The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River #3)

The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River #3)

Julia London




PROLOGUE

Beverly Hills, One Year Ago

Emma Tyler was at work, in the break room of Cypress Event Management, when she first heard about the devil child. Apparently, Cayley Applebaum was a skinny, curly-haired, twelve-year-old brat with a sense of entitlement so vast it rolled off of her in big tsunami waves. She had no limits on her cell phone and was perhaps the most spoiled of the children who roamed in packs up and down Santa Monica Boulevard. She lived in a Beverly Hills mansion in a magic bubble of infinite privilege and, like most of her friends, was accustomed to regular routines that included massages and facials, New York shopping sprees, and birthday parties that cost as much as art-house film productions.

Cayley was the only child of Reggie Applebaum, a film-industry mogul and power broker. He possessed buckets of money, and on the occasion of Cayley’s bat mitzvah, he’d hired Cypress Event Management—CEM, as it was known around town—to produce a party. He’d said, money is no object. He’d actually said those words, as if they weren’t a completely laughable cliché. Money was no object for a party for a twelve-year-old? Could anyone even say that with a straight face?

Reggie could, and he did.

Emma was fascinated by the tales of this kid. The planners working the event held court in the break room, reenacting Cayley’s demands and tantrums with many expletives. Emma wondered who produced children like this? By what failure of parenting did darling little toddlers become demons in a few short years?

Emma was a vice president at CEM, but she didn’t actually do much event planning herself. Her boss, Melissa, a well-preserved woman with an impressive collection of Chanel suits and handbags, said Emma lacked “people skills” and “empathy” for their most important clients.

Emma didn’t disagree with that assessment. She’d never been an event planner to begin with—she’d landed her job at CEM some years ago by sleeping with one of the members of the board of directors. She’d taken the job because she’d liked the idea of event planning. But it turned out that she wasn’t very good at execution. She couldn’t click with brides and anniversary couples. She was one to speak the truth and had a hard time distinguishing which truths people were willing to hear and which ones they weren’t.

But dammit, Emma had tried.

A few months into it, while working a divorce party—an inanity of the first order—Emma had agreed with the honoree that she did indeed look fat in her cocktail dress. After that, it looked as if Emma would be fired. Before Melissa could fire her, however, an important wedding had hit a snag. On the day of that wedding, the flower delivery van was hit from behind on the way to the venue and many of the arrangements were lost. The florist wanted to go with half the original order, arguing that he couldn’t possibly replace what was lost and get it across Los Angeles in time for the ceremony. Emma had been the only one available to deal with the disaster, and she’d handled it beautifully. She’d told the florist the truth: The couple had paid thousands for flowers, which was a drop in the bucket of what they’d put into a smear campaign if the flowers didn’t arrive as ordered, on time.

“Is that a threat?” the florist had asked.

“It’s just the truth,” Emma had said. “Oh, and by the way, I know someone with a helicopter.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?” the flustered florist had demanded.

“If I were you, I’d pay to have that shit airlifted over Los Angeles rather than face the fallout of not delivering flowers to a Hollywood star’s wedding. But that’s just me.”

The last of the flowers arrived just as the violinists began to tune their instruments.

Once Melissa discovered that Emma was good at cutting through chaos and handling bad situations that popped up, she saw her employee in a new light. Eventually, Melissa came to appreciate that Emma didn’t mealymouth her way around vendors and promoted Emma to vice president. She instructed her staff to call Emma if things broke.

If a vendor wasn’t delivering, staff called Emma. If a venue canceled on them, staff called Emma. If a twelve-year-old girl was calling the shots and screwing everything up, they definitely called Emma.

Paul and Francine, two very competent, bullshit-tolerant planners, told Emma they couldn’t deal with the kid. “Cayley changes her mind every day and we can’t book anything. Now she wants to cancel the audiovisual vendor and it’s two days before the bat mitzvah.”

Emma was almost eager to go with Paul and Francine to meet this child, if for no other reason than to lay eyes on her.

The first thing Emma noticed about Cayley was that she had an insufferable habit of sneering at her mother, Tallulah.