Celeste scrubbed her face with her hands and tried to organize her thoughts. Okay. Working with Nick. It wouldn’t be so bad. True, he still tried to flirt with her at every available opportunity and didn’t seem to understand the potential he had to ruin her life, but they’d had a couple of good conversations too—enough for her to see that he was actually capable of treating her like a human being.
Celeste threw back the covers and picked her way around her clothes-strewn floor to the bathroom. She turned on the shower and stared idly in the mirror as she waited for the water to heat up. And Travis. He might be okay too. He’d been on his best behavior ever since the fight with Nick. Maybe if she just explained to him again that her relationship with Nick was strictly business and that she had no choice in planning the party, he’d just relax and chill out, like he should have been doing all along.
With these comforting thoughts firmly in place,
Celeste pulled off her tank top and boy shorts and stepped into the steaming shower, letting the water drum on top of her long hair and fall over her face. She’d go talk to Nick as soon as she was dressed.
✦ ✦ ✦
Celeste banged out of the house and headed for the
Saunders villa. She wanted to talk to Nick about the situation before he heard it from someone else—and got any ideas about what this meant for their “relationship.”
Outside, the morning was fresh and a little dewy with that crisp air you find only in the desert. The resort sparkled like a jewel, waiting for the day to begin. The pool lay still and smooth as glass, and a crisp white towel lay on every chaise lounge, which were lined up in perfect rows around the pool. Inside the lobby, Celeste could see the floors still glistening from mopping. A housekeeper was placing vases of fresh lilies on the reception and concierge desks.
But Celeste barely noticed any of this. She was so intent on her mission that she didn’t even notice her father coming toward her on the path.
“Oof!” Mr. Tippen said, as Celeste barreled right into him. “Good morning to you too.”
Celeste straightened up. “Sorry, Daddy. Hi. Good morning.”
“I was just coming to find you. I have to talk with you, Celeste,” her father said.
Celeste groaned inwardly. She really wanted to talk to Nick as soon as she could, but she couldn’t really say that to her father. “Okay, Dad,” she responded meekly and followed him to his office.
Her father sank into his creaky leather chair and leaned forward on the peeling laminate desk. Celeste plopped down in her usual place in the corner of the plaid sofa. She pulled one of the throw pillows onto her lap and tucked her legs underneath her.
“Devon told me that she’s leaving for Scotland
tomorrow morning,” Dad said.
Celeste nodded. “I know. She woke me up at the
crack of dawn to tell me the news.”
“So that leaves us with the problem of who will take over the planning for the Saunders party. Now, Maria is going on maternity leave any day. We can’t depend on her to take over a major project right now. Simon is tied up with the Hargrove wedding. Your mother and I are going to be overseeing the entire festival—we can’t take the time to focus on only one event. So that leaves you, Celeste.”
Celeste nodded. “No problem. In fact, I was just on my way over to talk to Nick about the party.”
Her father leaned forward and clasped his hands, his craggy face serious. He was tanned red-brown from the sun, but the lines around his eyes were white from squinting. “I know I don’t need to remind you what happened the other day at the pool, Celeste.”
She gulped. She’d thought maybe the whole Travis-Nick mess could fade quietly into the background.
Obviously, she’d thought wrong. Her father went on.
“Your boyfriend has put the family in a potentially tenuous position with regard to our guests.”
Celeste opened her mouth to protest, but her father glared at her.
“I should have fired him, but I didn’t,” he said, his voice rising slightly. “So what I need from you, Celeste, is even more commitment to making this festival, and the Saunders party, truly memorable. It’s your duty to the family.” Dad suddenly cracked a smile. “I wouldn’t give you this kind of responsibility if I didn’t think you could handle it. You’re a smart girl, Celeste, and a hard worker.”
“Thanks, Dad,” she replied, breathing a little easier.
Making the party a success—she could do that.
Dad shuffled through some papers on his desk and chose a printout of an Excel spreadsheet. “This is a big deal, Celeste,” he said. He ran his finger down a column.
“We’re booked to capacity for that weekend—all with film-festival attendees. And these aren’t just any guests.
A group from Miramax has taken three guesthouses. The studio head of Searchlight is coming in and bringing several top directors.”
“Wow,” Celeste said, honestly impressed. She’d
known Mr. and Mrs. Saunders were successful, but she’d had no idea they had so much influence.
“Wow is right,” her father replied. “We want these people to love Pinyon. If they have a good time, they’ll tell their friends. It’ll be like building a billboard in L.A.—but without bankrupting us.”
“That’s awesome, Dad.” She knew how much this
meant to him—to her whole family. Even though they’d always been successful, her dad had been waiting for this kind of publicity for the resort for years.
“So, we need to make this festival the best event the resort has ever seen. If you’re going to be in charge of one of the showpiece parties, I’m counting on you to plan the highlight of the festival.” He fixed her with a piercing gaze. “Do you understand?”
Celeste straightened up. This was her chance to really impress her father. All the mess with Nick and Travis, all his doubts about her judgment in choosing Travis as her boyfriend—she could erase all of that by making the Saunders party unforgettable. She’d be on her way to help Travis move into the dorms in Tempe at the end of summer with no problem. And maybe, just maybe, if he was really impressed, he’d let her go to the Berkshires next summer instead of working. Her heart leaped at the thought. “Dad,” she said in her most mature voice, “I’m going to work incredibly hard on this party, and when I’m done, I swear, it will be amazing. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”
Her father smiled. “Good. I’m glad to hear you taking this so seriously. I have a lot of confidence in you, Celeste.”
She sprang up from the sofa. “Okay, well, I better go get started, right?” Dad nodded as she slipped from the room, her heart beating fast in anticipation. She could do this—after all, hadn’t she had six summers of practice?
This was going to be the most amazing party Pinyon had ever seen, Celeste thought. As long as she could keep her cohost and her boyfriend from killing one another until after the guests left, of course.
Chapter Fifteen
As she approached the Saunders guesthouse, Celeste saw the front door open and Mr. and Mrs. Saunders emerge, carrying towels. They both were wearing
huge sunglasses, and Mrs. Saunders was teetering along on a pair of three-inch platform espadrilles. Before they could see her, Celeste ducked behind a storage shed at the side of the path. She just really didn’t want to get waylaid by another “And how is your summer going, Celeste?” small-talk conversation, like she always got sucked into with guests. They had a tendency to drag on for a long, long time, and she was on a mission.
The Saunderses passed her hiding place, so close that Celeste could smell Mrs. Saunders’s sunscreen. When they were safely past, she slipped out and ran to the back door of the guesthouse. The glass doors stood open but the screens were closed. Celeste stood for a minute, wondering whether she should knock or something, but Nick was probably still sleeping. After all, wasn’t sleeping all morning standard rich jerk behavior? Finally, she just slid back the screen and stepped into th
e spacious kitchen.
Nick was standing at the counter, wearing nothing but a pair of baggy gray gym shorts and drinking a glass of orange juice. His hair stood up in sleep-tangled whorls, and his eyes had only made it about halfway open.
“Oh, sorry!” Celeste said. “Uh, the door was open.”
She could feel her face turning red. For some reason, seeing him when he’d clearly just woken up was like walking in on him in the shower or something. “I’ll come back later,” she stammered and felt for the door latch behind her.
“Hey, why are you leaving?” Nick asked, calmly finishing his juice. He didn’t seem the least surprised to see her in his kitchen. “What’s up?”
“Oh, um, nothing,” Celeste said. Why was she still acting like an idiot? Come on, Celeste, she told herself sternly. He’s wearing gym shorts. Get a grip! She shook her head. “Actually, yeah, there is something. Have you talked to Devon yet?”
Nick shook his head. “No. Why?”
“Well, she got into that acting program she wanted to go to in Scotland. And she’s leaving tomorrow morning for the rest of the summer.” Celeste looked down at her worn boat shoes.
“Ohhh,” Nick said.
“So,” Celeste said continued. “I guess—”
“Do you want to go get some breakfast?” Nick asked abruptly. He turned and started heading out of the room.
“Well, um,” Celeste stammered. “I just wanted to tell you that—”
Nick was heading down the hall. “There’ve got to be some places in town, right? I’ve barely been out of the resort since we got here. I’ll just put on some clothes… .”
His voice trailed away and Celeste could hear a distant door slam.
She stood in the center of the entryway, in the perfect silence of the airy guesthouse. This wasn’t really going like she’d expected. Nick didn’t even seem concerned that Devon was gone. She had to make him
understand how important this party was—and that their relationship was going to stay strictly business. A checklist of all the things she needed to do today whirled through her head until Nick reappeared in jeans and a worn gray T-shirt. He slapped his back pocket to check for his wallet.
“Ready?” he asked Celeste, pulling a set of car keys from his pocket.
“Um.” She looked at her watch. “I’m not technically on duty until noon, but I probably should check the—”
She didn’t finish her sentence. Nick was already out the door, heading down the path to an Alfa Romeo coupe parked in the driveway.
“Wow,” Celeste said, momentarily diverted. “Where’d you get this car? I thought you guys had a Mercedes.”
Nick slid into the driver’s seat and leaned across to open the passenger door for Celeste. “We do, but my dad was getting tired of it. He had this baby driven up from L.A. the other day. Nice, huh?” He turned the key in the ignition and listened appreciatively to the roar of the engine.
“Yeah.” Celeste climbed in. “So, Mary’s Food Shack in Red Dunes is good for breakfast. They’ve got eggs and bacon and stuff. The town’s like five miles from here or so.”
“Awesome.” Nick threw the car into gear and floored the accelerator. Outside the gates, he turned onto the two-lane road that ran from the resort into town and punched the radio. “Free Fallin’” by Tom Petty came on.
Celeste rolled down her window and let the wind blow through her hair. It felt great to be zipping along like this, encased in buttery soft leather, instead of folding endless towels in the sun or fetching lemon water and carrying yoga mats for the rarely appreciative guests.
“And I’m free … free fallin’ …” Tom cried on the radio.
“I love this song!” Nick shouted over the wind whipping through the car. Celeste couldn’t help grinning.
“Me too,” she confessed. “Tom Petty was actually one of my first concerts.”
“No way!” Nick glanced over. “I saw him in San
Francisco once.”
Wow. An actual conversation with Nick Saunders.
Weird. “The café’s up here on the right,” Celeste told him as they entered Red Dunes and slowed down a bit.
She pointed to a little yellow building on the main street. Nick pulled into a parking space next to an aqua blue Toyota Prius. Even though Red Dunes was only a few miles from Palm Springs, it was still small and sleepy enough to have slant parking on Main Street. The tourists spent all their time at the resorts just outside of town. It was mostly just locals who came around here.
“They have amazing bacon,” Celeste said as they
pushed through the glass door and into the steamy interior of Mary’s. The heavenly smell of frying grease and coffee hit them full in the face. The place was crowded with people from town and various resort employees but they managed to nab a booth by the window.
Celeste slid across the slick red leather seat and grabbed the hem of her white skirt as it rode up on her thighs, practically flashing her nude-colored bikini to the whole restaurant. Quickly, she glanced at her breakfast companion, but he didn’t even seem to have noticed. He was busy studying the one-page menu encased in limp plastic. It was a little weird, Celeste thought, being out like this with him. There had been no flirting since they left the resort, just basic friendliness.
“Hi there.”
Nick and Celeste looked up. A plump, gray-haired waitress with a stained white apron around her ample middle was standing over them, her pen poised. “What can I get you?”
“I’ll have the oatmeal with strawberries and a side of bacon, please,” Celeste said. “And a coffee.”
“I’ll have the three-egg breakfast, scrambled, with home fries, toast, a double order of bacon, a short stack of pancakes, and the fruit bowl. And a large orange juice and a large coffee.” Nick smiled pleasantly and handed back the menu. “Thanks.”
Celeste was staring at him with her mouth open.
“Nice breakfast,” she said. Nick shrugged.
“I’m always starving. I probably have a tapeworm or something.”
Celeste took a deep breath. “Okay, look, Nick, we have to talk.”
He arranged his face in an innocent expression and folded his hands like a little boy in school. “What ith it, Mithith Tippen?” he asked in a lisp.
“Be serious—this is important. Devon’s leaving,” she began.
“Right,” he said.
“So, my dad wants”—Celeste hesitated–“me to be in charge of planning the screening party with you. Like figuring out the theme, hiring the vendors and the band, getting the stuff for the film showing in place, doing the publicity—everything.” She watched him carefully. His face remained totally blank and neutral. She went on.
“And this party is going to be a really big deal—like huge.
I mean, the whole festival is a big deal. This is really our chance to show the guests what Pinyon can do.”
Nick nodded. “I get it. I mean, I want this to be perfect as much as you do—if my film gets a good reception, who knows what could happen? Maybe it would even get picked up… .” His face turned red and he looked down at his hands and fidgeted with a paper napkin.
Celeste raised her eyebrows. This was the first time she’d actually seen the suave and cool Nick actually look, sort of, well, unsure.
Nick looked up from the napkin, which he had
impaled on the tines of his fork. “So all this is actually just me being selfish. And you can always count on me to pull through with that, right?” His old devilish grin flashed across his face, and he sat back, draping one arm over the back of the booth and stretching his legs out under the table.
“Here you go.” The waitress set down their food.
Celeste stirred her oatmeal and watched Nick stuff half his eggs into his mouth in the first bite.
“So, what’s the deal with your movie, anyway?”
Celeste asked, pouring milk over the oatmeal so that it swirled with the brown sugar on top. “I mean, don’t you spend all you
r time hanging out with the Olsen twins and Rumer Willis at clubs?” she teased. “When did you find time to do actual work?”
Nick laid several strips of bacon on top of his toast, which he’d slathered in butter and jelly, and put another piece of toast on top. He looked at the whole thing with satisfaction and took a huge bite. “Ashfter …” he tried to say, spraying a few crumbs across the table. He held up a finger. Celeste waited while he chewed. He tried again.
“After I finished the film for my film studies class, I thought it could be better if I took more time with it.” He shrugged. “So I got permission to use the editing studio at UCLA and worked on it a bunch this year.”
“Yeah?” Celeste said, spooning up some oatmeal.
“Most people wouldn’t work on something after it was due, if it was for a class.”
Nick shrugged. “Well, it was my project. I wanted it to be good.” He took another gargantuan bite of his toast-and-bacon sandwich.
“Yeah, I totally know what you mean,” Celeste said, a little more enthusiastically than she’d intended. Nick looked up, surprised.
Celeste focused on her oatmeal bowl instead of meeting his eyes. The words had just slipped out.
“What do you mean? Do you have a film too?” Nick asked.
Celeste could feel her face getting hot. She stirred her coffee a little too hard, slopping some out onto the table. “Um, no, not a film or anything. It’s just that I did that once with a story,” she mumbled, laying her napkin over the coffee spill and watching the brown liquid spread across the white paper.
Nick looked interested. “What are you, a writer or something?”
Celeste looked at the ceiling and then out the window, hoping that if she just ignored the question, he would forget about it and they could move on to another subject. But when she looked back at Nick, he was still waiting for an answer. She dropped her eyes to her plate and nibbled at a strip of bacon.
“I’m not really,” she said. “I just like to write stories and stuff sometimes. Just for myself.”
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