Elite 03 Simply Irresistible Read online

  That was until she noticed that Drew wasn’t exactly sharing in her dreams of wedded bliss. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, a gloomy expression on his face as he pulled his T-shirt over his head. Without missing a beat, he rummaged on the floor for his pants, standing up and pulling them up to his waist, his eyes focused somewhere in the distance as he fastened his belt buckle, his eyes avoiding her face.

  “Do you need anything?” he asked woodenly, turning to look out the window. “Are you okay?”

  WTF? Madison wondered as she sat straight up, pulling the sheets even more tightly around her naked body as she leaned over and began to grope the floor for her clothes. Was she okay? Did she need anything? All of a sudden Drew was sounding more like a waiter at the Soho House than the guy she just gave her sort-of virginity to. Again. She pulled her dress over her head angrily, the material ripping slightly at the neckline. Fuck. Now she’d ruined her new favorite Miu Miu dress, too. Could this night possibly get any worse? This was all so typically vintage Drew Van Allen that she almost wanted to kick herself with the heel of her Jimmy Choo boots for not seeing it coming any sooner. Of course he was behaving like a moody asshole instead of a proper boyfriend—he was Drew, and if her past experiences had taught her anything about her former, soon to be totally ex-boyfriend, it was that he was so always likely to blow it, just when any sane and rational human being would least expect it. God, he pissed her off.

  “ ‘Am I okay?’ ” Mad mimicked meanly, using a simpering baby voice. “ ‘Do I need anything?’ ” She swung her legs over the side of the bed and proceeded to stuff her feet into her boots, grateful for the small diversion of zippers and buckles. If she really had to stop and focus on what was actually happening, she knew that she might just lose it completely. “You have got to be kidding me, Drew.”

  Drew’s body went absolutely still as the words left her lips. He turned around, his face full of confusion. “Mad . . . I,” he began, looking away from her penetrating green eyes again and studying the floor of his bedroom like he hadn’t seen it every day for the last two years. “I can’t . . .” he blurted out, gulping for air like it was suddenly being rationed, his blue eyes filled with confusion and what she could’ve sworn was a tinge of fear. “Look, Mad,” Drew went on, swallowing hard and looking down at his bare feet, “I think this was—” Mad stared at him in horror, open-mouthed in anticipation of the awful words that she just knew were about to fall from his lips, her green eyes glittering with anger.

  But before Drew could say anything else, there was a sharp rap at the door, then a squeaking sound as it swung open, revealing Drew’s father, Robert Van Allen, standing in the doorway, a pensive expression on his usually jovial face. Like father like son, Madison thought with a wave of irritation as she scooped up her bag from the floor and swung it over her shoulder. Drew’s dad slowly took in the rumpled sheets of the bed, Mad’s messy post-sex hair, the knowledge of what had just been going on in the room only moments before he’d barged in slowly dawning on him.

  “I, uh, didn’t realize you had company, Drew,” his dad said, recovering quickly with a smile that could’ve been genuine, or strictly pasted on in order to cover up any embarrassment he might’ve been feeling about the fact that not only was his son obviously sexually active, but he was getting down chez Van Allen. “I’ll get out of your way—I just wanted to ask you about dinner. I thought we could go out and catch a bite—but I see you’re . . . busy.” His face flushed red as he gestured to the air in between Madison and Drew, then turned to leave.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Mad snapped, jumping to her feet, her bag already slung over one shoulder, grabbing her black Dolce & Gabbana cashmere coat from where it lay in a rumpled pile on Drew’s floor. “I was just leaving.”

  Madison walked to the door and pushed past Drew’s father, not even bothering to say “Excuse me,” or make even the slightest attempt at politeness. Fuck politeness—and social graces. After all, it wasn’t exactly polite for your ex-boyfriend to take what was left of your virginity, and then promptly start acting like a moody, introverted asshole. She turned around and shot Drew a look that could’ve withered all the plants within a ten-block radius, the pain she felt clearly visible in her face, no matter how hard she tried to mask her expression. Dammit, she thought as she psychically willed her eyes not to even think about producing moisture. Why do I even still care—about any of this? When Drew’s eyes dropped to the floor again, it was clearly time to make her exit.

  “Fuckfuckfuck,” Mad hissed under her breath as she willed Drew to open his mouth and say something, anything, just so she wouldn’t feel like such an utter fool standing there, waiting for him to speak. The seconds dragged on as Drew continued to look at his bare feet, rubbing them against the satiny grain of the wood floor. O ... kay, Mad fumed, her nostrils flaring slightly.

  Since there seemed to be no danger of Drew actually opening his mouth and producing anything even vaguely meaningful, Mad turned on one stiletto heel and walked down the Van Allens’ long, immaculate hallway, her shoes clacking noisily against the gleaming wooden floors, Allegra Van Allen’s brightly colored abstract paintings blurring into intricately patterned kaleidoscopes that shimmered before her eyes as she walked out the front door, slamming it loudly behind her.

  london calling

  “Are you just going to sit there and fondle that remote all night? Or are you going to tell me about your date?”

  Casey muted the sound on the TV with the remote and smiled as Nanna walked into the living room, decorated in the cool blue and white hues that her grandmother loved, wearing a faded pink terry cloth bathrobe she’d probably had since the Depression. Her silky gray bob was pinned up at the back of her neck, and her softly wrinkled face was shiny with night cream, her diminutive, grandma-sized feet hidden by the most enormous, not to mention the furriest, pink slippers Casey had ever seen. That is not a good look for her, Casey thought while suppressing a giggle. Fashionable or not, there was no doubt that Nanna certainly looked a hell of a lot cleaner than Casey felt at the moment. As she pulled her hair down from a ponytail, the smell of stale beer wafted through the air, causing her to wrinkle her nose in distaste. Ugh, there was no question about it—she definitely needed a shower before bed.

  “It was . . . okay,” Casey said, her voice as hesitant and confused as she felt. “Darin’s really . . . nice.”

  Nanna sat down on the blue-and-white-striped couch, pulling a cushion from behind her and holding it in her lap, her blue eyes fixed on her granddaughter. “Nice, huh?” she said with a chuckle, retrieving her spectacles from her chest where they dangled on a pearl chain, and bringing them up to her nose. “Well,” she said authoritatively, “that doesn’t exactly sound like an affair to remember, now does it?”

  Casey laughed, drawing her knees up underneath her and flicking the OFF button on the TV, throwing the remote down on the couch beside her. “I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “Ever since this whole TV show, I’ve been really confused . . . about everything.”

  “Well, I never thought that show was such a great idea in the first place—but you wanted to do it, so . . .” Nanna’s voice trailed off into the distance as she threw her bony hands helplessly into the air.

  “So, you let me?” Casey said with a grin. She loved to tease Nanna more than anything. Sometimes she thought her eighty-something-year-old grandmother had a better sense of humor than most of the student population of Meadowlark Academy. Actually, it was probably better than most of the population of New York, come to think of it.

  “Of course I let you,” Nanna answered soberly, a knowing look in her eyes. “That’s what grandmothers do—haven’t you heard? We spoil you rotten.” She waved one hand exasperatedly in the air, signaling that she was bored with this subject already. “But whatever happened to that Drew character anyway? Did you finally give him the boot?”

  Casey’s smile rapidly disappeared at the mention of Drew’s name. How was she supposed
to really get over him if everyone kept bringing the topic up every five minutes? “That’s over,” Casey said darkly, her gray eyes the color of storm clouds. “I think.” Nanna frowned so hard that the lines in her forehead resembled the pleats of an accordion. “I’m pretty sure,” Casey added in a rush, trying to sound more confident about the whole thing.

  “It sure doesn’t sound like you’re sure,” Nanna said mildly, reaching over to the bleached pine coffee table for the ceramic bowl of Italian chocolates wrapped in shiny gold foil that she kept in the center of the table. Nanna didn’t seem to eat much real food anymore—nothing that constituted actual nutrition anyway—but she had a serious sweet tooth, and it had become routine for Casey to discover ten or twelve metallic wrappers strewn around the living room in the early morning. “So what’s wrong with this Darin character anyway?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with him,” Casey said, frustrated that this was turning out to be more difficult to explain than she’d originally anticipated. “He’s just not . . .” Her voice trailed off as she fell silent, biting her bottom lip as she tried to figure out the best way to explain how she felt, and came up totally blank.

  “Drew?” Nanna finished, her blue eyes softening. “Well,” she added lightly, “you can’t really expect him to be, now can you?”

  “It’s not just that,” Casey said, squirming uncomfortably. “I didn’t think that I liked Darin, you know, that way or anything. And then tonight . . .”

  “Aha!” Nanna interrupted, a wicked grin spreading over her face as she rubbed her grandmotherly hands together, relishing the drama. “You did.”

  “I got butterflies,” Casey blurted out, grabbing an overstuffed pillow off the end of the couch and hugging it to her chest. “I never get butterflies unless I really like someone. And tonight, while we were waiting in line to see the show, I felt them.” Casey exhaled loudly, puffing her cheeks out. “And now I don’t know what to do.”

  “So you have two suitors,” Nanna said, shrugging her shoulders and making light of the situation as usual. “So what’s wrong with that? I say enjoy it while it lasts,” she added with a chuckle, peering at Casey over the top of her glasses.

  “It’s not just that,” Casey admitted. “This whole TV show thing is totally bizarre. All of a sudden people want to be my friend. I mean, it’s nice not to be a social leper anymore, but if people only like me because I’m going to be on TV, or because I’m popular, then what’s it really mean, you know?” Casey stopped, out of breath now and more confused than ever. “I know I’m still the same person underneath,” she went on, muttering under her breath, wondering as the words left her lips if they were really all that true anymore.

  “Oh, you worry too much,” Nanna scoffed, unwrapping another chocolate. “All this stuff you’re dealing with now, it’s nothing—just wait until you’re my age and they send you to the doctor every week. Now that’s when you can really start to worry.” Nanna gave a quick, short laugh, deftly throwing the now-naked chocolate into the back of her throat. “And so what if you pick up a leech or two—if they’re around for long, their true colors will come out. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders—your mother made sure of that—I’m sure that you’ll figure it all out.”

  Just as Casey was about to say something decidedly less than flattering about her globe-trotting mother, Nanna’s phone rang shrilly, the sound cutting through the quiet hum of their conversation.

  “It’s after midnight,” Nanna said crankily as she shuffled toward the phone, grabbing the handset from the cradle and barking into the receiver. “Who died?”

  Casey laughed, twisting her stinky hair back up into a ponytail to get the smell away from her face, the darkness of her mood lightened. No matter how bad things got, talking with Nanna always made her feel better. Casey flipped back on the TV and channel surfed, stopping on a cooking show on the Food Network featuring what looked like a complicated cooking demonstration of sautéing a piece of juicy-looking veal—from an animal that Casey knew was probably raised in a horrible, tiny crate—with thin slices of shockingly yellow lemon, in a pan frothing with butter. Casey felt her eyes slipping shut, as Nanna’s voice, the lulling sound of the television, and the fact that she had to be up in seven hours all conspired to make her eyelids feel heavy as the manhole covers on Fifth Avenue. Just as she felt herself drifting off to sleep, Nanna’s voice cut through the dream she was almost having. She was in a darkened movie theater, an obscure French film scrolling across the screen, Drew’s lips touching her own, her hand in his, the weight of his delicious—

  “Casey!” Suddenly Nanna was standing above her, shaking the phone in her face. “Your mother wants to talk to you.”

  Casey rubbed her eyes and grabbed the phone from Nanna’s grasp, yawning loudly into the receiver before she spoke. “Hello?”

  “Casey Anne McCloy,” her mother, Barbara, began, her tone even more clipped than usual due to the totally annoying British accent she’d recently adopted. Casey winced. Whenever her mother made it a point to use her full name in a sentence, Casey knew she was probably in for it. “What’s this utter nonsense I hear about you being on a television show?”

  Casey’s stomach plummeted to her blue Converse high-tops. She knew that Barbara, who made it a habit to embark on several militant feminist, anticapitalist rants several times a day at least, wouldn’t exactly be happy to discover that her only daughter was in the process of becoming a reality TV star, but she hadn’t anticipated this level of anger either, which bordered on nuclear. “Mom,” she began, in a tone she hoped was placating, “it was a really good opportunity and I thought you’d—”

  “You thought I’d what?” her mother snapped before she could even finish her sentence. “You thought I’d be happy that my daughter is wasting time being followed around by a bunch of mindless Neanderthals with microphones rather than devoting her time to infinitely more important pursuits—like school, for instance. And what are you still doing up anyway? It must be after midnight there.”

  Yikes. She was definitely going to need backup on this one. Casey looked over at Nanna, who was sitting at the kitchen table, methodically making her way through a bag of Pep peridge Farm Mint Milanos while busily doing the crossword in a red felt-tipped pen. Obviously she was on her own.

  “Oh, come on, Mom,” Casey snapped, suddenly cranky from lack of sleep and the prospect of having to deal with her mother so late at night. “The only reason you even care is because it’s TV. If I’d been chosen to lead some stuffy symposium on great books or something, you’d be wetting your pants in happiness.” Casey knew that with the exception of PBS, Barbara McCloy considered television an inherent evil in contemporary society, capable of converting young minds to the capitalist agenda in just a few short hours. As a result, almost all of Casey’s mass-media consumption had taken place at friends’ houses after school, or in the wee hours after her mother went to bed at night.

  “There is nothing academic about television,” her mother said smugly. “It’s for tiny people with tiny minds.”

  “Then I guess I’m one of them,” Casey shot back, unable to keep her sarcasm in check. She didn’t exactly know what it was about her mother that always seemed to rub her the wrong way. Maybe it was the fact that Barbara preferred to lecture rather than actually listen. Or maybe it was just that she was almost seventeen, and any even vaguely adult presence was bound to get on her nerves. Either way, she knew it was time to cut the conversation short. “Look, Mom,” she began again, her voice calmer this time. “It’s done. Nanna signed the papers, and I’m on the show, so you can either support me or not. It’s your choice.” Casey paused, listening to the silence filling the other end of the line.

  “We’ll discuss it over the holidays,” Barbara said after a few moments, her tone still icy.

  “You’re coming . . . here?” Casey said in disbelief. Great. That was just what she needed to make her mess of a life even more complicated.

  “Didn’t Nann
a tell you?” her mother asked, exasperation filling her voice. Casey could almost imagine her on the other end of the line, a cup of steaming Earl Grey at her elbow, her tortoiseshell glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, the morning paper strewn out before her on the kitchen table. “I’ll be back on the twentieth.”

  “No,” Casey said, shooting her grandmother a dirty look—not that she even noticed, so buried was she in her crossword and cookies. “She didn’t mention it.”

  “Well, we’ll discuss it then, so don’t think for a moment that this subject is even remotely closed,” Barbara added brusquely. There was a click as her mother hung up abruptly, then the humming sound of the empty line. Casey looked hard at the receiver in her hand then walked into the kitchen, placing it gently back into the cradle.

  Casey couldn’t believe her luck. Not only had everything gone completely sour with Drew, she’d gone and gotten butterflies from Darin, of all people, and her raging feminist-Marxist mother Barbara “I’m not a Communist dear, there’s a difference” McCloy was coming to town for a visit. As she dragged her feet across the floor, past Nanna and her crumb-covered newspaper, on her way to bed, there was only one thing she could be certain of—it was all bound to make great television.

  cold as ice

  “So what’s going on, Drew? It didn’t look like you guys were exactly . . . studying,” Robert Van Allen said with a half-grin, sitting down on the edge of Drew’s rumpled, post-sex bed, one hand stroking his salt-and-pepper beard the way he always did when he was worried about something, or deep in thought. Drew pulled a navy sweatshirt roughly over his head and crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at his father before responding, his murky blue eyes dull with anger.