Tall Cool One (24 page)

“I’m sorry you missed your date with Eduardo. But he’ll understand.”

“Just my luck. I finally meet a hot guy with a brain who likes me, and I stand him up.”

“Once you explain—”

“I doubt it.” Sam yawned. “He goes back to Paris tomorrow. It’s probably better this way. It’s not like it was going to work out.”

“How do you know?”

“Okay, let’s say I went out with him and I started to really, really like him. He’d either stop liking me or I’d find out that he’s actually an asshole. Either way, I lose.”

“Why so defeatist?”

“It’s called experience.” Sam went back to the food stash and got the jam, some crackers, and a knife. She brought it all back to Anna. “Hot tub?”

Sans bathing suits, obviously. Well, it didn’t really bother Anna. She was comfortable with her body. And she thought it was a good sign that Sam seemed to be growing more comfortable with her own.

“Why not?”

Anna stripped off her borrowed clothes. Sam did the same, and they lowered themselves into the steaming water. “Bliss.” Sam sighed, leaning her head against the lip. “Sheer bliss.”

Anna reached for the jar of jam. Instead of spreading it on a cracker, she used her finger as she had in the caviar. “Mmmm. You can’t just give up on love, Sam. You’re seventeen.”

“The only thing that’s true about love is that true love doesn’t exist,” Sam declared.

“Yes, it does,” Anna insisted.

“Well, if you’re right, I’d like to experience it. Just once.” Sam slid lower into the water and closed her eyes.

Anna wondered if she’d ever really experienced it herself. Was love finding the right person to have children with, to grow old with? Or was love the way a boy made you feel when you were in his arms and the world was absolutely, completely perfect? She couldn’t imagine having children right now, and she definitely couldn’t imagine growing old. But she remembered only too well what it had felt like to be in Ben Birnbaum’s arms.

“With Ben, it felt like love,” she said softly. She waited for Sam to scold her for talking about Ben. When nothing happened, she extended her foot underwater and tapped it against Sam’s leg. “Sam?”

“Wha?” Sam asked blearily. She seemed only half awake.

“Don’t fall asleep.”

“Why not?”

“Jason? Freddy? The owner of this place walking in on us?” Anna prompted.

“Please. What do you expect us to do, stay awake all night?”

Anna realized that was ridiculous. Besides, she was exhausted. Then a plan came to mind.

“Maybe I should write a note and leave it downstairs explaining things so that if someone comes home, they’ll see the note before they see us.”

Sam gave her a baleful look. “Dear crazed mystery owner, we broke in, we ate, and now we’re upstairs asleep in your kinky bed under the mirror. Love, Anna Percy. And you’ll write it in English
and
Spanish, of course.”

Anna let her head loll back against the rim of the hot tub. “You’re right. Dumb idea.

“Come on. Let’s call it a night.”

Anna climbed out of the hot tub; Sam followed. They went back through the double doors into the bedroom, where Sam started to snore the moment flesh met mink quilt.

But Anna, tired as she was, couldn’t sleep. What an amazing, impossible day. Tomorrow they still had to find their way back to Las Casitas. In the meantime, someone could still come in and catch them. Anything could happen.

She turned over and closed her eyes. It was scary.

But it was also wonderful.

“Seat belts fastened? Seats upright?” The prematurely gray, uniformed captain of Jackson Sharpe’s private jet—a fifteen-seat Gulfstream III that had belonged to John Travolta before Travolta bought his Boeing 707—stood outside the cockpit and did a quick safety check.

“Let’s go, James,” Jackson snapped.

“You got it, sir.”

Dee could see that Sam’s father was in a bad mood. It had taken three hours for Kiki to track down Jackson’s pilot, Captain James McGill, and get him to Van Nuys airport, where Jackson kept his private jet. Jackson kept bitching to Kiki about how he paid James a small fortune and expected his pilot to be on call. In fact, Kiki herself had decided not to make the trip. She’d claimed to be staying behind to do damage control with Leno, but Dee thought maybe it was because she didn’t want to get yelled at anymore. In Dee’s experience, Jackson Sharpe wasn’t a yeller. Dee chalked it up to his concern for Sam. It was sweet, really.

Poppy wasn’t on the plane, either. She didn’t want to be far from her obstetrician. At first, Dee had wanted to stay with Poppy to support her. But then Dee found out that Cammie had insisted on flying to Mexico with Jackson. Dee knew that if Cammie went and she stayed with Poppy, it would seem as if Cammie cared more about Sam than Dee did. Dee couldn’t let that happen. Everyone knew she was a nicer, more caring person than Cammie. She had a reputation to uphold, even if she did feel guilty as hell saying goodbye to Poppy before climbing into Jackson’s limo to the airport.

Captain McGill finally closed the cockpit door. Five minutes later, they were airborne from Van Nuys and quickly reached their cruising altitude. It would be merely an hour’s flight to the small Las Casitas airstrip—the Gulfstream could fly at nearly six hundred miles an hour.

Dee had brought a copy of the
Tanya,
the classic Chassidic Jewish text on Kabbalah, but found herself too anxious to read. It was like the farther the plane got from Los Angeles, the more she found herself reliving all the good times she’d had with Sam. What if Sam had been kidnapped? That would be horrible.

So instead of reading, she just gazed around the cabin, which was more like an expensive living room. The leather seats and sleeper couch were custom-made, the entertainment center had a plasma high-definition television and state-of-the-art sound system; there was even a DVD library of the five hundred best movies of all time as selected by Peter Bart at
Variety.
Dee saw that Jackson was trying to distract himself with one of those DVDs—
It’s a Wonderful Life.
But he kept drumming his fingers on the leather arm of his chair and checking his watch every other minute.

Dee was thirsty. A pick-me-up wouldn’t hurt. She unhooked her seat belt, went forward to the galley, and found a can of Red Bull. She was trying to wean stimulants from her diet, so she now rationed herself to two Red Bulls a day. As she drank, she studied the framed photographs mounted on the interior walls of the galley. Jackson and Poppy’s wedding photo. Jackson with Tom Hanks. With Harrison Ford. With Robert Zemeckis. With Nicole Kidman. On the prize committee at Cannes. Holding his Golden Globe award.

“Is there a Diet Coke in there?”

Dee turned to Cammie, who’d joined her in the galley. “Yeah, lots. I have to say, Cammie, I’m surprised you actually came.”

“Why? Sam’s my best friend.”

Dee always felt anxious when Cammie said that. Sam was
her
best friend.

“I thought you’d want to stay with Adam,” she explained.

“I’m totally confident about Adam,” Cammie insisted, taking a can of Diet Coke from the refrigerator and popping the top.

Dee found that comment interesting. Usually Cammie really
was
totally confident. But Dee didn’t believe she was all that confident about her relationship with Adam. Yes, Dee had walked in on them about to do the deed, but everyone knew that Adam had been crazy about Anna in the not-so-distant past. And Anna Percy was the only girl who had ever given Cammie Sheppard true competition. It was one of the few things Dee really liked about Anna. She took a sip of her Red Bull. The temptation was certainly there, to rub salt into Cammie’s wounds. The Kabbalah rabbi she’d heard with Poppy last Saturday had termed it in Hebrew the
yetzer hara,
the evil impulse. But she was trying to become a more evolved person, to listen to her
yetzer tova,
the good impulse. So she changed the subject.

“You remember the first time we were on this plane? Right after Jackson bought it?”

Cammie chuckled softly. “Oh yeah. When we were—”

“Thirteen,” Dee filled in.

“All the kids at school were having their bar and bat mitzvahs,” Cammie recalled. “When Sam found out you had to be Jewish to get one, she was ready to convert. So Jackson flew about a dozen of us to the Bahamas instead.”

“After he left, we stayed with those boring Jamaican nannies. Remember?” Dee asked, picking up the story. “And one of them kept praying for us and telling us to repent our evil ways—”

“Right!” Cammie exclaimed, laughing. “The others didn’t seem to care what we did. But that older woman kept saying, ‘If you do dat, you’ll go to hell, children.’ Which didn’t stop us from scoring some killer island ganja.” She smiled at Dee. “I swear, they get the best reefer there.”

Dee grinned. Maybe the
yetzer tova
was working. She hadn’t felt so close to Cammie in quite a while. And to think it was all because Sam had gone missing and they were on a rescue mission.

“You know, Cammie, if anything happened to Sam . . .”

“We’ll find her.” Cammie gave Dee a little hug. “I know we will.”

Wow. Dee was impressed. Maybe Cammie’s
yetzer tova
was at work, too. Or else Adam was improving Cammie’s personality. Still, she didn’t doubt for a moment that Cammie really was worried that Anna was competition for her with Adam, that if Anna wanted Adam back, she could get him quicker than Dee could whip out her MasterCard at Trashy Lingerie on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood. Which meant that deep in Cammie’s heart of hearts it was
yetzer hara
all the way. Cammie probably hoped that Sam would be found and Anna wouldn’t.

Dee couldn’t decide how she felt about finding Anna. Anna had stolen her place on Sam’s A-list, that was for sure. Anna had also stolen the boy they all wanted, Ben Birnbaum. And then she’d dropped him, too.

A girl that fickle deserved whatever the gods dished out to her.

Well, if Anna wasn’t found, there would probably be a memorial service. Dee could wear her black Pamella Roland wrap dress and her new Alberto Ferretti slingback pumps with the leopard-print lining. She’d keep her makeup really pale, with maybe a touch of MAC Prrr lip gloss. Or maybe she’d buy all new stuff to honor Anna’s memory.

Not that Dee wanted anything really bad to happen to Anna. That would be truly bad karma. But she figured she should cover all the fashion bases, just in case.

¡Ay, Caramba!

B
en was kissing Anna everywhere; pure bliss. Back in New York, she’d dreamt of finding a boy who would make her feel like she felt this very moment. These kisses proved that dreams really could come true. They were lying on a gentle hillside, the lush grass underneath was so soft, so luxurious, almost like mink—

Anna’s eyes snapped open. Her mind went into instant overdrive.

Mink. She was sleeping under mink.

Where was she?

She looked around the dimly lit room as she heard Sam snore next to her. That’s right. They were in the lavish master bedroom of the estate they’d discovered the night before during the storm. Ornate hand-painted tiles bordering the room, hand-knotted rugs resting on burnished wood. She glanced straight up and saw herself in the mirror, Sam curled up to her left. Right. Mirrored ceiling.

Ouch. Her hand went to her head; she had the worst headache, and she saw now that she looked as bad as she felt. Well, first things first. Get up and check the telephones, see if they were working and—

Wait.

Had she just heard something?

Voices. In the house. She froze, listening carefully. Two of them. Male. Gruff. Spanish. Coming closer to the bedroom.

Anna jostled Sam. “Sam, wake up!”

Sam snored and rolled over. The voices got louder.

Anna shook Sam again. “Wake up
now!
Someone’s here! And we’re naked!”

Anna scrambled for something to wear. The clothes and the robes from the night before were in the room with the hot tub. No time to get them. She grabbed the Mexican shawl off the back of a white rocking chair and threw it at Sam. “Put this on! Hurry!” Then, as the male voices got still louder, she dove back onto the bed and pulled the mink throw around herself.

Suddenly the door burst open and the lights snapped on. Two armed men in khaki uniforms pointed Uzis at the girls.

“Quien están ustedes? ¡Sus manos al cielo!”
the taller of the two men yelled.

Anna flung her hands toward the ceiling, following the man’s instructions. “Do what I’m doing, Sam. Dammit!” Anna told Sam, her voice cracking with fear. She tried to hold onto the mink comforter with her chin to cover her nakedness and racked her brain for the Spanish to say, “We’re naked under these blankets.” But she drew a blank. She did manage,
“Somos norteamericanas. Somos turistas a Las Casitas.”

Neither of the men seemed interested or impressed.

“Rich Americans! From Beverly Hills, California,” Sam shouted in English. “My father is Jackson Sharpe. The famous actor!”

“Nosotros no hablamos ingles. ¡Español solamente!”

“They don’t speak English,” Anna reported. “Let me try to find out who they are.
Ustedes son con el gobierno?
”

“No!”
the tall man bellowed.
“¡Securidad!”

Anna’s heart sank. “They’re security guards, Sam. Not official.”

But Sam wasn’t deterred as she pleaded with the men. “
¡Por favor! Mi papi
Jacksono Sharpo. Mee
papi
Jacksono Sharpo, from
los
movies!”

“Ella se llama Samantha Sharpe,”
Anna translated
. “Su papá se llama Jackson Sharpe. ¡El grand hombre norteamericano de los peliculas! ¡El jefe!”

But the guards didn’t seem to care.
“¡Ustedes! ¡Vienen con nosotros!”
the taller one insisted, pointing toward the door with his rifle butt.

“
Sí, sí,”
Anna said, trying to placate them. “We’ll come with you.
Uno momento, uno momento.
”

She caught a glimpse of a clock in the nightstand. Six-thirty
A.M.
The storm was over. Surely people from Las Casitas had to be looking for them. Probably even the Mexican police. But if these men took them away, they were ruined. Who knew what they wanted or where they wanted to go?