Genuine Lies

tear at the tissue paper until she unearthed a velvet pouch. “This rhinestone clip. I thought you’d wear your hair up, you know?” She demonstrated by sweeping up her own. “And snap this in. And the earrings. Shoulder dusters.” Eyes bright with excitement, she held them out. “What do you think?”
    Julia jingled the long, glittery drops in her hand. She’d never thought of herself as the shoulder-duster type. Feather duster, maybe. But since CeeCee did, Julia was willing to risk it for one night. “I think I’m going to knock them dead.”
    Two and a half hours later, after a long, indulgent female ritual of creams, oils, powders, and perfumes, Julia let CeeCee help her into the dress.
    “Well?” Julia started to turn to the mirror, but CeeCee grabbed hold.
    “Not yet. First the earrings.”
    While Julia clipped them on, CeeCee fussed with her hair, tugged at the skirt of the dress, adjusted the collar.
    “Okay. You can look.” Stomach jittering, CeeCee took a long breath and held it.
    One glance told Julia the dress lived up to its promise. The dazzle of rhinestones added dash to the long, cool lines. The high collar and long, tight sleeves hinted at dignity. While the back hinted at something else altogether.
    “I feel like Cinderella,” Julia murmured. She turned and held out her hands to CeeCee. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
    “That’s easy. When people start asking you about your dress, be sure to tell them you discovered a hot new designer. CeeCee McKenna.”
    Julia’s feelings of panic had escalated several notches when she walked to the main house. The setting was perfect.
    An ocean of flowers set off by a trio of ice sculpture mermaids. Linen-covered tables as white as the rising moon groaning under the weight of elegant food, champagne enough to swim in, the twinkle of starry lights strung through the trees.
    There was a glamorous mixing of the old and the new, Hollywood’s tribute to youth, and to endurance. Julia thought it was epitomized by Victor Flannigan and Peter Jackson. Eve’s long and enduring love and—if the looks exchanged were anything to go by—her latest flirtation.
    Jewelry glittered, outsparkling the fairy lights. The fragile scents of roses, camellias, magnolias, wafted around perfumed flesh. Music floated over laughter, and the ubiquitous dealing that used galas as handily as boardrooms.
    More stars than a planetarium, Julia mused, recognizing faces familiar to the screen, small and large. And with the addition of producers, directors, writers, and the press, power enough to light any major city.
    And this is Hollywood, she thought. Where fame and power arm-wrestle on a daily basis.
    She spent over an hour mingling, making mental notesand wishing it wouldn’t have been bad form to haul out her tape recorder. Needing a breather, she slipped away from the crowd to listen to the music at the edge of the garden. “Hiding out?” Paul asked.
    Her smile came too quickly, so quickly she was grateful her back was to him. Because he enjoyed the view, he was glad of it himself.
    “Catching my breath,” she said. She told herself she had not been waiting for him, had not been looking for him. Or wishing for him. “Are you fashionably late?”
    “Just late. Had a good run going in chapter seven.” He offered her one of the two glasses of champagne he held. Looking at her, he wondered why it had seemed so urgent that he sweat out those last few pages. She smelled like a garden at dusk, and looked like sin. “Why don’t you fill me in?”
    “Well, personally, I’ve had my hand kissed, my cheek bussed, and, in one unfortunate case, my ass pinched.” Her eyes laughed over the rim of her glass. “I’ve dodged, evaded, and avoided a number of pointed questions about my work on Eve’s book, tolerated numerous stares and whispers—relevant to the same, I’m sure—and interrupted a small, nasty quarrel between two stunning-looking creatures over someone named Clyde.”
    He slid a finger down the earring that brushed one silky shoulder. “Busy girl.”
    “So you can see why I wanted to catch my breath.”
    Absently, he nodded as he scanned the clusters of people over terrace and lawn. They reminded him of the most elegant of animals set out to graze in an expensive zoo. “When Eve does it, she does it all the way.”
    “It’s been a terrific party so far. We have quail eggs and button mushrooms from the Far East. Truffles and pâté from the French