“Don’t they know who you are?” Olivia asked as she nodded at the maître d’. She gestured at the table behind the couple and allowed her suave employee to place a napkin on her lap with a flourish.
Camden perused the dessert menu. “Of course they don’t know me,” he whispered. “Blake Talbot, like everyone in Hollywood and across our little blue planet, believes that I am a woman named Milano Cruise, remember? Shall we partake of the chocolate crème brûlée?”
Olivia only needed to raise her eyes and a waiter instantly appeared. She ordered Camden’s dessert along with two decaffeinated cappuccinos.
“Now the trick,” Camden whispered, “is for us to pretend to be engaged in an important and intimate conversation. We lean in like so, and we move our lips every now and again, and we nod. Nodding’s good. And then, we listen to every word they say.”
Although she was skeptical of Camden’s plan, Olivia was too interested in discovering more about a member of the Talbot family to offer any dissent. As she concentrated on stirring cinnamon curls into her cappuccino, she overheard Heidi pleading with Blake.
“But I want this to be official.” Her plaintive tone was distinctly juvenile. “If you come to my screening, then we’ll be in all the magazines. It’ll make a huge statement. My mom and stepdad will see that you’re serious about us, and of course you’ll sell a bunch of CDs just by being in People. Come on, Blakey. Do this for me.”
“Heidi.” Blake spoke her name with an undercurrent of scorn. “It’s not like I haven’t been in People before. Besides, I told you that I need to keep up the appearance of being single. Girls don’t want to listen to the tunes of some whipped loser. They like to dream, to hope that they’d have a chance with me. I’ve gotta stay a fantasy. Being your boyfriend doesn’t fit with that whole picture. Don’t you get that?”
Heidi’s disappointed sigh seemed to blow across the room. She raised a flute filled with the restaurant’s finest champagne to her lips but then placed it on the table again. “It’s not fair.” Olivia could imagine her pursing her pretty lips. “But I can’t keep lying to my parents. You know how close my mom and I are. What if she calls Lila’s house? What if—” “Look. I’m going to meet with some people late tonight and then, tomorrow morning, we’re outta here. The Gulf-stream is all gassed up. We’ll climb aboard, pop a bottle of Moët, and...” Blake mercifully lowered his voice to an inaudible whisper, which was followed by a theatrical squeal from Heidi’s side of the table. “After one night in Vegas, we’ll be back in LA. You’ll be home in time for dinner.”
Olivia leaned toward Camden, whose gaze was fixated on the painting behind her shoulder. He waved a spoonful of crème brûlée in the air with his right hand. “Delicious!” he suddenly pronounced.
“He obviously doesn’t care about her at all. Poor girl,” Olivia murmured to Camden, shooting a sideways glance at the young man. She had to admit he was good-looking in a scruffy, rebellious sort of way. His black hair, dark eyes, and square jaw certainly lent him a masculine air, though he was far too reedy for Olivia’s tastes. However, she could see that other women in The Boot Top were also casting covert looks in his direction, for there was a magnetism about Blake Talbot, a mixture of conceit and coarse beauty, that most women found destructively fascinating.
Camden was unsympathetic to Heidi’s plight. “He never cares about any of them. Deep down, they all know it too, but we all deceive ourselves, do we not?”
“That we do,” Olivia agreed. “And you’ve got foam on your lip.”
Heidi continued her argument as Olivia and Camden fell silent again. “Why can’t I meet your friends? I don’t want to be in that beach house all by myself at night. I came out here to be with you.” Her pout was as extreme as a toddler’s.
“These men are not the kind of people you’re used to,” Blake answered flatly, grabbing the bottle of champagne from the silver ice bucket in the center of the table. He filled his glass to the brim and then jammed the bottle back into the chilled bucket without offering to replenish his date’s empty flute. “You wouldn’t fit in.”
“Just because I play a minister’s daughter on TV doesn’t mean I am one! You have no idea what I’ve lived through. I haven’t told you everything about my life!” Olivia and Camden found Heidi’s indignation amusing and they both smiled and nodded as though one of them had just received the punch line of a rousingly good joke.
“Well, you sure don’t act like a choir girl between the sheets,” Blake said huskily. “If everyone knew how wild Miss Junior Idaho or Indiana or whatever redneck state you’re from really was, you’d be on the cover of all the magazines.”
“Shut up!” Heidi hissed. “Oh, let’s just go. I’m not hungry anymore.”
“Oh, babe,” Blake purred. “I’m just messing with you. You know I think you’re the most smoking-hot chick in the whole world.”
“Notice he didn’t mention brains,” Olivia commented.
Camden smirked. “Or anything about her burgeoning talent.”
Unaware of the acute attention being paid to her, Heidi slipped her thin arms into a white silk cardigan and then folded the garment across her high breasts. “Then why won’t you introduce me to the guys?”
“The guys are not like my bandmates, Heidi,” Blake growled. “They’re not my posse—they’re a bunch of ex-con fishermen and knife-carrying scumbags who’ll do anything for a buck. Got it?”
“Then why are you hanging out with that sort?” Heidi asked and Olivia was pleased on behalf of her gender that the young woman had finally exhibited a hint of intelligence.
“Let’s just say I’m making an investment in my future.” Blake waved his hand in the air, rudely signaling for the check. “That’s the end of the subject, Heidi. We’re going.”
“Well, I just hope you’re not buying drugs,” Heidi said with a sulk. “I don’t approve of them, and besides, there’s plenty of those back home.”
“Right, like you’re such an expert on the subject.” Blake was openly derisive. “You’re not the one who has to rock your ass off in front of thousands of people. You get to sit around between takes, getting manicures and drinking mocha soy lattes.”
“No matter how much pressure I’m under, I’ll never take drugs!” Heidi whispered as she stood. “So I hope that’s not what your big, secret meeting at that gross bar is all about. If rumors about drugs or anything illegal affect my reputation, I’d be kicked off the show and my marketing value would go way downhill. I’m supposed to be a role model. Don’t you care about my future? I have two films debuting this summer!”