Star Crossed

by Jennifer Echols

  “Nowadays it just doesn’t matter, you know? I wanted to work in PR for something that really matters, like politics, like getting someone into office who can make a difference, and keeping that person there no matter what mud the other side slings. But whether the public likes or dislikes Colton Farr for pissing in the fountain at the Bellagio, and whether he’s able to land his blockbuster movie and pull his career out of the gutter . . . I don’t care, and nobody else should, either.”

  “I care,” Wendy spoke up. “I mean, not about Colton. But if you’re a little girl living in the middle of nowhere and your life is basically nothing, it can really give you hope to idolize a glamorous star.” She pointed to her pink computer screen. “I have always read the tabloids.”

  Daniel leaned closer, gazing dubiously at a montage of overdressed starlets and their ratlike dogs.

  “Even reality stars have talent,” Wendy said. “They have a larger-than-life personality that people want to watch, even if it’s just strange or grating.”

  “You should know,” Daniel said.

  Wendy’s brow furrowed in protest, but then her expression relaxed, backing away from his challenge. “I guess I walked into that one.”

  “I meant the larger-than-life personality,” Daniel clarified, “not the other.”

  She sniffed. “Right.”

  Daniel huffed out frustration. He really hadn’t meant to insult her, but he’d been putting his foot in his mouth constantly around her, which wasn’t like him at all. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she made him flustered. “I’m not telling you anything you haven’t heard already,” he said. “Isn’t that why you got kicked off the Darkness Fallz case? Isn’t that why you got called into the dean’s office a couple of times in college? I know that’s why nobody could take their eyes off you.”

  “I think that was the hair. That’s what it usually is.” She grabbed a lock falling over her shoulder and examined the ends. The front of her hair was still bound in a braid, but tendrils had come loose and framed her face in soft gold. The back hung in big curls. Yes, it was the hair.

  “Maybe,” Daniel said.

  She looked over at him. “Do you need to get in the bathroom? Because I’m going to be a while. I need to wash my hair, which is an undertaking. I used it to mop the floor of that exhibit room. It’s three shades darker than normal.”

  “Only at the roots,” Daniel said diplomatically. “It looks like your darker roots are growing out.”

  “That’s grease.”

  “There’s blood in it, too.” He nodded toward the bathroom. “Go ahead.”

  She felt the back of her head for the blood. Then she walked toward the bathroom, slowing once and listing a bit to one side as if she weren’t quite steady on her feet. After she’d disappeared and he could hear the door start to swing shut, he called sharply, “Wendy.”

  She stuck her head back out to look at him.

  “Don’t lock the door.”

  She didn’t protest this time. “ ’Kay.” The door clicked shut.

  Reluctantly he navigated away from his news feeds so he could address his father’s concerns with a few well-placed press releases on Colton’s stability and his excitement about the upcoming awards show. But he found himself listening very hard for noises through the bathroom door: The whisper of Wendy pulling the cotton T-shirt across her bare breasts and up over her head. A cascade that sounded like relief as she pushed the material of her sweatpants to the floor.

  The vent moaned, and shortly afterward, the shower hissed. The striptease in his head was over. He tried to go back to his work.

  But the sound of the shower danced with Wendy underneath it. The droplets drummed against the shower walls, paused as her body blocked the spray, and resumed their beat as she moved. He couldn’t get her out of his head. He pictured her naked with the hot water streaming over her creamy body, turning her bright hair slick and dark.

  He turned away from his computer, toward her. He peered down the hallway to the bathroom. He couldn’t go down it. Or, he could, but he wouldn’t.

  Just for a moment, though, he put his chin in his hands, staring at the laptop but not seeing it, and allowed himself the fantasy of Wendy. He’d done this before, in college. Back then the fantasy had turned physical. He’d returned to the dorm after class, closed himself in his room, and pleasured himself with the thought of her, this saucy girl from Appalachia who thought she would get the better of him.

  The fantasy had involved Dr. Abbott’s class. He’d bent her over Dr. Abbott’s desk, with or without Dr. Abbott still behind it, with or without the whole class watching. He’d wrapped her golden hair around his fist, holding her down and motionless as he entered her.

  Now he was still thinking about her hair—how could he not?—but he didn’t need an audience. He’d grown out of that urge for public sex. The new fantasy had him walking down that hall. Turning the knob on that unlocked door. Walking through the mist and raking back the white curtain, slowly so he wouldn’t startle her, to be greeted by that brilliant smile, those sparkling blue eyes. Her long, wet hair would be streaming over her shoulders and down her front. He would reach forward and slick it away from her breasts—

  “Daniel?”

  He started in surprise and nearly lost hold of his laptop.

  Shaking off his shock, he realized she’d called to him from the bathroom. She was in trouble.

  He leaped up and reached the bathroom door in two steps. It was open a few inches, the light golden beyond it. He swung it open.

  Wendy stood there with a white towel wrapped around her, gripping the terry cloth closed with both fists. Surprisingly, her hair was dry, with the same golden glow he’d always known, hanging in strange waves now that her braid was undone, but her face was wet. Her eyelashes were wet and dark, and he couldn’t tell from her expression whether she’d just washed her face or she was in tears.

  Her shaky voice gave him the answer. “I am so sorry,” she sobbed. “I need your help.”

  “Okay.”

  “Because I’m not supposed to get the stitches wet. But I have to wash my hair. In this business it’s important that the smell of your hair doesn’t repulse people. You understand this.”

  “Right.”

  “And I tried but I’m not going to have enough hands. I’m going to get the stitches wet and then I’m going to have to go back to the hospital and while I’m gone Lorelei is going to have a threesome with a showgirl and a taxi driver and tweet the pictures and I’m going to get fired.”

  He’d thought she was incredibly strong, seeming to shrug off the attack on her body last night. Turned out she just hid things well. Almost as well as he did.

  “Hey.” He put out one hand, but hesitated to place it on her shoulder, which was wet and bare. He put it down. “I’ll help you. I would help you even if you weren’t naked.”

  “Oh.” She heaved a deep sigh. “You just looked so . . . I didn’t think you were going to help me. You looked mean.”

  “I didn’t feel mean.”

  She tilted her head, considering him, and her long hair inched even farther down her bare arm. “Someone could make a poster with captions for all of your emotions and use the same photo for each one. Meanness. Anger. Happiness. Hunger. Giddiness. Lust.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  She swallowed. “Embarrassment.”

  “Charitableness,” he said. “What do you need me to do?”

  She handed him a small plastic bag. “Hold this over my stitches while I wash my hair. If you think that’s gross, I have latex gloves, too.”

  “I have my own latex gloves, but I don’t think it’s gross.”

  “You have your own latex gloves? I thought I was being weird to pack mine.”

  “You never know what you’ll encounter in this job. Especially in Vegas.” He took the plastic bag from her.

  She slid another towel from the rack as she turned, then dropped it on the tile floor beside the shower. Sh
e glanced back at him. “To kneel on, so you don’t hurt your knees.”

  “Do I look that fragile?”

  She shrugged, which made her towel slip a little. She tightened it around herself, blushing. “I just . . . okay.” She kneeled on the towel herself and pushed back the shower curtain to reveal the still-gushing faucet. A cloud of steam escaped.

  “Just a sec.” Daniel stepped into the hall, pulled off his T-shirt, and tossed it in the direction of the bed, thinking as he did so that reality was verging closer and closer to his fantasy of Wendy. He stepped back inside.

  Wendy was watching the door for him, looking small and so sexy with the towel barely covering her breasts. When she saw him, her eyes widened. He expected her to comment on his naked upper body, but she didn’t. She turned back to the tub.

  He kneeled behind her on the towel. Parting her hair, he found the stitches in the back and held the plastic bag over them, cupping his hand to protect the wound without using too much pressure and hurting her. “Okay, go.”

  She leaned forward to wet the front of her hair. His hand didn’t follow, and her head slipped out from under the plastic bag.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “You know what? I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you. Let’s switch jobs.” He brought her hand back and placed it over the plastic bag. “You hold it. Now lean forward.”

  Obediently she held the front of her head under the stream again. Her long hair seemed to become part of the water, glinting golden and pooling on the bottom of the white tub. He reached behind him to the sink for the ice bucket, then filled that with hot water and poured it on her hair around the wound, carefully avoiding the stitches. He squirted out a handful of her shampoo, rubbed his hands together to spread it, and worked his palms through one side of her hair, then the other, massaging her scalp with his fingertips and lingering over the job way longer than he needed to. He was getting hard.

  To steer himself away from the fantasy again, he joked, “You have a lot of hair.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. It wasn’t an insult, just an observation. If you could see the expression on my face, you would know that. I’m grinning ear to ear.”

  “I don’t believe it.” She moved as if she would turn to look at him.

  He put his wet hand on her bare back. “No, don’t look. I’m almost done.” And he needed to get rid of this hard-on before she noticed. He filled the bucket with water again and carefully poured it around the wound, then over the rest of her hair. The suds slid away and vanished.

  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 naked.”

  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 turne
d and mouthed to him, “We are fucking 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.