Star Crossed (Stargazer) (9 page)

“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.

“I could take that guy,” Colton said stubbornly.

“Because he didn’t hit you back?” Wendy asked archly. “As a general rule, we public relations specialists try not to strike our clients. If it weren’t for professional decorum, I’m pretty sure he’d kick your ass. But let’s not go there, okay? Daniel and I work for rival PR firms, and I would get in a lot of trouble if my bosses found out he and I are together.”

“Really? What if you were together with the star represented by the rival firm instead? Maybe that would work out better for you.”

“Ha ha ha! You’re funny.” Wendy giggled, then patted Colton on the cheek and slid past him. Looking up, she caught Lorelei staring right at them over the heads of the crowd. That girl was way too tall and willowy.

No.
This could not be happening. Just what Wendy had been struggling to avoid. Her new client could
not
think Wendy was trying to steal the ex-boyfriend she obviously still had feelings for.

Wendy’s purse vibrated against her hip. She stopped right there in the middle of the dance floor, mentally daring any of the flailing dancers around her to whack her with a stray arm. She would make this ecstasy trip one they didn’t forget. Pulling out her phone, she saw she had another text from Sarah.

Have you found Lorelei? I think she just posted that you are a twat.

Horrified, Wendy scrolled through the pages on her phone to Lorelei’s feed. Sure enough, there it was. Lorelei couldn’t mean anyone but her.

Asscrack Colton Farr has taken up with some Repunzil twat.

“That is not even how you spell Rapunzel,” Wendy grumbled to herself. She dared not look to her left again, where she could see out of the corner of her eye that Lorelei was commiserating with Giuliana. She’d gathered a few more ladies to listen to the tale, too: Lorelei’s celebrity hairdresser, whom Wendy knew by sight. The producer of Lorelei’s album, who was too old for a party like this but had been fighting middle age diligently with exercise and plastic surgery. Lorelei’s best friend from the canceled teen show, who had gotten even more famous in the past few months for faking a heroin addiction in order to be cast on a rehab reality show. In Wendy’s opinion, step one of her job was to get Lorelei some more impressive friends.

Make that step two. As she hazarded a glance to her right, she saw Colton and a point guard for the L.A. Lakers conversing behind their hands while they watched her. At any second, Colton would make another pass at her in full view of Lorelei et al.

In front of Wendy, a door opened in the dark velvet wall as the bouncer admitted someone from the outer club. Against the backdrop of the crowd pressing around him, Daniel was tall and dark, face chiseled into stone, black hair styled perfectly as if she’d never tousled it. He sauntered along the soft wall, scoping out the joint. Then he looked down at his cell phone. The screen lit his face in the black room, highlighting the sharp lines of his high cheekbones and his narrowed eyes. He glanced up at her. Realized he’d been busted looking at her. Glanced back down.

Not so fast. Wendy rushed across the club before he could escape, only slowing as she stepped around the last dancer so Daniel might not notice he was being ambushed. Wrong. He watched her unabashedly now with a look that said both of them knew exactly what was going on but neither was ready to admit it. She grinned brilliantly and stepped right up to his shoulder. He leaned down. She said in her most innocent bimbo tone, “Hi! I’m glad you got into the party after all.”

“I’m so excited,” he said, sounding ironically bored. “I’ve never been to a celebrity party before.”

His voice in her ear sent electricity straight through her. They smiled at each other again, his expression visibly forced, hers genuine. She wanted to laugh out loud at his joke, but showing her appreciation would give him an advantage over her. She wished she could take her phone out right there and text
Sarah,
Daniel Blackstone makes me feel all funny inside,
because making fun of herself would take some of the edge off.

As it was, she just inched a bit closer to him against the padded velvet and pretended to watch the crowd with him in companionable silence. She longed to make him laugh again. Then they’d definitely look like they were together. She was pretty sure Daniel didn’t go around laughing in his daily conversations with Colton Farr and his ilk.

However, with Daniel standing so close to her, impeccably dressed, dark eyes casually roving across the dancers in front of them like he owned the place, her sense of humor failed her. She felt like she was in ninth grade and a hot senior stood next to her in the lunchroom line. Between arms and legs flailing in the strobe lights, she spotted Colton staring at them, and she went cold in the sweaty room. Now was the time to look like she was flirting with Daniel,
now now now
, and her brain was a blank. She did the next best thing. She put her hand down by her side, slightly behind Daniel. Then she brought her hand closer to him, closer.

Daniel looked over at her. Her heart skipped a beat as he leaned down and cupped his hand around her ear. “Why are you touching my ass?” He backed away from her to let her respond, but he was watching her reproachfully.

Damn it! But whispering to each other also made it look like they were lovers. She stood on her tiptoes and
said, “I beg your pardon. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice. You have a very sensitive ass.”

He stared at her. She’d let him off the hook a few minutes before when he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge his black eye, but he wasn’t going to give her the same courtesy.

She decided to come clean with him, since he saw through every tactic she tried anyway. She took him lightly by the elbow and turned him until they both faced the wall and could talk privately in their own bubble.

She kept one hand down, though. Ideally Colton across the room would think she was touching Daniel intimately as she spoke in his ear. “Here’s the thing. I know you said you’re here on vacation, but I’ve begun to suspect you’re working with Colton Farr.”

“Why would you think that?” Daniel asked without bothering to feign surprise.

“Lorelei Vogel is telling the whole world that Colton gave his PR guy a black eye.”

“What black eye?” Daniel asked flatly.

“Don’t worry. It’s not noticeable at
all
. I detected it only because of my super-honed senses as a trained PR professional.”

Daniel nodded. “Why are you keeping tabs on Lorelei Vogel?”

Wendy batted her eyes at him. “Wouldn’t this conversation be easier if we both let our guards down and talked like we’re not insane? Ready? One, two, three.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She noted
that he glanced at her cleavage as her breasts rose and fell. His expression never changed.

“Is this what you look like when your guard is down?” she asked him.

“Yes. Does this have something to do with why you’re still touching my ass?”

She scowled at him. He raised his eyebrows in response. He was going to make this as difficult as possible for her. She needed to go into a longer explanation than she could manage while they shouted into each other’s ears, standing against the quilted wall.

“Come with me.” Holding his gaze, she reached for his hand. There was a chance he would jerk it away, even make a production of rejecting her in public. They were enemies, after all. But she counted on the importance he laid on decorum. He wouldn’t pull away from her, for the same reason he hadn’t mauled Colton when Colton hit him.

Without looking—instinctively, it seemed—Daniel put out his hand to connect with hers. She felt a shock of awareness at his warm touch. She couldn’t see his pupils in the shadowy room, and doubted if she could have seen them anyway because his eyes were so dark, but her heart sped up at the idea that his pupils dilated as his body reacted to her touch. She stared into his black eyes and lost herself.

Nonsense. She jerked him into motion a little harder than necessary and led him between and around dancers, back to the corner bench where she’d found privacy and relative quiet to text Sarah before.
As he slid around the far end of the cocktail table in front of them, she quickly sat and adjusted herself so that her skirt rode higher on her thighs than usual, the neckline of her blouse was pulled low, and her long hair fluffed around her shoulders. This way, Lorelei or Colton, glancing over, would assume she was having a sexy confab with her lover Daniel, whether Daniel played along or not.

It seemed that he would not. Eyeing her warily, he said, “Spill it, Mann. You’ve changed your tack in the last half hour. What happened?”

She glanced out at the crowd and saw nobody watching them. But she turned her chin toward the wall just in case, so her lips couldn’t be read. “Colton is coming on to me,” she said. “I can’t have that.”

“Why didn’t you tell him to fuck off?” Daniel spoke so forcefully and looked so concerned that she felt a rush of the same fight-or-flight reaction she’d had when she first saw Colton here in the club, as if she really
should
consider this threat to be serious.

She swallowed her explanation: her job security was dicey, and she couldn’t afford more trouble. Daniel wouldn’t understand that. He was about to own the Blackstone Firm.

She said simply, “I can’t state my case that forcefully right now. Colton was impervious to all my normal attempts at being obnoxious and repulsive. So I used the tools that were presented to me. He assumed you and I were together, and I jumped on it.”

Daniel’s mouth opened. He wasn’t gaping at her in shock, exactly. He never gaped. She was beginning to question whether an easily labeled emotion ever passed across his face at all. But his lips parted and his jaw shifted to one side, which she read as outrage. She wasn’t sure whether he was more outraged at Colton for coming on to her, or at her for dragging Daniel into it.

The next thing he said didn’t make his feelings any clearer. “You need to state in no uncertain terms to Colton that, for reasons of professionalism, you’re not interested.”

Wendy nodded. “He’s an actor who pisses in fountains. He understands all about professionalism. I think you got me into this mess, anyway. Did you mention me to Colton before I got here?”