Love you, Rookie.’
‘Love you, too, Mom.’ She heard the door open just as she hung up the phone.
She knew he would take his coat off and greet Walter, which gave her just enough time to peel off the foil wrapper and unscrew the wire basket around the cork. She had remembered to bring two flutes, which she placed on her bedside table before stretching out, catlike, atop the made bed. Her nervousness lasted only a second, just until Julian opened the door.
‘Guess who’s staying at the Chateau Marmont?’ he said, his smile a mile wide.
‘Who?’ She sat up in bed, momentarily forgetting her outfit.
‘I am,’ he said, and instantly Brooke felt a wave of anxiety.
‘No way,’ she breathed. It was all she could manage.
‘Oh yes. In a suite. Where I’ll be picked up by limo and taken to the NBC studio for the Leno taping.’
She forced herself to focus on his good news and remind herself that it had nothing to do with her. ‘Wow, Julian, that’s amazing! They mention that place constantly in Last Night, US Weekly, all of them. Kate Hudson just hosted an all-night party in the bungalows. JLo and Marc Anthony ran into Ben Affleck by the pool and Marc supposedly made a scene. Belushi overdosed there, for chrissake. The place is absolutely legendary.’
‘And guess what else?’ Julian asked, sitting down beside her on the bed and running his hand over her mesh-covered thigh.
‘What?’
‘My extremely hot wife is going to be joining me, so long as she promises to bring this mesh outfit with her,’ he said, leaning in to kiss Brooke.
‘Stop it!’ she shrieked.
‘Of course, only if she wants to.’
‘You’re joking!’
‘I’m not. I spoke to Samara, my new publicist’ – his eyebrows shot up and he grinned at her – ‘and she said it’s fine so long as we pay for your plane ticket. Leo thought it’d be better if we went alone, just so I wouldn’t be distracted, but I told him I could never do something this big without you. So what do you say?’
She ignored the Leo part. ‘I think that’s freaking incredible!’ she said, throwing her arms around his neck. ‘I think I can’t wait to canoodle with you by the bar and party all night in the bungalows.’
‘Is that really what it’s like?’ Julian asked, pushing her backward against the pillows and arranging himself, still fully dressed, on top of her.
‘Hell yes. From everything I’ve read, we can fully expect Cristal-filled pools, heaping mountains of cocaine, more cheating celebrities than a high-end escort service, and enough gossip on an hourly basis to fill ten tabloids. Oh, and orgies. I’ve never read that, but I’m sure they happen. Probably right in the restaurant.’
Walter jumped up on the bed and, chin to the air, began to howl.
‘That does sound pretty awesome, doesn’t it, Walter?’ Julian asked, kissing Brooke’s neck.
Walter howled in response and Brooke laughed.
Julian dipped his finger in his champagne glass, put it up to Brooke’s lips, and kissed her again.
‘What do you say to some practice?’ he asked.
Brooke kissed him back and pulled off his shirt, her heart swelling with the sense of possibility. ‘I’d say that’s the best damn idea I’ve heard in a long, long time.’
‘Can I get you another Diet Coke?’ the bermuda-clad waiter asked as he sidled up next to Brooke’s lounge chair, blocking her sun. In the direct sunlight it felt reasonably warm, and although she thought the low seventies was a bit too chilly for bikini weather, her fellow pool-goers apparently disagreed.
She glanced at the half-dozen or so people sipping delicious-looking cocktails around the pool, reminded herself that although it was only midafternoon on a Tuesday this was still a vacation of sorts, and said, ‘I’d love a Bloody Mary, please. Extra spicy and two stalks of celery.’
A long, lithe girl who, judging from her astonishing figure, was definitely a model lowered herself elegantly into the pool. Brooke watched as she swam a charming sort of doggie paddle to the side, taking great pains to keep her hair dry, and called out to her male companion in Spanish. Without glancing up from his laptop, the man answered her in French. The girl pouted, the man grumbled, and within thirty seconds he was walking toward the pool with her massive Chanel sunglasses in hand. When she thanked him, Brooke could’ve sworn she did so in Russian.
Her phone rang. ‘Hello?’ she said quietly, although no one seemed to care.
‘Rookie? How’s it going out there?’
‘Hey, Dad. I’m not going to lie, everything’s pretty damn great.’
‘Did Julian play yet?’
‘He and Leo just left so I’m guessing they’ll be in Burbank soon. I don’t think the actual taping starts until five or five thirty. It sounded like it was going to be a pretty long afternoon, so I’m waiting at the hotel for them.’
The waiter returned with her drink, the Bloody Mary in a glass every bit as tall and skinny as the women she’d spied so far in Los Angeles. He set it on the table beside her, along with a little three-part tray of snacks: marinated olives, mixed nuts, and baked vegetable chips. Brooke wanted to kiss him.
‘What’s the place like? Pretty swanky, I’d bet.’
Brooke took a small sip at first and then a gulp. Damn, that was good. ‘Yeah, it really is. You should see the people sitting by the pool. Each one is more gorgeous than the next.’
‘Do you know Jim Morrison tried to jump off the roof there? And that the members of Led Zeppelin rode their motorcycles through the lobby? From what I’ve heard, it is the place to be for badly behaved musicians.’
‘Where are you getting your information, Dad? Google?’ Brooke laughed.
‘Brooke, please! Don’t insult me by suggesting—’
‘Wikipedia?’
A pause. ‘Maybe.’
They chatted for a few more minutes while Brooke watched the gorgeous thing in the pool shriek like a child when her boyfriend jumped in and tried to splash her. Her father wanted to tell her all about the non-surprise surprise birthday party Cynthia was planning for him in a few months, how determined she was to celebrate his sixty-fifth since it was also his retirement year, but Brooke had a hard time focusing. After all, the woman-child had just climbed out of the water, and Brooke clearly wasn’t the only one who noticed that her white bikini was entirely transparent when wet. She glanced down at her own terry-cloth sweats and wondered what she would do to look that good in a bikini, even if just for an hour. She sucked in her stomach and continued to watch.
The second Bloody Mary went down just as smoothly as the first, and she was soon so happily tipsy that she almost didn’t recognize Benicio Del Toro when he emerged from a poolside bungalow and collapsed into a lounger directly opposite her. Unfortunately he didn’t remove either his jeans or his T-shirt, but Brooke was content to stare at him through her sunglasses. The pool area itself wasn’t anything special – she’d seen many grander pools in ordinary suburban homes – but it had a discreet, quiet sexiness that was hard to pinpoint. Despite being only a few hundred feet above Sunset Boulevard, everything felt hidden, like it was carved out of a jungly tangle of towering trees, hemmed in on all sides by plants in huge terra cotta pots and black-and-white striped umbrellas.
She could’ve sat by that pool downing Bloodys all afternoon, but as the sun got lower in the sky and the air grew chillier, she packed up her book and iPod and headed to the room. A quick spin through the lobby on her way to the elevator revealed a jeans-clad LeAnn Rimes having a