“There you are,” Sam said, striding over and swinging an arm around her shoulders before he quite knew he was going to do it. “I’ve been looking for you. We’re all getting in the photo booth.” He grinned his most winsome grin at the executives. “Sorry, ladies. Need to find this gal a feather boa and some novelty sunglasses, stat.”
“What the hell?” Fiona asked once they were alone, sitting down hard on the edge of a massive stone planter overflowing with tropical flowers and taking a sip of her drink. “How do you know I wasn’t dying to talk to those women?”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “Were you?”
“No,” she admitted. She was wearing a short, fringe-y dress and sky-high heels, a bunch of chunky rings on her fingers. Also, though she was holding it together decently well—not to mention the fact that she was only eighteen—he was pretty sure she was shit-faced. She’d started showing up on the gossip sites by then, a few dicey scenes at clubs in West Hollywood and a well-publicized fling with a two-bit pop star whose biggest hit featured a chorus that consisted entirely of the words my junk, my junk repeated over and over. Sam had asked Thandie about it when they’d broken up, just casually, in response to which Thandie had fixed him with an extremely dubious look and told him that if he was interested in Fiona’s personal life for any particular reason, he could damn well ask Fiona about it. “But I could have been.”
“You could have been,” he agreed, “and I apologize.”
“I forgive you,” she said politely.
“Magnanimous,” Sam teased, plucking a grape from her plate. He wasn’t interested in Fiona’s personal life for any particular reason, for the record. He’d just been curious, that was all. “Worried about getting scurvy?” he asked, nodding down at the pile of fruit.
“Cute.” Fiona rolled her eyes, fingers brushing his as she picked up a strawberry and popped it into her mouth. “I’m on a diet, technically.”
“Really?” That surprised him. “Why?”
“Jamie says I’m getting fat.”
“Seriously?” Sam blinked. It didn’t sound like something Jamie would say. It was certainly not something Jamie had ever said to him, and Sam found himself almost unable to picture it. He wondered if maybe Fiona had misunderstood, somehow, but knew better than to ask. “What the hell?”
Fiona shrugged. “Lucky for me,” she said, raising her glass in a little toast, “vodka is a low-calorie food.”
Sam grinned, charmed in spite of himself. “How drunk are you right now?”
“Fuck off,” she said immediately, but she was smiling. “How drunk are you right now?”
“Moderately,” he admitted, and Fiona laughed. In the glow of the patio lights she looked—he tried to think of another word, and couldn’t—luminous, full mouth and long eyelashes and something faintly glittery slicked across her collarbones. Then, all at once, her face fell. “This,” she said quietly, setting her glass down on the planter between them, “is not a good idea.”
Right away Sam felt himself blush, like he’d gotten caught doing something he shouldn’t have; and yeah, okay, there was a tiny part of him that had been thinking about asking her if she wanted to get out of here, that was in fact more than passingly interested in her personal life and wondered if there might be a place for him in it. Still, he didn’t think he’d been so obvious that she needed to shut him down preemptively.
But Fiona didn’t seem to be talking about whatever intentions might or might not have been forming in the back of his mind for the rest of the evening. In fact, she didn’t seem to be talking about him at all. She ran a hand through her hair, her rings catching at the tangles. “I’m fucking up,” she said, so quietly she might have been saying it to herself.
“What?” Sam shook his head, not understanding. This conversation had taken a hard swerve when he wasn’t paying attention, and he wasn’t sure how to get it back on track. “Why, because you’re drunk at Sexless Prom? Nobody can even tell.”
Fiona shook her head. “No,” she said, “I don’t mean that. I mean—”
“You’re okay,” he said reflexively, and the words were out of his mouth before he realized how stupid they were. It reminded him of his mom running across the playground after he’d fallen off the jungle gym when he was seven: You’re okay, she’d promised, presumably so he wouldn’t be scared, only then he’d looked down and realized his arm was twisted at an unnatural angle, his hand splayed limp as a dead bird. He wasn’t okay, and—he saw it now, in her panicky expression—neither was Fiona. He felt young and clueless and out of his depth all of a sudden; he was relieved when he looked up and saw Jamie crossing the patio in their direction.
“Children,” he greeted them, lips quirking. “You guys plotting your escape?” He was wearing dark jeans and a tuxedo jacket, this afternoon’s sunglasses poking out of the breast pocket. He nodded at Fiona’s drink. “I’m assuming that’s water.”
Just like that, Fiona was herself again, saucy and wry; she took a long sip, gestured with the glass in Jamie’s direction. “My warden,” she said, smiling sweetly.
“That’s me,” Jamie said. He squinted. “Can you pull it together?” he asked, plucking the glass from her hand and placing it on the nearby tray of a cater waiter as they passed by in a blur of black and white. “Or do we need to leave?”
Fiona shrugged. “Only one way to find out,” she said cheerfully. She wobbled a bit as she got to her feet, and for one horrifying second Sam was sure she was going to take a header directly into the deep end of the pool, but in the end she corrected with impressive grace, finishing with a spunky little dance right there on the patio. “Look at that,” she said, and her smile was dazzling. “Right as rain.”
“Very nice,” Jamie said, sounding distinctly unimpressed. “Still, I think that’s your cue.”
Fiona frowned. “I’m having fun,” she protested. “I’m hanging out with my friend Sam.”
Jamie’s gaze flicked to Sam for an instant, then back to Fiona again. “I see that,” he said. “I also see that you’re about half a vodka tonic from making a fool of yourself in front of every entertainment reporter in America and possibly a Canadian or two, so I’m suggesting again that you call it a night.”
“Oh, is that what you’re suggesting?” Fiona looked at him balefully. “You realize, James, that you’re not actually my father.”
Jamie didn’t react to that, though Sam thought he could see a muscle ticking in his jaw. “No,” Jamie agreed evenly, “I’m certainly not.” Then he sighed, his voice softening. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said, wrapping his hand around her elbow. “It’s time.”
“Jamie, dude,” Sam said, the words out before he could stop to consider whether or not this was a situation he wanted any part of; a minute ago he’d been relieved to see Jamie—their boss, a grown-up, a rational person in charge—but now he just kind of felt like a snitch. “She just said she was good.”