Black Diamond. Havana Adams

the link was broken, the man with the jet-black hair and piercing eyes had turned his attention back to his friends. Grace’s gaze drifted back to the dark-haired man and then her gaze took in the whole table.

      “Grace, what are you doing?” Grace spun around to see Vicky staring at her. Grace felt her cheeks grow warm; she’d been standing in the middle of Hall mooning over a hot boy. “Nessa will kill you if she sees you hanging around with an empty platter.” Grace nodded and she quickly headed back to the kitchen to refill.

      Later that night, exhausted after three hours on her feet, Grace sat by the dim light of her lamp and completed her essay on the law of theft, yawning all the way through it. Though she was exhausted, as always sleep eluded her and she lay for a long time in the dark, running through the list of essays she had to do and jobs she’d need to apply for in time for the summer break. As she finally fell asleep, the last thing she thought of was the piercing blue eyes and the look that she had shared with the nameless boy in Hall.

       CHAPTER 6

      “Lola! Smile!”

      Lola watched the look of derision that Amber shot at the lone photographer that greeted their arrival at the Chateau Marmont. Lola could practically read her friend’s mind. Paris would have twenty photographers; this lone snapper was an insult. Lola and Amber linked arms and together they walked into the infamous Hollywood landmark. It was a scorching Los Angeles afternoon and Lola pursed her lips, hardly bothering to hide her irritation.

      “We should be by a pool,” she muttered. She tensed as she noted Amber’s frown. Too often, in the last few months, she’d seen her best friend frown at her. Lola was starting to worry that having her best friend as her manager was quickly going to become a buzz kill.

      “Tyler wanted to meet,” Amber replied as they stepped into the ornate dimly lit lift that would take them down to the Chateau’s garden dining area.

      “We could have met at his office, at least that’s by the beach,” Lola replied. Amber sighed and once again Lola felt that she was somehow failing to live up to expectations.

      “What good would that have done?” Amber snapped. “The point is to be seen, to raise your profile.”

      “I’m seen everywhere, I’m out every night,” Lola snapped back and she felt a dart of anger as she saw Amber roll her eyes. When did Amber start rolling her eyes at me? It used to be the two of them against the world. Silently, they stepped out of the lift and Amber waved across the dining area at Tyler who was seated at a prominent table at the centre of the garden. As they walked towards him, Lola was aware of a few surreptitious glances thrown their way. She recognised a famous Swedish actor that her mother had once worked with and an award-winning screenwriter who was tapping away into a laptop. As they approached Tyler, Lola took a moment to appraise him. In his pressed jeans, button-down shirt and sun-streaked blond hair, Tyler looked like every wannabe surfer dude that had ever walked the Thirty Mile Zone with a dream. By rights, like every one of those dreamers, Tyler should have wound up doing porn or working as a pool boy in Brentwood, while flirting with the co-ed daughter of the house. And yet, somehow, Tyler had shaken off the shackles of low expectations. He’d hustled his way up from runner to reporter at a cable entertainment station. He had tenaciously made the jump from reporter to presenter and, displaying the kind of smarts that no one would ever have suspected, given the artfully highlighted hair, he’d parlayed his way into producing. The Cable Network where he’d once been the go-to guy for coffees, now counted his production company and the revenue from his shows as the sole reason for its continued existence.

      “Lola, Amber. Goddesses, as always.” Tyler stood as they approached, smiling with a flash of his blinding white teeth. “So how have you been?” Tyler directed his question at Lola as they took their seats.

      “Good, we’ve gone out a whole lot,” she admitted. “And I checked, we were on one of those live blog things after the benefit last week. That’s good, right?” Lola asked. Tyler gave a non-committal nod.

      “It’s a start,” he replied, leaning back in his chair and for just a moment Lola caught a flash in his eyes, a flash of the shark that must lurk beneath the laid-back, Californian beach boy exterior. “But the thing is, we’re not even in the ball park yet, babe. We want you to be everywhere, not just on blogs. We want you on TV, on magazines, on red carpets, at the Super Bowl and maybe eventually on movie screens.” Lola stared in dismay at Tyler. She thought her renewed push had been good. For someone who’d partied since she was thirteen, she hadn’t imagined that it could ever become a chore but in the last two weeks she and Amber had been to everything. What more could they do?

      “How do we do that?” she asked quietly. Tyler nodded at Amber.

      “Amber and I have been talking and we think what you need is a boyfriend. A celebrity boyfriend.”

      Whatever Lola had expected to hear, this wasn’t it and she stared open-mouthed at Tyler.

       CHAPTER 7

      “His name is Nico.”

      Grace looked up at Vicky’s words as they strolled through the University Parks on another sunny day. Across the field, a rowdy group of cricketers were engaged in a nets session, whooping loudly as one of their number was caught out. Several joggers had lapped them several times making Grace feel exhausted. Even as she relished the feeling of the warm sunshine on her skin, with the thought of the impending summer also came other fears, not least that she would have to abandon her thick sweats and hoodies for clothes that might reveal more of her far too ample body. Once again her healthy eating regime had failed to take, just last night as she waded through the Law of Property Statutes, she’d chomped down on an 18-inch pizza all by herself.

      “His name is Nico,” Vicky repeated.

      “Whose name is Nico?” Grace asked though she knew she wasn’t fooling her friend. Vicky gave a low laugh and Grace felt her face warm.

      “Old Steamy eyes,” Vicky replied punctuating her words with a long smooching sound.

      “Stop it,” Grace hissed, her eyes darting quickly around. Grace allowed herself to think about the boy whose blue-grey eyes had stopped her in her tracks at Newman. She had seen him several times during her shifts and every time he’d been in the company of the same group of beautiful people. Grace’s eyes darted around to make sure no one had heard Vicky’s comment. Not that it was likely that Nico or indeed any of The Gatsbies would ever make it this far out of town.

      The Gatsbies, that is what they were called, Grace had learned. And she understood the nickname absolutely, evoking as it did the decadence and wealth and glamorous luxury of the book The Great Gatsby. Nico and his friends were modern-day Gatsbys with their reputed millions and their country homes and yachts and glamorous star-studded parties. Since that day when she had met eyes with Nico Andreou, her serving stints at Newman had been tinged with a charged frisson of something. What that thing was, Grace had avoided putting a name to. By design she’d always ended up serving on the other side of Hall from where The Gatsbies always sat and so there had been no chance for any more eye contact. Not that it was likely to happen again, Grace told herself sternly, for Nico Andreou was not merely out of her league, he was utterly out of her stratosphere; in another universe altogether. Once, when she’d been flicking through the magazines at a local bookstore, she had stopped shocked as she’d caught sight of Nico within the pages of a glossy celebrity magazine. On his arm had been a famous European pop star and next to him a dashing older couple that could only be his parents. Grace had devoured the article. Nico’s mother was a former Brazilian swimwear model and his father a billionaire Greek industrialist whose business influence reached all over the world. Grace had set the magazine back down on the shelf and walked quietly home, more aware than ever that she’d stepped into a world where she didn’t belong.

      By now, she and Vicky had emerged from the Parks