Chapter 27
27
J ulia did a quick scan of the guests. “Hmmm,” she said, tapping her chin. “Who should I introduce you to first?” She pointed surreptitiously toward a woman in a mouse gray pantsuit speaking quietly to Ronny. “Look there.”
Ordinarily, the entire point of a mouse grey pantsuit is to not stand out. At a beach-themed costume party, she might as well have been wearing a flashing sign saying, “I don’t have to please the host.”
“Is that—” he started to ask.
“Della Rosings, Surf Summer ’s producer. Whatever you do, don’t piss off the money. Not even I can save you if you piss off the money.” She sent him a sexy wink. “But we both know you’ll charm the pantsuit off her—figuratively speaking.” She shifted her gaze to a different area of the party. “Still, let’s not meet her right away. Let’s break you in a bit first…” A half-second later, her eyes lit up, and she began pulling him by the arm. “There’s Rob. Something tells me he’ll appreciate you.”
Grant had no idea who she was talking about until he spotted a small knot of people a dozen feet away. He instantly recognized the person she must be calling “Rob,” and his mouth drained of moisture. He could have licked the sand at his feet, and his tongue wouldn’t have felt any different. What was a farm kid from Ohio supposed to say to Robert Roundtree? Julia left him no time to figure that out.
“Julia!” Rob said, turning toward her when she tapped him on the shoulder. She leaned forward and he kissed her lightly on both cheeks. “Congratulations on your latest and your newest upcoming project, but you have to cut it out. You’re making the rest of us look bad. Nobody can keep up with you.”
“Thank you, thank you,” Julia said, blinking coquettishly. “It’s very exciting.” She smiled toothily at Grant and hugged his arm tighter as she added, “And this is my newest leading man, Grant Mason.”
Grant steeled himself as he held out his free hand to shake the hand of a living film legend, but the gesture went unanswered. Rob gave him a cursory smile and nod before continuing his conversation with Julia.
“Hey,” Rob said, cupping his hand on her waist and pulling her closer to him, “I was talking to Billy the other day, and he said he’s got a script that might finally get all three of us on-screen together. Wouldn’t that be a thing?”
Grant slipped his empty, outstretched hand into his pocket like a child caught reaching for the cookie jar. For several minutes, he stood there awkwardly as Julia and Rob spoke and laughed in low voices. So that he didn’t appear quite as useless as he felt, he took a glass of champagne from a passing waiter dressed in bright yellow coveralls and a floppy sun hat.
Over the next fifteen minutes, his experience with Rob repeated several times. There was the flutter of anxiety as Julia introduced him to yet another impossibly famous person, followed by them ignoring him completely as they focused solely on Julia.
“Star struck yet?” she asked him as they moved away from a group that included two double Oscar winners and a Golden Globe awardee.
“I might be…if they saw me.”
She let out a girlish giggle that made her shoulders quiver. “Oh, don’t worry. There are plenty of lesser mortals taking pictures of my new arm candy.”
More like used gum under your shoe, but okay .