Zoey Dean - California Dreaming

Copyright 2008 by Alloy Entertainment

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Poppy

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

First eBook Edition: April 2008

The Little, Brown and Company name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ISBN: 978-0-316-04924-5

If you have to ask, you'll never be on

THE A-LIST

Be sure to read all the novels in the New York Times bestselling A-LIST series

THE A-LIST

GIRLS ON FILM

BLONDE AMBITION

TALL COOL ONE

BACK IN BLACK

SOME LIKE IT HOT

AMERICAN BEAUTY

HEART OF GLASS

BEAUTIFUL STRANGER

CALIFORNIA DREAMING

And keep your eye out for a new era of THE A-LIST coming January 2009.

Be sure to read all the novels in the #1 New York Times bestselling GOSSIP GIRL series

Gossip Girl

You Know You Love Me

All I Want Is Everything

Because I'm Worth It

I Like It Like That

You're The One That I Want

Nobody Does It Better

Nothing Can Keep Us Together

Only In Your Dreams

Would I Lie To You

Don't You Forget About Me

It Had To Be You

Keep your eye out for a new era of Gossip Girl: The Carlyles, coming May 2008.

A-List novels by Zoey Dean:

THE A-LIST

GIRLS ON FILM

BLONDE AMBITION

TALL COOL ONE

BACK IN BLACK

SOME LIKE IT HOT

AMERICAN BEAUTY

HEART OF GLASS

BEAUTIFUL STRANGER

CALIFORNIA DREAMING

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Haters by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez

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For Hair Guru to the Stars, Mr. Raymond.

There must be thousands of girls like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm dreaming the hardest.

Marilyn Monroe

Saturday morning, 2:47 a.m.

A nna Percy was trapped. Also, barefoot.

Behind her was the slammed-shut door of the long, white-walled jetway. Ahead of her gaped the open door of her Bali-bound flight. A petite flight attendant with dark, thick waist-length hair, clad in a double-0 navy blue uniform, was calling to her in lightly accented, chirpy English.

Hurry! We're pulling back from the gate! Hurry!

Rather than hustle the remaining ten paces toward the beckoning flight attendant, Anna froze. Her last words with Logan Cresswell, the boy who had brought her here, the boy who was presumably waiting for her in the first-class cabin of this Air East Indonesia flight, flashed through her mind.

There's a flight back to Bali that leaves LAX at three this morning. That's three hours from now Come with me.

Anna was not the kind of girl to break up with one guythe exquisitely complicated but equally compelling Ben Birnbaumonly to run away to Bali with another one. Everything in her future was planned out, thank you very much. She was exactly seven days from returning to New York City after living for eight surreal months in Los Angeles. Then, she'd start her freshman year at Yale, which had been her dream ever since she could remember dreaming at all.

Yet here she was, on the jetway. The international-departures building behind her, the plane ahead of her. Her Chanel pumps? They'd been tossed aside a few moments before, as she'd made a mad three-hundred-yard dash down the airport concourse from the TSA metal detectors to gate 87.

After these months of attempting to reinvent herself in Los Angeles, including some admitted experimentation with things both remote and dangerousas benign as ordering a double-double animal style from In-N-Out Burger, as scary as learning to surf on the waves of Malibu, as death defying as ascending the steps of the Getty in a pair of Prada stilettosnow she was about to do the most remote and dangerous thing of her life. A mere ninety minutes before, she'd made the snap decision to join an old Upper-East-Side-childhood-neighbor-turned-recent-romantic-interest, Logan, for a trans-Pacific flight to Bali.

She wasn't sure Logan was even on the plane. The airline's gate attendant had told her it was against security regulations for her to confirm that he was on the flight. Anna had tried to reach him by cell, but evidently, the captain had already given the order for cell phones to be turned off, tray tables to be locked in their upright positions, et cetera, et cetera.

Miss! Please hurry! The petite flight attendant's voice went up an octave and a half, and she gestured with both hands.

Anna's heart was pounding as she covered the last five paces of the jetway. She took a deep, fortifying breath and stepped across the threshold. There, the beautiful Balinese flight attendant broke into a relieved smile, welcomed Anna aboard with a gentle bow, and thrust a ribbon-tied bird of paradise blossom into her hand while she scanned Anna's ticket stub.

You'll want to take your seat quickly in the first-class cabin, Miss Percy. You're the last one to board, and we'll be taking off shortly.

Anna thanked her and pivoted left in the direction of first class. She sighed, grateful that the twenty-two-hour flight across the Pacific and the international dateline would at least be comfortable. Since she hadn't had time to packthis trip had been the very definition of a last-minute decisionshe still wore the white eyelet lace Betsey Johnson baby doll dress she'd had on earlier in the evening.

She glanced around the cabin. There were nine rows of first-class seats, two across. Directly in front of her, another immaculately coiffed attendant in the same navy blue uniform served tall, chilled mimosas to a well-dressed elderly couple, regaling them with details about Bali's fabulous gem shopping and wondrous natural beauty.

Where was he?

Bald man in a tweed business suit. Not him.

Swarthy guy with a heavily tattooed neck, wearing skinny vintage jeans and studded bracelet. Definitely not him.

Huge man in backward Lakers baseball cap atop a Lakers uniform. Nope. Tiny woman in a maroon warm-up suit sitting beside him. Double nope.

Short, dirty blond hair. Broad shoulders. Piercing blue eyes. Slight cleft in the chin. Faded jeans and plain black T-shirt.

Logan.

Anna smiled. There he was, stretched out in the second row of the luxurious white leather seats, next to the window. The seat on the aisle