Beautiful Stranger (27 page)

With that, he turned into the crowd and was gone.

Sam shook her head wryly. “That was strange.”

“Open it,” Anna urged. Spotting a round stone table with matching granite benches that were in a lighted area to one side of the club, Sam headed for it, with Anna right behind her. She laid the portfolio on the cold stone, and unzipped it as Anna moved closer.

All the girls could do was look at each other. Finally, Anna motioned for her to turn the pages—there were eight or ten of them inside the portfolio. Sam did, lingering on each page for thirty seconds or more. When she was done, she went back to the beginning and started again.

Each one of the leaves of the portfolio contained a beautifully rendered two-by-three-foot sketch on creamy artist’s paper, with the paper protected by a thin, clear plastic sleeve.

Each sketch was of a custom-designed wedding gown. And the girl in each drawing wearing these amazing weddings gowns was Sam. Or, she thought, some romantic, idealized, much more gorgeous version of herself. In some her hair was in waves around her face; in others it was blown straight, or up in a French twist with romantic tendrils around her face. In each drawing, she had a mysterious Mona Lisa smile on her face.

The gowns, too, took her breath away. Her favorite was strapless, the bodice encrusted with pearls and diamonds and an Empire waistline.

Sam kept turning the pages until she came to the very last one. There, inside the plastic sleeve, was an envelope instead of a sketch.

“Open it,” Anna urged.

Sam tore the envelope open and read feverishly.

Dearest Samantha,

You are a difficult girl to surprise. But when work took me to New York, I saw my opportunity. It was the hardest thing in the world to take my leave from you, to not invite you to come with me. Yet I knew in New York I would be able to accomplish my mission.

And then, there you were! Part of me was cheering, part of me was cursing. Because I knew Gisella would be in New York for a workshop at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and my plan was to enlist her help for your surprise. But once you showed up, it made my plan so much harder to pull off. Unfortunately, you saw her, and jumped to an obvious, but very wrong conclusion.

Somewhere in your family tree, there is hot Latin blood
—
of this I am certain.

I was with Gisella for only one reason: to consult on ideas for the design of your wedding gown. Her work is in front of you now, if you are reading this letter. It is not that you must wear one of these gowns, because a bride should always choose her own wedding dress, and you are not a girl to be dictated to! But in my mind’s eye, I saw your beauty in these gowns, and described my ideas to Gisella. What you see before you is the beauty I see every time I look at you.

I’ve been trying for a week to get this explanation to you, but sadly you would not take my calls, and when I came to your house, your father’s guards told me I would not be permitted near you. I am hoping very much that this will reach you tonight at your friend’s party, and that you will find it a reasonable explanation for my behavior. If only I could explain away all the pain I must have caused you.

I’m at my condo now. Come to me if you can.

—
Your Eduardo

“Oh my God.” Sam could hardly breathe. “Check this out.”

She pressed the note into Anna’s hands and then read it again over her friend’s shoulder. Images from New York flashed through her mind. Seeing Gisella at the embassy party. The ugly confrontation at the restaurant. All that time, she realized, Eduardo had been trying to arrange this for her. She’d been wrong to be suspicious. Very wrong. Why was it that doubts were always stronger than trust?

“All I have to say is, that’s about the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Go,” Anna urged gently, when she was done.

Sam hugged her tightly. “Why the fuck did Eduardo do that to me?” But even as she asked the question, she knew she couldn’t possibly hold on to her anger. Her eyes filled with tears. She hadn’t known it was possible to feel as happy as she felt at that moment. Her Eduardo.

Away from the Madding Crowd

A
nna stood outside Bye, Bye Love. Life with a capital
L
swirled around her; the clothes, the celebrities, the gawkers; the deafening music spilling from the club, the searchlights illuminating the night sky. She didn’t really feel she was a part of it. She didn’t know where she belonged anymore.

“Anna?”

The familiar voice had come from behind her. The hairs stood up on the back of her neck as she turned toward the voice.

“But, but, but … what are you
doing
here?”

All of her usual poise fell away. And there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

“For the moment, all you need to know is that I’m here.” A familiar smile curled Logan’s lips.

It was him. Really him. The flesh-and-blood handsome pseudo-son of Daniel Craig. He was casually dressed, in faded jeans and a plain black T-shirt, smiling that fabulous little-boy smile. Logan. Here in Los Angeles. Here at Bye, Bye Love. Not in Indonesia.

She blinked, but he didn’t go away. Logan was here. Ben was inside, only about twenty yards away. Did life get any weirder than this?

“Why? How?” she stammered.

“In reverse order, the ‘how’ is I looked for you inside the club and your friend—I think she said her name was Dee?—said she’d seen you come outside. And the why … How about if we take a walk?”

He reached out a hand. A moment later, they’d negotiated their way past the security guards and away from the crowd. She kept sliding her eyes to Logan, as if to assure herself that this was really happening. As they stood together by one of the three spotlight machines in front of the club that were painting bright circles across the night sky, she couldn’t avoid the obvious conclusion that he’d come to see her.

But how could that be? If he’d flown to Bali already?

The pounding noise of the club turned to distant thunder and then to a gentle wash, and they could hear night birds chirping in the eucalyptus trees of the modest residential streets on which they found themselves. This corner of Culver City was a universe away from either the mansions of Beverly Hills or the brown-stones of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Small frame houses and six-unit apartment buildings abutted one another. There were Chevys and Toyotas in the driveways instead of Beemers and Maseratis. It was a world—no, a
galaxy
—away from the Los Angeles she had come to know.

“No one I’ve met in L.A. has probably even been to this neighborhood before,” she realized.

“I’ve only been in L.A. once before.” Logan looked around. “When my dad was scouting the hotel location in Bali. Back in January.”

“That was right after I came here!”

“I knew you were here.” He smiled. “I heard it through the Trinity grapevine.”

“You should have looked me up.”

“No, I shouldn’t have.” Logan shook his head. “That was the wrong time.”

Anna pondered his comment. “I’ve never been much of a fatalist.”

He stopped and looked closely at her. “If this sounds crazy, then I’m crazy. I’ve had a thing for you since the day at Trinity when Jillian Dubois peed her pants and you found an extra pair in the lost-and-found box for her to put on, so that no one would know.”

Anna’s mind raced back through the years. She remembered that day. Jillian had been the smallest girl in their class, and very shy. As successful as her ambassador parents were, they didn’t seem to know how to dress Jillian so that she fit in with all the other little girls. By age six, Cassie Lancaster and Margaret Thornhill had already marked her as a geek. So Anna had taken Jillian under her wing. The fact that Logan remembered that was amazing.

“When I was in Bali—”

Anna held up a palm to stop him. “You were in Bali?”

“I was. Until about twenty-four hours ago. Then I turned around and flew back.”

They were standing under a streetlight. He reached into his back pocket for a large manila envelope. “There’s a flight back to Bali that leaves LAX at three this morning. That’s three hours from now. I’ve got to check in there in an hour.”

Anna’s head was pounding. None of this made any sense. “You’re … going back?”

“Absolutely. The place—my father’s new hotel—is paradise. There’s no real town for five miles in every direction, there are only thirty-five thatched bungalows, and each of them is unique. Poster beds, and every bungalow has a little library. My dad put me in charge of acquiring the books. The resort’s right on the beach. The catamarans and windsurfing are unbelievable. And the fishing. And the palm trees and the mountains. Everyone eats in this open-air dining room. There are three meals a day, and a seafood snack at midnight. They brew their own beer, and recycle everything.” His eyes were shining. “For the very first time in a very long time, I felt like I could breathe. And think. About Harvard. About the future. About you. Come with me.”

He put the envelope in her hand. “It’s a ticket to Bali. Yours.”

They were in front of a small brick house with a tidy yard, and a light went on in the living room. A shadowy figure peered at the bay window. Then—apparently deciding that Anna and Logan were merely a couple out for a stroll—the light went off again and the figure disappeared. In the distance, a dog started barking. It was joined in a matter of moments by seemingly every other dog within earshot.

“I have a cheering section,” Logan observed wryly. “So listen to the fans. Say yes, Anna. Come with me.”

He’d just painted a beautiful portrait of how life should be. She had a plane ticket in her hand. And yet—

“I-I … I can’t!” she blurted out. Because … well, because she wasn’t a spontaneous, throw-away-the-future-you’ve-planned-since-forever kind of girl. “There’s Yale.”

“Of course you can,” he insisted. “You can come back if you want, and still go to Yale. But I know I’m not crazy. You’re just as confused about your future as I am about mine. You can
think
in Bali, Anna. Away from the madding crowd. I’ve known you since forever. You’re all about thinking.”

She thought for that blurring moment about what her expectations had been for her life and her expectations for her time in Los Angeles. She thought about starting Yale—it wasn’t perfect by a long shot, but it was still Yale. And she thought about what might happen in Bali, where she would have a chance to think without the relentless clutter of New York, the incessant noise of Los Angeles, the chronic drama of the people she’d come to know and who’d become her friends.

But how could she go to Bali? “I wish I was the kind of girl who could just say yes,” Anna began with hesitation. “In the movie version of my life, I’d get on the plane with you. But in real life—”

“Whose real life is it?” Logan pressed. “You can do anything, if you want to badly enough.”

Could she? It made perfect sense—in theory. But in the real world …

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “But I … I just can’t.”

There was so much more she wanted to say, about what she felt for him. How could she, though, when he’d come all this way just for her and she was turning him down?

“I’m not surprised.” He finally replied. “Come on. Let’s go back. I’ve got a limo meeting us—me—in twenty minutes.”

They walked back to the club in silence, though a loud internal debate raged in Anna’s head. As they neared Bye, Bye Love and the black limo that was waiting for Logan, her mind still hadn’t changed.

He took her hands again. “One last chance?”

Anna observed their distorted reflection in the limo’s tinted window. She shook her head sadly. At another time, in a parallel universe, he’d open the door for her and she’d get in. She didn’t have clothes, she didn’t even have a toothbrush, but it wouldn’t have made a difference. It made her disappointed and sad to know she couldn’t take such a leap. Cyn would have done it in a heartbeat. Sam, too, probably. But she was Jane Percy’s daughter, and she seemed to have inherited the “proper” gene, much as she wanted to deny it.

“I can’t.” She shook her head again.

“You
won’t
. There’s a difference. A big difference.”

“I want you to know, Logan, that coming back here like this … it’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. We’re going to stay in touch, right?”

His response was to give her one gentle kiss. Then her beautiful stranger—who wasn’t really a stranger at all—got in the black limousine and Anna swallowed hard as she watched it pull away. She felt a tear roll down her cheek and quickly wiped it away.

She took a deep, fortifying breath. What would Jane Percy do? Her mother would go back into the club, find Ben and Cammie, and offer them the most hearty congratulations on the enormous success of Bye, Bye Love, before going home for a quiet nightcap in the privacy of her own home.

So that’s what she decided on, followed by what Anna herself would do—go home and commence working on her screenplay. Even if her writing wasn’t any good—and she strongly suspected it wasn’t—at least it belonged to
her
.

The club was still rocking when she went back inside. Still wall-to-wall people, but P. Diddy had now taken over for Pegasus Patton in the DJ space. Anna spotted Champagne, dressed in white chiffon, holding hands with a cute guy who looked like a younger Martin Rittenhouse. She waved and Anna waved back, but she kept snaking through the crowd. Then Parker crossed in front of her with a willowy model type on his arm, and Anna touched his shoulder. As she looked closer, she realized it was Django’s sister, Citron. How they’d come to know each other was beyond her, but it made Anna smile. “Hey, have you seen Ben?” she asked.

Parker motioned toward the performing space. “Back there. I think Gwyneth is about to do a set. How hot is this place?”

“It’s great. Have fun!” Anna gave the two of them a little wave that she hoped wasn’t too rude, then edged through the dancing crowd—at this point, people were getting down not just on the dance floor, but anyplace they could find a little space. It took five full minutes to go fifty feet, but finally she was at the end of the short corridor that led to the little theater.