me in public again.’ He wasn’t looking at her.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Lana, feeling her fists clench by her sides.
‘Especially where it concerns our wedding.’
‘Am I not permitted to have an opinion?’
Cole’s face broke into a professional smile as he spotted an actor friend and his wife. A lot of back-slapping ensued as they greeted each other, before Cole brought Lana forward.
Thank God this marriage will soon be over, thought Lana. It was all she could think as she engaged in a conversation with the woman she barely knew. Thank God it will soon be over.
The reception took place in a five-star luxury resort on the coast. Hundreds of guests arrived for the celebrations in limos and private helicopters.
Chloe and Nate entered the hotel accompanied by Brock Wilde. ‘This is a number-one photo opportunity,’ he’d advised her days before. ‘Get photographed here, honey, and you’re on your way.’
‘I can’t believe this place,’ whispered Chloe, squeezing Nate’s hand. The lobby was huge, a glass ceiling gleaming hundreds of feet above and pillars soaring high into the vaults. It was like Daddy Warbucks’s house in Annie.
‘Keep it cool, babe,’ said Nate, grabbing a glass of champagne and downing it. He didn’t want to appear all simpering and tragic, even if he was a bit nervous. Just a bit. Chloe getting them invited to this gig was a major coup–he certainly hadn’t secured this kind of company yet.
The ballroom was packed with celebrity guests. Everywhere Chloe turned she saw faces she recognised, faces from magazines and films, faces she couldn’t remember the names of but had seen countless times–faces that were as much a part of her history as her own family.
‘This is freaking me out,’ she confessed. Brock thrust a cocktail into her hand and told her to drink it.
‘Not too fast, babe,’ chipped in Nate, swigging his own drink. ‘Don’t want you getting drunk and embarrassing us.’
Brock frowned.
‘There’s Lana!’ said Chloe happily, waving across the room. They had been introduced on-set a week before and had got on well.
Nate straightened his tie, depositing his glass on a passing tray.
‘And look!’ She turned to him, eyes wide. ‘There’s Cole Steel.’
Cole spotted Marty King across the room just as a lofty, very striking dark-haired girl walked over, apparently to talk to his wife.
‘Marty,’ Cole said, interrupting his conversation with another client, ‘I need a word.’
Marty’s expression was strained. ‘One moment, Cole,’ he said.
Cole had never seen the client before in his life, a young, pasty actor with pointed ears. ‘Now, Marty.’
‘Excuse me,’ Marty told the man, knowing where to hedge his bets.
‘What is it?’ he hissed as Cole steered him smoothly out to the terrace. The sun was kissing the horizon, a hot red circle on the lilac sky.
‘I want to know where we are with the plans, Marty.’
‘Cole, please, I’ve had things to—’
‘I repeat: where are we?’
Marty mopped his brow. ‘I’m yet to come up with a solution,’ he said. When Cole opened his mouth to speak, Marty barrelled on. ‘But I will. The contract’s a tricky thing, you know that. Give me time.’
‘We don’t have much time.’
Marty shook his head in confusion.
‘Lana wants out. I know it.’ He put his hands on the veranda, breathing deep the clean air. ‘Find a way, OK? You’ve got two weeks.’
‘Two weeks isn’t—’
‘You’ve got two weeks,’ Cole said again, his voice flat.
Marty closed his eyes. When he opened them again he placed a hand on his client’s shoulder. ‘Two weeks it is, buddy. I’m your man.’
Kate diLaurentis hadn’t let Jimmy Hart out of her sight all afternoon. There were too many starlets here and with a party of them staying overnight at the hotel, she didn’t want her husband doing one of his vanishing acts.
‘I’m going for a smoke,’ Jimmy told her, fumbling in his suit pocket.
‘No, you’re not,’ said Kate, smile in place as she greeted Danielle’s sister Freya, a stout screenwriter with bad hair and jowls. Kate noticed she hadn’t bothered losing weight to squeeze into her bridesmaid’s dress.
‘You look radiant,’ she lied.
When she’d gone Jimmy muttered, ‘Bullshit.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
He was still digging around in his jacket. She yanked him round as a photographer ushered them into the frame.
‘Smile, Jimmy-and mean it,’ Kate commanded out the side of her mouth.
Finally he found the cigarettes. In good time, as Kate had just spotted Lana Falcon talking to a very beautiful young woman with poker-straight coal-black hair that ran down the length of her back. She’d better find out who that was, and certainly not with her husband in tow.
Jimmy followed her gaze and she felt, rather than saw, his mouth drop open.
Oh, no, you don’t.
‘Go on, then,’ she said archly, shooing him away, cigarette in hand. Abandoning her husband and heading in Lana’s direction, she muttered, ‘If they don’t kill you, one day I will.’
Chloe French’s accent was what Lana liked best. It was quite proper and upper-class, even if Lana suspected she tried to play it down. She was impossibly pretty–it was easy to see why Sam had wanted her for the part.
‘I still have to pinch myself,’ Chloe said, sipping her margarita. Next to her Nate rolled his eyes, hoping to catch one of Lana’s.
‘It’s as if none of it is really happening,’ she went on, ‘and I’ll wake up in a minute and it’ll all have been a dream.’ She shook her head. ‘LA doesn’t seem real. I bet you felt like this when you started out … or do I sound totally crazy?’
Nate butted in. ‘You sound totally crazy,’ he agreed, wishing his girlfriend could act a little cooler.
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ smiled Lana. ‘Actually, I still feel like that.’
Chloe beamed. She had promised herself back in London that she wouldn’t act like an idiot around Lana Falcon but all that had gone rapidly out the window.
‘I don’t want to go on,’ she said, knowing she was going on, ‘but it’s all true. And you’re married to Cole! I used to fancy him so much at school.’ She was babbling. Nate’s pinch brought her back into line. ‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘that was a stupid thing to say.’
Lana laughed, a genuine laugh that came from her tummy. ‘Not at all.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘He’s something else, all right.’
‘Did you always want to get into the industry?’ asked Nate, hoping to make up for Chloe’s embarrassing behaviour.
Lana twirled the stem of her champagne flute. ‘Not always,’ she said. ‘I decided it was for me when I was,’ she pretended she had to remember, ‘seventeen. Which I guess is quite late for some people.’
‘And what attracted you to it?’ Nate was pleased. It was a buzz talking to such a gorgeous piece as Lana Falcon, even if she was so out of bounds it wasn’t even funny.