The New Year's Eve party is about to begin. But first...there are some surprises in store. And a "kiss" seen around the world-and may mean trouble in paradise...

Wyatt let out a horror movie scream.

I shot straight up in bed all squinty eyed and disoriented. And then I saw what had made her scream like that-I almost screamed, too.

There was this serious drone hovering just outside the glass wall of our bedroom like a ginormous dragonfly. I'm talking a big, black, NASA-looking thing with all kinds of propellers and a big old camera.

"What IS that?!" she yelled, shrinking back against me.

"It's a goddamned drone," I said. I got into my jeans right quick and ran over to get a better look.

Wyatt slid back down under the covers, like she was trying to hide.

"But what is it doing here?" she asked. "Is it a security thing or..."

"Nah. It's a media thing," I said. "No worries, though. It's one-way glass."

She sat up again, once I'd said that. But asked, "Are you sure?"

"Yep! You can set it to be see-through, but the default's one way."

I got out my cell to take pictures of the drone taking pictures of us. Or trying to.

And I said, "Even if it wasn't, all they'd have is pictures of the teacher who accompanied me to Vegas as a condition of probation."

"In your bed, wearing one of your t-shirts."

I went back over, took her in my arms and said, "It's okay, okay? I promise they can't see anything."

She looked up, smiled a little, and said, "I'd better shower. We'd better shower. They'll be coming for us soon."

"Best offer I've had all day," I told her. And even though she kept smiling, something in those eyes told me the nerves were kicking in.

The great room of my villa was like Grand Central or something, when we finally came out to get the low down. Everyone had chosen to crash at my place, trying to get some rest before the main event and after a long day of meetings and run throughs and final fittings.

Wyatt hung with me, but Amelie was with the girls again, laughing. Always laughing. But always an inch away from tears, too, I'd noticed. Jumbled up, emotionally, still. But mostly always laughing. She was all light, that woman. A little Sun in the middle of the room, shining on everybody.

"Did you see that drone?" I asked the girls.

"Honey, this fool was out there on the balcony jus' twerkin' it," Aisha said, nodding to Mike, who bent right over to give me a little demo.

I slapped that ass and said, "So you're the one got 'em tryin'a spy on people'n' shit!"

"This is our day," Mike said. "I'm gonna twerk it 'til it don't twerk no more, baby!"

"Had a head start, too," I said. I mean, she was definitely high already. What on, I wasn't sure.

But she took my face between her hands and kissed me and said, "You're not mad at me, Papi!"

I said, "Damned right I'm not! I'm proud of you, you lunatic!"

And Cat said, "Let's hope you stay that way," but she was only teasing. In fact, she kissed her, just to prove it. And everybody got a big laugh when Mike grabbed her and almost Frenched her to death.

They were still lip locked when Joie came stomping into the great room with some kind of green goop slathered all over her face and her hair up in curlers.

She glared at Mike and Cat, and then clapped her hands and said, "All right, children! There are reinforcements in the sky lounge waiting to do their thang, so I want everybody up there pronto! I'll be doing the girls and some of my very talented assistants will take Papi, Hugh and their mates. There's food and drink there, including both sugar and fire water to get you into party mode. Let's roll, children-where's Wyatt?"

Wyatt rose and waved, and Joie went, "Oh, there she is! We took in that dress just a tad bit at the waist at the last minute. We want no wardrobe malfunctions tonight. So if you feel the girls slipping out of those dresses let me know now, ladies."

"Bay boy wouldn't even care if hers fell out," Aisha teased me. "He'd be stannin' there lookin' all proud."

"Well, be that as it may, just to make sure, come try yours on, sweetie," Joie said to Wyatt.

I gave Wyatt a hug and said, "Make it work!" And everyone laughed as they headed for the elevator-some ran for the stairs.

But Hugh caught up to me and said, "Just a word..." which meant he wanted to get the scoop on Celie, I gathered. So Hugh and I headed for the "pit," this circular, sunken...hole at one end of the great room that the girls called the "play pen," because it sort of corralled you in.

Hugh grabbed a little plate of cheese wedges and said, "I think your lady friend is a bit shell shocked."

"Well, Amelie's not," I told him. "That little laugh of hers is, like, the happiest sound in the world."

Hugh sampled a wedge, gave a nod of approval and said, "She's infatuated with the lot of you. Admires your sangfroid-yours in particular. This morning she said, 'He's not really 19, is he?' Thinks it's an elaborate ruse we've devised. For PR purposes."

"I'll show her my passport or something."

He laughed and held out the plate to me. So I grabbed a piece of brie, but I wasn't as hungry as usual. Maybe I was frazzled, too.

"Our actress friend has kept a very low profile thus far," he said, sort of waggling his eyebrows as a cue to dish the dirt.

I grabbed a bagel and a big gob of cream cheese to spread on it. The brie had turned my appetite back on a little bit.

"She's a piece o' work, for sure," I said. "We'll have to keep her in check."

He poured us both some coffee from a carafe on the table and took a quick sip before asking, "And the script?"

"Is still a good script," I said. "We can still do business. I mean, if she left here empty-handed, the press would eat her alive."

"Well, she may land on her feet. We've gotten an interesting response from one of the producers she 'outed.'"

"Oh yeah? Which?"

"Foster'd like to have a look. The Oscar impressed him. Needs the PR. Something...of the moment, to re-establish his rep. So it would be good for all concerned. You would receive credit as executive producer, of course."

"I pay the bills, he runs the show?"

Hugh winked and said, "You get paid, too. If all goes well."

"It was scary to watch her morph into this...I don't know how to explain it," I said. "But she's tougher than she let on. Shiftier, too. She zigs and zags right with you."

"Survivor," Hugh said. "I suspected that. I just hoped you'd zig and zag with equal agility. As a fellow survivor."

"So you felt that up front? That she was maybe...not what she was pretending to be?"

"I felt that she'd cut me out of the herd with uncommon precision. I'd never heard of her, to be brutally honest. And I'm quite sure she hadn't heard of me before that night, either. Someone else told her who I was and what I did with you. The rest she directed brilliantly. Got herself introduced...asked, seemingly innocent questions..."

"And you bit the hook."

"Baited the hook," he said. "She's a big fish. Swam right up to the boat-prize catch for the new boy in town."

"You know who you sound like right now, don't you?"

"Oh, JJ would've played it far more skillfully," Hugh said. "He would have put her in her place from the very beginning. And had her people taken care of himself, of course."

"Wish to God he could see this," I said. "I'd like to look out into the audience and see that smile, you know?"

"Would you indeed?" he said. "Well, you've given me the perfect segue-quick detour. Joie won't mind. Come!"

I stared, and he managed to keep a relatively straight face as he stood up and nodded toward the elevators. And as I rose, he slapped me on the back and then led the way.

We wound up standing in the middle of the Sky Walk. And all he said was, "Look down."

Because aaaaaaallll the way down in the plaza at ground level, there was now a huge pool-one of those ones that looks like the water is running over all the sides, but never actually overflows.

And beneath the ripples was this amazing black and white picture of JJ, surrounded by the girls and me. It was one of my favorites, with me hugging him from behind and both of us smiling like we only smiled at each other. You can see how much I loved him. And how proud he was of me, too.

You could only see it properly from 'way up like where we were, or from any of the rooms facing the plaza. And Hugh put a hand on my shoulder and said, "There is a plaque there now. Making it officially DeVillier Plaza. And the restaurant in lobby of the rear tower will be called 'JJ.' Very expensive, of course."

I teared up and he hugged me. And said, "Well...he had to be here, as you rightly suggested."

"It's fuckin' amazing," I said, kneeling down as if that would give me an even better view through the glass floor.

"The girls insisted he be right in the middle of it all," Hugh said. "Where he could not possibly be ignored."

I touched the glass as if it were the water flowing over us down there. And I left my body for a minute. Watching all these little JJ moments run by in my mind. Like when you're dying.

"You're killin' me, man," I told him. I couldn't wipe my eyes fast enough. So I quit trying. And the elevator opened and the girls and our two ladies came rushing out to grab me, which only made it worse.

Amelie and Wyatt stood by-they hadn't been part of the conspiracy. But Hugh knelt to show them what we were squealing and crying about.

And I heard Amelie say, "How do you do these things?"

Wyatt came to rub my back and read my face.

"They're crazy, right?" I said. "Honest to God, sometimes I can't believe my life."

Something buzzed, and I saw Hugh frown when he checked his cell. And when he saw me looking, he said, "Well! They're rounding up cops back home. Based on an investigation said to have been initiated by a friend of yours, who suspected evidence in several recent trials might have been illegally or unethically obtained."

"Friendly, too?"

"They didn't name names."

"Could this be good for you?" Wyatt asked me.

"Chase thinks so," Hugh answered for me. "But he's laying low 'til he's done some digging."

"So we shouldn't meddle," I said.

"They're mucking it up themselves. If we let things unfold, you may walk away unscathed."

Aisha walked over and snatched his cell away.

"We ain't there today. We here," she said. And then she looked at me with her eyes all sparkly and wet and said, "We here, Papi..."

And when her voice caught like she was about to cry, we just folded up around each other and cried for all the people who weren't there to see it, and also because we had survived the heinous shit that killed them.

And that's when I gave her the now famous kiss that someone had the sense to shoot and that went crazy viral when our PR people released the next day. You can see how deep our love is, in that picture. It puts me right back there, in the moment, whenever I look at it.

And then my eyes wander to Wyatt, in the background, looking down and off to the side...