The First Assistant (22 page)

Clearly five weeks in the presence of Tomorrow’s Woman, aka Emerald Everhart, had made me wary of emancipation, financial independence, and a woman’s right to wear anything other than a burka, I thought with alarm as I pulled a stray sock of Luke’s out of a duffel bag. What did my world hold without him, I wondered. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to do my job anymore, playing nursemaid to someone. I wanted to get on with making my own mark. There was no Luke to hide behind now and no excuse. I vowed to keep my eyes open and look for a producing opportunity, but this time I wouldn’t let anyone like Daniel Rosen cut me out of the deal. I’d have my eyes open and I’d be in charge. I also didn’t have a home anymore, and my only rock of sanity in this whole horrible town, Luke, the man whose mere existence had counteracted every sleazy, cheating, double-dealing man in Los Angeles, had let me down. But before I could even blink out a tear and drown myself in the misery of the past month, there was a knock on the cottage door.

“Come in,” I shouted, glad of a distraction.

“Settling in?” It was Lara and she had Lachlan balanced on her lis-some hip.

“Yes, thanks. It’s great. The bathroom’s gorgeous,” I said cheerily as she came in, set Lachlan down, and sat in a chintzy armchair under the window.

“I meant, how is it to be back?” Lara asked, while looking pointedly at the navy blue man’s sock I was wringing in my hands.

“Horrible.” I let out a deep sigh.

“Thought so.” Lara scooped Lachlan up before he could insert his tongue into the electrical socket behind the television. “So, Scott’s away in New York for a premiere for a couple of days and I’ve got a babysitter. We can hit the town.”

“Oh no, really, it’s sweet of you, Lara, but I just can’t,” I protested. The idea of going out anywhere made me want to crawl inside my unpacked duffel bag from Thailand with all my mildew-scented clothes.

“It’s not open for discussion,” Lara said. “We’re going out, and that’s all there is to it.”

“But if you had any clue how many clubs and bars and parties I’d been forced to go to recently, you wouldn’t be making me do this,” I pleaded without optimism as Lara stripped my trip duffel of its contents.

“Don’t care,” Lara said as she pulled out a jean skirt and a gold and white top that clearly belonged to Emerald and that I didn’t remember packing. “Wear these.”

“That’s not mine... .”

“I’ll meet you at the house at eight o’clock. I’m going to give this little monkey his bath now,” she said as Lachlan nuzzled his face into her neck.

“Where are we going?” I asked as she walked out the door. “Somewhere fancy,” Lara said, and left.

“You’re an incredible mother,” I said to Lara later on, after I’d rallied, forced my boobs into Emerald’s top, and stopped protesting to Lara that I never wanted to go out again. We were sitting in the garden at the Sunset Mar-quis. We were apparently planning to go to the VIP room at Spider afterward, but I was hoping to dodge that particular annex to the evening.

“Everyone’s an incredible mother,” Lara told me.

It was weird how our wild night out was tamer than our talks over Chinese takeout used to be.

“It must be amazing, being a mom,” I said, gazing over the top of my champagne cocktail into the middle distance.

“It is.” She shrugged. “But it’s also amazing going on location to Thailand and having the world at your feet, I’m sure.” She looked at me meaningfully, but I dodged her inquisitive stare.

“Do you think I’ll ever have children?” I sighed.

“No, never. I mean look at you. Why would anyone want to bother impregnating you?” She raised her glass and winked at me.

“Do you and Scott still have sex?” I asked, wondering whether Scott’s affair with the actress was an ongoing concern.

“Sure, all the time,” she said casually. “That’s true, by the way. My husband, as you know, is an addict. So one thing I’m guaranteed until the day I die is lots of sex.”

“Do you think you’ll be together until the day you die?” I asked. “Well, most likely until the day
he
dies,” she said confidently. Which

was probably a fair enough point, that Scott would shuffle off this mor-tal coil first, given how much he’d abused his body in the past. Unless, of course, all that booze and powder had merely served to preserve him. “Do you think that Luke and Emanuelle will be together until they die?” I asked, suddenly not able to help myself from bringing up the

subject, picking at it like a scab.

“You still don’t know if they’re together or not Lizzie,” she said. “You haven’t spoken to him since it happened. To be honest the poor guy must be going out of his mind wondering what’s going on with you.” Lara had already promised me that she’d obsessively pored over every magazine on the shelf in search of Luke and Emanuelle gossip, but af-ter that one sighting had found none. Though I was taking nothing for granted. I had heard no more from Luke since the flowers in Thailand and still wasn’t ready to reach out. In fact I wasn’t sure I ever would be. “Well, he knew where to find me,” I said glibly, and bolted back a

mouthful of champagne.

“Actually, he didn’t,” Lara reminded me. “You were in a paddy field. Remember? And didn’t he send you a roomful of roses when he did finally track you down?”

“I’d prefer it if we didn’t discuss Luke Lloyd,” I said firmly.

“Have you cried once since this happened?” Lara suddenly lowered her head and looked me in the eye.

“I can’t remember.” I turned away. “Elizabeth?”

“Yes.” I sniffed. “I cried almost daily in Thailand. I cried when I crashed on my moped. I cried when I saw how much Emerald’s annual

clothing budget was. I cried when her personal trainer made me do four hundred lunges in one session. I cried.. .”

“Have you cried about Luke?” Lara demanded. “No.”

“That’s not good.” She took my hand. “Lizzie, you loved him. You guys were together for a year.”

“Yeah, and he didn’t love me,” I said as I pushed my glass out of the way and stood up. “I’m going to pee.”

When I emerged from the refreshingly sterile bathroom, I determined to enjoy myself. I’d taken a hard look at myself in the bathroom mirror and told myself I was not going to waste my time pining for a man who could cheat on me, and if Luke wanted to be with Emanuelle, I wasn’t going to be a clingy freak and try to stop him. I would move on with my life without so much as a backward glance. How could I ignore fate then, when it seemed to intervene on my behalf ?

“Hi there.” A tall man with blond hair and a very sharp suit was standing by the bar with some friends. I half-smiled out of politeness but didn’t want to make eye contact. “How are you?” he asked.

Ever well-mannered and not one to cock a snoot at the mores of fate I felt obliged to answer. “I’m fine, thank you,” I replied, but didn’t really stop walking.

“I’m Anders,” the man informed me. I smiled again and hastened back to my table where Lara was in full flow on her cell phone.

“Sorry, honey,” Lara said. By the time she got off the phone, I had finished my drink and caught Anders’s eye once or twice more. I didn’t mean to but I had to look somewhere, and he and his entourage were compellingly handsome. Certainly they weren’t American, which was always a pleasant treat. They were like a collection of Norse gods hanging around waiting for their Viking longboat to drift into view across a fjord and take them to war. Though God knows I probably had my cultures all mixed up.

“That was the babysitter,” Lara said. “Lachlan won’t settle down. But she can cope for now. Let’s order another drink and see what happens.” But no sooner had the words left her mouth than the three Vikings appeared above us.

“Ladies. We’d like to buy you drinks.” Anders was at the helm. The other two were silent. Perhaps they didn’t speak English.

“Oh, we’re fine, thanks.” I smiled. “We’re just having a quiet girls’ night out.”

“I would just like to buy you one drink.” He seemed very earnest and he was focusing all his attentions on me. “You will offend me if you don’t.” He smiled.

“Thanks but no,” Lara said firmly. She was always good at getting rid of unwanted attention, unlike me who always hesitated for just long enough to let any nutcase determined enough into my life.

As Anders was refusing to take his eyes off me, a young couple approached our table and tapped Lara on the shoulder.

“Oh my God, hi.” Lara stood up and began an excitable conversation with her long-lost friends, leaving me at the mercy of the Vikings, like many an innocent maiden before me, I thought giddily.

“We shall keep you company while your friend is talking,” Anders said quietly. “What’s your name?”

“Elizabeth,” I replied, not really wanting to get involved but, well, what else was I going to do? Play beer mats by myself while Lara chatted?

“Elizabeth,” Anders repeated in what was clearly a Scandinavian ac-cent. “Would you mind if we joined you for a moment?”

“Well, I suppose for a moment.” I shrugged as Anders
et al.
sat down on the sofa next to me. “But when my friend comes back, we’d like to be alone. We have some catching up to do,” I explained.

“Surely,” Anders said as one of his friends motioned for the waiter. “But first you’ll have a glass of champagne?”

“I already have a drink, thanks.” I shook my head and cast a look at Lara over my shoulder, but she was clearly still filling whoever it was in on the past three years of surviving Scott and motherhood.

“Ah but my champagne is so good,” Anders said as his long, dark gray–clad leg brushed faintly against my knee.

“It’s fine, thank you,” I reiterated. I knew that once I accepted a drink I was complicit and there would be no getting rid of the Vikings. Which would result in Lara getting brusque with them and me getting embarrassed. Besides, while it was nice to have a little clean-cut attention, I

really did want to spend my evening with Lara. We had a lot of work-shopping to do tonight that was sorely needed for my general sanity and reintegration back into my life.

“But there’s something very special about my champagne.” Anders nodded and leaned close to me, his blond curls skimming his shirt col-lar sexily.

“Is there really?” I asked, transfixed by his locks and his voice. I mean, who could resist that gentle accent so redolent of emancipated men, recycling, and the most liberal laws in the world? Everyone knew that Scandinavian men were perfect in every way. They were everything that chauvinistic, backward-thinking American men weren’t. My sister, Melissa, and I had often longed for a Lars or a Björn. Even before we knew about the child-care policies of their homelands.

“Oh yes, I’ll show you.”

The next thing I knew one of the entourage had stepped forward, dropped to his knees beside Anders, and began to roll up Anders’s trouser leg. I kid you not. I looked over my shoulder to see where Lara was, but she’d gone over to the couple’s table and was now busy saying hi to at least another eight long-lost friends, who were being delighted by the photos of Lachlan she was showing them on her cell phone.

I watched as Viking #1 removed a small velvet bag that was strapped to Anders’s ankle. Then he handed it to Anders. This was a very unex-pected turn of events, even for someone who had walked the meander-ing path of unpredictability that was Emerald for the past four weeks.

“Here,” Anders said as he unrolled the piece of velvet onto the table before me, and a cluster of uncut diamonds fell out and arranged themselves into a dazzling constellation. I looked on with a mixture of won-der and bewilderment. But before I could respond, Anders had picked up the biggest of the stones and was holding it between his fingers, subjecting it to an impartial gaze.

“Oh, you’re working on a movie.” I laughed. “You brought the props home with you. It’s not the remake of
Raiders of the Lost Ark,
is it? I heard the script was great.”

“I’m not in the movies,” Anders said, suddenly looking extremely intense, even for a Viking. “These are real.” He seemed affronted at my suggestion. And I suspected that he wasn’t lying. But then they couldn’t

be real. What would a sane, Scandinavian man be doing with a bunch of diamonds up his pant leg?

“I see.” I smiled. “Very nice.”

“Now you will drink the champagne, see?” he said as he dropped the gem that he’d been holding into a glass of Cristal that was fizzing with a million tiny bubbles.

“Now I definitely
won’t
drink it.” I laughed.

“But you must.” Anders put his hand on my knee momentarily. “Where are you from, Anders?” I asked, trying to detract his attention

from the fact that I was going to do no such thing. If only because I was terrified that Lara would be furious that I’d blown our girls’ night out on a bunch of pretty boys. Not that she had any right to talk at the moment when it came to blowing our evening. Couldn’t she come back now?

I looked around to see if she’d returned, but she was perched on the edge of a woman’s chair and chatting to someone on the other side of the couple’s table. Anyone would think
she’d
been out of town for the past month and not me.

“I’m from Denmark,” he said patiently. “Copenhagen. Now if you drink the champagne, you can keep the diamond,” he said with a twinkle.

“Oh, really, that’s funny, but . . .” I began. But he silenced me with a shake of his head.

“For me,” he told me. What he could possibly want out of this trans-action I had no idea. But he was oddly determined and compellingly glamorous.

“I really have to go and make sure my friend’s okay. It was nice meeting you,” I said, tearing my eyes off the shimmering gem at the bottom of the glass that seemed to be fizzing with excitement.

“You only have to drink the champagne,” Anders said calmly. “And the diamond is yours.”

“No, really, I have to—”

“You’ve nothing to lose.” He spoke to me as though I was making a big mistake.

I looked around and took stock of the situation. Only a few tables away were Lara and a host of her laughing friends; in the corner with the plants was Courtney Love, engrossed in a cozy conversation with some guy; and all around us were couples nursing cocktails and chatting.