s. She snapped her fingers. “I know just the guy.”
“Who?”
The week before, she and Sam had gone to the Montmartre Lounge in West Hollywood, at the top of the hill where La Cienega met Sunset Boulevard. It was currently the second-hottest place in the city, other than Trieste. The line to get in had been interminable. Naturally, they hadn’t waited. The DJ was a guy in from New York for one night only, an incredibly charismatic and strikingly handsome, tall, thin, blond dude named John Carlos who worked absolute magic on a sophisticated Hollywood crowd. When they got inside at eleven, the place was a seething mass of sweaty, dancing bodies, and everyone knew that no one ever got moving before midnight. The music was a heady mix of trance, techno, and rock from the sixties. The segues were immaculate, the build in the beat infectious. It was impossible not to want to dance.
John Carlos was their guy. There was only one problem, and Cammie knew it. Club owner Fred Kahlilian had offered him a contract at fifty thousand dollars a week. It had made the
Los Angeles Times
, in fact. John Carlos was one hundred percent completely and totally locked up.
Ha. If there was one thing Clark Sheppard had taught his daughter it was that no contract was ironclad, no deal airtight.
“Let me take care of it,” she told Ben, her mind already racing.
“We don’t have a whole lot of time.”
“But we do have a whole lot of tricks up our collective sleeves.”
Ben looked at her bare arms. “No sleeves, Camilla.”
“Aren’t you observant. How about you get two beers and we toast the most popular new club in Los Angeles, and maybe the entire universe?”
“That’s a bit premature.”
“I see it, Ben,” Cammie insisted. “And I feel it. Your dream is about to become reality.”
He flashed a smile that made all the money she’d invested in his club seem worthless in comparison.
She was going to see that smile again. And she was going to get him back.
S
am was nervous. She’d already tried on five outfits that morning, surveying her reflection in the antique full-length gold-gilded mirror in Anna’s room. Anna had liked the Chloé black trousers and black sleeveless cashmere shell, but Sam had tossed that outfit on her tall wooden bed with all the others. Nothing she’d brought with her looked right for ambushing Eduardo. So she’d coaxed Anna into a quick trip to Bergdorf’s, where she’d found the Melissa Masse wrap dress in cherry red that emphasized her curvy breasts and camouflaged her even curvier ass. It was one thing for Eduardo to say he loved the curves below her waist. It was quite another to believe him when he’d blown off the chance for her to join him here in Manhattan. Twice.
By the time she was dressed, made up, and shoed up it was midafternoon. She’d called the Peruvian mission to the United Nations just to make sure he was in. The chirpy receptionist with a charming accent confirmed that he was indeed on the premises, which made her feel a little better. He was also in a meeting that was expected to go on for another hour. Would Sam like Eduardo to return the call?
She demurred. Instead, she hopped in a cab and headed for the mission, located on the sixteenth floor of an office building on Second Avenue between Forty-second and Forty-third Streets. Not that she planned to burst into his meeting—unless, of course, she found out that he was ensconced with whom she now thought of as That Bitch Gisella. She couldn’t help it. Even if he’d professed his love to her last night, she wondered whether the reason he didn’t want her here in New York was tall, dark, sexy, and one hundred percent Peruvian female.
In some tiny corner of Sam’s mind, where rationality and sanity still reigned, she told herself that she was being paranoid. Why in the world would Gisella be in New York? If Eduardo wanted to cheat on her while he was here, he could do so with any number of girls. Thinner girls. Cuter girls.
She sighed and let her head loll back against the seat before she rethought that position—God only knew who or what had rested their head in that spot previously. She sat up again and rubbed her neck. She had no
real
reason to suspect that Eduardo was unfaithful. Maybe all of this had to do with the getting-engaged thing. Maybe she was still uncomfortable with it, maybe she wasn’t ready. …
But no. That was stupid. You didn’t turn down the greatest thing that had ever happened to you just because it had happened to you when you were too young.
She shook her perfectly-streaked-by-Raymond hair off her face and folded her creamy white arms. Stay on track, she told herself. When Eduardo’s meeting ended, she’d be waiting for him. And his reaction would tell her everything.
With luck, it would be a good surprise. If it was a bad surprise, she’d throw his gleaming engagement ring in his face, turn on her Beverly Feldmans, stomp down to some dive in the East Village, and get completely plastered.
God
, she couldn’t help thinking, as the taxi stopped in front of the consulate building.
Please, please, please don’t let him be with That Bitch Gisella
.
Sam paid the driver, who had a photo of his wife and TV-cute little girl taped to his dashboard, and got out. The building was like any other—tall, glass, home to a dozen corporations, law offices, and advertising agencies. Just a few blocks from the United Nations, it also held the missions of six or seven other small nations. Security was tight. She had to show identification and go through a metal detector before she could even enter the elevator. Upstairs, a desk blocked the way to the mission itself.
“Hello,” she told the guard behind the kidney-shaped black marble desk. He was built like a football tight end—tall, wide, and muscular all at once. “I’m here to see Eduardo Muñoz.”
He lifted the multibuttoned phone on his desk. “Is he expecting you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Your name please, miss?”
Damn. She did not want to be announced. That would give Eduardo time to stash his mistress in the ladies’ room. She took a deep breath; she knew she was being ridiculous. Even if he and That Bitch Gisella were hanging from the chandeliers singing the Peruvian national anthem while making wild Amazon monkey love, that would happen
after
hours. Eduardo was the son of a high government official. He wouldn’t risk it at work.
“On second thought, I’m a little early,” Sam said with what she hoped was a radiant grin. “I’ll just wait a little while.” She could feel the guard’s eyes on her as she took a seat on one of two low-slung white leather chairs in the entry area. There was a black onyx coffee table with some magazines.
Vogue. Sports Illustrated. Time
. Evidently the whole South American thing didn’t extend to reading material.
Sam pulled out her new Razr V3 and speed-dialed Anna. “I’m here. What are you doing?”
“I’m at MoMA. I still can’t get used to the Monet water lilies straight across the wall. How about you? Did you find him?”
“I’m still outside the main office.” Sam kept her voice low so that the guard wouldn’t hear her. “I can’t get in without getting announced and—”
She stopped midsentence. One of the elevators at the end of the hall had just opened, and Eduardo himself had stepped out. He wasn’t alone. Instead, he was chatting with a swarthy man in a double-breasted charcoal gray Ralph Lauren suit. As for Eduardo, he wore taupe trousers, a yellow shirt and patterned tie, and a sports jacket Sam had never seen before.
“Gotta go,” she told Anna quickly, then stashed her cell phone and rose awkwardly from the damn low-slung chair. Whoever had designed it clearly hated women whose center of gravity was south of their navels. By the time she was on her feet, Eduardo was staring at her. He didn’t look thrilled, either.
“Sam? What are you doing here?”