With no further ado, I hurried off through the crowds to find Amanda. Just make a good impression. Sure. No problem. I’ll just claim to be sleeping with the host. Honestly, I didn’t think it could have been worse even if Amanda had stabbed that peacock with her stiletto.
I found Amanda in the center of a group of men, laughing and talking like she’d woken up at the mansion and had just happened downstairs. As casually as possible, I wound my fingers through the crook of her arm and summoned her attention.
“Could I talk to you for a minute?” I asked with a hoarse whisper and a huge smile.
She sensed trouble and the muscles in her face froze. “Sure,” she said just as cheerfully.
We delicately extracted ourselves from the crowd, and she pulled me away a couple feet away, prepared to fully let me have it, but I beat her to the punch.
“We need to go. Now.”
“Becca,” she said testily, “I forced myself into Spanx. Now, what happened?”
I threw up my hands with feigned innocence. “Nothing that could have been prevented, let me tell you that! It all started with this girl who was impersonating a python, and—”
A sharp tap on my shoulder cut my story short, and I turned around with a sinking feeling of dread. Sure enough, it was my Medusa. Smiling and ready for Round Two.
“What is it again?” she asked with a stabbing grin. “Becky?”
I narrowed my eyes, brave now that Amanda was by my side. “It’s Rebecca, actually.”
“Well, Rebecca, you’re in luck.”
The dread was back, gnawing a hole in my stomach like an ulcer.
“And why is that?” I asked.
The girl flashed me another wicked smile.
“Your boyfriend just
arrived.”
Chapter 6
“Your boyfriend?” Amanda said it like an accusation.
Snake-eyes grinned like a mouse had been lowered into her tank. “Her boyfriend.”
A clammy chill started climbing up my toes before losing itself somewhere in my hollow stomach. My mouth and eyes went simultaneously dry as the belated taste of nail polish remover burned inexplicably in the back of my throat. I wondered if I was being retroactively embalmed.
“Yes,” I bristled defensively, “my boyfriend.”
Two pairs of false eyelashes fluttered angrily in my direction. Two pairs of perfectly manicured nails looked like they wanted to curl in and punch me in the face.
I decided to excuse myself once again.
“Well then, I better get his gift.”
“Gift?” the woman asked.
I stepped backward onto the foot of a caterer who was able to re-balance his tray of booze only by a miracle. “There’s a welcome-home gift I have to get ready...and, um...excuse me.”
The lies just keep piling up! What the hell is wrong with me!
William Colson’s Talent Agency be damned, it was time to abort. Amanda could drive the Volvo home. I’d just catch a taxi. With the disjointed pacing of a frightened gazelle, I darted this way and that—searching for a way out of this gilded labyrinth that seemed designed to keep people in. An easy escape presented itself as people began streaming outside, but as I eagerly followed, I saw a helicopter landing on the grass and decided that was the last direction I wanted to go toward. Instead, I pushed my way through the crowd to what looked like the service entrance.
“Excuse me, excuse me,” I murmured over and over, tapping uniformed shoulders as I tried to weave my way through an army of caterers. But each time I did, someone just tried to hand me another glass of champagne.