California Dreaming
Copyright © 2008 by Alloy Entertainment
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Poppy
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
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www.HachetteBookGroup.com
.
First eBook Edition: April 2008
The Little, Brown and Company name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-04924-5
Contents
A Preview Of Gossip Girl The Carlyles
If you have to ask, you'll never be on …
THE A-LIST
Be sure to read all the novels in the
New York Times
bestselling A-LIST series
THE A-LIST
GIRLS ON FILM
BLONDE AMBITION
TALL COOL ONE
BACK IN BLACK
SOME LIKE IT HOT
AMERICAN BEAUTY
HEART OF GLASS
BEAUTIFUL STRANGER
CALIFORNIA DREAMING
And keep your eye out for a new era of THE A-LIST coming January 2009.
Be sure to read all the novels in the #1
New York Times
bestselling GOSSIP GIRL series
Gossip Girl
You Know You Love Me
All I Want Is Everything
Because I'm Worth It
I Like It Like That
You're The One That I Want
Nobody Does It Better
Nothing Can Keep Us Together
Only In Your Dreams
Would I Lie To You
Don't You Forget About Me
It Had To Be You
Keep your eye out for a new era of
Gossip Girl: The Carlyles
, coming May 2008.
A-List novels by Zoey Dean:
THE A-LIST
GIRLS ON FILM
BLONDE AMBITION
TALL COOL ONE
BACK IN BLACK
SOME LIKE IT HOT
AMERICAN BEAUTY
HEART OF GLASS
BEAUTIFUL STRANGER
CALIFORNIA DREAMING
If you like
THE A-LIST
, you may also enjoy:
Poseur
by Rachel Maude
Footfree and Fancyloose
by Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain
Secrets of My Hollywood Life: Family Affairs
by Jen Calonita
Haters
by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Betwixt
by Tara Bray Smith
For Hair Guru to the Stars, Mr. Raymond.
There must be thousands of girls like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm dreaming the hardest.
—Marilyn Monroe
Saturday morning, 2:47 a.m.
A
nna Percy was trapped. Also, barefoot.
Behind her was the slammed-shut door of the long, white-walled jetway. Ahead of her gaped the open door of her Bali-bound flight. A petite flight attendant with dark, thick waist-length hair, clad in a double-0 navy blue uniform, was calling to her in lightly accented, chirpy English.
“Hurry! We're pulling back from the gate! Hurry!”
Rather than hustle the remaining ten paces toward the beckoning flight attendant, Anna froze. Her last words with Logan Cresswell, the boy who had brought her here, the boy who was presumably waiting for her in the first-class cabin of this Air East Indonesia flight, flashed through her mind.
“There's a flight back to Bali that leaves LAX at three this morning. That's three hours from now … Come with me.”
Anna was not the kind of girl to break up with one guy—the exquisitely complicated but equally compelling Ben Birnbaum—only to run away to Bali with another one. Everything in her future was planned out, thank you very much. She was exactly seven days from returning to New York City after living for eight surreal months in Los Angeles. Then, she'd start her freshman year at Yale, which had been her dream ever since she could remember dreaming at all.
Yet here she was, on the jetway. The international-departures building behind her, the plane ahead of her. Her Chanel pumps? They'd been tossed aside a few moments before, as she'd made a mad three-hundred-yard dash down the airport concourse from the TSA metal detectors to gate 87.
After these months of attempting to reinvent herself in Los Angeles, including some admitted experimentation with things both remote and dangerous—as benign as ordering a double-double animal style from In-N-Out Burger, as scary as learning to surf on the waves of Malibu, as death defying as ascending the steps of the Getty in a pair of Prada stilettos—now she was about to do the most remote and dangerous thing of her life. A mere ninety minutes before, she'd made the snap decision to join an old Upper-East-Side-childhood-neighbor-turned-recent-romantic-interest, Logan, for a trans-Pacific flight to Bali.
She wasn't sure Logan was even on the plane. The airline's gate attendant had told her it was against security regulations for her to confirm that he was on the flight. Anna had tried to reach him by cell, but evidently, the captain had already given the order for cell phones to be turned off, tray tables to be locked in their upright positions, et cetera, et cetera.
“Miss! Please hurry!” The petite flight attendant's voice went up an octave and a half, and she gestured with both hands.
Anna's heart was pounding as she covered the last five paces of the jetway. She took a deep, fortifying breath and stepped across the threshold. There, the beautiful Balinese flight attendant broke into a relieved smile, welcomed Anna aboard with a gentle bow, and thrust a ribbon-tied bird of paradise blossom into her hand while she scanned Anna's ticket stub.
“You'll want to take your seat quickly in the first-class cabin, Miss Percy. You're the last one to board, and we'll be taking off shortly.”
Anna thanked her and pivoted left in the direction of first class. She sighed, grateful that the twenty-two-hour flight across the Pacific and the international dateline would at least be comfortable. Since she hadn't had time to pack—this trip had been the very definition of a last-minute decision—she still wore the white eyelet lace Betsey Johnson baby doll dress she'd had on earlier in the evening.
She glanced around the cabin. There were nine rows of first-class seats, two across. Directly in front of her, another immaculately coiffed attendant in the same navy blue uniform served tall, chilled mimosas to a well-dressed elderly couple, regaling them with details about Bali's fabulous gem shopping and wondrous natural beauty.
Where was he?
Bald man in a tweed business suit. Not him.
Swarthy guy with a heavily tattooed neck, wearing skinny vintage jeans and studded bracelet. Definitely not him.
Huge man in backward Lakers baseball cap atop a Lakers uniform. Nope. Tiny woman in a maroon warm-up suit sitting beside him. Double nope.
Short, dirty blond hair. Broad shoulders. Piercing blue eyes. Slight cleft in the chin. Faded jeans and plain black T-shirt.
Logan.
Anna smiled. There he was, stretched out in the second row of the luxurious white leather seats, next to the window. The seat on the aisle—
her
seat—held two hardcover books and a Yankees baseball cap. In that moment, she realized he wasn't expecting her to show up.
“Please, to your seat, Miss Percy,” the petite, raven-haired flight attendant whispered discreetly. “We'd like to depart.”
The flight attendant moved off. Logan didn't look up from his copy of the
Los Angeles Times
, open to the sports section.
Anna was just about to move to her seat and announce her arrival when another memory struck home. It had been in a first-class cabin that she'd met Ben Birnbaum. That flight had been the one on New Year's Eve that had brought her from LaGuardia Airport to LAX. Ben had been a savior on that flight—he'd helped get rid of her deeply obnoxious seatmate, a thirtysomething record producer, by pretending to already know her. By the time the flight ended, she felt as though she
did
know Ben. And she also knew that she wanted to be with him.
But Ben was in the past. Just a few hours before, he had broken her heart again, this time by kissing his old flame, Cammie Sheppard. Anna had met Cammie her first night in Los Angeles, and it had been hate at first sight. On Cammie's part, anyway. Mostly because Ben was clearly into Anna, and Cammie had been Ben's last girlfriend. But also partially because Cammie was the type of girl who needed someone to hate. At times during the last few months, their relationship had thawed to almost peaceful coexistence. At other times … not so much.
“Come with me.”
That's what Logan had suggested to her and it seemed like the perfect escape. Yet she'd said no. Expectations awaited her. Home to New York. Then Yale. But then she'd seen Ben and Cammie in a corridor at the new club they'd opened together in Culver City—Bye, Bye Love—having a close encounter of the third kind.
That was enough to send her to the airport. Why not? She could always fly back to the East Coast in time to start at Yale.
The white leather seats were so lush and roomy that Logan didn't at first notice her moving in next to him. “Sorry I'm late. The traffic on the 405 was just
insane
,” she announced nonchalantly, flipping a lock of her long silky blond hair.
He looked up and, in one fluid movement, rose and pulled her toward him. “Anna.” He breathed her name and the next thing she knew his lips were on hers as they melted into a tight embrace.
“Umm, sir? Miss?”
The flight attendant tapped Logan on the shoulder, and they broke apart sheepishly. “Please have a seat. You don't want the other passengers to show you what they think of your public display of affection,” she chided, winking at them as she moved away.