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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.
“I don’t care about the awards show so much,” Colton admitted, “but my agent’s got me on the short list for some big flicks, okay? Action movies that would make my career. My agent thinks if the awards show replaces me, the movies won’t want me, either, because I’ll look like a liability.”
“Your agent is a smart man,” Daniel said.
Colton grimaced and gulped his bourbon. “I’m working with you to make my agent happy, but he’s overreacting. No way is the awards show going to replace me this late in the game.”
“Really?” Daniel asked. “How much rehearsal have you done so far?”
“None. Rehearsal starts tomorrow, but—”
“So,” Daniel broke in, “if you’re pissing in a fountain that’s somehow become one of America’s most beloved landmarks in the past decade and a half, and you’re posting tasteless insults online about your beautiful ex-girlfriend, why would anybody tune in to watch this unpleasant guy? Why can’t the show replace you at the last minute with another actor, one who’s on TV now, one who’s not struggling to make the transition from teen shows to the adult market and failing miserably?”
Colton swallowed. “I guess it could happen.”
“Which is why you promptly went down to an open section of the casino and nearly got photographed losing a hundred thousand dollars while sitting next to a prostitute.”
Colton frowned. “I didn’t know she was a prostitute.”
Daniel watched Colton levelly over the rim of his glass while taking a sip. “I might believe you if I were my father, or if I were twelve. What’s with the girl, Colton?”
Colton shrank several more inches. “Okay. I let her pull up a chair. I also noticed the photographer pretty quickly. I was hoping a picture of me with the prostitute might get picked up by the tabloids and make Lorelei go nuts. I wasn’t trying to lose the hundred grand, though.”
At that admission, Daniel took another, bigger sip of bourbon. He might not be much of a drinker, but for once he wanted to chug the contents of the glass and pour himself another. He couldn’t, though. He had too much work to do today. He asked Colton, “What’s the deal with Lorelei?”
Colton’s jaw tightened. “We were great for the past three years. Then, as soon as we left the TV show and she started her own band, the whore cheated on me with her drummer.”
Daniel winced internally at Colton’s brutal language for his ex-lover. “Maybe we’re having trouble with definitions here,” he said. “A whore is what was sitting next to you downstairs at the blackjack table, where everybody in America could take pictures of you together. Lorelei is your costar from a children’s TV show—”
“It wasn’t a children’s show,” Colton said testily. “It was for teenagers, and a lot of adults watched it, too.”
Daniel waited for Colton to hear how immature that statement sounded. After a few seconds of silence, he realized that was not going to happen. He cleared his throat and went on, “—and Lorelei is also your ex-girlfriend. You shared your life with her for three years. The public expects you to have sore feelings about your breakup. Anybody would. But they don’t expect you to call her names on the web. You can’t say things like that about a young lady. She’s twenty-one years old, Colton.”
“She’s plenty old enough to know exactly what she’s doing.”
“She’s not much older than my sister.” Daniel said this with more vehemence than he’d intended. He could tell, because Colton raised his eyebrows in surprise.
Daniel was surprised, too. He wasn’t sure where that outburst had come from. Since when was he human? He cleared his throat. “When you insult a young lady, you’re trying to make her look bad, but you’re the one who ends up looking bad. And things are about to get worse for you. I heard that Lorelei has hired Stargazer, which is one of the best PR firms she could have brought on board, besides my own.”
Colton frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Stargazer’s very good. If they send certain people, I won’t know quite what to expect. But if they send Sarah Seville, I’ll know we’re in trouble. Sarah is a smooth talker, very friendly, and she’ll become Lorelei’s new best friend and persuade her to use a soft touch with the press. If they send Wendy Mann, we’re in more trouble. Wendy is a drill sergeant. She has a reputation for whipping people into shape and getting them to do things they never dreamed they could do themselves. Before you know it, she’ll have Lorelei dressing in lace and pearls and hosting tea parties for charity.”
“If she’s so good, why don’t I fire you and hire her?” Colton asked in the tone of a petulant child. “Maybe she wouldn’t have dragged me away from the tables when my luck was turning.”
“Your luck wasn’t turning,” Daniel said. “There’s no such thing as luck. The probability that you’ll get a good hand is exactly the same every time you play.” He could tell by Colton’s wandering gaze that Colton was losing interest, so Daniel stepped back from the lecture on applied math and returned to the subject that Colton seemed most interested in: Wendy Mann. “And if you hired Wendy, you wouldn’t like her. I guarantee you wouldn’t lay eyes on a blackjack table the rest of the time you spent in Vegas.”
“But with you, I can? I don’t think it would be good for publicity if I stayed in my room until Friday. That would make it look like my handlers had shut me down because there was something seriously wrong with me. It would be an admission of guilt.”
“That’s very insightful, Colton. If you’d been that smart for the past month, you wouldn’t need me.”
