"Bennett, Cherie - Sunset Island 011 - Sunset Paradise" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bennett Cherie)

one
"This rain is mondo depressing," Sam sighed as she stared out the sliding glass doors that led to the Hewitts' deck. The rain was pelting the doors so hard that the backyard was just a blur of greenery.
"This was the only day Kurt actually had a couple of hours to spend at the beach with me," Emma said glumly.
"It's rained every day for a week," Carrie added, as if they didn't all know that already.
The three best friends, Samantha Bridges, Carrie Alden, and Emma Cresswell, sighed simultaneously as the storm seemed to gather force outside.
"I'm starting to take this personally," Sam grumbled. "This may be nature's way of telling us we're having too much fun."
Well, they were having funЧthat was
something all three of them could agree about.
As Sam stared out at the rain she thought about all the excitingЧas well as complicatedЧthings that were going on in her life.
She had a great summer job as an au pair on ritzy Sunset Island, where she lived with Dan Jacobs and his twin fourteen-year-old daughters, Allie and Becky. She spent a lot of time hanging out with her two best friends, who were also au pairs. She was dating a totally buff guy named Pres Travis, who was the bass player with the hot rock band Flirting with DangerЧor the Flirts, as they were commonly known. On top of that, she'd recently auditioned to be a backup singer/dancer for the Flirts, and she'd been hired, as had Emma!
Then there was the complicated stuff. Although she was incredibly attracted to Pres, she couldn't seem to stop flirting with other guys. But it made her crazy when other girls flirted with Pres, especially if he seemed to be flirting back. The whole thing gave her a huge headacheЧshe wasn't sure what she really wanted.
And then there was the really big confusion. She'd found out earlier in the summer that she was adoptedЧadopted!Чand that for nineteen years her parents had neglected
to mention it. Through Family Finders, a nonprofit organization that helps people find their birth parents, she'd recently met her birth mother.
Susan BriarlyЧSam couldn't think of her as "Mother," since she already had one of thoseЧhad come to the island to meet Sam, and since then they'd been corresponding. Now Sam's feelings were a mass of confusionЧabout her adoptive parents, who had lied to her, about Susan, who had given her up at birth, even about Susan's kids, who had only just been told that she existed.
"I have to have my pink Mickey Mouse sneakers!" Sam heard a little girl's voice insist from the next room. "Mickey wants to see them!"
Sam knew it had to be four-year-old Katie Hewitt, one of the three kids who were in Emma's charge.
"Hey, Em, you haven't by any chance seen Katie's pink sneakers, have you?" Jeff Hewitt asked, sticking his head into the kitchen. "Katie is convinced that she has to wear them to Disney World, or Mickey will throw her out."
The Hewitt family was leaving the next morning for a week-long trip to visit Jane's mother in Miami Beach, Florida. Then Jane and Jeff were planning to rent a car and drive the kids to Orlando to see Disney
World. Lucky Emma would have more than a whole week off to do whatever she wanted.
"I'll help you look," Emma offered, getting up from the kitchen table.
"There's a picture of Mickey on them," Katie said helpfully, coming into the kitchen behind her father.
"I know that, cutie," Emma said, playfully tickling Katie in the ribs. "Come on, let's go look under the furniture in the family room." Emma took Katie's hand and they walked away.
"She's so good with kids," Sam commented to Carrie. "You'd never know she was a filthy-rich heiress and an only child."
"Do I hear jealousy rearing its ugly little green head?" Carrie teased Sam.
Sam shook her red curls back from her face. "Mot?" she asked innocently. "Jealous of Emma, just because she's actually lived the lifestyle of the rich and famous, whereas I have only dreamed about it? Perish the thought!"
Carrie drained the last of the Diet Coke from her glass. "Listen, I have no doubt that those dreams of yours will become reality one day."
"You think?" Sam asked, pleased at her friend's vote of confidence.
"I don't think, I know," Carrie said. "I
mean, look at you. You're gorgeous, smart, and talented. What's to stop you?"
"Yeah, what?" Sam agreed. She stood up and walked over to the sliding glass doors, where she watched the rain beating down for a moment. Then she turned back to Carrie. "Sometimes I wonder, though."
"What?" Carrie asked.
"Well, Emma is in college, and you go to Yale, for pete's sake. ..." Sam's voice trailed off.
"You had a dance scholarship to Kansas State," Carrie reminded Sam. "You were the one who dropped out after only a few weeks of school so you could dance professionally at Disney World."
"I know that," Sam said testily, irritated that Carrie was reminding her. Sam was also the one who had gotten fired from Disney World for being too original, and she didnt want to be reminded of that, either. "It's just that sometimes I wonder if an education might not be a good thing."
"Well, of course it's a good thing!" Carrie exclaimed. "Hey, are you thinking about going back to college in the fall?"
"No," Sam said. "Forget I said anything."
"ButЧ" Carrie began.
"Once again I have saved the day!" Emma called out, walking back into the kitchen.
She was soaking wet, but she looked happy. "I remembered how much Dog loves Katie's shoes," she said, referring to the family petЧnamed by Katie. She opened the closet for a towel and started to dry herself off. "He had them socked away in his doghouse in the backyard."
"Good thing," Sam said. They do throw you out of Disney World if you're not wearing the official Mickey Mouse footgear," she said seriously.
"Was that your downfall?" Carrie asked, a smile on her face.
"I was simply too good for them," Sam said with dignity. Right. As if it doesn't still smart that Mr. Christopher fired me, she added to herself. So what if the choreographer had told her how talented she was? He'd still fired her, and it still made her feel like a failure.
ul gotta get back to work," Sam said, pushing all thoughts of Disney World from her mind. "I promised I'd take the monsters on a shopping spree this afternoon. I'm trying to be Little Miss Perfect so Mr. Jacobs won't get ticked about our having another gig with the Flirts tonight."
"Why, does he think you're spending too much time on the band?" Carrie asked, taking their glasses to the sink.
"He's actually really nice about it," Sam admitted. She picked up her purse and pulled out her car keys. "Of course, tonight the monsters are coming to the Play Cafe to watch us perform, so it's sort of like killing two birds with one stone."
"I have to get going, too," Carrie said. "So I'll see you guys at the cafe tonight. Are you two nervous that Graham and Claudia will be there?"
Carrie was the au pair of Graham and Claudia Templeton. Graham was better known as Graham Perry, rock superstar. The Flirts were friends of theirs, and that night Graham and Claudia were coming to hear the Flirts perform with their new backup singer/dancers.
"Who, a seasoned pro like me?" Emma asked with a laugh. Sam and Carrie knew that before auditioning for the Flirts, Emma hadn't sung in public since her days in a madrigal group at boarding school in Switzerland.
"There's a little pressure," Sam acknowledged. "I mean, the guys know just how much Graham could help us if he wanted to. Graham could even ask us to tour with him!"
"Which would mean good-bye au pair jobs," Emma pointed out.