Chapter One
Decadence, Ilana mused as she left a reception at the Beverly Hills agency that represented movie star Hunter Holt. She could almost smell it in a man: decadence-the reckless, hedonistic, blas decadence exuded by only the very rich and truly powerful. Living to excess ... she found it part fascinating, part repulsive; it was so foreign to what she was, and what she wanted to be. "Would you consider Holt decadent?" she asked Linda, her personal assistant.
Linda followed her into an elevator and they rode it down to street level. "The chocolate cheesecake was decadent. But Holt? He tries. I don't know if he's 'quality' enough to qualify as truly decadent."
"True. He's self-made. He didn't inherit anything he has. Or had, before he blew it all on drugs."
"He's more ... used. Like an old Lamborghini is used. Sexy, luxurious, still a status symbol, but if you look too closely, you can see the leather fittings are worn."
Linda's eyes crinkled behind her narrow, black rectangular glasses. "I don't think I want to know about Holt's fittings-what they look like or where they've been."
"Debauchery isn't very hygienic." Ilana laughed and snapped her fingers. "That's the word I'm looking for. Debauched. One step below decadence." Holt exuded it like bad aftershave: late nights, hard partying, and too much money. "But he's got talent, and it's bankable."
"If he can keep straight long enough to finish a film."
"If he led a boring life, no one would have financed our film."
Linda studied her. "I wouldn't think Holt was your type, Ilana."
"Are you crazy? I don't have a type. But I do know that I don't do decadent, and I don't do debauched."
The elevator let them out in a marble-floored foyer manned by a bored security guard. Outside, the July evening was tinted orange. It was nearly nine and it was still twilight. Glass doors swooshed open and she strode outside, high heels tapping out a staccato beat on the cement.
Linda had no troubled keeping up with her. Ilana wouldn't have kept an assistant who did. Besides, Linda didn't walk; she bounced along, as energetic as her short, spiky flame-orange hair. Ilana needed a Linda. The woman was indispensable during the chaotic days of filming and the post-production frenzy that followed. But now that Ilana was sifting through possible projects, so far unable to decide on any, Linda would retreat on vacation to her Torrance condo and her three schnauzers until Ilana called her back to duty.
"Don't tell me you don't know the type of man who attracts you."
"Available is nice. Not being possessive helps, too."
Linda sighed.
"Don't shake your head at my social life."
"I'm not shaking my head. Did you see me shaking my head? I'm only stating the facts. Available isn't a type."
Ilana fluffed out her hair. "It works for me."
"Because you've never stayed with Mr. Right-Now long enough to figure out if he's Mr. Right."
"Explain to me why when a man says he's a confirmed bachelor, no one minds, but when a woman says the same thing, everyone has a problem with it."
"I'm not talking about any woman; I'm talking about you, Ilana. I don't see you alone for the rest of your life, and I don't think you do, either."
"That's right. I don't." She gave Linda a sideways smile. "I have a good social life. I attract men."
"You attract them. But you never let them get close."
Ilana's chest tightened strangely. Maybe she did crave that closeness. But she wasn't sure it was worth the risk.
Monogamy, commitment, it might work for Linda and women like her, but she'd seen the flip side of the coin, the hurt her mother had suffered when she'd found out how long her first husband, Ilana's father Jock, had been cheating on her.
At a young age, Ilana had suspected that "Daddy was seeing other ladies." With a child's hyper-awareness, she could smell the faintness of perfume when he'd open his suitcase after returning home from his trips as an airline pilot, could tell that he'd been with a stranger, things her mother never seemed to notice. That innocence-or blindness-had angered Ilana.
She'd directed that fury at her mother, for not seeing, for letting herself love Jock, despite what he was doing behind her back. If he was with other women, it meant he was bored of his family, tired of them. Assigning that blame made her a sullen teenager with her mother, and a needy girl with her father, showering him with love and attention so that he wouldn't leave. While Ian had reacted the opposite way, becoming the perfect, devoted son, only in the last few years of college did Ilana grow closer to her mother. But the deep-down kernel of anger, of resentment, of fear, had never really gone away. "Giving someone that much opportunity to hurt you is crazy."
"I think if you ever opened up, Ilana, let a man inside that stubborn, smart-assed head of yours, you might be surprised and like it."
Ilana groaned. "I know there are decent men out there. I know many relationships truly work. But I like my life the way it is. If I didn't like it, I would have changed it. I'm in charge. I'm in control. That's more than I can say about most of the married women I know. If a guy loves you, he loves you. He doesn't have to give you a wedding ring to prove it."
"Bullcrap, Ilana. If a man really loves you, he'll want you to be his. He won't want to share you with other men."
She let out a heavy sigh. She'd had enough psychoanalysis for the day. Probing her mind was like peeking under the bed when you didn't want to find dust bunnies. All it did was remind you that you needed to clean.
Her cell phone rang. "It's Cole," she muttered, reading the caller ID.
"I thought you weren't seeing him anymore."
"I'm not." She'd broken it off with the cameraman the week before, just after her disastrous visit to Fly Without Fear For Dummies. True, he'd been a casualty of her shame over failing at that venture, but he was due to take a hike anyway. She'd been with him for a month, hadn't yet met anyone new, and she'd grown bored. "I admire persistence in a man," she told Linda, setting the phone to pick up the call automatically. "Only not after I'm done with them."
"Ms. Hamilton!"
Ilana's head jerked up. That's when she noticed the white news van with the satellite dish on top.
"Hell. What do they want?"
"Probably a few questions answered about Holt," Linda assured her. "Tell them how decadent you think he is."
"Yeah, right." Ilana lowered her voice. "I didn't think there would be that much interest in him. Not enough to warrant a van and a news crew. A phone call, maybe." She was an independent filmmaker; she managed to make her films on impossibly small budgets. She operated on the fringes of Hollywood, with her chief purpose being getting her movies made, the way she wanted to make them. The press didn't follow types like her around.
A woman in a mint green Tahari suit, a killer manicure, and a microphone in her hand waited in front of Ilana's car. Oh, no. It was Rose Brungard. She hosted a small-scale version of Entertainment Tonight, "Rose Knows," focusing on hot celebrities and parties they attended.
Ilana made sure her eyes remained mostly hidden behind a tangled curtain of curls. Whatever her opinion of Holt, she wasn't going to feed a gossip's curiosity. The man deserved his privacy, she thought, aiming her opener at the silver electric Lura she'd parked at the curb.
Rose's perky voice startled Ilana. "With official word reaching Earth today that Prince Ian Hamilton has chosen a wedding date, Ilana Hamilton, twin sister to the man who will become ruler of the entire galaxy remains the last of Earth's newest royal family to remain unclaimed."
"Un ... what?" Ilana blurted out.
The woman thrust the microphone in her face. "Who will Earth's Cinderella-heiress choose?"
Linda mercifully wedged herself between them. But the reporter leaned sideways. "The word on the street is that you'll soon announce your engagement, Ms. Hamilton. Who is your lucky guy? Or should I say, your lucky prince?"
"I'm not going to marry a pr-"
Linda reached behind her back and pinched Ilana's thigh. "Ms. Hamilton has been instructed by her family not to comment on this subject at this time."
To Ilana's dismay, the reporter appeared charmed by her silence, forced as it was, and not put out at all by Linda's intervention.
"This is such a Cinderella tale! Would you be willing to appear on the show? We'll do an interview, tour your home." She turned to her cameraman. "We'll need a shot of her in the kitchen, cooking a romantic, alien dinner-for-two."
Ilana's vision blurred. Either from hunger or from shock. Linda was inching her toward the car door.
"We look forward to having you on the show, Ms. Hamilton." Rose winked. "And to finding out who the lucky guy is."
"But there is no-"
Before Ilana could finish, Linda shoved her into the car, locking her in before she scurried around to the other side.
Linda landed in the passenger seat. Ilana looked at her. "Aren't you going to buckle my seatbelt, too?"
"Drive," Linda ordered. "Before you talk yourself into trouble."
"With you or them?"
"Drive."
Ilana started the engine. As she pulled into the street, she tried to smile at the reporter, though she suspected it looked more like a grimace.
"Why did you have to say that, Linda? That I've been instructed on what to say. No one has instructed me-in anything. It's only going to whet their curiosity."
"It's already whetted, Ilana. It has been for months. Only now that the guests have been invited, it's going to heat up. You're the only one in your family who lives on Earth. And the only one who's single. You're a natural target."
"I don't want to be a target. I just want to live my life. But you didn't let me tell them."
"You're whining."
Ilana gripped the steering wheel. "Damn right, I'm whining. I deserve to whine." The flying clinic, the invitation, and now this. All she wanted to do was crawl home and hide, order Chinese and listen to the surf. "Besides, I've always been able to whine to you," she added with a pleading smile.
Linda pushed aside her hair so she could see her face. "And you always can," she said. "And I'm sorry about the whetting. I said the first thing that popped into my mind. I'm a book reviewer and your personal assistant. A retired teacher. I never said I was a press agent."
Keeping her eyes on the road, Ilana reached across the seat and squeezed Linda's hand. "I'll drive around a bit, give the news folks a chance to clear out. Then I'll bring you back to your car."
"Whatever it takes. I'm in no hurry."
Ilana gave Linda's hand one last squeeze. "Thanks."
They drove up and down the back streets. Then she merged onto the freeway, heading back in the opposite direction, blankly, as if she were driving on autopilot.
Her heart skipped a beat. Autopilot. Airplanes. Spaceships.
Stop!
The beginnings of a headache pressed behind her eyes. Cheesecake and a glass of chardonnay were hell on an empty stomach. The last thing she need was a carb overdose when she was stressing.
Her thoughts swung back to the news people. "She called me Earth's Cinderella-heiress."
"Well, you are, technically, an heiress, Ilana. To the galaxy's richest family."
Ilana frowned. She'd never thought of herself as an heiress. It wasn't denial, exactly; she just hadn't made that mental leap with regards to her identity. Heiresses were people whose names ended in Woolworth or Rockefeller, not women who bought supermarket shampoo and used those dryer sheets to save on dry cleaning bills.
She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "Word on the street. The reporter said that, too. What the heck did she mean? I haven't heard anything."
"Neither have I, if it makes you feel better."
Ilana had been combing newspapers, magazines, TV and the Web, looking for inspiration for a new film, but nothing had yet sparked her interest. She'd felt so ... uninspired. Scriptwriters suffered writer's block. This must be filmmaker's block. But if there had been gossip about her, she would have found out.
She hoped tonight's incident didn't mean that her privacy had come to an end. Other than an unlisted number and an assumed name on her mailbox, she hadn't needed to do much to stay anonymous, despite her family's high profile. Had that now changed?
A strange suffocating sensation enveloped her.
"Are you okay?" Linda asked.
Ilana huffed. "If they think they're going to discover any gossip-column-grade tidbits about my social life over the next six months, they're going to be very disappointed."
And if they expected to see her hanging on some Vash prince's arm, they were dreaming.
* * *
It was after eleven before Ilana finally pulled into the carport below her building, across the street from the beach in Santa Monica. There were twenty condominiums salvaged from what used to be an old office building. Although the building had a chronological age of seventy years, remodeling had made the condos feel closer to five years old. Ilana had lived in hers for three.
It was early-for a Friday night. Most of the other tenants' spaces were empty. She gathered her purse, slipped her shoes back on. Then she noticed an unfamiliar car parked by the curb.
The engine was off. The interior lights were on. A lone man sat inside, watching her.
Darkness shadowed his features. Cole? No. The guy didn't drive a black Porsche. Neither did any of the other men she'd dated recently ... that she knew of. She had no idea who the dude was, only that his unwavering attention was doing a bang-up job of giving her the creeps.
She shoved her hair out of her eyes. Great, just great. A stalker would be the perfect ending to a perfect day.
Keeping an eye on the Porsche, she slipped her hand into her purse. Her fingers closed over a cold, metallic tube. With the can of pepper spray armed and ready, she opened the car door and stepped out.
The stranger's car door opened, too.
Shit. He was dressed from head-to-toe in black. The self-important way he carried himself spoke volumes about confidence in his strength-and his purpose; he was tall and solid enough to assure her that he could kick some butt if he wanted to.
Stop it. She was letting her thoughts run away from her. She did that when she was nervous. Nervous, yes. Not scared.
She slammed the car door behind her, locking it, and strode toward her front door as if she meant business.
Her condo was two staircases up. She reached the alcove where the stairs began, pausing to see if the man had followed her.
He had.
Her heart lurched, dumping a bucket-full of adrenaline into her bloodstream. But her mounting fear didn't come close to what she'd experienced in Flying Without Fear for Dummies.
Flying was a no-go. Pursuers, she could handle.
Yes, she acknowledged silently, pursuer. As far as she was concerned, he'd just lost the title of creepy stranger. No one who dressed in black and hunted women in the middle of the night qualified.
Adding to her heebie-jeebies were the sunglasses she could now see that he wore.
Shades. At night? Worse, they were mirrored wraparounds. But he hadn't tripped over the trashcan; nor had he stepped on any of the dog mines littering the wide swathe of grass that separated the sidewalk from the building. He must be able to see.
He was definitely smooth. He reminded her of a highly paid hit man-not that she'd seen one before, but she had a good imagination. Too good, and it was freaking the daylights out of her. Not that anyone she knew could afford a professional; they'd have hired some guy named Eddie, a down-on-his-luck ex-con with a potbelly and type II diabetes.
But what if someone she didn't know wished her harm?
Her thoughts sped off in a new direction. She was an heiress now. If the reporter saw her that way, others did, too. Heiresses got kidnapped and held for ransom. Her address was private, but it wouldn't be that hard to figure out.
Enough! She dropped a roadblock in front of her racing thoughts and hurried up the stairs. Halfway to the landing, she whirled around, dismayed to find that in only a few, long, determined strides the man had reached the bottom of the staircase, half-hidden in the shadow of the building.
Her grip on the can of pepper spray didn't waver.
"Ilana Hamilton," he said.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Star Princessby Susan Grant Copyright © 2003 by Susan Grant. Excerpted by permission.
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