by Zoey Dean
“Dad, you’re back!” Anna exclaimed. She quickly described the situation.
Her explanation was followed by dead silence. “I’d love to help you out myself, sweetheart,” her dad said after the depressing delay, “but I’m swamped here. Look, it’s just a fender bender. Swap the information, stay in your car and keep the doors locked at all times, and wait for Triple-A. Then take a cab right home.”
Anna’s fingers tightened on the phone. “Dad, that isn’t reasonable.”
“Well …” She could almost see her father tapping a Cross pen on his expansive granite desk. “How about if I send over my new intern? He’s an ace; up all night wining and dining some real jerk-offs for me in Vegas—helped make the deal happen. I gave him the day off. But if I ask, he’ll come over.”
Great. Her dad’s intern hadn’t slept all night, but her father thought nothing of waking the guy up to tend to his daughter? Maybe Jonathan Percy found it acceptable to impose like that, but Anna didn’t. Besides, she remembered her last horrid encounter with one of her father’s employees. Lloyd Millar. Anna had accompanied him on a drive to Las Casitas, a fabulous resort on the Pacific coast of Mexico that her father had also been helping a group acquire. Lloyd had been so obnoxious that the Mexican authorities nearly wouldn’t let him cross the border.
“Dad, the last guy you sent my way was a Yeti in a bad Hawaiian shirt,” she replied testily. “I’ll wait for Triple-A. Sorry to have bothered you.”
“Hold on, Anna. No need to cop an attitude.”
Anna winced. Cop an attitude? Jonathan Percy tended to boomerang between businesslike precision and aging hipster slang, but she never got used to it.
“Really. Sit tight. I’m sending the new intern,” he repeated patiently, as if she were a five-year-old begging for sweets at the Ralph’s supermarket checkout counter. “His name is Caine Manning. He’s twenty-two, Wharton grad. Helluva guy. He’ll be there in thirty minutes. Tops. Okay. Ciao. Love you.”
Anna sighed as her dad clicked off. Well, she wouldn’t mind a little assistance sooner rather than later, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t take care of the situation herself in the meantime. She turned around to peer at the dreadful redhead, who had gotten back into her car. What was the next step? Exchange information. She took the registration and insurance card from the glove compartment, found her license in her bone leather Kate Spade hobo bag, and walked back to the Honda. The woman was trying—and failing—to get her car started.
“It won’t run,” the woman practically spat. “Thanks a fucking lot.”
Anna believed in the virtue of la politesse, having been raised by a mother who considered good manners as important as personal hygiene. A lady did not curse out loud. A lady did not raise her voice. A lady remained gracious and in control at all times.
A lady didn’t accept being cursed at.
“Now you listen to me, whatever your name is,” she told the other driver, her voice shaky but her tone steely. “I have someone coming to help. He’ll get here as soon as possible. In the meantime, unless you are ready to act like a human being, we are not speaking. I’ll be in my car.”
Take that, she thought, as she turned on her gold Sigerson Morrison leather-and-topaz sandals and headed back to the Lexus. Anna Percy has balls. Well, figuratively speaking. She glanced at her Jacob & Co. five-time-zone platinum-and-diamond watch, which featured a gemstone kite in each time zone—an early graduation gift from her mother, who was off in Italy seducing a very young muralist. Damn. Sam’s yacht was supposed to leave soon. The unrealistic fantasy of making this party was growing fainter by the second. Not that it mattered; there was no point in holding everyone else up just because her car had been rear-ended by Cruella De Vil.
She got back in the pearl-gray Lexus and let her head fall onto the headrest. Then her cell rang. Ben. It had to be Ben.
“Hello?”
“Anna, Caine Manning.” Not Ben. “Your dad’s intern. He gave me your number. I just wanted to let you know that I’m on my way. I’m coming from Westwood; I’ll be there in twenty minutes.” His voice was assertive and deep. She instantly felt better.
“Thank you,” she told him gratefully. “I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. You can’t miss me. Lots of tattoos. Okay, see you.”
She clicked her phone shut. Huh? Tattoos? Her father had hired an intern with lots of tattoos? No. That had to be a joke.
Anna checked her watch again. She’d find out in nineteen minutes.
Four-Foot Eleven and as Bad-Ass as They Come
Anna was about to call Sam when an electric-blue Ford F-150 pickup truck pulled directly in front of her car. A brunette guy wearing distressed Levi’s with holes in both knees hopped out of the cab of the pickup and strode back toward her. He wore an olive-green Brooks Brothers shirt with the sleeves rolled up; both forearms were indeed covered in tattoos. His deep chocolaty hair was slightly spiked in the front, his chin shadowed with light stubble. Silver hoop earrings hung from each earlobe.
Had to be him.
He tapped on her window. She pressed the down button and immediately noticed that one of his eyes was blue and the other was brown.
“Hey, Anna, I’m Caine Manning,” he announced easily.
Anna got out, surprised to find herself looking up—way up—at him, since he was at least six-foot two, maybe six-foot three. She quickly filled him in and he soaked up all the details, nodding every once in a while.
“Okay, got it covered. Come with me, but let me do the talking—if that’s okay with you?”
“Why not?”
Anna was proud of herself for having taken the initiative; if Caine could get the insurance and other information out of the driver of the Honda, so much the better. She saw him slap a smile on his face and head for the volatile redhead, who now appeared to be chomping on an entire pack of gum at once. Anna followed a few paces behind.
“Hi,” Caine said amiably.
“Who the hell are you?” Before he could answer, the woman stabbed a stubby finger in Anna’s direction. “This bitch is in so much trouble. I could get her arrested like that.” She snapped her fingers in what would have been Caine’s face, if he had been eight inches shorter.
His response was surprisingly muted, considering the traffic noise. “You and I both know that you’d be the one in trouble for following too close. Be grateful my client didn’t call the police. She was simply obeying the law by stopping for a crossing pedestrian.”
“Client?” She chomped furiously on her gum.
Caine nodded, then asked Frizzhead her name.
“Patrice McMasters,” Frizzhead replied hesitantly, paling a couple of shades.
“Patrice, I take it you don’t actually have insurance.”
“Look …” She took a crumpled tissue from her pants pocket and spat her enormous wad of gum into it, then threw it in the general direction of Wild Women. “I know that’s against the law, too. But I can’t lose my car. I need it to get to my job down at LAX.”
Caine nodded. “Completely understandable.”
“I’m just so damn stressed out, you know?” Patrice nodded too.
My God, Anna marveled. This was an entirely different woman from the one she’d dealt with previously. How had her dad’s intern accomplished that?
Caine reached inside the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a Tiffany money clip crammed with cash and ID cards. He flicked out a crisp manila business card.
“My friend is an Allstate agent in Redondo Beach,” he explained with a calm grin. “Mention that you ran into me, Caine Manning—well, you might not want to use the words ran into, exactly.”
This coaxed a weak smile from Patrice.
“Now, there’s nothing that he can do about this accident, but my client is willing to walk away from this if you are, each responsible for her own repairs.” He eye-balled Patrice’s battered Honda. “I think you actually came out the worse for it, in fact. But there’ll be no c
laims or lawsuits. Sound good?”
“Sounds good,” Patrice agreed, perking up considerably. “But I’ve only got one problem. My car won’t start.”
“Let me take a look at that.”
As Anna watched, Caine opened the hood of her cherry-red Civic and moved a few wires and cables around. Moments later, he was slamming the hood shut again. “I think your battery cable came loose when you hit my client. Try it now.”
Patrice got back in and turned the key; the old Honda started right up.
“You’re a lifesaver,” she called through her open window.
“The license and insurance info,” Anna told Caine softly. “Just to be sure.”
“Smart.” He nodded, then turned back to Patrice. “Ms. McMasters? I know we’ve got an agreement here. But let’s exchange our information anyway, so in case there’s a problem we can reach each other?” A pen and small pad of paper materialized from Caine’s back pocket; he smoothly passed them through her cranked-down window. It was like watching a great hypnotist at work, Anna thought as Patrice copied down her information under Caine’s watchful eye. He compared it to her driver’s license and insurance card, then handed both back to her.
“Okay, ’bye now.” Caine touched the hood of the Civic. “Drive safely. Check your radiator fluids when you get a chance.”
Patrice raised a hand and started away as Anna and Caine headed back to her car and his truck. “I can’t believe … I don’t know how you …” She stopped, then started again. “Thank you doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
“Hey, no problem. She’s broke and she was scared, that’s all. No sense in suing her. Best thing to do is cut your losses and get on with it.”
They reached the Lexus, where he leaned against Anna’s front door. “Now, hop in my truck. Where ya headed?”
“Marina del Rey, for a party.” She took her phone off the front seat. “If I’m going to leave my car, I need to call Triple-A and ask them to bring it to a Lexus dealership. Isn’t there one in Beverly Hills?”
“There is,” he confirmed.
“Great.” Anna made the call, quickly explained the situation to the harried dispatcher, and then got into Caine’s pickup. “I just want to thank you again—”
“No need.” He smiled at her. Killer smile. He was so kind. Plus, he’d been able to read that shrew of a woman so well. He was right. She hadn’t really been mean; she’d just been scared to death. Anna studied Caine’s profile as he started the engine.
Well, well, well, wasn’t he the intriguing one?
Five minutes later, they were tooling down Venice Boulevard toward Marina del Rey. Anna had called Sam to say she was indeed on her way after her first L.A. car accident, her first ever car accident. Sam said she was now an official Los Angelino and that they’d hold the boat.
Anna put her phone back in her hobo bag and turned to her father’s associate.
“I’m curious,” she began. “How’d you know that woman didn’t have insurance?”
Caine shrugged. “I’ve always been good with people. They give off all kinds of clues to what’s really going on with them, especially things they’re trying to hide.”
“You should have been a detective.”
“Not for me. Carmen and I don’t want to work for The Man.”
Anna stared at him quizzically. “Your girlfriend?”
“Carmen. My truck,” he laughed, patting the dashboard.
She studied his large, callused hands on the wheel, and then the tattooed forearms. “An investment banking intern with tattoos and earrings. You can get away with that?”
“The earrings come out on workdays. I wear long sleeves at the office. Besides, your father has been known to loosen up now and then.”
More than that, Anna thought, recalling how she’d come upon him stoned out of his mind a few weeks ago in the garden gazebo. Her tall and lanky father was a very handsome man who looked much younger than he was. He wore his hair spiked and had told his daughter that smoking a blunt now and then helped him unwind.
“What’s the big tattoo on your right arm?”
Caine held it up; a stunningly beautiful woman was etched across his entire forearm, surrounded by lush seashells and swirling clouds. Her wavy hair was woven with vines; sunlight haloed her hair. The figure was vaguely familiar.
“Botticelli, right?” she asked, nudging her chin toward his arm.
He nodded with a half smile. “I guess you were paying attention in art history.”
“My mother collects Italian painters.”
“Don’t you mean paintings?”
“Both, actually,” Anna admitted. “What made you choose that one? Or is it too personal?”
They turned south on Ocean Avenue, picked up speed, and merged with the heavy late-afternoon traffic.“No big secret. My favorite grandmother was from Florence. Angelina Principesssa Filipepi,” he explained.
“Oh my God. She was an actual descendant of Botticelli.”
He gave her a curious glance, then changed lanes to maneuver past a slow-moving truck full of gardeners and lawn equipment. “How did you come up with that?”
“Botticelli’s birth name was Alessandro Filipepi,” Anna recalled. “Wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. I just can’t believe you knew that.”
Anna waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, I’m a fount of useless information. I must have read it somewhere.”
“Impressive. Well, my grandmother fancied herself a distant cousin of the artist—I have no idea whether or not that’s true. She came to America when she was a girl, put herself through school, and taught art at Fremont High School in South Central for twenty-five years. She was like four-foot eleven and as bad-ass as they come.”
Anna knew that South Central was probably the roughest section of Los Angeles.
“You got it to honor her. That’s so sweet.”
“Actually, we got drunk on Sambuca together one night and we both got ’em,” he admitted, laughing. “She raised me after my mom died. Hell of a lady.”
Anna couldn’t help but feel curious as to how and when his mother had died, but it was much too personal a question. She hated people who probed like that. What truly horrified her were the casual confidences she’d been privy to in ladies’ rooms. Once, at the House of Blues, a girl with punked-out black hair and torn stockings—Anna had never met her before in her life, and had never seen her since—had given Anna a blow-by-blow description of her recent diagnosis and treatment for chlamydia.
“Hey, you want AC?” Caine offered. “I hate the stuff myself, but it’s hard to hear you over the noise.”
She nodded. He closed his windows and flipped on the air conditioning.
“So, you’re on your way to a graduation party—your dad told me. I loved being that age; chilling with my friends, you know?”
The truth was, Anna wasn’t yet terribly close with anyone at Beverly Hills High, with the exception of Samantha Sharpe.
“It’s okay,” she allowed. “But there are some girls who will be at this party who make cobras looks like cashmere kittens tucked in a wicker basket.”
Caine’s hearty laughter burst like fireworks. Anna grinned back, stealing a glimpse at his laughing profile. What a truly good guy he was, tattoos and all. Gratitude to him, and just general liking, bubbled up inside her. She could be friends with this guy. She really could.
“Are you busy tonight?” she blurted out impetuously, remembering why she’d come to Los Angeles in the first place. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. A person couldn’t have too many friends; she guessed that Ben would really like Caine, too. “If you aren’t, you ought to come with me. There’ll be champagne at sea.”
Caine raised an amused eyebrow. “Aren’t I a little old for your crowd?”
“I know for a fact that you’re only twenty-two.” Anna could be spontaneous, but she was always prepared with the facts.
“There’s light years between seventeen, eighteen, and twenty-one, twenty-tw
o, trust me. Plus, I’m not really big on champagne.”
“What, then?”
“Brew. Ice cold.”
“How many kinds of beer are there in the world?”
Caine looked quizzical. “Can’t say that I know.”
“Well, however many kinds there are, my friend Sam will have them all on the yacht. Trust me.”
He grinned. “Overkill. All a person needs is one great one.” He reached over and slid a CD into Carmen’s sound system and cranked it up.
“King Crimson. You know this? It’s classic.”
Anna shook her head, but listened for a minute. Heavy guitars and a strong drumbeat filled the air, and over them a man’s intense but muffled voice. “I like it.”
“And I like you,” Caine said, flashing that killer grin again. “All righty, then. About this party … Count me in.”
White Imitation of Christ Jeans Covered in Dog Shit
Cammie Sheppard was the daughter of a Hollywood über-agent; she had wined, dined, and reclined with a stellar variety of hot guys on hot yachts since her early teens. Yet even by her own grudging standards, the Look Sharpe—the new 120-foot yacht that Sam’s father had acquired as the result of a three-picture, eighty-million-dollar deal with the most major of the major studios—was nothing short of spectacular. Now if only she could get this goddamn ocean wind to stop fucking up her hair. She was standing by the vessel’s teak starboard railing, and every few seconds a gust of air would blow her vivid strawberry blond ringlets against her Bing My Cherry Plump Your Pucker lip-glossed mouth.
A perfected flick of one OPI ballet-slipper-pink-polished finger (French manicures were so last year) unstuck them, as two well-muscled arms snaked around Cammie’s waist from behind, pressing her close. Adam Flood’s left hand held the necks of two icy cold Coronas. Cammie took one, lifted the glass bottle to her lips, and took a long swallow.
“Great view, huh?” Adam murmured softly into her ear. Cammie nodded in agreement, leaning further into her boyfriend’s embrace. Adam wore khaki cargo shorts and a white linen button-up shirt from the Gap—unlike Cammie and so many of her friends, he had no compunctions about buying clothes without designer labels. And, also unlike Cammie, he’d just gotten a buzz cut that showed off the small blue star tattoo behind his left ear.