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Finally he’d rinsed all of her hair. He should turn off the water and end this now. He was loath to do that. His bare chest was inches from her bare back, and steam transformed the bathroom into a sexy cloud.
This had to stop. He’d always prided himself on his professionalism. He wasn’t about to come on to a business rival. She thought he was okay to partner with up to a point. This was that point, and there was no need to give her a weapon to use against him later. Abruptly he reached over her and turned off the water.
He carefully patted the surface of her hair with a towel. “Lean back,” he commanded her. As she eased backward out of the tub, he caught her hair between the sides of the towel and scrubbed it. Now he stroked the towel closer to her wound. “There. Not completely dry, but your stitches aren’t soaked, either.” He gently moved her hand away from the back of her head. Lifting her under the arms, he set her on the side of the tub.
She looked down at him dully. Her face was stark white.
“Hurts?” he asked her.
She started to nod, but moving her head seemed to hurt worse. She swallowed.
“Maybe you should go home.” He didn’t want her to leave. The two of them had circled each other in New York for years, never crossing paths. He was afraid it would happen for another six years if he let her go. But she wasn’t well. She had a stalker in Vegas. “Let Stargazer send Sarah or one of your other agents to take over. I’ll fill her in and work with her like I’ve been working with you.”
“Ha!” Wendy said. “I don’t think so. Her husband might have something to say about that.”
He blinked. “I didn’t mean—”
“I’m kidding. Come to think about it, he probably wouldn’t say a thing. I hate that guy.” A rivulet of water formed at her hairline and snaked down one side of her face. “Besides, I have a deal with Stargazer. They’re firing me for losing Darkness Fallz unless I save Lorelei.”
“Oh.” That didn’t sound like a good deal to him. Her chances of repairing Lorelei’s career looked slimmer every time Lorelei pulled her skirt down. He couldn’t imagine how much pressure Wendy must be under. He’d thought he was in a pressure cooker, and he wasn’t threatened with losing his job if he failed a client. The worst that waited for him back in New York was shame.
“When I was surfing online, I didn’t see a sign of anyone posting the photo of Lorelei,” she ventured. “Maybe that won’t happen.”
“Maybe not,” he agreed, doubtful.
“But the possibility is so horrible that I’m ready to work with you to make it seem like she and Colton are back together, if you still want to.”
Looking into her blue eyes, he nodded solemnly rather than pumping his fist in the air.
“I do think if that picture comes out and we’re claiming they’re back together,” she said, “we can brush it off and say Lorelei mooned Colton as a result of flirtation and youthful exuberance.”
He cracked a smile. “When in actuality it was a result of spite and gin.”
She laughed, then winced and reached for the back of her head. “But even if they don’t really get together, we’re putting them in proximity. I don’t feel comfortable doing that unless we sit down with them.” She reached for his hand—his adrenaline spiked—and turned his wrist over so she could read his watch. “If we hurry, we’ll have time before their afternoon rehearsal. We need to explain what we’re doing. But we also need to talk to them about what went wrong between them, and try to defuse the situation before they blow up at each other again.”
“Agreed. I’ll get them both down here pronto.” He stood. “In the meantime, I’ll give you some privacy. Let me know if you need me.” As he slipped out of the bathroom, his heart felt heavy with worry for her, and with unrequited desire. He couldn’t let that cloud his judgment. They were working together now to save the reputations of both their clients. The best way to keep the air clear between Wendy and himself, he was learning, was to make a joke. He called back into the bathroom, “Especially if you’re still na**d.”
10
An hour later, breakfast had been cleared away, Wendy was dry, Daniel was dressed, and he’d asked her to hang her clothes in the wardrobe alongside his instead of leaving trails of exploding women all over the suite, which she thought was pretty funny but also pretty insulting. She was glad he would never see the inside of her apartment in New York.
Lorelei and Colton would arrive any second. Wendy stood in the center of the spotless seating area, drumming her fingers together, mentally preparing for this meeting. Daniel lounged in a corner with his arms crossed, watching her, impassive as ever.
“When we grill them about their behavior,” she said, “you be the bad cop. I’ll be the good cop.”
“You’re going to be the good cop?” he asked in disbelief.
“Are you going to be the good cop?” she challenged him.
“No,” he said.
She held open her hands, meaning, Duh. “We can’t do bad cop/bad cop. It’s not a technique.”
A knock sounded at the door. As Wendy crossed the room to answer it, Daniel called softly, “What about you and me? We need to be on the same page. Do we tell them you stayed here last night? Are we supposed to be dating again?”
He might genuinely be asking so they got their stories straight before they confronted Lorelei and Colton. Or he might be teasing her right before this important, job-saving meeting. That ticked her off. She turned and mouthed to him, “We are f**king like rabbits.” She opened the door.
“Hi, sweetie!” She gave Lorelei a big hug and greeted Colton less enthusiastically. She expected Daniel to come forward and seat them, but he was doing his sullen bad cop thing, alternately scowling at everyone and staring out the window at the Strip. Okay.
Colton nodded toward the bar. “How about a drink? I have a feeling I’m going to need it.”
Wendy had the same feeling. She grinned stiffly. “Not before your five-hour-long rehearsal, sorry.” She ushered the stars onto the sofa, then took a chair beside them and leaned in earnestly. “We asked you here because we’ve got a big problem. Colton knows this, but I’m not sure you do, Lorelei. When you mooned him last night, he took a picture, and someone snatched the phone from me.”
“I don’t see why we get called in and, like, reprimanded for that,” Colton complained. “You’re the one who took my phone, and it got stolen from you.” Wendy noted he might be defiant, but he was again dressed in duds a few steps up from his usual redneck-casual ratty shorts and hat. Daniel must have threatened him. And Colton had listened. That meant he did care about salvaging his career. Wendy had an in.
“We wouldn’t be here talking about this if you hadn’t taken the picture,” Wendy told him gently. She turned to Lorelei. “And there wouldn’t be a picture if you hadn’t pulled your skirt down. We need to be prepared for that photo to appear on the front page of every tabloid magazine with a black rectangle over your butt cheeks, and all over the web without the black rectangle.” She paused for Lorelei’s horrified realization. Lorelei only furrowed her brow as if trying to remember which pair of killer heels she’d been wearing in the picture.
Sure, that could be useful information—what Lorelei had looked like in the photo. “Let’s just pause here for a moment,” Wendy said. “I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable, pretty girl, but if you don’t mind, let’s run to the restroom. I want you to show me what you did so I’ll have a better idea of what we’re working with.”
“You mean, if my ass is nasty, we’re in worse trouble,” Lorelei said flatly.
“Of course!” Wendy exclaimed. “Don’t you read the tabloids?”
“No.”
Wendy couldn’t imagine this. The tabloids were her life. But it was probably best that Lorelei didn’t read them. That way, Wendy could interpret them for her and tell her when to worry and when not to worry. Though Lorelei didn’t seem like much of a worrier.
Wendy explained, “If your ass looks good, the photo will run with an article about how out-of-control you are. That’s exactly what we don’t want when the awards show is watching you and thinking about firing you because they don’t trust you, and concertgoers are weighing the probability that you’ll go into a tailspin and cancel your tour after they’ve already bought a ticket. However, if your ass looks bad, the photo will run with lots of other photos of stars’ asses and an article about cellulite. That would be worse.”
Lorelei nodded. “You want me to moon you guys? Hell, I don’t have to go to the bathroom and moon you in private. I’m not ashamed of my body.” She stepped up on the coffee table and unfastened her jeans.
“That isn’t necessary,” Wendy said, to no effect. “It’s better if you’re elevated, is it?”
Sarcasm was no deterrent. Lorelei wiggled to loosen the waistband of her jeans, then shoved them down, bending over. Daniel sauntered from his corner and crossed behind the sofa for the view.
“See?” Colton said. “This is how she is.”
It certainly was. Lorelei had a dragon tattooed on her ass. Not a dragon in profile that started on one ass cheek and extended to the other, either. It was the head of a dragon with its snout coming forward, one nostril on each buttock. She had gone full dragon.
“Satisfied?” Lorelei called between her legs.
“Yep,” Wendy, Daniel, and Colton all said at once.
Daniel bent to speak in Wendy’s ear. “We’re toast,” he understated. He took up his post at the window again as Lorelei buttoned her jeans and plopped down on the sofa beside Colton.
“So . . . ” Wendy wasn’t often at a loss for words, but it was hard to find a segue after what they’d all seen. The plan she’d been about to explain melted away. Lorelei’s rump kept marching across her vision, clad only in its imaginary serpent. Maybe it really would be better if Wendy lost her job, because this did not qualify as actual work.
She felt the dark mountains of West Virginia crouching over her.
“What’s the matter, Wendy?” Lorelei asked. “You look sick all of a sudden. You’ve never seen a tattoo on somebody’s na**d booty before?”
“Excuse me just a minute,” Wendy said to the tunnel vision infiltrating the afterimage of Lorelei’s bottom. She stood up too fast, forgetting her head injury. Dizziness rushed upward. She stood very still, pretending to look out on the vista of Las Vegas but actually waiting to regain her balance.
Daniel was at her side, holding her up by the elbow. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Just give me a minute.” She swayed on her way to the restroom, where she leaned heavily on the door as she closed it, then felt her way to the toilet and collapsed on the shut lid with her head between her knees.
She thought about her father, always talking about escaping work at the coal mine, and then, when he broke free because he was laid off, utterly unable to hold a job doing anything else. He finally took the first coal mining job he could find and died there a week later in a massive tunnel collapse, no air pockets, no saving grace, no lives spared.
She wiped her hair away from her clammy forehead before remembering with a start that the ink in her palm, Daniel’s room number, hadn’t disappeared during her bath. She didn’t want his number smeared across her forehead. She did want to keep it in her hand. The 7 had a horizontal line through the middle as the Europeans wrote it, something he must have picked up from his father.
Out in the suite she heard him say almost apologetically, “She’s missed a lot of sleep.”
“Maybe you should leave her alone at night,” Colton said.
“Maybe you should shut the f**k up,” Daniel said.
It was Daniel’s voice that propelled her up from the toilet with a final shake of her head. The talk with Lorelei and Colton had been going well. She needed to get back out there before male egos ruined everything. She glanced in the mirror and wished she hadn’t—she looked ashen and ill, which would not help her save her job—and went back out into the suite.
Daniel was waiting for her at the bar. He handed her a glass of ice water. “Want me to be good cop for a while?” he whispered.
She glanced dubiously at his expressionless face. “I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Me neither.”
“I’m better. I just needed a moment. Let’s do this thing.” She swept back into the room on her high-heeled boots and settled on the chair again like she’d taken a phone call instead of nearly passing out on the toilet.
“Lorelei,” she began again, “I’m here because you asked for me. Colton, Daniel is here because you’d driven your talent agent to the brink of suicide. We’ve told you both to stop slandering each other online. You haven’t complied, and this morning Daniel and I got calls from the awards show, wanting you replaced. We’ve talked them down, for now. But the photo is out there.” She turned to Colton. “And the tabloids are reporting that you upset Lorelei so much that she mooned you. Daniel and I can’t work magic, but we’ve thought of a way to mitigate the damage. You two need to get back together.”
“No way!” Lorelei yelled.
“Screw that.” Colton’s words were harsher than Lorelei’s, but his tone lacked her conviction.
Wendy explained that Colton and Lorelei wouldn’t really get back together. They would only fake it, and fake it well, at least through the awards show Friday night, and possibly until after Colton had snagged his movie audition and Lorelei had started her concert tour.
