“When are you guys leaving for the Vanity Fair party?” Vaughn asked.
Gage looked around, assessing the situation. “About ninety minutes,” he said. “Morgan is starving, and Wolfgang’s food is nothing to sneeze at. I’ll get her fed and make sure she gets a bunch of photos with Gloria. Why?”
“I told my director from tonight’s show that he’s free to use my limo anytime he wants to leave. I figured I’d hitch a ride with someone else. Allie tells me she’s going wherever Morgan goes. Mind if I catch a ride with you guys?”
“Not at all,” Gage assured him. “You wanna sit at my table with us? I have my usual six-seater reserved at the back of the room.”
I noticed that Allie looked thrilled when Vaughn nodded.
“Perfect,” Vaughn answered. “I could definitely go for some food. Wish it was larger than bite size, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
It took more than ten minutes to make our way through a labyrinth of celebrities, all of whom wanted to congratulate me and say hello to Gage and Vaughn. By the time we got to the table, my cheeks hurt from smiling so much and my eyes were still seeing cell phone camera flashes. Everywhere I looked, people were staring at us with unabashed interest. Most made no real effort to contain their surprise, not that I could blame them.
I gritted my teeth when I saw Kerri Anderson glaring at me. Her Oscar night outfit was worse than her Golden Globes dress had been, which was one hell of a feat. She was in a strapless, red velvet pant suit that was so skintight it did nothing to hide her nipples or her insane camel toe. And just to make it clear that the toe showing wasn’t an oopsie, she had a big heart-shaped diamond placed right in the middle. The sides of the outfit were done in red lace, and across the ass of the pants was a set of huge diamond-encrusted lips. Seeing who I was looking at, Allie leaned in and told me that word was the diamonds were real. Typical. The girl was so tacky it was ridiculous. Her shoes had diamonds and rubies floating in the four-inch heel, the heart-shaped earrings she wore were so large they weighed her earlobes down, and her décolleté and arms were covered with thousands of tiny crystals. Her hair was platinum blond, swept up and covered in what seemed like hundreds of tiny ruby colored crystals. She might’ve been able to be seen from space, but it wasn’t a good look. Untroubled by the way she was glaring at me, I twinkled my fingers at her. The middle one may have stayed up for an extra half a second.
Luckily, my attention was quickly drawn away from her because we’d arrived at our table. I was overjoyed to find that Gloria, Dane, Garrett, and Shaelyn were seated at the table connecting to ours. Not long after we sat down, we were joined by the current People Magazine sexiest man alive choice, Liam Hall. He’d been on the scene for about six years and already had three Oscars under his belt, two supporting actor and one lead actor. Hollywood was oddly small, and everyone knew everyone else somehow. It turned out that Liam lived across the street from Gage while Vaughn lived a few blocks away in the same development
I enjoyed how fun and relaxed our group was. I snuck bites of food in—delicious, but super small, just as Vaughn had said—as people came and went from our table. I’d taken what felt like hundreds of photos, but I knew there were more to come at the Vanity Fair party. We left an hour or so later, the silence in the limo almost deafening on the heels of the above normal volume at the Governors Ball.
Vaughn had made arrangements to go with us, but at the last minute, low and behold, his limo turned up right behind ours. Not wanting to “waste” it, he asked Allie to ride with him to the Vanity Fair party. I barely held in my inelegant snort of disbelief at that one. Seeing how happy Allie was about being alone with him meant I was thrilled with the change in plans.
More than that, I was delighted to finally have a few quiet minutes alone with Gage. The second the driver pulled away from the curb, Gage had me in his arms. I linked my fingers behind his neck and watched in wonder as his lips descended toward mine.
“God, baby,” he groaned so close to me that I could feel the warmth of his breath against my lips. “You have no idea how much I want you right now. I’ve been insane without you.”
“I missed you, too,” I whispered.
“Now that I’ve officially declared you mine, I get to kiss you whenever I want,” he rasped. He gave me a quick grin before he took my breath away with a kiss that melted my brain, my panties, and my entire body in one fell swoop.