He slid a two-inch stack of paper to my side of the table. "Here’s what Lorna's written so far. She’s still researching a few of the chapters, so there are some gaps.”

He leaned back in his chair, and I tried not to stare at every movement his broad shoulders made. "I read it last night,” he said.

I skimmed the introduction, which was the story of Kari's firing Lorna because Lorna had tried to help the hospital director do a benefit concert for sick children. I hadn’t gotten far when I let out a sigh of disgust. "This is awful.”

"Which part?”

"The woman doesn’t know how to write. On the first page it says, ‘Caring for no one, the benefit for sick children was turned down.’ Besides the fact that it makes it sound like the benefit cared for no one, the sentence is in passive voice and has a dangling modifier. This sentence alone would raise an English teacher’s blood pressure to dangerous levels.”

Grant picked up his water glass and took a sip. "That’s what bothers you? The dangling modifier in that sentence?”

"Well, I expected the rest to be bad.” I let out a sigh and read on about how Lorna had interviewed several people, etc., etc., and did all sorts of meticulous research.

I moved on to the first chapter, entitled "A Princess Is Born.” It told the story of how Alex Kingsley lost his young wife while out on tour. "His guilt and sorrow overwhelmed him for years,” Lorna wrote. "He compensated by lavishing gifts on his daughter. In terms of toys and clothes, young Kari had double anything she ever wanted, including a slew of nannies, a child-sized Hummer, a personal swimming pool, and a Shetland pony."

It went on cataloging his excesses and told how he threw himself into his work. He came out with four albums in five years. He took Kari and her nanny on tour with him when she was young, some years doing as many as 125 concerts. "Kari learned from the time she was small,” Lorna wrote, "that the only important life was a life onstage.”

A picture of the two of them was included in the text. Kari looked to be about four years old. She wore a cowboy hat, ruffled skirt, and rhinestone boots. He held her up for a crowd to see.

I stared at it and tears pressed against my eyes. The words blurred together and I didn’t even know why I was crying. Was it because I was jealous of the time and attention Kari got from the father I never knew, or the fact that he was so overwhelmed by sorrow and guilt he had wanted to buy for her what she couldn't have, a mother?

I didn’t notice that Grant had come around the table to sit beside me until he spoke. "Maybe this isn’t a good idea. You're already crying, and you're not even to the bad stuff. Why don’t you read it later?"

But I didn't want to wait. "I’ll be okay.”

I wasn’t okay. I got to the sentence, "Friends tried to convince Alex to remarry, but his answer was always the same: He’d already proved he didn’t make a good husband.” And I cried all over again. This time I knew why. I cried for my mother and her dreams that didn't happen, that couldn’t have happened because she'd pinned them on somebody too broken and unattainable to love her back.

Grant slid the manuscript away from me. “Look, this kind of stuff is said about celebrities all the time. People don't believe half of it, and they don't care about the rest. Even if it does go to press, you’re not going to lose any fans over this stupid book.”

I nodded, but the tears came anyway. I hated that I'd become so emotional here in California. I hadn’t cried this much over my father since elementary school, when I first realized I could never go to the donuts-for-dads-and-kids breakfasts they put on once a year.

Grant slid his arm around me, and I laid my head against his shoulder. I shouldn’t have leaned into him that way, but I couldn't help myself. I wanted the comfort.

He said, "Really, don’t worry about it. A tabloid once said my songs had subliminal messages that brainwashed kids so they'd do whatever I asked. Apparently I'm trying to take over the free world with an army of junior high zombies.” He ran his hand through the ends of my hair, loosely winding his fingers through it. "I had it framed and sent to my high school civics teacher. She thought I'd never paid attention to any of her lectures on government."

I laughed even though I was still crying, but I couldn’t speak. I grabbed my napkin from the table and used it to dab the tears off my face. You spend that much time buffing, concealing, and bronzing your skin and you don’t want it ruined by one outburst. "It's just hard to read about my father.” I could tell Grant didn’t understand, so I added, "Things are distant between us right now, but I don’t want them to be. At least I don't think I want them to be. That's part of the problem—I don't know—and I want to talk to him, but I'm afraid to. I don’t know what he’ll say. I don't even know if he wants me in his life."

Somewhere in that I’d quit being Kari and had become Alexia. My mom had said she hadn’t told me Alex Kingsley was my father because she didn’t want me to be devastated if he rejected me. It seemed like a cop-out answer at the time, but now that I was here in California, counting down the days until I met him, I realized my mother was right.

"Of course your dad wants you in his life," Grant said. And then he pulled me even closer. I let my head fall against his shoulder and stayed there listening to him breathe, feeling the slow rise and release of his chest. Neither of us moved for a long time.

Finally he said, "Can I ask you a question?"

“Yeah."

"Do you promise you’ll be honest?”

"No."

He laughed and I liked the feel of it against my cheek.

"It depends on what you ask,” I said.

"Do you really have a gambling problem?”

I sat up away from him, but not very far away. He still had his arm around my shoulders. I wanted to answer for me, but knew I had to answer for Kari. "I hope I don't anymore. I worked this whole week doing concerts to pay off debts. Really, that's the honest answer. I could show you my latest dance routine to ‘Two Hearts Apart' right now to prove it."

"I'll pass on that." His hand returned to my hair, flipping it lazily between his fingers. "Do you really have temper tantrums when you’re upset?"

He was asking about Kari. But with his arm around me and the smell of his cologne encircling me, I couldn't be Kari. I relaxed back into him. "I don't have tantrums. Well, I did push Theresa Davidson into a cafeteria garbage can when I was eleven. And there was an incident not too long ago involving some books that ended up on the floor. But I'm doing my best to reform. That's the honest answer.”

"One more question." His fingers were still intertwined in my hair. His gaze settled on my eyes. "Is there any chance the two of us could be more than friends?"

I didn't answer for a full minute. I just looked at the table and felt the heat of his arm draped around my shoulders. Finally I said, "I still consider Michael my boyfriend."

Grant didn’t move. Neither did I.

"You didn’t say that was the honest answer," he said.

"I know."

He shifted his weight to look at me better. His eyes were serious, smoldering. Then his gaze slid downward, stopping at my lips. He leaned forward, about to kiss me. I should have moved, turned away, said something. But I didn't.

Then the waiter came in. "Oh," he said, looking back and forth between us with obvious discomfort. "Do you need more time to order?”

Grant straightened up, picked up his menu, and glanced over it. “Porterhouse steak. Medium rare." He handed his menu to the waiter and turned his attention back to me.