Free The Perfect Christmas by Kate Forster Page A

Hall’s from Oscars night, or keep ‘em and they might make a great story one day. Either way, you win.’

3
    Dylan stared at Maggie Hall’s discarded shoes in disbelief, turning them over and studying each detail.
    She had never owned anything as gorgeous and frivolous as these, she thought, quelling the desire to slip off her plain black flats from the Gap, and try the Givenchy’s on. Her mother didn’t believe in spending too much money on clothes. ‘Functional is always better than fancy,’ she would tell Dylan whenever she lusted after something pretty and useless.
    She shoved the shoes in an empty gift bag left by a guest and placed them under the bench, then looked at herself in the mirror. Was she really as beautiful as Maggie Hall said?
    She was okay looking, she thought, but growing up with intellectual parents meant you were much more focused on your brain than your looks.
    Dinnertime in the Mercers’ brownstone was spent discussing her mothers ethical legal riddles from her university tenure and her father’s more bizarre psychiatric cases, while Dylan tried to keep up with the conversation.
    She was bright, but she had to work hard for her marks and staying on the honor roll wasn’t easy but she did it because her parents expected nothing less of her.
    Sometimes Dylan longed to remind them that she didn’t have their genetic code so it was unreasonable to expect her to be as brilliant as them, but a part of her was grateful that they treated her as though she was an extension of them.
    That was until she found the letter they had never shown her.
    ‘Excuse me.’ She heard a voice and turned to see another famous face, a starlet who had recently been named as the sexiest woman in film. ‘Do you have a Band-Aid, my shoes are killing me?’
    Dylan opened the first-aid kit, took out a Band-Aid and handed it to the girl. Now
she
was beautiful, Dylan thought, after the girl had left the bathroom.
    She glanced at her face in the mirror again. It was too wide, the sort of face that didn’t look right in everyday life, but it did kind of work in photos. She might have sought out modelling work, if she’d even known where to start, but it never seemed like the right time to say that to her a law professor mother, with tenure at Columbia, or her ailing psychiatrist father, who had recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
    As more women came into the bathroom, there were several faces Dylan recognised, but she wasn’t as starstruck any more. Hell, she had Maggie Hall’s Givenchy shoes! She couldn’t wait to get home and tell her best friend back in New York.
    That was the sort of thing her Addie loved to hear. During their almost daily Skype sessions, Addie always wanted to know what celebrities Dylan had seen in LA.
    But in the two months she’d been in LA, Dylan hadn’t seen many, until tonight. She thought she’d glimpsed Kevin Bacon in a frozen yoghurt store, but couldn’t be sure. A Kevin Bacon sighting probably wouldn’t impress Addie anyway, but Maggie Hall was different.
    Her supervisor walked into the bathroom with a sour face. ‘You can go now. Make sure you sign your hours sheet before you leave.’
    ‘Okay,’ said Dylan politely. This woman had been a total bitch all night, but Dylan refused to let it bother her. This job had been way better than working nights at the greasy chicken shop downtown, trying to avoid the slick on the floor and the even more oily owner.
    Dylan picking up her bag and putting the gift bag with the Givenchy shoes in it over her shoulder. ‘Thanks, it was fun.’
    The woman looked at her and made a face, ‘Being stuck in a bathroom with needy celebrities, bitching about each other and fighting over the mirror, was fun? You’re nuts.’
    Dylan smiled as she stepped into the elevator, feeling the slight weight of the shoes in the bag slung over her shoulder. Tonight had been a rare good night.
    ‘How you doing?’ she heard as the elevator doors