Lauren Conrad - Sweet Little Lies - An LA Candy Novel

“’Kay.” Gaby jumped to her feet and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

Scarlett sighed again. This was such bullshit. If only Jane were here, things would be different. They’d be watching lame Christmas specials they had TiVo’d or doing last-minute shopping together at the Grove while fake snow fell around them. Scarlett could spend Christmas at the Robertses’ house instead of jetting off to Aspen; Jane’s family was actually normal (in a good way) and nicer than her own family. Mr. and Mrs. Roberts didn’t sit in total, icy silence at the dinner table, CNN in the background, cutting quietly into their forty-dollar rib-eye steaks. They didn’t spend more time on the phone with their patients than with each other. They didn’t psychoanalyze their children with comments like, So, Scarlett—do you think your choice to go to USC rather than Harvard or Columbia has to do with your unconscious fear of success?

Where was Jane, anyway? The note Jane had left for Scarlett in the apartment five days ago said that Madison had taken her to Mexico to get away, and that she’d be back soon. The problem was, Madison was the person who had orchestrated the whole Gossip scandal in the first place, and Jane had no idea.

Before disappearing with Jane, Madison had whispered in Scarlett’s ear that Jesse Edwards was the one who had leaked those photos to Gossip . So Scarlett had gone to Jesse’s house to deliver a few choice words she had for him, personally. When she got there, Jesse told her that Madison was the guilty one, that Madison had tried to convince him to leak the photos to Gossip , and he’d refused (despite being beyond furious about his girlfriend hooking up with his best friend). And Scarlett had believed him. He was a drunk, ungrateful, publicity-hungry man-whore. But on this one crucial occasion, he had been telling the truth. She was sure of it.

Desperate to track Jane down, Scarlett had asked Gaby if she knew the location of Madison’s parents’ condo…or had any contact info for the Parkers. But Gaby had been clueless, as usual. Although it was surprising that she wasn’t more informed, since she and Madison always seemed to be hanging out. Scarlett had also Googled the Parkers but had turned up nothing. Which was kinda strange, given the fact that they were supposedly zillionaire real-estate developers or whatever. Maybe they preferred to keep a lower profile than their daughter, who would happily attend the opening of an envelope if there were cameras there.

Whatever. As soon as Jane returned, the two of them were going to straighten out this whole stupid mess about Madison and the pictures. And they would work on getting their friendship back on track. So many things (and people) had come between them in the last few months: the show, Madison, Gaby, Jesse. Their lowest moment was probably when Scarlett had to find out about Jane hooking up with Braden from a damned website. She and Jane never used to keep secrets from each other.

Alone in the room, finally—the crew members seemed to have spread out into the hallway—Scarlett walked over to her desk, in search of her passport. She would need it if she ended up having to go to Mexico herself and drag Jane home. As she was rifling through the topmost drawer, she heard a voice behind her.

“Hey, you doing okay?”

Scarlett turned around. It was Liam, one of the cameramen. Well, not just one of the cameramen. Scarlett had had a secret crush on him for the last few weeks (speaking of secrets). It was secret because, according to the PopTV rules, the “talent” wasn’t allowed to get involved with the crew (not that a crush was the same as getting involved, but the former could always lead to the latter). It was a secret, too, because Scarlett didn’t really have crushes. She had a long and perfectly happy history of hooking up with guys once, maybe twice, and then never seeing them again. It had always worked for her. It was certainly better than relationships, like Jane’s disasters with Jesse and her high school boyfriend, Caleb Hunt, who had (in Scarlett’s humble opinion) strung her along long-distance when he started college and then broken up with her with some very original excuse like “I love you, but you deserve better.” (Scarlett’s theory was that Caleb had been cheating on Jane at Yale, but that was all it was—a theory. She’d never found any proof.)

Liam, her noncrush, was standing there watching her with a friendly, concerned expression. Wow, his eyes were so blue. The same shade of blue as the bandanna that held back his long, light brown wavy hair, and the same color as the soft, faded tee that accentuated his slender but well-sculpted torso. Scarlett had tried to ignore him all morning during filming. But now, alone with him in her bedroom, she found it was not so easy.

“Hey,” Scarlett said, turning back to her desk. “I’m great, thanks. I’ll be even better when this shoot’s over.”

“No, I meant because…Jane. I’m sure you’re worried about her.”

Scarlett hesitated. Liam was the only person on the crew who had been thoughtful enough to realize this. And she hardly knew him. In fact, they had barely said more than “hi” to each other since he joined the show in September. “Um, well, yeah.”

“I’m sure she’s fine. And this whole stupid media circus—it’ll blow over as soon as the next national emergency happens, like some It Girl gaining five pounds or Leda Phillips wearing something ugly to the Wuthering Heights premiere.”

Scarlett cracked a smile. He was funny…and nice…and cute. Great. “They remade Wuthering Heights ?” she said lightly. “Why?”

“Dunno. Leda Phillips is Catherine, and Gus O’Dell is Heathcliff. So lame compared to Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, right? And even lamer compared to Emily Brontë’s novel.”

“ Charlotte Brontë,” Scarlett corrected him.

“No, Emily . Wanna bet?” Liam held out his hand, grinning.

Scarlett frowned. Then she picked up her BlackBerry (courtesy of PopTV, so they could always reach her… gag ) and looked up Wuthering Heights on the internet. Hmm. Emily Brontë. Damn!

So Liam was funny, nice, cute, and knew his Brontë sisters. It was a dangerous—and irresistible—combination, especially for a voracious reader like her. (She plowed through novels in their original Spanish or French or Italian, just for fun.) Actually, she had seen Liam reading some of her favorite books during breaks: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Marquez one time, and Middlemarch by George Eliot another. It was one of the reasons she’d noticed him.

“Yeah, okay, it’s Emily,” Scarlett admitted. “What, you a SparkNotes fan?”

Liam laughed and pretended to look hurt. “You don’t think I can read a whole novel?”

“Well, maybe a short one. Like a novella.”

“Oh, that’s—”

Their conversation was interrupted by footsteps: Gaby wandered in and sank onto the bed, chomping down on what looked like cold pepperoni pizza. “Whatcha talking about?”

“Nothing, just grabbing the rest of the stuff in here.” Liam picked up a rolled-up electrical cord.

Scarlett smiled and gave a little wave as she watched Liam walk out of her room. He’s just another guy, Scarlett told herself. So why did she feel a warm, nervous, giddy feeling in the pit of her stomach? What the hell was that feeling, anyway? Maybe she ate something bad? She eyed the pizza in Gaby’s hand and couldn’t recall when exactly she had ordered it. She watched Gaby take another bite…and said nothing. As long as Gaby was eating, Gaby wasn’t talking. And that was a good thing.