Star Crossed

by Jennifer Echols

  With a gasp, she looked to Paul for help. He simply leaned forward in his own chair, camera poised. There was no horror in his eyes at what she was being forced to do, and no lust, either. Just the jaded resignation of a professional who made money from other people’s misery.

  She turned back to Rick. Heart pounding so hard that she could feel the throb of blood in her ears, she said, “I’m not going to do that.”

  His eyes narrowed. He was still as handsome as he’d been at twenty-one—more so, in fact, with a man’s thick muscles and sharp features. But that shift in the set of his eyes hadn’t changed at all. It still signaled that she’d crossed a line with him. He was about to call her a bitch, get rough with her, put his forearm across her throat.

  He said smoothly and clearly, “You are going to do that.”

  “I’m not,” she said, panting now. “You can’t make me. Kill me if you want.” Without another glance at Rick, on legs like rubber she walked toward the door.

  A few steps and nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen. The ordeal had been horrible, but now it was over. She had called his bluff. She would reach the door and open it, and she would be free.

  Paul barked, “Rick!” Though his yell filled the small room and thudded against the ceiling, underneath it she heard another, smaller sound with excruciating clarity: the meaty click of Rick’s gun.

  She stopped short. Tingles rushed across her bare arms as she realized that she was very lucky the gun had jammed. And that she likely would run out of luck in the next second when Rick tried again and the gun fired.

  BANG. She braced for the pain of the bullet to tear through her.

  Instead, in slow motion, the door burst open in front of her. Daniel dove through it, locked eyes with her, shifted his gaze past her, and kept coming. Colton was right behind him.

  In the next second, time snapped back to normal. Colton tackled Paul, knocking the chair over. The camera smashed into the wall.

  “No!” was all Wendy had time to scream before Daniel yanked Rick out of his chair by the throat. As he took him to the floor, their movements were a blur. Daniel had no idea about the gun—

  BANG. This noise sounded totally different from the door slamming open. It really had been the gun this time. Heart sinking into her gut, Wendy rushed over. If Rick had shot Daniel, he could still shoot Wendy, too, but this was only a fleeting thought as she slipped her whole arm between the two of them and pulled Daniel away.

  His shirt was soaked with a fist-size circle of bright blood.

  “It’s him,” he said, nodding to Rick.

  Rick’s shirt showed a circle of blood in the same place, the barrel of the gun still pointed toward his stomach. His fingers trembled on the grip, and he stared into space, breathing heavily.

  Wendy used both hands to lift his fingers away until she could take the heavy gun. He didn’t resist. She leaped away from him and grabbed the knife from the table with her other hand. Passing Colton, who sat on Paul’s chest with both muscular thighs squeezing his neck, she stuck the toe of her sandal through the crack in the doorway and nudged the door all the way open to toss the gun and knife outside before Paul or Rick could make a grab for them.

  She was blinded by camera flashes that heated her bare skin. Beyond them she could hear sirens chirping and see blue lights spinning. “Clear out!” a man called over a bullhorn. “Police! Photographers, clear out! Lady, we’ve got guns on you. It’s over. Very slowly put down your weapons.”

  * * *

  Five minutes later, Daniel had joined her against the wall outside the hotel room. The cameras still flashed, though they’d been reduced to taking telephoto shots from across the parking lot. Uniformed police scurried in and out of the room. Daniel’s and Wendy’s hands, cleaned of Rick’s blood, were cuffed behind their backs, but they hugged as best they could, her head against his solid bare chest. His heart raced. Gently he pressed his lips to her bruised cheek where Rick had hit her.

  “I tried to catch up with you right after you left,” he said. “I meant to tell you that I don’t want to get divorced. Wendy, I love you.”

  She looked up into his worried face, his dark eyes. “I love you, too.”

  Their lips met. As they kissed, she marveled that he could make her feel this good while she was half-naked and detained by the police in the parking lot of a seedy hotel. It boded well for the rest of the marriage, she decided.

  “Thank you so much for coming for me,” she said. “How did you find me?”

  “It’s a long story, but Colton and I are the ones who led the paparazzi here. That was an accident.” He nodded to the distant flashes. “I’m afraid I’ve gotten you fired.”

  “Why?” she asked. “Just because Lorelei Vogel’s PR rep is going to be on the front page of the tabloid blogs tomorrow, at a shitty hotel, in her underwear, with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other?” She let out one halfhearted chuckle of resignation. “Maybe that won’t happen.”

  Daniel looked over at Colton, also handcuffed, who was talking animatedly to a cop. He moved his elbows awkwardly, trying to talk with his hands. “This is going to be great for Colton,” Daniel said. “When the reporters hear what really happened, the public will love that he actually lived these action-adventure movies he’s trying to land. The publicity could be great for Lorelei, too.”

  “And if that doesn’t work,” Wendy said, “I could tell my bosses the truth.”

  “The truth?” Daniel repeated. “Innovative.”

  “Stargazer prides itself on being cutting-edge.”

  “And if that doesn’t work,” Daniel said, “I know of another difficult case you can tackle to save your reputation. Again. I’m pretty sure Olivia Query and Victor Moore’s marriage is about to crumble, and they’ll be looking for different PR representation.”

  Wendy gaped at him. “Why aren’t you in L.A., taking care of that?”

  “Because I’m here, taking care of you. Finally.” He set his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. “Besides, after I give my father two weeks’ notice, it won’t be my problem anymore. I’m going to work for Senator Rowling.”

  Wendy stepped back to grin at him. “You are?”

  He smiled. “I am.”

  “I think you’ll be happier.”

  “I think I will, too.” He leaned down to kiss her again.

  While they were still kissing, she felt someone manipulating her handcuffs and removing them. She was able to reach both arms up and put her hands in Daniel’s uncharacteristically rumpled hair, and she felt his strong arms encircle her bare waist. They only broke the kiss when a man cleared his throat beside them.

  “So you weren’t making the whole thing up,” Detective Butkus said. He dropped Wendy’s ring into her hand.

  She was about to thank him for retrieving the ring from the crime scene, as she’d asked, when Daniel broke in. Keeping one hand on her hip, he directed at Detective Butkus a string of filth the likes of which she had never heard from his lips. She stared at him, taking it in, memorizing a few choice turns of phrase to use in case she really did get assigned to Victor Moore and Olivia Query.

  Detective Butkus held up both hands. “Give me a break! Would you have believed this story if you were me?”

  “No,” Daniel and Wendy said at the same time.

  “I mean, what a freak this guy is.” Detective Butkus jerked his thumb over his shoulder, where paramedics were wheeling Rick on a stretcher out of the hotel room. He asked Wendy, “Did you see he braided your hair and made it into a camera bag strap? Sicko.”

  Daniel pushed past the detective and lunged for the stretcher. The detective caught him by the arm and yelled, “Get him!” He and two cops wrestled Daniel back from attacking Rick.

  Wendy watched the whole surreal scene, the muscles of Daniel’s back and shoulders glowing in the shifting light of the hotel’s cheap neon, and wiggled her ring back onto her finger where it belonged.

  “You know what?” the detec
tive called to Wendy. “Just get in that car, both of you. We’ll let you put some clothes on at your hotel before you come down to the station. Get him in there with you.”

  The cops gave Daniel a final shove. He glared at them resentfully. Wendy took him by the hand and led him into the backseat of a police car and shut the door behind them. He still looked over her shoulders at the ambulance. Finally, to snap him out of that violent mood, she said, “They’re taking us to the room to change. Do you think we’ll have time for a quickie? Because we never got around to doing it against the wall.”

  He blinked at her. She thought he hadn’t heard her. Finally he smiled, slowly at first, his grin becoming broader as she slid her hand onto his thigh. “We will always make time for a quickie,” he said. “And that is a wedding vow.”

  * * *

  After midnight, the four of them—Daniel, Wendy, Colton, and Lorelei, who had jumped on a private jet when she heard Wendy was in trouble—lingered over dinner in an exclusive room in the restaurant on top of the Stratosphere tower. The lights of Vegas inched underneath them at one rotation every eighty minutes.

  Daniel tightened his arm around Wendy’s shoulders as she nuzzled against him in the booth. After hours at the police station, he knew she was beat. He was, too. But they’d also been starving. They could have gone to a cheap diner, but he’d insisted on treating everyone at this tourist trap. The past week had convinced him to look for fun where he could find it.

  His phone beeped with a text.

  “Again?” Wendy teased him.

  “Yeah, again?” Colton asked from across the table, and Lorelei giggled. The last call Daniel had received had been from Colton’s agent. The tale of Colton’s heroics had spread like lightning through the Internet. Both producers Daniel had talked up in the past few days wanted Colton to star in their action flicks, audition or no audition.

  “Pesky multimillion-dollar deals interrupting dinner,” Daniel muttered. But he really was reluctant to look at his phone, because the beep was the one he’d set for texts from Victor Moore. He wound a tendril of Wendy’s hair around his finger. Now that he finally had her—again—he never wanted to leave her. And if she did end up handling the Victor mess after he quit the Blackstone Firm, he never wanted her to leave him.

  He grimaced as he glanced at the screen. “Oh!” he said in surprise.

  “What?” Wendy asked, looking up at him.

  “Victor Moore has seen on the news that I might be having a little trouble. He says he’s explained the situation to his family, and their problems can wait until I’m available.”

  “That is ridiculous,” Lorelei said, laughing, at the same time Colton said, “This Victor Moore, whoever he is, has no idea how to be a star. I could teach him a thing or two.” He glanced at his watch. “I think we’re about to close this place down. But Lorelei and I agreed that we have a couple of confessions to make to you first.”

  Wendy’s eyes flew wide open.

  “Soooo . . . ” Lorelei started slowly.

  Daniel glared at her. If it was bad news, frankly, he didn’t want to know. He definitely didn’t want Wendy to know. Not tonight.

  “When you guys made Colton and me sit on your couch and talk to each other?” Lorelei continued. “And then you said we should take things slow from there? We didn’t. We slept together.”

  One of Daniel’s hands was still wound up in Wendy’s hair. Under the table, he balled his other hand into a fist. He was going to kill Colton yet.

  “But the next night,” Lorelei rushed on, “at my birthday party, we had a huge argument.” She was talking only to Wendy now. “Colton said you and Daniel were only getting married so people would get confused about the ceremony and think we were getting married. Daniel was so cold, sorry”—Lorelei waved toward Daniel by way of apology—“that I wanted to stop you from marrying him if that was true.

  “Colton said to let you go ahead, because it would save our careers. He said it was all for work. I said nothing is all for work. The PR folks, the photographers, they’re people and they matter, too. That whole fight was why, when I headed home to L.A. last night, Colton got out of the limo and backtracked to Vegas. Though, considering what happened next, I’m glad he did.”

  “So are we,” Daniel said, pulling Wendy closer.

  “Anyway,” Lorelei said, “I’m happy you’ve stayed together. You’ve given Colton and me hope. Sometimes even when a relationship is hard, it’s real.”

  Unimpressed, Wendy tapped her fingernail on the table. “What’s the other confession?”

  Lorelei bit her lip. “I didn’t follow some of your other instructions, either.”

  “Really,” Wendy said flatly.

  “Yes! I used my phone and took a picture at your wedding when you weren’t looking.” She peered down at her phone and thumbed through the images. “I guess it’s the only wedding photo there is. Colton thought it was safe to tell you about it now that the awards show is over and everything has worked out. We’re going to get it blown up for you as big as this room. Here it is.” She handed the phone to Daniel.

  He and Wendy put their heads together and peered down at the picture. They both gasped when they saw it.

  “That is the coolest thing ever.” Daniel elbowed Wendy. “You look completely freaked out.”

  She laughed. “You look stoic.”

  “That’s my expression of ecstasy. You know that by now.” He looked up at Lorelei. “Thank you.”

  “You’re so welcome, you guys! Hugs!”

  Everyone stood. Daniel gave Lorelei the hug she deserved for her part in saving Wendy, and his handshake with Colton turned into a bear hug, too, surprising nobody more than himself. With repeated promises to head straight for their hotel rooms and leave for L.A. again tomorrow, Colton sauntered and Lorelei bounced out of the room.

  Daniel and Wendy sank back down onto their seat again. He told her, “Lorelei’s ditzy, but she knew we belonged together way before we did.”

  “She’s an idiot savant of love.” Wendy interlaced her fingers with his. “Gosh, this whole marriage thing has blindsided me, because we’ve done it all backward. We have so much to talk about. Whose apartment are we going to live in?”

  “We can use mine,” Daniel said, “but it’s too dark for you.”

  “Mine’s too messy for you,” Wendy said. “I want desperately to be neat, but I get in a hurry and start flinging things.”

  “I’ll help you,” Daniel said. “Life will be a lot less stressful for both of us now that we have each other’s backs.”

  She beamed at him and brought their clasped hands up to kiss his bruised knuckle.

  He had a sudden, terrible thought. “Are you allergic to cats?”

  “No, I like cats. Are you allergic to turtles?”

  He laughed. “You have a turtle?”

  “He came with the apartment.” Her face fell. “Uh-oh. I wonder if turtles and cats get along.”

  “I predict that they’ll try very hard and will be utterly unable to hurt each other.” He unwound his finger from one lock of her hair and wound it around another. “What do you say we put that off for a few more days and have a honeymoon? Are you sick of Vegas?”

  “No, even after the week we’ve had, I’m not sick of Vegas, so obviously that’s not possible. We could re-experience it, sort of write over the bad memories. Can you take off from work?”

  “Yeah, now that Victor’s let me off the hook for a while. Can you?”

  “Absolutely. Earlier today, I thought I’d better get back to New York ASAP. But the publicity for Lorelei—and for me—is working out better than I’d dreamed. All of Hollywood will be asking for the well-armed PR expert in her skivvies.”

  “I certainly would,” Daniel said. Her photo was already appearing on the tabloid blogs, looking like a pulp fiction cover. And her tense call to her boss had turned out fine. After all, Stargazer prided itself on innovative PR.

  “Before I left,” Wendy said, “Stargaz
er gave all my clients to other people. I can wait a few more days to ask for them back.” She examined Daniel’s hand in hers. “The first thing I want to do on our honeymoon is buy you a new wedding band.”

  “Nope,” he said. “This one is perfect.”

  She eyed him skeptically. “It doesn’t go with your Rolex.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Senator Rowling’s constituents are going to think you married a carny.”

  “Senator Rowling values difference.”

  “You’re good at PR.” Edging closer until her lips brushed his, she whispered seductively, “What do you want to do on our honeymoon?”

  He wanted to ride the roller coaster around the New York casino. See cheesy concerts. Fly over Hoover Dam in a helicopter. Hike Red Rock Canyon. Avoid the Eiffel Tower like the plague. And one thing he’d thought was so far beyond his reach that he hadn’t even longed for it until Wendy appeared like magic in the Big O bar with a shining zipper down the back of her skirt: he would spend every long Vegas night making love with his wife.

  JENNIFER ECHOLS has written ten novels for Simon & Schuster. She currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she is at work on a sequel to Star Crossed. Visit her website at www.jennifer-echols.com.

  http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Jennifer-Echols/

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