California Dreaming by Zoey Dean Read Free Book Online Page A

crush. “Anna! Logan!”
    They turned to see Sam and Eduardo approaching breathlessly, Sam looking radiant in an emerald chiffon party dress she hadn't been wearing earlier. Anna pulled away from her father just as Sam tackled her, wrapping her in a bear hug.
    Anna nestled her head into Sam's brunette waves and inhaled the scent of her Juicy Couture perfume. The hug went on and on, until Anna finally pleaded for mercy.
    Sam smiled, the expression on her face one of utter joy and amazement, as if she couldn't believe she was really looking at Anna. “I know this is going to sound selfish, because it should be all about you right now,” Sam began, grinning from ear to ear, “but I'm so glad you're here, because later this week Eduardo and I are getting married, and I want you to be a part of it.”
    Anna looked at her friend, stunned for the second time that night. But this time it was a happy kind of shock. “Congratulations!” She grabbed Sam again and hugged her tightly.
    It was too much. This night. Her father. Her friends. All the people around her, laughing and crying and hugging. Anna saw the man still carrying the little girl in the pigtails, who was crying to a woman who looked like her mother. For a moment, Anna almost dissolved in tears too. But she was too overwhelmed to cry. She didn't know what she felt, beyond being so, insanely glad to be alive and on the ground.
    She looked from Sam to Eduardo to her father, and finally rested her eyes on Logan, who'd been so quietly patient during her whole reunion. She'd almost forgotten the thing she most wanted to say. “Thank you.”
    He cocked a blond eyebrow. “For what? Inviting you to Bali on a flight that nearly got you killed?”
    “For being so wonderful when I was losing it. You got me through it.”
    “We got through it together.”
    Anna felt entirely comforted. Surrounded by her friends, her father beaming appreciatively at her, and with Logan by her side, it felt like the complete opposite of an hour earlier. Wearing airplane slippers and a sundress, in the midst of a sea of people in the international-arrivals terminal of LAX, she felt truly free. So she did what she never would have done at any other time in her life: she grabbed Logan and kissed him.
    He kissed her back.
    It was a kiss of hope. A promise for the future. It was, more than anything else, a kiss of life.

The Parent Trap
    Saturday evening, 8:45 p.m.
    A s Sam pulled up to the valet stand at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the hallowed grounds where the Hollywood elite had partied, mated, dated, and overdosed for years, she decided that this had been one of the more insane days of her life.
    First Anna had nearly died. Then Anna had survived. Then she and Eduardo had called his parents to deliver the news that they were getting married in a week. His parents, Pedro and Consuela, had cut short a vacation in Cabo and caught a flight to Los Angeles that afternoon, renting one of the hotel's most exclusive bungalows for a week. Sam next called her estranged mother, Dina, who agreed to fly in from North Carolina immediately. A cozy dinner for six was planned—Sam, her fiancé, and both of their parents—at the Polo Lounge in the back of the hotel, at 9:30 p.m.
    As Sam had waited for Anna's plane to land, one part of her brain was so deeply steeped in Hollywood that she'd felt removed from the terror, as if she were watching one of her father's big-budget action movies, and whether or not the plane crashed, whether or not people survived, was nothing more than a plot point. But another part of her—a part she liked—had been terrified. She'd cried, she'd felt nauseated, she'd even prayed.
    But now that it was over, with a very Hollywood-esque happy ending, Sam was back to worrying about her own life and her upcoming nuptials. Eduardo's parents were light-years different from her own. Would they hate each other? Would worlds collide?
    Sam slid out of her Hummer and handed the keys to the