Star Crossed

by Jennifer Echols

  Sipping his champagne, he watched her over the top of his flute as she drank a few long gulps with her eyes closed, then turned her head to one side and stretched her neck. She really did have a crick. Sitting with Daniel and having a drink was her only break—if one could call it that—before she searched out Lorelei. He knew how she felt.

  The next second, she set the drink down, her eyes opened, and she was grinning again. “So who of note is here at the bar? Not that you’ve been paying attention. I know you’re on vacation.”

  “You’re right,” he said drily. “I’ve just been sitting here relaxing and getting plastered.”

  “You do seem three sheets over there. Totally out of control. You might want to cut yourself off.”

  “Thanks for your concern. But I did happen to notice Lorelei Vogel pass by.”

  “Really!” Wendy blinked her long eyelashes, feigning shock. “What a big star! Did you get her autograph?”

  “No. And Colton Farr is here. Giuliana Jacobsen.”

  “You don’t say!” Wendy gasped. “Did they go into the back room?”

  “Yes.” He leaned closer again, catching another whiff of her perfume, and said conspiratorially, “I heard Giuliana is throwing a party.”

  Wendy gaped at him. “Wow! A reality star of her stature is liable to bring all the A-listers over from the Bellagio!”

  “I’ve seen them.” He gave her a litany of the D-list celebrities who had filed through. “But like I say, I haven’t been keeping track.”

  She slapped her hand on the table as if coming to a spontaneous decision. “This may sound crazy to you, but I think I’ll slip back there to the private room and see if I can get in.” She laughed uproariously at her own joke, it seemed, without letting Daniel in on what was so funny. Then she eyed him knowingly and clarified, “They don’t let just any girl into the private room of the Big O club, you know.”

  Daniel laughed. Then corralled his laughter into a polite, halfhearted chuckle. He didn’t want her to know how funny he thought she was. And he hoped she couldn’t see him blushing in the dim and shifting light of the bar.

  He watched her very carefully, and he could have sworn she didn’t blush at all as she said, “I wonder if the interior of the club is red velvet. Or pink. Pink velvet.”

  He bit his lip. He refused to let her make him laugh again.

  “And they have fountains running over the velvet, to lubricate it, for effect.”

  He cleared his throat.

  “Like a vagina,” she said with gusto.

  That was it. He burst into laughter. Several men passing turned to stare because his outburst was so loud, or because he looked so strange wearing a genuine smile. He reached for his champagne and polished it off.

  “You okay there?” She pursed her lips, suppressing her own smile as he nodded. She didn’t press him further, though. She let him off the hook. Sighing, she said, “I probably won’t get in, but it’s fun to try. Maybe I’ll see you there later?”

  He considered making a joke about her inviting him into a vagina. But that was a joke she would make, or some guy with a sense of humor. The kind of guy she was probably married to or—dating, he decided, glancing at her ringless hand supporting her chin.

  He managed, “It does sound like fun, but I’m sure I won’t get in, either.” Of course he was on the list to be admitted. She was, too, or she would argue with the bouncers and make phone calls until they let her behind the velvet rope.

  “Thank you for the champagne.” She stood—first bending so that he got a glimpse down her white shirt at her cleavage and the lacy edge of her pale bra, then straightening.

  He stood with her. Maybe it was his imagination, but he thought there was a moment when she looked up at him in the near darkness, her blue eyes big with something other than teasing. A spark passed between them.

  And then she was sliding out of the booth and rounding it to make her way through the crowd to the back room where the action and the catastrophes were.

  Sitting again, he watched her go. Then blinked. Slapped one hand to his jaw to make sure it hadn’t dropped. Her tight skirt had seemed like normal business attire from the front. Now he saw that an exaggerated zipper ran all the way down the back. It was a detail some crazy designer had added to make the standard offering a little different. It was also way too risqué for conservative New York offices, including his own. She was wearing it anyway.

  And wearing it well.

  He longed to watch that zipper sway all the way into the back room, but he couldn’t afford for her to catch him staring at her like she was a scantily clad celebrity and he was her starstruck fan. With supreme effort, he tore his eyes away and looked through the glass wall at the casino floor again, wondering what minor luminaries he’d missed while Wendy had his full attention. He put his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand and was just realizing he’d unconsciously imitated the position she’d taken sitting there when he heard a voice close by.

  “Hey.”

  Wendy was standing beside him. As he looked up at her, he couldn’t help wondering whether she’d engineered their positions on purpose, so that he would be gazing up at her instead of the other way around.

  But she’d lost the mocking tone in her voice. “I just wanted to say . . . ” She frowned down at him. “Take care, Daniel. You don’t seem like yourself.” Her gaze focused on his battered eye.

  And then the teasing came back. Before he could stop her—and how would he have stopped her?—she reached out and ruffled his hair.

  She walked quickly through the writhing crowd, toward the Big O. The long golden zipper on the back of her black skirt wagged violently as her hips shifted. He felt his cheeks burn with anger that someone in the bar might have witnessed her overly familiar gesture. Yet he still felt the soft touch of her fingertips brushing along his scalp. And he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her ass.

  She was so tiny that she disappeared behind the dancers. He glimpsed her white blouse again, glowing among all the black. She vanished again. And then he saw her talking to the bouncer at the entrance to the inner room. He hoped against hope that the bouncer would refuse her entry, and Daniel could save face after that hair ruffling by interceding for her, coming to her rescue.

  The bouncer held the door open for her, and she slipped inside.

  Daniel pushed away his champagne flute and stood, eyes never leaving the door of the inner room. He’d heard stories about Wendy’s exploits his whole professional life. Now that he thought about it, he was amazed their paths hadn’t crossed before. But he was finally feeling something he hadn’t felt since he’d gone head-to-head with her for the Clarkson Prize.

  Challenged.

  4

  As Wendy walked away from Daniel’s table, she started to get that sinking feeling, with mountains looming over her. She knew she had no filter. She had very good instincts about what made other people tick, and very bad ones about what made herself tick, or how far she could take her natural inclination to tease, like stopping on her walk to elementary school and poking an ant bed with a stick. It was only afterward, as she was retreating from an encounter, that she realized she’d made a mistake.

  She looked back toward Daniel. She couldn’t see him past the wall of bodies dancing around her. It didn’t matter anyway. She didn’t really want to know whether he was still glaring at her, did she?

  Flushed with embarrassment and adrenaline and the certainty that she’d ruined everything in her first hour in Vegas, Wendy stammered through her introduction to the burly bouncer at the door to the inner room. Luckily, her name had made it onto his list. At least someone in Lorelei’s camp wasn’t too coked up to sweat the details. But Wendy felt coked up herself at the moment and was in no shape to introduce herself to Lorelei as her savior.

  Stepping through the doorway into the second party, she noticed with disappointment that the club was decorated in blue rather than pink velvet and did not glisten or otherwise look l
ike anything remotely resembling a vagina. Clearly the designers were not as creative as she was. She fought her way through the even tighter crowd and retreated to an empty bench in a corner. She couldn’t make a call because being overheard would be disastrous, and the music was too loud anyway. But she could take deep breaths and text Sarah.

  Daniel “Cheekbones” Blackstone is here. Was trying to draw him out and when I left I patted him on the head. Probably should not have done that.

  In less than a minute she had Sarah’s response.

  YOU WHAT? He will be MORE likely to one-up u now. Why couldn’t u just have too many friendly drinks w him and leave him w the impression ur a lesbian???

  Wendy laughed at this description of Sarah’s own modus operandi. She texted, Touché, which her phone autocorrected to Touched, which was not what she’d meant at all.

  Or was it? She thought of her shock when she saw Daniel’s black eye, the damage Colton had done to him, and felt sorry for him all over again. She’d never felt sorry for him for being born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but tonight he’d looked so . . . solemn, isolated to the point of sadness, sitting there on his throne. Then he’d shown her a side of himself that she’d never seen before, ever, like he was under so much pressure that he was finally close to blowing.

  She texted Sarah,

  I made him laugh like an embarrassed teenage boy.

  As she waited for Sarah’s answer, she read her text over and considered it. She’d been a teenager, eighteen, and she assumed he’d been the same age, when they’d first met. Except she wasn’t sure they’d ever met, officially. So . . . when they first became aware of each other. Or when she first became aware of him. She did hope he knew who she was, and that he’d only been pretending to have a hard time placing her. She would hate to think that after all those nights she’d agonized over whether she could beat him for the Clarkson Prize, he hadn’t even known she existed.

  Then came Sarah’s answer.

  When it’s whack, it’s crack.

  This was one of Sarah and Wendy’s mantras. They’d noticed that when they came into a meltdown situation and there didn’t seem to be any overt cause for the chaos, usually the stars and all their entourage were busy covering up the fact that somebody was on crack: the star, the manager, the boyfriend, the star’s mother.

  Wendy snorted at the idea of Daniel Blackstone on crack, then typed,

  More likely high on the casino’s oxygen bar.

  That was kind of funny, but not what she’d intended to share with Sarah. She typed,

  I was able to make him laugh only once before the blast shields went up. Maybe I’ll try again later.

  Her nerves calmer now, she took a deep breath—smelled marijuana and looked around curiously, but the smoker was hiding it well—and stood to make her way across the room in search of Lorelei. She was slipping her phone into her purse when it vibrated in her hand again. Glancing at the screen, she saw Sarah had texted,

  Stay away from him.

  That was a very good idea, and yet as Wendy pictured herself sidestepping him until the Hot Choice Awards in four nights, she felt a little sad. She definitely wanted to see if she could make him laugh again.

  She put her phone away and scanned the crowd. She recognized Lorelei in a far corner, having a têteà-tête with Giuliana, whose fake tan looked even stranger under the club lights. Then Wendy saw him coming toward her.

  Rick. Blond and handsome and broad with muscles that he’d used to pin her by the throat against the wall when he attacked her at college.

  Not Rick, she assured herself, tamping down the wave of panic. After he’d assaulted her, he’d fled New York. She hadn’t seen him since. Even when she went back for her father’s funeral in West Virginia, he hadn’t been around. People said he’d skipped town right after she left for college, stealing his uncle’s truck on his way out. He’d held her captive in her dorm room, then disappeared completely.

  No, this was someone much more banal: a huge television star. Yet her heart didn’t slow down as she picked out Colton Farr’s differences from Rick in the dim and spinning lights: his surgically straightened nose, his younger age by ten years, his softer smile. He might not be her violent ex, but he was the last person she should be seen talking to before she’d even introduced herself to Lorelei. By the time she realized this, he was too close for her to escape without an awkward scene, and public relations specialists did not do awkward scenes.

  She noted as he neared that he was uncharacteristically dressed like a grown man rather than a teenage skateboarder. His style might have matured, but his approach hadn’t. He gave her a lopsided grin and dipped his head to say, “Hey, beautiful.”

  Her grin at him rapidly intensified until she was just gritting her teeth. She dressed well and paid attention to her hair and makeup so she’d be accepted into the stars’ worlds—and yes, there was vanity mixed in. But her client’s recent ex was handing her a line, and her looks had suddenly become a liability. The Darkness Fallz singer’s ire over being forced to quit drugs would be nothing compared with Lorelei’s complaint to Stargazer that Wendy had flirted with her ex.

  Wendy gave Sarah a hard time about dressing like a women’s basketball coach on the job, but now she was seeing a certain logic in that mode of fashion. She dodged around Colton. “Hey yourself,” she shouted over the music. “Excuse me.”

  “Excuse me,” he countered, moving with her. “Where are you going in such a hurry? I’ll buy you a drink.”

  She took a long, calming breath through her nose. Colton was not Rick, and if she couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d fallen into a bottomless pit when she had not, she was going to screw up this case and lose her job for real. She managed to say smoothly, “I’ve had a drink, thanks.”

  “Let me introduce myself. I’m Colton Farr.”

  She extended her hand for him to shake, to move their conversation from pickup line back to business. “Yes, I’ve heard! Emcee of televised awards shows. Puncher of public relations specialists. Landmark fountain pisser. Congratulations.”

  As he took her hand, he turned his head and looked at her with one eye. “And you are?”

  “Wendy Mann.”

  He dropped her hand and stepped back dramatically. “Oh, you’re Wendy Mann!” He looked her up and down. “Nice.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Do we know each other?” He must have talked to Lorelei about her. But that didn’t make any sense. Lorelei and Colton weren’t on speaking terms.

  “Sure we do,” Colton said. “I was at the Little Lingerie fashion show in L.A. a few weeks ago. You were one of the models. Good work up there.”

  Gross. This guy had plenty of money. He could be persuaded to spend it on things that would be useful to him, such as a ghostwriter to come up with better pickup lines. If she were on good terms with Daniel, she might suggest this. But she nodded seriously at Colton. “Yes. I was the one dressed as the whooping crane.”

  He stared at her for a moment, then relaxed. “I’m kidding with you, Wendy. You’re doing PR for Lorelei.”

  She gasped as if he’d made the best. Joke. Ever! “That’s right. How did you know?”

  “Daniel Blackstone suspected you might be coming.”

  Wendy nodded slowly. “Did he.”

  “Yes. And listen. I’m not sure things are going to work out between Daniel and me. Would you come to work for me?”

  She widened her eyes at him in innocent horror. “After you came on to me?”

  “I was kidding, I said.”

  “You said that the third time. Anyway, hiring and firing Daniel and me is a little more complicated than that. It’s not like we’re doing PR out of the trunks of our cars. You sign a contract with his firm or mine, and the firm sends us.”

  “Please, Wendy. Daniel was talking about you like you could really whip me into shape.”

  “You need whipping?”

  “Yes!” he said more vehemently than she would have liked. />
  “No, I’m sorry. Daniel will whip you into shape, too. You’ll see.” Also, go away.

  Colton grinned at her. “If we’re not going to work together, there’s no reason we can’t play together. I’m coming on to you again. You seem like the kind of lady who’d enjoy a walk on the wild side.”

  Oh God. What had Daniel said to Colton about her? The way people in PR talked about Daniel, someone going up against him might as well forfeit. He was that good. But nobody had ever detailed to her exactly how he worked. Maybe he really did convince his clients to proposition the PR specialists representing his clients’ jealous exes. Divide and conquer. Wendy had engaged in some questionable business practices herself to get her clients out of trouble, but nothing like this. Could Daniel possibly be that sneaky?

  Two could play at that game.

  She threw her hands in the air, as if she were giving up. “You pegged me!” she told Colton. “But I can’t walk on the wild side with you. I’m already with somebody.”

  “Who? Daniel? I saw you talking to him.” Colton’s eyes narrowed, as if for the first time he’d been presented with a serious obstacle to getting up Wendy’s skirt. Her rejection of him didn’t matter, but the threat of Daniel did.

  Bingo.

  “When did you see me talking to him?” she asked suspiciously.

  “When you were in the outer room, at a booth near the door. I came out of the club for a minute.”

  “To do what? Piss on the bar?”

  To his credit, he looked a little ill. “No, I was talking to the bouncer to see whether he’d throw Lorelei out if I could get her to hit me.”

  “Get her to hit you? You’re the only one hitting people.”

  “You mean Daniel? That was an accident,” Colton insisted. “So, are you with Daniel or not? Because if you’re not . . . ” He slid his hand up her arm.

  “That’s right,” she said without missing a beat, covering his hand with her hand and sliding it back down and off her skin. “I’m with Daniel Blackstone.” She couldn’t have Colton coming on to her. She shouldn’t even be standing next to him. Somebody was going to report it to Lorelei, and then Wendy would have even more problems.