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  To every girl’s dream of her real-life “John Steeling”

  Nothing can hinder, nothing can delay the manifestation of the Divine Plan of my life.

  —FLORENCE SCOVEL SHINN

  From the moment I’d told Marvin Castelli that I wanted to move out to California, he had insisted that my daughter, Isabella, would love it. But I’d had so many doubts. She had just lost her father five months earlier, and her life had been so chaotic for the last several years that I was afraid she would plunge into a blue funk. I should have known better. She was sixteen going on thirty, a beautiful young woman with her father’s dark eyes, my black hair, and a personality as huge as the Pacific. She loved her new school, Our Lady of Malibu, and already had so many friends that on weekends our Malibu beach house rocked with music and laughter.

  Her life had settled into a kind of normalcy that my childhood never had. My mother was a chain-smoking alcoholic, a lost soul, and my father abused her, cheated on her, and abandoned her shortly after I was born. I saw him once when I was six, a guy Mom pointed out in the Brooklyn neighborhood where we lived. I ran over to him and hugged his legs tightly. He pulled away, and I never saw him again.

  I didn’t have any positive male influences in my life as a kid, and that does something to you, creates this terrible inner void that begs to be filled . . . with something. For me, that inner void burned with a craving for love. True love.

  That craving had caused me plenty of heartache and still did.

  My husband, Alec, had been one of those people who was larger than life and, not surprisingly, had done everything in a big way. He literally swept me off my feet, and for years, our life together was about excess. We had money to burn—but it was his money. He controlled every facet of it and also controlled me. After Alec crashed and burned with the Wall Street debacle, after we lost everything and he ended up in a psych ward, our lives descended into darkness and chaos.

  When Alec lost his money and his power, he also lost himself, his identity as a human being, as a man. His frenetic energy, once so laser-focused, scattered like dry seeds in the wind. He became someone I no longer knew.

  I stayed in the marriage because I didn’t know what else to do, didn’t have any other recourse. I hoped I might fall in love with him again, but then I began to wonder if I had ever really loved him at all. I had thought he was my saving grace. The real knight in shining armor who came and captured my heart. After all, a modern-day Rapunzel I truly was, and all I wanted was to be loved and to give love. What else is there? I thought. Maybe I was seduced by the luxuries of those good years: the private jets and exotic travel, the clothes and jewelry, then to quickly adapting to socializing with the pawnbrokers to unload it all. To a girl from Brooklyn who’d spent her childhood on food stamps, Alec had represented my ticket to love and to final freedom over the Brooklyn Bridge, to the high life in Manhattan, where I would become a writer.

  Well, a writer I became, all right, and moved across that bridge. But at what cost? Four years ago, I lost everything—my marriage, my home, and the millions we supposedly had in the bank. Even the million we had in our daughter’s college fund evaporated. Was any of the money ever really there to begin with? Or was it all just the smoke and mirrors of derivatives? After all, money doesn’t define you; it just enhances your life.

  During my first trip out here eighteen months ago, my manager, Liza Corrlinks, and I were on our way to meet a producer who was interested in optioning my novel, The Blessed Bridge. Liza told me I would be moving to California, and when I laughed, she confessed that her friends thought she was a tad psychic. They think it explains why I knew Stallone was perfect for Rocky, Pacino for Corleone, Michael Douglas as Gekko. Hey, it sounds like your life, Sam!

  I told her The Blessed Bridge sounded like my life, and that was when she explained that the producer with whom we were meeting wanted to change the title to Brooklyn Story, that blessed was too religious for them. But they love the word bridge, Sam.

  Why this? Why that? Why, why, why seemed to be the litany of my life. Why had Alec, a man in his early fifties, after losing it all, managing to make some of it back, suddenly died of a heart attack thirty-five thousand feet above the Atlantic, en route to Switzerland for HGH treatments? And why had it happened right after my meeting with the producer who ultimately optioned my book? That kind of juxtaposition of events made me wonder, again and again, just who or what orchestrated our lives.

  Alec’s death had hurled our lives into utter bedlam—­emotionally, spiritually, financially. As his widow, I was responsible for his debts, hundreds of thousands of dollars he had borrowed from his parents, friends, former Wall Street buddies. I was responsible for his funeral expenses at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel and his viewing in their chapel, his coffin surrounded by dozens of red roses and white lilies. Scattered about were wreaths of Yankee memorabilia.

  Isabella and I moved in with Liza and lived with her while I tried to figure things out. Focus groups became a way to earn easy cash and helped to improve our situation. Even when my novel was optioned, a lot of that money went toward paying off Alec’s funeral expenses and our other debts. I could no longer afford the tuition at Isabella’s private Catholic school. Fortunately, a dear friend stepped up and paid a year’s tuition while I figured it out. What a blessing. I was grateful for the things that mattered the most and the people in my life that gave me hope to continue on my path.

  Then, sixteen months ago, a man appeared at the door, and our lives spun in the opposite direction. He was an insurance agent and handed me a bunch of papers and a check for fifteen million dollars, payoff on a life insurance policy I didn’t know Alec had. Fifteen million. Even during the darkest years, Alec somehow had been making the payments on that policy, ensuring that Isabella and I would be able to survive in the event of his untimely death. And right then I forgave Alec for everything and understood that even if we’d made a mess of our marriage, his love for his daughter had never waned. In the end, he had done the right thing, and he had done it the way he had done everything—big and grand.

  Now here we were in our new lives, with new opportunities for me and a more stable environment for Isabella. I had my own production company and had convinced Marvin to move out here after he and his partner of fifteen years had split up, and now he was working for me. There was even a new man in my life, the producer, Paul Jannis, who had optioned my book. I didn’t know yet if he was my other half, my true love, if he would fill that void I have carried inside me for most of my life. But I was doing what my grandmother had advised before she’d died: You wrote yourself out of a Brooklyn story, Sam. Now write yourself into a California story, the one you really deserve.

  ONE

  The blue vastness of the Pacific swept to the distant horizon and melted into the sky. Mansions perched at the edge of cliffs and beaches appeared and disappeared against all the blueness, this incomparable open space. I definitely wasn’t in Brooklyn anymore—or in Manhattan.

  “Gorgeous, just gorgeous, all of it,” Marvin remarked, leaning forward from the backseat, his head popping into the space between Isabella and me. “Even after living out here for a year, I don’t get tired of feasting on all this blue.”

  “And no winter, no snow,” exclaimed Isabella, my daughter. “A
t night, I go to sleep to the sound of the surf. How awesome is that?”

  “Very awesome,” I agreed, and my eyes met Marvin Castelli’s in the rearview mirror. Told ya so, Sam.

  I turned off on South Winter Canyon Road. I loved the name of that road; south winter conjured such vivid mental images of snow-covered streets wrapped up in that strange silence that came with falling snow. And the word canyon was all about this area of California, a sweeping desert of canyons and valleys that humanity had sort of tamed.

  Just beyond Pepperdine University on our left, I hung a right through the gate of Isabella’s school. “I’ve got a swim meet after school, Mom, so I’ll catch a ride home with Lauren.”

  Lauren was her closest friend in Malibu, the daughter of writers for one of the hottest TV shows this season. Even though both she and Isabella had their driver’s licenses, neither of them was allowed to drive to and from school. Lauren’s older brother, who attended Pepperdine, often drove them home.

  “Have a good day, love, and I should be home around six. I left a veggie lasagna in the fridge that you can heat up.”

  She bussed me quickly on the cheek and slid out of the car, and Marvin got out of the back to join me up front. “And good luck with that English test,” he called after her. “I know you’ll do great.”

  Marvin used to teach English lit and composition in a high school in Rhode Island and had spent several hours this weekend helping her study for the test. He and his ex-partner had also written a play that I had produced off Broadway, in my other life. That was how I’d met him. That time now seemed so distant and remote that I often couldn’t remember who I had been there, what had motivated me, what goals I’d had.

  Isabella flashed him a thumbs-up and I stared after her, watching until my beautiful daughter vanished into the crowd of kids moving toward the main building.

  “Don’t worry about her, Sam,” he said. “She’s flourishing out here. We all are.”

  Yes, we were. But always, in the back of my head, there was an annoying little voice that kept warning me about becoming too complacent, too comfortable. As I knew from the past, the proverbial curveballs usually hurtled toward you out of the blue, and slammed your life into crisis mode. I’d had more than my share of crises and disasters and could do without them, thank you very much. But still, a part of me remained alert and vigilant, prepared nonetheless for what might occur.

  “So how’s our day shaping up, Marvin?”

  “We’ve got back-to-back meetings from ten till noon, lunch with Liza after that, and then five more scripts came in over the weekend. And I haven’t finished going through the email yet.” He brought out his trusty iPad and went online.

  Marvin was a short, handsome man with wavy blond hair and dark, compassionate eyes. There was an artistic, disheveled air about him, but he was so efficient and organized that he kept my new company on track. Despite the fact that we were new in town, we already had one TV movie in production with HBO, a thriller/love story set post-WWII, and we were actively seeking scripts for a possible TV series. Brooklyn Story was supposed to go into production at Gallery Studios sometime in the next several months, but we didn’t have a date yet.

  Liza had been immensely helpful in connecting us with the right people. Her network out here was vast and varied and ranged from actors and directors to scriptwriters and line producers. She was also steering our search for financing for a movie of my second novel, The Suite Life. It would have been great if Gallery had just optioned both books, but as Liza said, Patience, love. It’ll happen.

  For most of my life, I’d known people who were helpful and supportive like Liza was, but she was extraordinary. Endowed with endless energy, Liza could tackle anything, anywhere, and complete the job in half the time it would take anyone else.

  Sometimes my life felt as if it was moving at the speed of light, and I just had to slow down and take some deep breaths. That was when Isabella and I would take long walks on the beach, talking and looking for shells. Or we would do girl things, like shop and get our hair cut and our nails done, stuff we rarely had done together in New York. Our relationship was much stronger and deeper here than it had been during the years when our lives were so screwed up. I hated to admit it, but with Alec gone and some money, that can happen. I guess money can do that. There was a lot of be said for financial freedom.

  “Okay,” Marvin said. “There’s an email here from Liza. She says you’re not answering your text messages and are we still on for lunch?”

  “You bet. Tell her that. And tell her I just did a software update on my phone, and my texting isn’t working right.”

  DeMarco Productions was located on Melrose Avenue, close to Paramount Studios. It was small, just four rooms on the second floor of a house that had stood on Melrose for decades. The central room was a small lobby, the walls painted a pale lemon yellow and decorated with some vintage movie posters that Paul had lent us from his collection. The other three rooms circled the lobby, like planets around the sun.

  Clara Mendoza, our receptionist, was already at her desk, madly typing away at her computer; she paused to hand me a stack of phone messages. “They’re all urgent,” she said in her snappy, slightly accented voice. “They’re always urgent.”

  I laughed. “Life is urgent.”

  She glanced away from the computer screen. An attractive brunette in her early thirties, a Peruvian who had come to L.A. looking for fame and fortune, after several years of heartbreak, she’d decided to find a real job, something in the industry, and I hired her within five minutes of meeting her. She was bilingual, a definite asset, and could fix anything from computers and broken faucets to scripts.

  “Now you sound like some South American writer like . . . Marquez. Wasn’t he the one who said that life is urgent? Or was it love is urgent? Well, whatever.”

  “I can’t text after updating my phone’s operating system,” I said. “Any advice?”

  “I’ll take a look.” She extended her hand, and I passed her the phone. “Paul has called a couple of times. He wants to meet you for lunch, I told him you were meeting Liza, and he’d like to join you.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “Que va, chica. I told him you’d call him as soon as you got in. Oh, I just forwarded you and Marvin another script we received. It looks promising. I’ll read it tonight.”

  And she was also incredibly diligent. “Great. Thanks. Can you get Paul on the phone?”

  Since Paul had called the office rather than my cell, it meant he had business to discuss. I would do the same.

  I hurried on into my office. Sunlight shone through the sliding-glass doors leading out to a small balcony to my right, where several gorgeous potted plants grew with a kind of wild abandon.

  Sometimes at the end of a busy day, Marvin, Clara, and I sat out at the balcony table, sipping my favorite rosé wine, commiserating over possible strategies, and marveling at our good fortune. I hoped to expand the staff eventually, but I didn’t intend to make the same mistakes I had made during my marriage to Alec, when money went out faster than it came in. I pondered the thought of how far I had come in my life, and finally it felt great. I was even able to exhale for a moment.

  Right now it was just the three of us and a part-timer, a male intern from UCLA who had a sharp eye for what worked in stories. He worked closely with Marvin, and I suspected that some sort of romantic thing might be unfolding between the two of them. I hoped so. Marvin needed love as badly as I did.

  My first ritual every morning when I came into my office was to light three candles on the little altar in the corner that held miniature statues: the first to the Blessed Mother, a second to the Archangel Michael, and a third to Buddha. In the six weeks Paul and I had been dating, he’d never commented on the altar or the items it held, but I suspected he didn’t approve for “business reasons.” He was too nice to say it, thou
gh. Even if he had, this was my office, my production company, and if I wanted to have an altar in here, then I would. These were my beliefs. They had taken me this far, and I was willing to go all the way with them. I hoped that the days when a man called the shots regarding what I did, who I saw, where I went, or how I spent my money were history.

  As I lit the candles, I could almost hear my grandmother whispering, Kinehora, Samelah, kinehora, the words that always protected me. Blessed good journey, protecting what’s to come. I asked that the week ahead would unfold peacefully. I’ve had enough drama in my life to last several lifetimes, and the only thing that ever came from it was more drama and heartache. I then blew the candles out and inhaled the scent of lemon that lingered in the air.

  My desk faced the balcony so that I always had a view of those potted plants and the palm trees beyond them. Those palms were a constant reminder that I wasn’t in New York anymore, as if I could forget that. As much as I loved being organized, stuff still cluttered my desk: books, scripts, notes, and pads of paper on which I jotted everything, from addresses to lines from songs that I wanted to use in the script for The Suite Life. So when my desk phone rang, I had to dig through the clutter even to find it. “Sam, I’ve got Paul on the line,” Clara said, and clicked through.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey yourself, beautiful.”

  He had a low, husky voice, infinitely seductive, and it elicited an immediate image in my head of a younger Bruce Willis, head as bald as an egg, Mediterranean blue eyes, a salt-and-pepper goatee. Six months ago, he had asked me out for the first time. I turned him down. I didn’t think it was a good idea to date the guy who had optioned my book and script. He wouldn’t take no for an answer and kept finding excuses to call me. This went on for months, until he came by the office one afternoon with my favorite, a truffle pizza.