Blonde Ambition (21 page)
“You’re welcome. I guess I should go,” he said finally.
“Wait. Do you really have to go back to school? I mean, could you … would you … ?” She gulped hard as she stepped away from him and gazed into his welcoming eyes. “I’d really like to be with you right now. We could go to … to the park by the elementary school. To the swings. Anything.”
Oh God. Had she just said that? How pathetically vulnerable and needy did she sound? What if he turned her down? Of course he was going to turn her down; he was Mr. Straight Shooter and he was going to get on his little bike and pedal back to—
“Let’s do it,” Adam said.
Cammie’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
He laughed. “You look about six years old. Yeah, really. My GPA can take it.”
“I don’t even know if there’s a car I can take—” Cammie began.
“We can walk.”
“Walk … right!” It seemed like an adventure to Cammie, who never walked anywhere. “I’ll go get dressed. Wait right here.”
She ran upstairs, giddy with happiness. She was going to spend the afternoon in the park with Adam. He was so straight. And honest. And nice. He was probably a virgin, for godsake.
But go figure: Cammie Sheppard was losing her heart to him anyway.
“… So you can have your job back,” Clark concluded.
He’d called Anna at school to inform her that he was rehiring her since he’d determined she hadn’t been the culprit with
Hollywood Tonight.
There’d been no apology, just an order to be on the set right after school.
It was a beautiful day, so Anna was outside in the courtyard, eating lunch with Sam at the same picnic table where the newspaper editor had accosted her about doing an interview for the school paper. “Mr. Sheppard, if I were dirt poor and you were paying me in diamonds, I wouldn’t take back the internship,” Anna told him. “There is no excuse for the way you treated me.”
“It’s Clark?” Sam asked, raising her eyebrows. “Tell him to go to hell!”
Anna smiled and shushed her as Clark replied. “Hey, that’s showbiz. If you’re going to be that touchy, you’ll never get anywhere in this town.”
“Well, then, that works very neatly with my plans. Thank you and have a pleasant life.” Anna disconnected him. It gave her a great deal of satisfaction to do it.
“Nice,” Sam said. “Now you can concentrate on our screenplay.”
“True.”
“You want to go to Bev’s after school and throw some ideas around?”
Anna shook her head. “Actually, I have to go to the set after school.
Hermosa Beach.
”
“Uh, hello—Anna doesn’t work there anymore.”
“I know,” Anna replied. “But Anna definitely has some unfinished business there. How about dinner?”
“Sounds good,” Sam agreed. “Call me later and we’ll pick a place.”
“Did you ever eat Ethiopian?” Anna asked.
Sam grinned. “No. And I’m not starting now.” She got up and headed back toward the main building.
But Anna called to her. “Sam!”
Sam turned and took a couple of steps back toward Anna.
“Thanks,” Anna said. “For believing me. For helping me talk to Mia. For going against Cammie. She’s going to hate you now. And … well, everything.”
A smile lit up Sam’s face. “I’m sure you’d do the same for me.”
And so I would, Anna thought. And so I would.
By the time Anna reached the
Hermosa Beach
set, it was nearly four o’clock. No one paid much attention to her; one intern more or less wasn’t exactly news on the set of a TV show about to premiere. She found Danny in his office, typing into his computer. She sat uninvited on his couch. “Hello.”
“Interesting opening line,” Danny mused. “Is it followed by, ‘I hate your guts’?”
“No,” Anna said. “You were right. You didn’t have any reason to believe me or to risk your job over it.”
Danny swiveled his chair around to face her. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
“Were you planning to tell me that?” Anna asked. “No,” he confessed. “I’d already moved on to the ‘she hates your guts’ thing. I figured you’d never want to hear from me again.”
“I’ve decided to let you make it up to me.”
He laughed. “Oh, really?”
“Yes, really,” she teased. “You can take me out and lavish me with attention and excellent jokes. In return, I may forgive you. When can I pencil you in?”
“Now.”
Anna was taken aback. “Now? But you never leave the office in the middle of the—”
Danny jumped up from his desk, took her hand, and pulled her out of his office and down the hall. They stopped outside the door of the script supervisor. “Hey, Jimbo. If anyone asks, tell ’em I’m out for a couple of hours.”
“You can’t leave,” the script supervisor retorted. “Clark’s around. What if he needs you?”
“Tell him it was an emergency!” He turned to Anna. “This calls for a fast getaway.”
They hightailed it down the hall, out the ocean-side doors of the hotel and toward the ocean. Danny quickened his pace until he was fairly flying across the sand. Anna followed, breathless with laughter.
“You’re insane!” Anna cried as Danny whirled, picked her up, and then tumbled together with her to the sand. “The sun will be down in a minute. We’ll freeze out here.”
“That is then, this is now.” Danny propped himself up on his elbows and looked out at the ocean. “What do you see, Anna?”
She thought a moment. “Possibilities.”
“Me too.” He leaned over and kissed her lightly. “Could you like a writer who’s less than five-foot eight and went to a public university and may never write the great American novel?”
“Maybe you will. Or …” She paused and grinned at him. “Maybe I’ll write it first.”
“Touché, Anna Percy. But you didn’t answer the other part.”
“Why do you think I’m here?”
His answer was to kiss her again. The first guy Anna had ever loved was Scott Spencer. But Scott had fallen for her best friend Cyn and never seemed to know that Anna existed. The second boy she had loved was Ben. But that had become so intense, so fast, that she couldn’t separate the getting to know him from the lust of wanting him.
And now there was Danny. She wasn’t sure what they would be or even
if
they’d be. But she liked him, and he wasn’t likely to get all heavy with her or try to rush her into something for which she wasn’t ready. Because there were other boys—Django … and even Adam—that she thought about. Maybe lots of other boys. Maybe lots of boys she hadn’t even met yet.
Maybe she was going to be so busy writing a movie with Sam that all the boys would just have to stand in line.
Anything was possible. Anything.
The only thing harder than getting in is staying in.
Be sure to read both novels in the juicy CLIQUE series, and keep your eye out for REVENGE OF THE WANNABES, coming May 2005.