Annie settled into her seat for the brief flight to Paris. She sat next to an old woman who said she was going to visit her daughter there. After they landed, Annie wandered around the Paris airport. Charlie called her on her cell phone, the moment she turned it on after the flight.
“I miss you already,” he said mournfully. “Come back. What am I going to do without you for a week?” It was unlike him to be that clingy, and it touched her that he was. They had been together so much that this trip was hard for both of them. It made her realize how attached to each other they had become.
“You'll have fun in Pompeii,” she reassured him, “and I'll be back in a few days. I'll bring you back some peanut butter,” she promised. He'd been complaining about missing it since he arrived. There was nothing about the States that Annie missed, except her family. Otherwise she loved living in Italy, and had adapted totally to the culture, language, habits, and food in the past two years. In fact, it was always a form of culture shock now when she went back. She missed Italy more than she did the States, which was part of why she wanted to stay. She felt so totally at home there, as though this were meant to be her place. She hated to give that up, if Charlie wanted her to go back to the States with him in six months. She felt torn between a man she loved, and a place where she felt so comfortable and at ease in her own skin, as though she had lived there all her life. Her Italian was fluent as well.
The Air France flight left Charles de Gaulle airport on time. Annie knew Candy had left the same airport six hours before, but Candy hadn't wanted to wait and go on Annie's flight, mostly because Candy flew first class, and Annie flew economy. But Candy was selfsupporting and Annie wasn't. She wouldn't have considered flying first class at her parents' expense, and Candy said she'd rather die than fly in economy, squashed into a seat, with no leg room, and people squeezed into their seats on either side, unable to lie down. The first-class seats turned into proper beds, and she had no desire to miss out on that. She told Annie she'd see her at home. She had thought of paying the difference in her fare but knew that Annie would never take charity from her sister.
Annie was perfectly content in her economy seat as the plane took off. And although she missed Charlie, just thinking about seeing her family made her impatient to get home. She sat back in her seat with a smile, and closed her eyes, thinking of them.
Chapter 3
Tammy's day in Los Angeles was totally insane. She was at her desk by eight o'clock that morning, trying to get everything done before she left. The show she had produced for three years was on hiatus for the summer, but she was already busy organizing the following season. Their star had announced she was pregnant with twins the week before. Their male lead had been arrested for drugs, and it had been hushed up. They had fired two of their actors at the end of the last season, and they still had to be replaced. There was a threatened strike of the sound technicians that could delay the start of their next season, and one of their sponsors was threatening to move to another show. She had messages on her desk from lawyers about contracts and from agents who were returning her calls. She had about six hundred balls in the air, all of them part of the complicated logistics of producing a hit prime-time TV show.
Tammy had majored in television and communications at UCLA, and stayed on in Los Angeles afterward as the assistant executive producer of a longtime successful show. She'd worked on two shows after that; done a brief stint in reality TV, which she had hated; and worked on a dating show. For the last three years she had produced Doctors, a show about the practice of four women doctors. It had been the number-one show for the past two seasons. All Tammy ever did was work. Her last relationship had ended nearly two years ago. Since then she'd had two dates with men she had hated. She felt like she never had the time to meet anyone else or the energy to go anywhere when she finally left the office at night. Her best friend was Juanita, her three-pound toy chihuahua who sat under her desk and slept while Tammy worked.
Tammy was turning thirty in September, and her sisters teased her that she was going to be an old maid. They were probably right. At twenty-nine, she had no time to date, meet men, get her hair done, read magazines, or go anywhere for the weekend. It was the price she was willing to pay for creating and producing a hit television show. They had won two Emmys for the last two seasons. Their ratings had gone through the roof. The network and sponsors loved them, but she knew better than anyone that that would be the case only as long as their ratings stayed up. Any downward shift would drop-kick them into oblivion. Hit shows had gone from the top to the bottom faster than anyone could blink. Especially with their major star pregnant and on bedrest. It was going to be a major challenge to overcome, and Tammy didn't know how she would do it. Yet. She knew she'd solve the problems, as she always did. She was a genius at pulling rabbits out of a hat and saving the day.
By ten-thirty that morning, Tammy had returned all her phone calls, spoken to four agents, answered all her e-mails, and given her assistant a stack of letters to type. She needed to sign them before she left, and she had to leave for the airport at one for a three o'clock flight to New York. It was impossible to explain to her family what her life looked like on an everyday basis, and what kind of pressure she was under to keep the show on top of the ratings charts. After grabbing her third cup of coffee, she walked back into her office, glancing down at the tiny dog sleeping soundly under her desk. Juanita lifted her head, blinked, rolled over on her side, and went back to sleep. Tammy had had Juanita since college and took her everywhere with her. She was cinnamon-colored and shivered whenever she wasn't wearing a cashmere sweater. When Tammy left her office to do errands or go to lunch, she stuck Juanita in her purse. She carried an Hermès Birkin bag that was the perfect carrier for her tiny friend.
“Hi, Juanie. How're you doing, sweetheart?” The little dog moaned softly, and went back to sleep under the desk. People who came to see Tammy often in the office knew to watch where they walked. If anything happened to Juanita, it would kill Tammy. She was unnaturally attached to her dog, as her mother had commented more than once. She was a replacement for everything Tammy didn't have in her life, a man, children, women friends to hang out with, her sisters on a daily basis since they had all left home. Juanita seemed to be the sole recipient of all of Tammy's love. Juanita had gotten lost in the building once, and everyone had joined the search, while Tammy cried uncontrollably and even ran out to the street, looking for her. They had found her sound asleep next to a space heater on the set. She was famous all over the building now, as was Tammy, for her enormous success with the show, and her obsession with her dog.
Tammy was a stunning-looking woman, with a mane of long curly red hair that was so lush and luxurious that people accused her of wearing a wig sometimes, but it was all her own. It was the same color as her mother's, a bright fiery red, and she had green eyes, and a dusting of freckles across her nose and cheekbones, which made her look impish and young. She was the shortest of her sisters with a young girl's body, and irresistible charm when she wasn't running in fourteen directions and a nervous wreck about her show. Getting out of her office and onto a plane was almost like severing an umbilical cord, but she always went home for the Fourth of July to be with her sisters and parents. It was a good time of year to go, with the actors on hiatus.