Spoiled (5 page)

“Would a chocolate chip cookie help?” the lady asked. “Fresh-baked.”

See? The positive attitude was already working.

Molly’s feet were on the ground barely fifteen minutes before her life took another Hollywood turn. A uniformed driver whose
sign read
MS. CHANANDALER BONG
grabbed her at baggage claim and escorted her to a glossy Escalade with tinted windows—one of which was cracked enough for
her to see a man wearing a deeply fake beard in the backseat.

“Sorry for the cloak-and-dagger stuff,” the guy said, leaning out the window and peering at her over a pair of reading glasses
with the lenses removed. “I didn’t want the paparazzi to ruin this moment. Get in!”

Brick Berlin ripped off his chin fuzz with the gusto of a
Mission: Impossible
spy and threw open the door. His voice was every bit as deep and rich as it was in the movies—if it could have a flavor,
it would be chocolate—and he looked exactly the same, right down to the unrealistic accessories.

Molly froze. When she’d pictured meeting Brick for the first time, she’d thrown herself into his arms (and Brick hadn’t been
wearing a beret). Instead, her legs abandoned her, so Brick scooted toward the edge of the seat and
scooped her inside the car practically with one hand, while she did nothing but stare.

Hazel. Like hers. She
did
have his eyes.

As the driver slammed Molly’s door shut, Brick hugged her so hard she felt a few ribs quit on her. He felt as densely muscular
as he looked on film, and he smelled like spray tan and expensive cologne (definitely
not
Trick by Brick). Molly was torn between being touched and wondering if he was acting, since this was exactly what his character
did in
Tequila Mockingbird
when he rescued his fiancée from South American sex slavery. It made the moment that much more surreal.

Brick pulled away and ruffled Molly’s hair.

“You have Laurel’s freckles,” he told her. “Molly, I’m so sorry she’s gone. She was a wonderful woman.”

“It’s okay,” she said, her voice trembling. “I mean, thank you. I mean…”

“This is an emotional time for us all,” Brick said kindly. “Cancer is a vicious thief.”

He paused to let that sink in and then grabbed her face. “I’ve been waiting to meet you all your life, Molly. And now that
you’re here, I hate to look into those eyes and see an ounce of pain, sweet child of mine!”

Molly’s heart skipped as she noticed she’d been right about their shared cheek dimple. She blinked back fresh, unexpected
tears. Maybe it was the effect of being comforted by her father for the first time in her entire life, maybe it was that meeting
a new parent reminded her of
the one that was gone, or maybe it was the fact that he was gazing searchingly at her through fake Harry Potter glasses, giving
him an air of permanent surprise. Probably, it was all three. Molly had gotten used to feeling every possible thing at once.

Brick gave her damp cheeks a firm pat.

“Let it out,” he advised. “Tears are full of toxins. If you hold them in, they’ll flood your brain.”

Molly chuckled in spite of herself. Brick frowned and then took off his glasses.

“That does sound kind of ridiculous,” he admitted with a grin. “My trainer told me that. But I’m sure it’s true on a deeper
level. I’ll ask my hypnotherapist.”

The driver started the car and pulled out of the parking garage, at which point twenty or so photographers descended upon
the Escalade, yelling and shoving one another.

“Damn, I thought we’d lost them back on Sunset,” Brick said, shaking his head. “This disguise sucks. I
told
Stan I should wear the headdress.”

Molly had seen footage of paparazzi scrums on TV, but it was ten times scarier in person. A woman getting her hair pulled
by a cameraman slammed against the window, begging Brick for “the goods.” The guy closest to Molly, who couldn’t have been
much older than she was, wore a trucker cap that read
PORN STAR IN TRAINING
.

“Molly, open up,” he shouted, jiggling the door handle.

Molly grabbed the nearest object she could find—which turned out to be an ice bucket—and tried to hide behind it.

“How do they know who I am?” she gasped.

“Well, here’s the thing, Sunshine,” Brick began. “There’s going to be a tiny little story in
Hey!
about this. About you, I mean. Being my love child.”

“What?”

Molly was reminded of the time she belly flopped off the high dive at the local pool: The wind was knocked out of her, and
she thought she would drown. The entire student body of both her new
and
her old high school might read some sordid tabloid story about
her
? How was that even possible? She’d only been in Los Angeles fifteen minutes.

“I’m sorry,” Brick said. “But fear not! It’s not a smear job. Here’s what already ran.”

Molly scanned the crinkled magazine Brick handed her from his back pocket. The weird breathless feeling eased up when she
realized the blurb didn’t actually use her name.

“ ‘Children, like protein shakes, are God’s greatest present’?” she read, trying to sound cheerful. “I’ve never heard that
one.”

“Well, protein shakes are delicious,” Brick said. “And they make you a better version of yourself.”

Molly stared at him. “Okay,” she said, after a beat. “But how did those guys know my name? It’s not in this article.”

“I almost forgot!” Brick evaded. “I brought you an ice-blended from the Coffee Bean!” He opened a mini cooler set into the
console at his feet. “I got vanilla. Laurel loved vanilla.”

Brick handed her the drink. Molly took it silently and cast another uneasy glance out the window as they crept along. A photographer
was trying to climb up the trunk. The driver finally found a spot of open road and floored it toward the airport exit.

“Sunshine, this is just how it works around these parts,” Brick said. “Everything gets out eventually, so we decided, hey,
let’s leak it on our terms. So I’m sure they know your name because of the party.”

“What party?”

“Well.
That
is a long story,” Brick said. “Why don’t we talk about it when we get home?”

“Sure,” Molly said, wanting to seem agreeable. She took a long sip of her drink and privately hoped a crippling brain freeze
would shove her into a coma before that conversation, or the mysterious party, ever even happened. Suddenly, it seemed awfully
naive to think she could drop into her world-famous father’s life without anybody caring but him. As if to underline the point,
they passed a building bearing a giant poster from Brick’s latest movie that read
BRICK. BRUCE. BEYONCÉ.
BERGERAC.
The shoot-’em-up remake of
Cyrano
made $98 million its first weekend. Molly and Charmaine had seen it twice. For research. Obviously.

“Oops, almost time for
E! News
,” Brick said.

He clicked on the TV in the back of the limo and cranked up the volume. In what Molly found was a welcome and pressure-free
silence—she could let her emotions settle
down a notch—they watched a story about Ed Westwick shaving his head to play Howie Mandel in a biopic called
No Deal
, and then a piece about Chris Pine hurting his hamstring doing a stunt for the next
Star Trek
.

“Oh, no,” gasped Brick. “He can’t play the second lead in
Avalanche!
if he can’t climb!”

Brick whipped out his BlackBerry, then boomed frenzied instructions at whatever poor sap from his office was unlucky enough
to have answered his call. So she wouldn’t sit there and just stare dumbly at her father, Molly gazed out the window. It was
a relief to see L.A. had McDonald’s and Starbucks and supermarkets and crappy bumper sticker–covered cars, just like West
Cairo. But it also had a brilliant azure sky unmolested by anything except sky-high palm trees ruffling in a gentle breeze—so
Californian that it almost seemed fake—and about ten tons more traffic. It was 2 p.m. on a Monday. Didn’t anybody have a job?
Where were all these people
going
?

After about an hour, during which Brick made four more phone calls and arranged to send a ham to Chris Pine, the car exited
onto Sunset Boulevard. The concrete jungle vanished, replaced by a winding, tree-lined road dotted with palatial houses lined
up like beads in a necklace, broken only by UCLA’s redbrick campus. Eventually, the Escalade pulled up to a huge set of wrought-iron
gates set between two tiled outbuildings, one of which was marked in cursive with the words
Bel Air
. A man inside the security kiosk waved them through with a smile.

“Almost home,” Brick chirped, stowing his phone back in his pocket. “Look, that’s the country club. Maybe I should send
them
a ham. They think I use my phone on the golf course too often. Crazy!”

The car began its climb up a curving road. Molly hadn’t realized the term
Hollywood Hills
was actually
descriptive—
for some reason, in her mind, the city was all sand and blazing heat bouncing off flat pavement. But Bel Air was lush and
green and rolling.

“That’s where the crown prince of Saudi Arabia used to live,” Brick said, pointing at yet another gate, behind which was a
driveway so long Molly couldn’t see the house at the end of it. Her nosy days of staring out her bedroom window at the neighbors
across the street were probably over, which was a shame, as these neighbors were doubtless way more interesting. No offense
to Danny.

“That guy threw the craziest parties,” Brick said wistfully. “But my pool is nicer.”

They pulled up to an ivy-covered brick wall and robust fuchsia bougainvillea bushes. The gate swung open to reveal a gravel
driveway running through a tunnel of trees and across a green and perfect lawn, up to a white house larger than Molly’s high
school in Indiana. As they parked, someone wearing a gray workman’s jumpsuit hurried past toward a spherical chrome-and-glass
greenhouse that looked suspiciously like the bad guy’s laboratory in
Rad Man.

Whoa
, Molly thought. This place was no house. It wasn’t even a mansion. It embarrassed mansions.

Brick hopped out and opened Molly’s door with a flourish. “Welcome to Casa Berlin!”

Molly slowly climbed out of the car, making the most of this first chance to take in all of her father in one go. Divested
of his disguise, Brick was even better-looking than he was on-screen: well north of six feet tall, with thick red-brown hair
and familiar hazel eyes surrounded by long lashes Molly wished she’d inherited. They crinkled warmly at the edges when he
smiled, like the kind of candy wrapper his muscles suggested he hadn’t actually untwisted in years. He also had the whitest
teeth Molly had ever seen.

I am Brick Berlin’s daughter
. Somehow, standing right in front of him, it was both easier and harder to believe than when she was back in Indiana.

Molly followed Brick up the steps, through a midnight blue front door with a snarling half-man, half-lion doorknocker, and
into a marble foyer flanked by two identical wide, curving staircases, meeting underneath a crystal chandelier. It made her
feel very small. She had joked to Charmaine that her first seconds in the Berlin house would play out like in
Annie
, when Daddy Warbucks’s staff bursts into song and dance upon her arrival. Molly now had to admit a little choreographed welcome
sounded much more appealing than the echo of footsteps on chilly marble.

The driver lugged in her bags and disappeared up the left flight of stairs. Molly started to follow him, but Brick stopped
her.

“You’ll have time for the tour later,” he promised. “First, your sister is really excited to meet you.”

For the next ten minutes, Molly trailed after Brick through room after empty room. They wandered through an enormous kitchen
(where Brooke was not, as Brick had hypothesized, baking flaxseed muffins), the plush screening room (where Brooke was not
watching
Diaper Andy
), and Brick’s gym (where Brooke was not doing squat thrusts), only to end up back in the cavernous foyer.

“I can’t believe this!” Brick said. “She swore she was going to be here.”

“It’s okay. Something probably came up,” Molly said, to allay his distress. “We have ages to get to know each other. I’m not
going anywhere.”

This brightened Brick, who actually clasped his hands together with glee.

“That is true!” he said. “And this way, we can have some private bonding time. I want to hear everything that’s ever happened
to you.”

He was slinging a beefy arm around Molly when she felt something in his pocket buzz. Brick disengaged and pulled out his phone.

“Tell me you have good news, Mitch,” he said. “What? No, we can’t shoot in Key West. The movie is called
Avalanche!
”

Molly took a seat on the staircase and watched as Brick walked in ever-tighter circles.

“There are no polar bears at large in Key West,” Brick shouted. “That will ruin the last half hour. Do not call me back about
this.”