“Open, please.” Eduardo dunked another strawberry into the little silver basin of chocolate on the table in front of them and moved it toward Sam's Stila-glossed lips.
“I've had enough, I think,” Sam demurred, pushing back from the circular white table. She couldn't help but imagine her couture wedding dress splitting a seam twenty-four hours from now.
“Are you concerned about your figure? Because you know I think it's magnificent.” Eduardo whispered huskily in her ear as he put the strawberry back on the plate.
“Are you ever not a gentleman?” Sam leaned in and gave him a strawberry-and-chocolate-flavored kiss.
“It's a Peruvian tradition. Nice as can be until the ring is on the finger, and then a jerk for the rest of your life,” Eduardo teased as he lovingly brushed a strand of auburn hair off of her face. “Forever and ever.”
Sam felt the smile on her face falter, and was glad Eduardo was burying his head in her neck.
Until the ring is on the finger. Forever and ever
. To have her own fate tied to the fate of someone else.
Women had been doing it ever since men graduated from the cave and club to more sophisticated mating rituals. It was natural. It was normal. But was it natural and normal at age eighteen?
“How is the happy couple?” Mrs. Munoz came up behind her son and Sam, and put a gentle hand on each of their shoulders. She was elegantly attired in a tan Versace suit, cut simply enough to showcase the stunning strand of diamonds draped around her neck, just below the collarbone. But no piece of jewelry could rival the radiant expression on the proud face of the mother of the groom.
“We're doing great, Mama,” Eduardo answered, putting his hand over Sam's on the table.
“You too, Sam? This should be the happiest night of your life,” Mrs. Munoz rhapsodized.
“I'm fine. I'm good,” Sam nodded.
“Excellent.” She leaned down toward Sam's ear to whisper, so her son couldn't hear. “And if you wanted to give Eduardo's father and me a little surprise nine months from tomorrow night, I can tell you for a fact that he wouldn't mind at all. Neither would I.” She pulled away from Sam's ear and beamed at the couple.
“Giving her advice on how to keep me happy?” Eduardo teased.
“How to keep us all happy,” his mother replied, smiling.
Standing over them, Mrs. Munoz obscured their view of the party, and Sam felt as if she'd been blockaded in. Suddenly, she needed some fresh air. A wedding, that was okay. Being a mother? She was several years away from that. Maybe more than several years. Maybe a couple of decades. “Excuse me, Consuela. I'm going to walk back toward the tennis courts,” she told Eduardo. “Wanna come?”
He shook his head. “I'll hang out here with my parents. They're so excited about this—it's like they're getting married all over again. Come back soon?”
“Very.”
His dark eyes flashed. “Good.”
She gave him a radiant grin, nodded politely at his mother, and got up from her table just as one of the black-clad waiters poured her and Eduardo more champagne. On stage, Citron was starting another song. The girl was tireless. She was also outstanding. Couples were swaying to the music. Eduardo's brother and his wife. Jack and Dee. Ben and Cammie. Anna and Parker were dancing together, and Sam wondered where Logan had gone.
The rear entrance to the Polo Lounge opened onto the expansive, immaculately manicured grounds of the hotel. The bungalows were back that way, as well as one of the most famous hotel tennis facilities in the world, where champions like Pancho Gonzales and Alex Olmedo had trained when they were juniors, and where stars like the Williams sisters and Maria Sharapova liked to play when they were in town.
It was a cool, cloudless night, and a bright full moon shone overhead as she walked down the asphalt path toward the tennis courts. Well, no rain tomorrow. Maybe even no clouds. That was nice; there'd be a full moon for the wedding. Out at sea, a full moon shining. How romantic. As romantic as you could get for a wedding. And Paris was about as romantic as you could get for your time as a newlywed.
But would they even still go to Paris? That was what Eduardo expected. How could it be the night before her wedding and she
still
hadn't told him about her doubts? Nor had he even asked. It was like he expected her to come with him. Yet the film program at USC was so much more impressive than she'd expected it to be. As much as she had been jaded by Hollywood at times—she was still miffed that Marty Martinsen was blowing her off about Anna's screenplay—it was, after all, her home.
She could hear the thwack-thwack of players on the tennis courts playing late-night matches as she followed the asphalt path to the facility. About a hundred feet from the white clubhouse, she stopped dead in her tracks.
No. Please, God. She prayed her eyes were deceiving her.
It was her father, America's Favorite Action Hero. He was doing what he seemed to do best, which was to engage in a serious lip-lock with an unexpected lip-lockee.
Her mother.
Sam stood rooted to the spot. They were divorced. What was wrong with him? What was wrong with her mom?
What did this mean?
All roads led to a definitive
yuck
.
She fled back the way she'd come, back to the Polo Lounge. Eduardo saw her immediately, and she knew she must be looking as ill as she felt from the words he shouted at her. “Samantha! What's wrong? Are you sick?
“Sick, yes. But—”
Eduardo motioned toward the maître d'hôtel, an elegant African-American gentleman named Richard whom Sam had known since middle school, when she'd started coming here. “Call the house doctor! Samantha is not feeling well!”
Richard went straight for his walkie-talkie, but Sam cut him off. “I'm not that kind of sick. I just—”
She opened her mouth to speak, to tell him that it wasn't the shellfish, it was the sight of her parents together.
“I just can't do this! I can't get married tomorrow!”
The words tumbled out before she could stop them.
Django stopped playing. Citron stopped singing. People stopped dancing and talking. The waiters stopped serving and cleaning up. Time stopped. Sam looked from face to face. Anna. Cammie. Dee. Parker. And then finally, at Eduardo, who was now ringed by his family. Pedro's face was a mask of pure anger. Consuela's tight-knit brows and open mouth betrayed both fury and disbelief. Eduardo was simply ashen.
“It's okay, Samantha.” His voice was calm as ever, but his hand quavered as he took hers. “You've just got—how do you say it in English?—you've just got prewedding jitters.”
It was the strangest thing. She knew what she'd said was shocking. Utterly inappropriate. Guaranteed to make a scene. Which, judging from the circle of friends and family around her, she had done. Yet at the moment she'd said the words—or rather, they'd decided to come out of her lips—she'd felt an incredible sense of relief wash over her. She hadn't felt this way since she'd seen Anna's plane land safely at LAX nearly a week ago.
Consuela Munoz forced a smile. She smoothed her dark bun with her left hand, her enormous wedding ring sparkling in the light. “Yes, of course. Why didn't I think of that? The night before Pedro and I married in Lima, I was so mad at him, I didn't speak to him for the entire evening. Do you remember that, Pedro?”
“Of course I do!” Pedro was upbeat, and his broad shoulders seemed to relax under his perfectly cut tuxedo. “I don't even remember what the argument was about. Do you, Consuela?”
“I don't. No, Pedro, I don't.” She shook her head, smiling.
“What's going on here?”
Sam turned around. Jackson and Dina had just stepped back into the Polo Lounge, arm in arm. Her parents, so long estranged, had reunited—at least for the moment. She nearly laughed at the irony.
“Your daughter is having an attack of the jitters.” Pedro laughed nervously.
“It's okay, Mr. Sharpe,” Eduardo assured. “It's taken care of. Samantha, why don't we go for that walk to the tennis courts,” he said, squeezing her hand. His hand felt warm and confident in hers, and Sam wanted to go with him. But she knew she couldn't.
“No, I really mean it.” Sam looked at him pleadingly. “I can't get married tomorrow,” she said softly. “Or any other day.”
Eduardo looked the way she felt: utterly heartbroken. He couldn't even muster a sentence.
Consuela edged closer to Jackson. “It is typical of young brides,” she continued loudly. “I was just telling your daughter, I was a young bride myself. Mr. Sharpe, if you would just take some time with Samantha, I am sure we can bring this lovely dinner to the happy conclusion it deserves. Sam, how do they say it in the movie business? Can we take it from the top? So we will have a wonderful story to tell at your twenty-fifth-anniversary party?”
Everyone laughed at Consuela's attempt at a joke, and Sam felt herself weaken. Maybe it was just nerves. Maybe it was the shock of seeing her parents playing tonsil hockey. Whatever was happening with Paris and film school, she wanted to be with Eduardo, and to be with him meant being married to him. “Yes, I'm sorry,” Sam began meekly.
Suddenly, Cammie's voice boomed out over everything. “What the fuck do you people think you're doing?”
Her strawberry-blond hair swished around her head as she surveyed the stunned crowd, the light from the candles playing off her shimmery gold sheath dress. “I haven't been the best friend to my friend Sam these last few weeks. I've been a little busy with a number of other things, for which I am really, deeply, truly sorry.” She met Sam's brown eyes with her own, and kept them on Sam as she continued. “But I'm still here, and I still have ears, and I heard what Sam had to say loud and clear.
She does not want to get married tomorrow
. She changed her mind. When a girl says yes and then she says no, the no
always
takes priority.” Cammie walked to where Sam was standing and took her hand. “Sam? Yes or no?”
Sam looked at her friend thankfully and made a decision.
“No,” she told Cammie.
Cammie held her hands out wide. “Then I'd say it's time for everyone to go home. Have a pleasant evening. Robert Cray is at the House of Blues—you might want to check him out. And if you come to Bye, Bye Love afterward, drinks are on me,” she added. “Sam, come with me.”
Sam felt Cammie's arm go around her, and she followed blindly as Cammie led her out of the Polo Lounge and into the pink-hued lobby of the hotel, to the registration desk. There, they sat in low-slung chairs near a large group of young Eurotrash female models, each with a skirt shorter than the next. She nearly collapsed into her friend's embrace, inhaling the scent of her Narciso Rodríguez perfume and remembering all over again why she loved Cammie.
“Thank you.” She could barely get the words out.
“Anytime. Want to go get a drink somewhere?”
“That sounds perfect. But there's something I need to do first.”
The longest walk that Sam had ever taken was across the hotel lobby and back into the Polo Lounge. There, she found Eduardo still standing where she'd left him. His parents moved to him when they saw Sam, but he shooed them away. To his credit, he didn't back away when she approached.
“I'm sorry,” she told him. It was the only thing to say.
“So am I. I'm sorry that I ever met you.”
His dark eyes flashed, but Sam saw the very real hurt underneath. He turned and strode away the same way she had just come in. It was only when he was safely out the door and into the hotel lobby that Sam let the tears come.
Friday morning, 11:05 a.m.
“I
’d like an iced coffee,” Anna told the waitress, closing her menu.
“And I'd like a Bloody Mary, followed by a Manhattan, followed by a glass of Taittinger. Then come and talk to me about brunch,” Sam said crisply.
They were at Geoffrey's Restaurant in Malibu, one of Anna's favorite places, overlooking both the beach and the curve of the coastline heading south toward Santa Monica and beyond. Anna had been awakened by a phone call at nine o'clock, in which Sam had ordered her to join her for brunch. She'd have one of her father's drivers take her up the coast. But in case she keeled over into her tiramisu from exhaustion, could Anna drive her back? Anna assured her that she would. What were friends for?
“Anna, are you going to drink with me?”
Anna shook her head. “All I want is an iced coffee.”
“Add some Baileys to it,” Sam ordered the tall, thin blond waitress. “I can't stand the thought of drinking alone.”
“Will do,” the waitress said. “Aren't you Sam Sharpe?”
“No. Iced coffee for my friend. Start with the Bloody Mary for me. Thank you. Consider it an emergency.”
“You got it,” the waitress told them, and moved off toward the kitchen.
“I don't much feel like being Sam Sharpe today,” Sam commented as she watched the wanna-be-actress waitress walk away.
“That's quite all right by me.” Anna smiled at her friend. “You picked a great place,” she commented.
“If only I'd had my rehearsal dinner here,” Sam snorted. “I could have flung myself off the cliff at the end.”
Anna tried a joke. “How operatic.”
“How difficult to clean up,” Sam shot back. She let her head collapse onto her folded arms. “Am I insane?” she moaned.
“You did the right thing,” Anna said firmly. Since Sam was showing no sign of lifting her head, Anna looked around. The place was beautiful. The outdoor patio followed the natural curve of the cliffside; the occasional white umbrella shaded some of the tables, but not all, in case diners wanted to enjoy the sun. Morning glories climbed the side of the white main building, and other fragrant flowers bloomed in planters. The clientele was elegant—mostly couples and groups of well-dressed friends, with not a few obvious romances in progress. Diners had the choice of sitting at the large, plush booths or lounging on the elegant low-rise blue-and-white-striped couches that lined the deck. In addition to acclaimed favorites like the Geoffrey's Kobe burger and grilled portobello mushrooms, the menu always featured the freshest seafood available and changed daily depending on the market.