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She buried her face in the pillow. Soon the mattress sagged as he got up. S
he heard the muffled sound of his footsteps dragging toward the bathroom. When the door shut, she fumbled for the sheet and made herself sit up. The room tilted. Her stomach roiled. She wrapped the sheet around her, wobbled to her feet, and staggered to the second bathroom, where she leaned against the sink and buried her face in her hands.
What would Scooter do if she’d been drugged and woke up naked in bed with a stranger? Or not a stranger. Scooter wouldn’t do anything because nothing this horrible had ever happened to her. It was easy to be all feisty and optimistic when you had a full-time writing staff protecting you from the real crap life tossed out.
As she let her hands drop, a horrifying image greeted her in the mirror, like early Courtney Love. A witch’s brew of tangled cherry-cola hair didn’t hide the beard burn on her neck. Blotches of old mascara smudged her green eyes like mud around an algae pond. Her wide mouth sagged at the corners, and her complexion was the color of bad yogurt. She made herself drink a glass of water. All her toiletries were in the other bathroom, but she washed her face and swirled some hotel mouthwash.
She still didn’t feel capable of coping with whatever lurked on the other side of that door, so she pushed her hair out of her face and sat on the marble tub deck. She wanted to call someone, but she couldn’t burden Sasha right now, Meg was unreachable, and she wasn’t up to confessing her transgression to April, who would be so disappointed in her. A former rock-and-roll groupie had become her moral compass. As for her father…Never.
She made herself get up and tightened the sheet under her arms. The bedroom was empty, but her hopes that he’d left faded when she saw his clothes still on the floor. She shuffled across the carpet and out into the living room.
He stood at the windows with his back to her. He was tall. But he wasn’t NBA tall. He was her worst nightmare.
“Don’t say a word until the coffee gets here,” he said without turning. “I mean it, Georgie. I can’t deal with you right now. Unless you have a cigarette.”
Rage swept through her. She snatched up a couch pillow and hurled it at Bramwell Shepard’s rumpled tawny head. “You drugged me!”
He ducked, and the pillow hit the window.
She tried to go after him, but as he turned toward her, she tripped over the bedsheet, and it slipped to her waist.
“Put those away,” he said. “They’ve already gotten us into enough trouble.”
She had better luck connecting with one of his abandoned shoes.
“Ow!” He rubbed his chest and had the nerve to look outraged. “I didn’t drug you! Believe me, if I was going to drug a woman, it wouldn’t be you.”
She tugged the sheet into her armpits and looked around for something else to throw. “You’re lying. I was drugged.”
“Yeah, you were. We both were. But not by me. By Meredith, Marilyn, Mary-somebody.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“The redhead at the party last night. Remember those drinks she brought over? I took one and gave you the other—the one she made for herself.”
“Why would she drug herself?”
“Because she likes the feeling she gets!”
Georgie had her first inkling that, for once in his life, Bramwell Shepard might be telling the truth. She also remembered the way he’d confronted the woman and how angry he’d looked. She jerked up the sheet and lurched toward him. “You knew those drinks were drugged? You knew, and you didn’t put a stop to it?”
“I didn’t know. Not until I finished mine, looked at you, and realized I wasn’t totally repulsed!”
A rap sounded at the door, and a voice announced room service. “Get back in the bedroom,” she hissed. “And give me that robe! The tabloids have informants everywhere. Hurry up!”
“If you give me one more order…”
“Please hurry up, you dickhead!”
“I liked you better when you were drunk.” He pulled off the robe, tossed it over her arm, and disappeared. She threw the sheet behind the couch and knotted the sash on her way to the door.
The waiter wheeled in the serving cart and arranged the dishes on the dining room table, which sat under a gilded chandelier. She heard the shower go on in the bathroom. Word would spread that she hadn’t spent the night alone. Fortunately, no one knew whom she’d spent it with, so this might work to her advantage.
The waiter finally left. She made a dash for the coffee, then wobbled over to the windows and tried to pull herself together. Far below, tourists had gathered to watch the Bellagio’s fountain show. What had taken place in that bedroom last night? She couldn’t remember anything. Only the first time…
The day they’d met, she’d been fifteen, and he was seventeen. His beauty had left her dumbstruck, but he’d dismissed her with a bored grunt and a single sweep of those cocky lavender eyes. Naturally, she was smitten.
Her father’s warnings about him only intensified her crush. Bram was arrogant, sulky, undisciplined, and gorgeous—catnip for a fifteen-year-old romantic—but he ignored her during those first two seasons unless they were actually filming. She might have been on the cover of a dozen teen magazines, but she was still a skinny kid with gum ball green eyes, marshmallow cheeks, and a Silly Putty mouth. Her skin was perpetually broken out from the makeup she had to wear, and her curly orange Orphan Annie hair made her look even younger. Going out with a few cute teen actors didn’t bolster her confidence, since her father had arranged the dates for publicity. The rest of the time, Paul York kept her locked up tight, safe from Hollywood’s vices.
