American Diva Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Epilogue

  Praise for Julia London’s delightful novels

  Extreme Bachelor

  “Fun . . . sensual.”—Publishers Weekly

  “London’s wonderfully entertaining Thrillseekers Anonymous series is deliciously sexy, clever, and fun.”—Booklist

  “[A] romantic romp . . . a fun, contemporary, second-chance romance.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  Wedding Survivor

  “Wonderfully sexy chemistry [with] plenty of humorous moments . . . Perfect for readers who like sexy contemporary romances liberally laced with laughter.”—Booklist

  “London gives us the pleasure of a celebrity tabloid without the guilt . . . In movie-speak, the novel is XXX meets Legally Blonde: witty and sweet with plenty of sparks.”—Publishers Weekly

  “A fun romp through the mountains with a side of adventure . . . an irresistible romance with some comic relief.”—Huntress Reviews

  Miss Fortune

  “Read this fun and fast-paced adventure of the heart. It will make you laugh, cry, and believe in the power of love.”—The Best Reviews

  “With saucy wit, London brings her delightful trilogy to a triumphant conclusion . . . [with] sharp, snappy writing . . . deliciously entertaining.”

  —Booklist

  Beauty Queen

  “A wonderfully endearing heroine, a delightfully roguish hero, some sizzling chemistry, and writing that sparkles with sexy, sassy charm . . . fabulously entertaining.”—Booklist

  “Another ‘knocks your socks off’ read . . . funny, sexy, and touching . . . one of the best books of the year.”—Affaire de Coeur

  “Winningly fresh and funny throughout.”—Publishers Weekly

  Material Girl

  “Great characters, sassy dialogue, and a feel-good ending.”

  —The Oakland Press

  “Simply irresistible. Precious. A polished gem.”—Reader to Reader

  “The romance is great, the sex is fantastic . . . A number one pick for your summer reading.”—A Romance Review

  More praise for Julia London

  “Her characters come alive on every page and will steal your heart.”

  —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Witty, absorbing . . . London’s fast-paced narrative is peopled with colorful characters . . . and not without its fair share of thrills.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Will make you laugh out loud!”—Christina Skye

  “Delightfully imaginative.”—Booklist

  “Romance and adventure, thrills and chills, sensuality and compassion, and characters you will fall in love with.”—Romance Reviews Today

  “Completely engaging and fun, as well as sensual and exciting.”

  —All About Romance

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2007 by Julia London

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without

  permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of

  the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY SENSATION is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  eISBN : 978-0-425-21564-7

  I. Title.

  PS3562.O78745A84 2007

  813’.6—dc22

  2007007167

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  AUDREY’S BABY BUMP?

  (Celebrity Insider Magazine) Pop-diva Audrey LaRue and boy-toy, singer Lucas Bonner, capped off a week of R&R in New York at the trendy new Vincente nightclub.

  Insiders say the couple were seen cuddling like two lovebirds behind a flimsy curtained-off area. An insider close to the couple says that Audrey’s recent weight gain is a baby bump, expected around Christmas. (LaRue’s rep dismisses the rumor of a baby bump as “ludicrous.”)

  Trouble in Paradise?

  Audrey LaRue to Lucas Bonner: I want some space!

  (Famous Lifestyles Magazine) Rumors have circulated for weeks that the long-term relationship between Audrey LaRue and her main squeeze, guitarist Lucas Bonner, is on the rocks. “Audrey has gone home to her mother,” a source close to both says. “She is trying to finish an album while dealing with Lucas’s ridiculous demands, and she has reached her breaking point. Mom is giving Audrey some much-needed TLC before she begins her summer tour in a few months.” Reps for LaRue and Bonner could not be reached by deadline.

  One

  Marty Weiss believed he was the luckiest man in all of Chicago. He’d fantasized about meeting the pop star Audrey LaRue since his ten-year-old granddaughter, whom he’d been stuck baby-sitting one night, had introduced him to her by way of MTV. From the moment Audrey had appeared on Marty’s wide-screen plasma TV with that curly blond hair and the bare belly and stiletto heels, he’d been bewitched.

  He’d sat on the edge of his seat, his eyes and ears taking in every inch and every sound of Audrey.

  The next day, he bought the two CDs she had released and played them over and over in his car. In a month’s time, he knew the words to all twenty-eight tracks. He’d read
the liner notes until he’d memorized them and had a concert date list for her upcoming summer tour.

  He’d also joined an on-line Audrey LaRue fan club where her most rabid fans posted daily. Marty became a regular poster there, offering his opinion about her love life (she’d been with Lucas Bonner, a second-rate musician, too long to Marty’s way of thinking); her oft-rumored pregnancy (she looked too thin to be pregnant, and as a father of four, Marty knew pregnant); and the meteoric rise of her last CD up the charts (spurred along, in part, by Marty’s bulk purchase).

  It was only natural that when Marty’s wife, Carol, began to plan his sixtieth birthday party, Marty would call an old business acquaintance in Hollywood and cash in a favor the guy owed him. He told his on-line pals that he was certain he could get Audrey to attend his party.

  The other cyberfans scoffed at him. They said there was no way Marty could get Audrey to a birthday party. One guy said he’d give Marty one hundred bucks if he could get even a reply from her record label.

  Marty knew that those cyberyahoos had no concept of the sort of dough he had to work with to make sure it happened. Thanks to his ownership of a series of computer chip manufacturing plants, plus some dubious connections with some “businessmen” in Chicago, Marty had some serious scratch in his pocket.

  His birthday party was Carol’s brainchild. She’d heard from her cousin in L.A. about an extremely private outfit that would arrange an extremely private outing for the adventurous at heart. “They did Olivia Dagwood’s wedding,” Marsha said as she and Carol spent a day at the spa. “I mean, almost—they had it all ready to go until disaster struck.”

  “Really?” Carol asked breathlessly. “I read about that in People!”

  “Mm-hmm,” Marsha said. “They’ve done a lot of dangerous stuff like that.” She said it as if all weddings were dangerous, and proceeded to tell Carol about this outfit—Thrillseekers Anonymous—that arranged extreme outings for a fee. Their specialty was extreme adventure with guaranteed privacy. But what appealed to Carol most was that TA worked with movie stars on a routine basis.

  When she told Marty about it, he was all for it. He didn’t care so much about the guaranteed privacy aspect, but some of his friends did, as they had some rather strained relationships with the federal, state, and local authorities.

  With the help of a couple of women from TA, Carol planned the whole birthday bash. It would be held on a private island off the coast of Costa Rica. They would do some ocean kayaking, some zip-lining through the jungle, and some waterfall hiking up to a volcano. Caterers would be brought in from the finest eating establishments in the U.S.A.

  When Carol asked Marty if there was anything special he wanted in addition to all that plus the two hundred names on his guest list, Marty said yes. He wanted Audrey LaRue.

  Carol thought he was nuts. “That girl you are so enamored with is younger than your daughter, pervert,” she reminded him. “And a whole lot younger than the whores you usually hook up with.”

  There were certain things a woman never forgave, and an extramarital affair or three topped the list.

  But Marty was steadfast, and seeing as how he controlled the purse strings for this party, Carol had no room to argue. Besides, as it turned out, Marty’s friend in Hollywood knew a friend who knew Audrey LaRue’s business manager.

  And now, on the day before his sixtieth birthday, Marty was standing on a private beach on a private island off Costa Rica and was already lit, even though it was just two in the afternoon. He was wearing his new Tommy Bahama board shorts whose waist kept folding over below his belly. His fifteen-year-old leather flip-flops were keeping the sand from burning his feet, and he was holding a scotch neat with a little paper umbrella in one hand as he watched the boat ferry Audrey and her crew to the island.

  Marty Weiss could not have been happier. And he could not wait to tell the cyber-fan club all about it.

  After two days of fun in the sun with the gang from Chicago, the Thrillseekers Anonymous crowd was exhausted. The four partners—Michael, Eli, Cooper, and Jack—agreed that this was one of the hardest gigs they’d ever done. Not sports hard, because what they were doing here could hardly be called sports, but hard like a big kiddie birthday party with unruly kids. Of all the trips they’d taken, this one had to rank right up there with Satan’s Wedding at the top of the Rocky Mountains, otherwise known as the meltdown of Olivia Dagwood, an A-list movie star.

  They couldn’t quite put their finger on what, precisely, it was about this group that was making this so hard. The windsurfing had gone off without a hitch, mainly because only three of the two hundred had tried it. The ocean kayaking had turned out to be nothing more than a bunch of fat guys paddling around the shallow end of the pool playing bumper boats. The hike up the waterfall to the volcano had included six trophy wives and one personal trainer—and not one guy from Chicago.

  They weren’t certain what made this trip so miserable, but as two young Costa Ricans strapped the birthday boy’s fat ass into the harness to ride the zip line down to the beach, Jack Price thought he had a pretty good idea—it just wasn’t any fun to baby-sit.

  As Cooper gave Marty Weiss a healthy push off the rock outcropping, Jack cringed—either at Marty’s girlish shrieking or the way the zip line bounced, bungee-like, to the tops of the trees and back up again, high in the air.

  “I said we should have done a load test, but no one listened,” Cooper sighed as they watched Marty land on the beach and plant his face in the sand.

  When TA had signed up to stage this birthday party, they had thought the zip line would be a safe, easy form of entertainment for a bunch of Chicago business moguls who wanted extreme adventures. But what these guys really wanted was extreme adventure without the extreme. Every one of them who’d ridden the zip line from the hilltop to the lagoon had screamed with terror on their way down.

  These guys didn’t want to do anything but sit on their asses, drink maitais, and eat. And that wasn’t what Thrillseekers Anonymous was all about.

  “Whatever happened to a little kite surfing?” Michael had complained last night as the fat cats danced a drunken rumba around them. “Since when did we become event planners?”

  “Since you saw the green,” Eli’s girlfriend, Marnie, cheerfully reminded them.

  No one could argue with her. It was true that they were being paid a king’s ransom by some of the richest men in the United States for this party, and wads of cash did have their own special attraction.

  Still, if someone was going to pay that kind of money, the least they ought to do is try a few of the excursions TA had set up for them. But oh no—more than one man had asked if there was a golf course on the island, and then had complained when told no, as if that was the only sport that interested them.

  As Jack and Cooper watched Marty’s pals pick him up and toss him into the surf to wash off the sand, a woman said, “Excuse me, Mr. Hunk, but Ms. LaRue would like to ride.”

  Jack and Cooper turned to see a pretty redhead wearing a pair of board shorts and a very tiny swim bra. She smiled at Jack’s crotch.

  “Who?” he asked, momentarily distracted by her bold smile.

  The redhead glanced up. “Ms. LaRue? The singer?” she said in a tone that suggested he was a moron.

  “So where is Ms. LaRue?” Cooper asked.

  The redhead jerked a thumb over her shoulder at almost the same moment Audrey LaRue, arguably the hottest pop star in the country, and dressed in very short shorts and a skimpy tee, picked her way down the path, pushing through underbrush and looking very irritated. “Good God, where is this place?”

  The redhead sighed wearily as Audrey cleared the brush and inched her way to the edge of the outcropping. She ignored Jack and Cooper as she stepped in between them to have a look over the edge. She craned a very lovely neck to see down, and instantly grabbed their arms. “Shit!” she whispered.

  “It’s a zip line,” The redhead said. “It has to be high up.”

>   “I know that,” Audrey snapped.

  “What . . . are you afraid?”

  Audrey gave the redhead a cool look over her shoulder. “No . . . Just a little.”

  “If you aren’t comfortable, you probably shouldn’t do it,” Cooper suggested.

  “I have to,” Audrey grumbled.

  “Why?”

  “Because they promised a sizable donation to my foundation,” she said, gesturing to the fat cats on the beach.

  Standing behind her, the redhead smiled at Jack again, and let her gaze slide down his body to his crotch again. What was wrong with this girl? He glanced at Audrey. “If you want to ride, strap up, sweet cheeks. We need to wrap this up.”

  Audrey glanced at him. “Where do I . . . strap up?”

  He pointed to the two young Costa Ricans standing a few feet away. One of them held out the harness to her.

  “Oh my God,” she sighed, and started picking her way toward them.

  The redhead followed her. Jack and Cooper watched as the Costa Rican boys strapped her into the harness.

  “What foundation, do you think?” Cooper asked idly.

  “Got me,” Jack said with a shrug. And frankly, he didn’t care. He’d had about as much fun in the sun as he could stand this weekend. He couldn’t wait to get off this island.

  Given how lame the entire event was turning out to be, the mystery of Audrey LaRue’s presence at this shindig was growing. The TA guys had wondered more than once how the real estate guys, who were currently splashing around like whales in a lagoon, could have enticed her to come to a private island in Costa Rica.

  “Money,” Eli had hypothesized over beers one night. “What else? That’s why we’re all here.”