Flawless (26 page)

“It’s idyllic,” gasped Scarlett. “No wonder so many writers and artists come to live here. I feel like I could design just about anything in this secret garden.”

“It does feel like a secret garden, doesn’t it?” said Nancy proudly. “Come and take a look inside.”

A wraparound porch led to wooden doors—Scarlett noticed Nancy had left them unlocked—that opened onto a light-filled sitting room. A comfy, white, shabby-chic sofa faced the big window. To the left was a simple farmhouse table and chairs, on which sat a vase full of homegrown flowers, dog roses, hawthorn berries, and various sprigs of sprouting green. To the right was a wall smothered from floor to ceiling in bookcases, groaning with old, leather-bound first editions of the classics—gifts, no doubt, from Nancy’s wealthy family. Set off the living room was a small, bright kitchen with faded red cupboards and a stove that looked like something out of a Doris Day movie. A small window looked out over the garden, and on its ledge Nancy had planted various
potted herbs, which sent a smell of rosemary, basil, and thyme wafting into the air, competing with the sweet, heady scent of the flowers.

“Wow.” Scarlett beamed. For some reason she’d pictured LA as all concrete and glass. But Nancy’s cottage was like something out of Snow White. “I may never move out.”

“Oh, please don’t!” said Nancy, grabbing her hand and leading her through to the bedrooms and bathroom, each room as small and white and perfect as the next. Scarlett’s room had a painted pine bed, made up with the most exquisite antique linens, a chest of drawers, and a tiny dressing table in the corner.

“I’m afraid there’s no hanging space, just a hook on the door,” said Nancy apologetically, “but I’ve cleared some space in my closet for you to hang a few dresses.”

“It’s perfect,” sighed Scarlett, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “Really. Thank you so much for letting me stay.”

“Are you kidding?” said Nancy. “I’ve been going totally stir-crazy up here on my own. We are going to have
such
a ball.”

Once Scarlett had showered, changed, and taken a catnap, she reemerged into the living room to find the porch doors open and a delicious smell of rosemary chicken floating out into the night air.

“Are you hungry?” asked Nancy, setting two broken china plates down on the table along with knives and forks and a pottery jug of homemade lemonade.

“I am now,” said Scarlett. Wearing the one sweater she’d brought with her, a threadbare gray castoff of her father’s that reminded her of him and of home, and a pair of bright-green sweatpants, with her shower-wet hair pulled back off her face in an Alice band, she looked unchanged from the gauche, gangly schoolgirl Nancy had first met all those years ago. “So come on,” Scarlett said eagerly, helping herself to the wasabi nuts from a bowl in the middle of the table. “Fill me in. What’s been going on since I saw you?”

“Precious little compared to your life,” said Nancy, plonking a hefty pot of chicken stew between them before ladling a scoop on to Scarlett’s plate. “No robberies, no fires, no poisonings. I’m starting to think I lead a pretty dull existence, actually.”

But as they ate, she told Scarlett about her writing and the joy of at last selling her screenplay: “It’s only an option, and the money’s barely enough to buy me a new set of dishes, but it’s a start, you know?” before moving on to the typically tangled web of her love life.

“What about you?” she asked, having finished filling Scarlett in on her dizzying array of recent lovers. “Any news from Seattle’s answer to McDreamy?”

Scarlett gave a coy smile. “We’re e-mailing,” she said. “We said we wouldn’t, but I decided over Christmas that I ought to at least let him know I was moving here. I had to get his address from his grandmother. I felt about fifteen.”

“And? So? What’s happening?” said Nancy impatiently.

“Nothing.” Scarlett shrugged. “He’s in Seattle. We might see each other at some point I guess, but…”

“But what?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” sighed Scarlett. “I suppose I’m sort of waiting for him to make the first move. I don’t want to look too interested and ruin it all. Besides, I’ve got a lot on my plate here for the next few months. I don’t have time for a relationship.”

“Well, the second part of that sentence is complete bullshit,” said Nancy robustly. “That’s like saying you don’t have time to eat or go to the bathroom. But the first part, I couldn’t agree with you more. Play a little hard to get. Works every time.”

Scarlett laughed. “How would you know, Lorriman? You’ve never had to play hard to get in your life.”

After a difficult year, and a typically fraught Christmas at Drumfernly, she’d been quietly dreading the move to LA. Jake had gone unnaturally quiet on her over the holidays, which she hoped wasn’t a sign of cold feet on his part. Even if it wasn’t, she
was miserably aware that they’d have a mountain to climb once she got here, building a brand-new business from scratch, not to mention generating momentum for her campaign. Many was the night she’d woken up in a cold sweat, convinced she was making a terrible mistake, with Jake, the move, and everything. But sitting here now with Nancy, in this picture-postcard house, laughing about men and toasting the future, she finally began to relax.

Tomorrow was a new day. And really, how bad could it be?

“Jesus Christ.” The real-estate agent honked her horn loudly as yet another smug Prius driver pulled into the car pool lane in front of them. “Where do these people get off? Dumbest law
ever
, letting ’em use the car pool as single drivers, just because they splashed out on some eco bullshit car. Now we all have to sit in goddamn traffic.”

Beside her in the passenger seat, Scarlett turned up the faltering AC to full. It was noon, and yesterday’s chilly weather seemed to have evaporated overnight as a sweltering sun pounded remorselessly down on the windshield. She’d woken up at five with jet lag, schlepped back to LAX in a taxi to collect Boxford, and rushed back to Nancy’s for a lightning shower before the agent had arrived to collect her at nine a.m. Since then they’d spent the entire morning driving around the city looking at possible sites for the new store, and Scarlett’s high spirits of the night before had long since melted away. Apart from the heat, choking traffic fumes, and irritating presence of Carla, the agent—a hair-sprayed harridan of indeterminate age with nails like talons and a voice so grating it could shave parmesan—the property they’d seen so far was all of a shockingly poor standard.

“Spaces like this on Rodeo or Canon go for up to two or three thousand a
day
,” insisted Carla, showing Scarlett around a dirty breezeblock square on a nondescript street in West Hollywood.
“You gotta have some imagination, honey. This place could be byuuudiful with a little bit of TLC.”

Scarlett thought of the boarded-up windows and closing-down-sale signs in the windows of the neighboring stores and decided that no amount of TLC could turn this dump into a successful, high-end jewelry boutique.

“Do you have anything smaller, but in a better area?” she asked hopefully.

“Like where?” Carla looked nonplussed.

“Well, that’s the whole point, I don’t know,” said Scarlett. “I was hoping you might be able to show me some of the options. Perhaps if we drove by some of the better-known jewelers? Neil Lane, maybe, or some of the up-and-coming designers? Jenna Halliday has a store in Los Feliz, I believe. Is that far from here?”

It turned out that everywhere was far from here. Carla tried rat run after rat run, but traffic choked every available street, and it seemed to take an age to drive a few short miles. In the end they’d headed back to the freeway and Beverly Hills, with Scarlett feeling exhausted and utterly disoriented, staring out the window and thinking longingly of her dear little shop on Westbourne Grove.

Carla’s cell phone rang, and an irritating cacophony of Latin beats filled the stifling car.

“Carla Berenger,”

“Hey, Carla.” Jake’s low, distinctive voice rumbled over the speakerphone like thunder. “It’s Jake Meyer. Is Scarlett still with you?”

“She sure is,” said Carla, smiling for the first time all morning and automatically checking her hair in the driver’s mirror. Even on the other end of a phone line, women wanted to look their best for Jake. “You’re on speaker, honey.”

“How’s it going?” he asked cheerfully. He certainly sounded full of the joys of spring this morning. “Seen anything promising?”

“Not yet,” said Scarlett grimly. She didn’t want to let rip about how ghastly everything had been until she was out of Carla’s earshot. She was also mildly pissed off with Jake for not calling yesterday to welcome her to LA, or at least to check she’d arrived safely, and was not in the mood for chitchat.

“Where are you now?”

“Almost at Beverly Hills,” said Carla, when Scarlett didn’t answer. “The traffic’s been a nightmare; we’re a little behind on our schedule.”

“Great,” said Jake. “Would you drop Scarlett off at Newsroom Café on Robertson? I’ll take her to lunch, and then I’ve got somewhere I’d like to show her.”

Carla’s lips puckered into a tight line of disappointment that she was not to be included in their lunch and afternoon plans. Having sat through an excruciating morning with this stuck-up, whining British stick insect, the least she deserved was a little face time with Gorgeous Jake.

“Remember, we signed an exclusive,” she said petulantly. “Who found you this new site?”

“Friend of a friend,” said Jake, not losing any of his chipperness. “Don’t worry, Carla, you’ll get your commission, whatever we take. A deal is a deal.”

“I’m really not hungry,” said Scarlett, who would happily have traded places with Carla and lunched alone. “Why don’t we go straight to the—”

But Jake wasn’t about to be put off. “See you there,” he said briskly, and hung up.

Newsroom Café was a bustling, sceney restaurant, popular with the wealthy shoppers of Robertson Boulevard, and when Scarlett walked in there was a line.

“Hello, stranger.” A beaming Jake kissed her on both cheeks, earning her dagger looks of envy from the bimbos waiting for tables, who’d been enjoying his attention until Scarlett arrived. In bright-yellow Bermuda shorts and a white Ralph Lauren shirt with yellow piping, he looked like a catalog model for the new season’s cruise wear, and she noticed that he failed to remove his Oliver Peoples wraparound sunglasses when he kissed her. “Expecting snow, were we?”

He laughed teasingly at Scarlett’s corduroy trousers, Ugg boots, and fleece combination, the latter borrowed from Nancy’s wardrobe and several sizes too small for her, its sleeves stopping midway between her elbows and wrists.

“It was cold when I arrived,” said Scarlett, feeling stupid, her cheeks flushing from heat and embarrassment. “It must be fifteen degrees warmer today.”

“Well, take your fleece off, then,” said Jake, ignoring the glares from the other waiting customers as the smitten hostess showed him straight to a table.

“I’m fine,” snapped Scarlett, pulling it more tightly around her. Underneath she was wearing only the skimpiest of tank tops, and she was paranoid she might have sweated right through it so he’d be able to see her nipples. “Let’s just order, OK?”

“All right, Little Miss Sunshine. What’s eating you?” said Jake, at last removing his shades and fixing her with his intense, violet-blue eyes.

“Nothing,” grumbled Scarlett. “It was a frustrating morning, that’s all.”

Jake, whose own morning had been anything but frustrating (he’d spent most of it in bed with the new
Grey’s Anatomy
actress, with whose anatomy he was now intimately familiar), watched her as she studied the menu. Still pale from yesterday’s flight, and with deep shadows under her eyes belying her jet lag, she wasn’t looking her best. As for that ridiculous child’s sweater she was wearing, it made her look as though she’d climbed into
the dryer herself and shrunk her entire torso. But the cute smattering of freckles across her nose, the huge eyes like pools of liquid amber, and the endless legs that, even hidden beneath those awful gardening trousers and folded under the table, managed to attract admiring glances from men around the room, all set her apart from the other women here. If there was such a thing as an X-factor—something that caught the attention without discernible effort—then Scarlett had it in bucket loads.