Star Crossed (Stargazer) (5 page)

That had to change. For the entirety of this trip to Vegas, she would need to pretend she was a benevolent, motherly person. As the second floor, the third floor, the fourth floor slid past, signaled by dark spaces through the crack between the doors, she winked at her reflection good-naturedly. Now she looked like a stranger. Which might be a good thing at this point.

At her own floor, she opened her apartment door carefully in case her turtle was behind it. He wasn’t there, but an unopened package was, piled with a scarf and a coat she hadn’t worn since March. When she wasn’t on a difficult case, she was very neat. When
she
was
on a difficult case, which was most of the time, she lived at the office or on location with her client and used her apartment as a dump. Sarah said Wendy’s apartment looked like the inside of Wendy’s mind, which was probably true. She tried to straighten up between jobs, but this time she’d missed her chance. She had a plane to catch.

She could clean for the turtle, though. She scrubbed his terrarium and filled his reservoir with fresh water. Then she scanned her apartment for him. He wasn’t in the potted tree by the window, where he usually hung out. She looked around the ramp she’d propped there so he could get out of the pot if he wanted. After a cursory search of her living room, she realized she was going to need to conduct more than a cursory search, because there were too many sweaters, sheaves of paper, files, and packages of books on the floor. He could be behind or inside any of them.

Oh God, she was going to miss her flight because her turtle was lost. She’d nearly been fired today, and now her turtle was going to starve to death in her absence. She resisted the urge to call to him. She didn’t know whether he would come or not. She’d never had the patience to test this. Even if he did come when called, it would take him five years.

On a hunch, she opened the closet door wider and peered into the dark corner behind mounds of her shoes. There he was, exactly where she’d found him six years before when she moved in—the last owner’s
cast-off pet and a kindred spirit for Wendy, who’d felt like her father’s afterthought.

She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, relieved her turtle was safe.

She picked him up, a small but solid mass, and gave him her usual stern warning: “Don’t pee on me.” She carefully placed him in the terrarium, secured the jar of turtle food under her arm, and picked up the tank with both hands. She negotiated the door of her apartment with some difficulty and gently kicked the next door, hoping she wasn’t waking Bob.

She heard him move toward her from across his apartment. The footsteps paused as he looked through the peephole at her. Opening the door, he was already holding out his arms for the tank. She tried not to stare, but it was always shocking to see him without his wig and makeup and corset.

“Thanks a million,” she said. “Sorry to do this to you again so soon. It’s almost like he’s your turtle instead of mine.”

“Hi, Wendy,” a voice called from the depths of the apartment.

She leaned around the doorframe and called back, “Hi, Marvin.” Bob’s boyfriend probably didn’t want to greet her in person because of what he was wearing. Or not.

“It’s no problem,” Bob told her. “Turtles don’t bark.” He slid the terrarium onto a table near the door and took the jar of food from her. “Plus banana?”

“Just a tiny bit of whatever fruit you’re eating, yeah.”

“How long this time?”

“Maybe a week. I’ll be in Vegas.” Wendy gave him her optimistic grin. The effort in front of a friend made her so tired that she sagged against his doorjamb. “Longer, I hope, because I’m probably going to get fired at the end of it.”

“Oh, honey!” He stuck out his bottom lip sympathetically. “I can get you a job if you need one.”

“Thanks.” Wendy kept grinning. The threat of working at a strip club was one of the many reasons she’d been so eager to escape Morgantown.

“Kidding!” Bob exclaimed. “You would never pass for a man dressed up as a woman, unless we strategically placed your hair, Lady Godiva.” The turtle food rattled as he switched the jar to his other hand so he could tug her blond locks. “Vegas, huh? Who are you bailing out of trouble? Colton Farr?”

“No, the Blackstone Firm handles him.” She thought again of her nemesis from college, Daniel Blackstone. He was gorgeous in an ultraconservative way, his dark hair cropped close and perfectly styled, his dark eyes haughty, a hint of his father’s British accent breaking through when he gave a formal presentation in class. She felt a wash of pleasure at the thought that if he was indeed the rep whom the Blackstone Firm had sent, he had worse problems than she did today.

“What’s the latest you’ve heard on Colton?” she asked Bob.

“He got arrested last night for pissing in the fountain at the Bellagio,” Bob said.

“You’re kidding!” Wendy squealed in delight. “There’s a wall around the fountain. How did he balance up there long enough to whip it out?”

“In addition to his storied acting career, he has his own line of exercise equipment, remember?” Bob wagged his eyebrows. “He’s in good shape.”

“That is revolting and fantastic. Maybe I can engineer other inappropriate places for him to pee, and that will draw people’s attention away from my client. I feel so much better.” Wendy leaned in and kissed Bob on one baby-smooth cheek.

“Who’s
your
client?” Bob asked.

“Lorelei Vogel.”

Bob’s eyes widened. “Girl, she’s
much
worse than Colton Farr. Best of luck straightening out
that
little hellcat. You’re as good as fired.”

Wendy stuck her fingers in her ears. “La la la, I am not listening to you.” She backed through the door into her own apartment.

Glancing at the texts from the travel office on her phone, she saw her plane was leaving in two hours. She would have barely enough time to negotiate a taxi to the airport and the line through security, and she could not screw this up. She sprinted for her bedroom, snagged the suitcase she hadn’t yet unpacked from her trip to Seattle, slung it onto her bed, and dumped it out to start over for a new city. She’d spent enough time with debauched stars in Vegas that she had a good idea what she needed to pack.

Bathing suit.

No, bikini.

No, string bikini.

Cocktail dress.

Three-inch heels.

Cocktail dress.

Four-inch heels.

Cocktail dress.

Five-inch heels.

Rhinestone tiara.

Body glitter.

Teddy with matching thong.

Headband with bunny ears and cottontail to clip onto the back of her thong. Some celebrity parties got a little weird.

She didn’t really want to take the ears and tail. She lifted them from her suitcase and put them back into her dresser drawer. But if she didn’t take them, she would certainly need them. She would waste money and, more importantly when she was working, waste an hour buying another set. Shaking her head, she set them in her suitcase again.

Latex gloves.

Rubbing alcohol.

Scissors. Wendy’s hair was long, and Vegas was sticky.

As she packed, butterflies fluttered in her stomach. In the past, she’d loved going on salvage missions. She’d thought she was helping people. And she felt high whenever she grabbed the point of someone
else’s rising star and held on for the ride. People all over America bought the tabloids and followed actresses’ every move online, fascinated with the lifestyle and the glamour. Wendy had grown up one of those starstruck girls. She still was one, even now that she’d seen divas at their worst.

But as she folded the complicated bra she wore with her lowest-cut shirt and tucked both garments into her suitcase, she realized this time would be different. She was desperate to save her job. And Daniel Blackstone might be there, stepping on her toes, getting in her way, looking down on her for making a ninety-seven on Dr. Abbott’s speech-writing midterm when he’d gotten a ninety-eight. If he actively tried to screw her up—which wasn’t out of the question, considering how strongly his father and her bosses hated each other—she would prove no match for him. Though she was in a terrible hurry now, the recurring thought of him drove her to her bathroom to touch up her makeup and brush her hair.

No, not just because of him, she assured herself. She never knew whom she’d run into on the flight from New York to Vegas. It was a common route for people in PR. Many of the biggest stars lived in New York and chose Vegas as the location for their nervous breakdowns.

As she wheeled her suitcase through her apartment, she slowed at the bulletin board beside the
door. It was always the last thing she saw when she left her apartment, and she’d tacked things there that made her happy: A few photos of herself with Sarah. A few shots of herself with stars she’d saved and who hadn’t thrown her to the wolves afterward. Printouts of e-mail messages from those stars and from Katelyn, Jonathan, and Archie, praising her for jobs well done.

Squeezing her eyes shut against the tears, she kept rolling right out of the apartment. Her meeting with the bosses today was just a blip on the map of her career that nobody would remember this time next year, when she was enjoying her promotion and her raise. She would save Lorelei Vogel from herself. Lorelei would
enjoy
it and beg to retain Wendy’s services forever. Vegas would be welcoming. Wendy would not have occasion to use the rubbing alcohol after all. And maybe Daniel Blackstone wouldn’t even be there.

*   *   *

Daniel wanted to sag against the elevator wall and gingerly touch his mauled eye to assess the damage. But he wasn’t alone—Colton was with him—so he was still on display. He stood up straight in the elevator with his hands down by his sides. Breathing evenly through his nose, he tried not to think about thirty more years of keeping his cool in this job.

“I’m sorry I hit you, man,” Colton said quietly.

Bullshit. Daniel glared at Colton. But searching Colton’s face, he saw no malice. On a pained sigh he said, “It’s okay. All in a day’s work.”

Colton’s bleached blond brows shot up. “Really?”

“No,” Daniel said, losing his battle with showing his annoyance.

The doors parted. He stepped through them and led the way down the hall. As he slid his key card through the door lock and pushed open the door for Colton, he was glad he’d taken a few extra minutes to make sure he left the room neat. Shoulders sagging, Colton looked like a kid in the principal’s office in these professional quarters. Colton had been in his own suite only a few hours, but Daniel suspected it was already littered with beer cans.

Gesturing to the sofas overlooking the blinding day-lit Strip, Daniel muttered, “Have a seat. Excuse me just a moment.” He took a deep breath, then peeked through the bathroom door at the mirror.

His eye looked exactly as bad as it felt. At least his whole socket wasn’t bruised, but the knuckle mark underneath was turning from red to purple. For the life of him he couldn’t remember a single piece of advice that
GQ
had ever dispensed about this.

Classy.

He hated this job.

He drew his phone from his pocket and checked his messages. He’d silenced it because it had been chiming all morning with new negative publicity for Colton.
Now, among the many e-mail updates of how strongly the public hated Colton, Daniel’s office had flagged the message containing the worst news of all. Colton’s unhinged ex-girlfriend had hired Stargazer, a public relations firm second only to the Blackstone Firm for averting Hollywood career disasters. They were scrappy, resourceful, irreverent—the opposite of the Blackstone Firm in every way. And Wendy Mann was one of their top agents. She was a likely candidate to take on Lorelei, since some of her time would be freed up now that she’d lost representation of Darkness Fallz to the Blackstone Firm.

Daniel had thought of her only occasionally in the six years since graduation, whenever she came up in work-related conversation. But he’d thought about her a lot in college. Battled with her over an academic prize that he had to win or risk embarrassing his father. Wished that they weren’t enemies, because the very sight of her turned him on, not to mention the knowing tone in her husky laugh. She’d been the star of all his hormone-fueled college fantasies. He was sure if he saw her in person now, he would turn beet-red with embarrassment at what was going on in his head, as if she could see it herself.

He crossed the hotel room to the bar and dropped a few ice cubes into two glasses. Then he sloshed in a generous helping of Kentucky bourbon, in honor of Wendy, who was originally from down south somewhere. As he poured the amber liquid, he wasn’t sure whether he meant the drink as a bane to keep her away
or a charm to bring her closer. One thing was certain: if she really was representing Lorelei, Wendy was about to make his job a whole lot harder.

He sipped his drink. The bourbon had a sharper kick than he’d expected from its refined look—like Wendy, he thought briefly, before snapping back to reality. He rounded the sofa to hand the other drink to Colton.

“Thanks.” Colton took a big gulp. “You might want to put yours on that eye.” He held his own cold glass near his eye to show Daniel what he meant.

Daniel sank onto the opposite sofa, careful to give the impression he was sitting rather than collapsing. He gave Colton a tight smile, though smiling was the last thing he felt like doing. “Tell me why your agent brought me out here.”

Colton let his head loll back against the sofa, suddenly weary, though he’d seemed chipper enough when blackjack and a call girl were available. “I’m supposed to emcee this stupid televised awards show Friday night, but they have a stupid morality clause. They’re threatening to replace me. They say nobody’s going to tune in because of what I’m saying
online
?”

Daniel cleared his throat. “It may have more to do with your peculiar choice of where to relieve yourself. What was that about last night?”

“I was
so wasted
, and my driver dared me. I never back out of a dare. Usually my bodyguard stops me from doing stupid shit. My driver and I snuck out. I’m ashamed.” Colton gave Daniel a lopsided grin that
might have been charming if they hadn’t been talking about a grown man pissing in a fountain, and if Daniel hadn’t wanted to kill him.