Star Crossed (Stargazer) (10 page)

“I’d heard Stargazer was sending someone to help Lorelei,” Daniel admitted. “I discussed you as one of several possibilities. Why?”

“Did you describe me as some sort of dominatrix?”

He blinked at her. “Maybe.”

She laughed. “Really? Is that my reputation?”

He gave her the smallest smile. “Yes.”

“I guess that’s kind of cool.”

“If you say so.”

“I guess that’s Colton’s type. Lorelei is a dominatrix in training, like a fluffy kitten with a Taser.”

There! She thought she saw it for a split second: Daniel laughing. Almost laughing, but as soon as one
corner of his mouth turned up, he regained control and turned his face impassive again.

Disappointed, she went on, “You don’t really want me hooking up with your client, do you? I would totally pervert him. Besides, it would be bad PR. That cougar story only sells to one demographic: the cougars themselves. The rest of the public just thinks it’s gross.”

“You’re—” Daniel said on a laugh. He cleared his throat, collected himself, and started again. “You’re twenty-eight years old, aren’t you? Not a cougar by any stretch of the imagination. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll tell him to stop hounding you.”

“You don’t know yet whether he’ll follow your orders. I can’t take that chance. Besides, you’ve already opened the can of worms. In Lorelei’s mind, without you, I’m available and therefore a threat. Dating you is the only way I can take the can of worms off the shelf. I’m really sorry, Daniel, but I’m going to have to insist that you help me. You got me into this mess. You have to get me out.”

“By acting like your boyfriend?” Daniel’s face was utterly blank.

She acknowledged him with a grim nod. “Here where Colton and Lorelei can see.”

His eyes slid away from her to the crowd undulating before them in the lush darkness. He seemed to be looking for Colton and considering his options.

And Wendy was fed up. She was out of options, because of Daniel. “I don’t think you quite understand,” she said. “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”

This tactic worked on a lot of people. It had even worked on the lead singer of Darkness Fallz up until he nearly had her fired. It didn’t seem to work on Daniel. He simply stared at her coldly.

She tried to hold on to her own steely gaze. But inside she was cowering. She was that eighteen-year-old girl all over again, daring to leave her home state and her controlling boyfriend behind to pursue her dream, only to have him track her down and hurt her.

“Do you still have that crick in your neck from the flight?” Daniel asked. “Turn around.” He put his hands on her shoulders and started to turn her.

Maybe he was going to help her after all—although a neck rub wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind. She wasn’t sure how convinced Colton and Lorelei would be that Daniel and Wendy were lovers just because he worked the kink out of her neck, but it was better than nothing. She turned away from him, bent her head, and pulled her hair forward.

He smoothed his hands along her skin and across the shoulders of her blouse. Then his lips were at her ear. “My God, why are you so tense?”

She gave the smallest shrug. She’d nearly been fired today, she had an impossible job to do or else she would be fired tomorrow, and the hottest guy on earth was touching her. No stress there.

“Relax, Wendy,” he whispered. “It won’t look like we’re lovers if you don’t let go.”

With a shiver of pleasure at his voice, she took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and softened under his hands, as instructed.

She tried to suppress her gasp of surprise and pleasure as his hot fingers pressed into her shoulder muscles. Now she wasn’t so worried that they wouldn’t look like lovers. For her at least, this was the sexiest event of the past six months, since her last night with an on-again, off-again boyfriend. She felt self-consciously like a neglected dog rolling over happily for anyone who would rub his belly. The longer Daniel’s hands deftly moved up and down her spine and along her shoulders, the more boneless she became.

“Better?” he growled as he took his hands away.

She nodded a little, so sorry the session was over, but hopeful it had been enough to stave off Colton for a few days. Though a kiss would have been better . . .

She was just telling herself not to go there, not to entertain the possibility, because she was going to be disappointed. But as she faced Daniel, he was looking at her mouth.

The beat of the music, the volume, the frenzy of it, seemed to escalate with her heartbeat as he bent toward her. But he advanced lazily, like a hot southern afternoon. They were a special effect in a film, moving in slow motion, just the two of them, while their surroundings whirled.

She wouldn’t falter. She wouldn’t look away shyly. She’d asked him for this. She held his gaze as his hand moved down her back and underneath her blouse. It
was all she could do to keep from shuddering with anticipation now that the silk didn’t separate them. His skin met her skin as he bent closer over her. His lips touched hers.

She froze against him, simultaneously telling herself she shouldn’t be freezing. That was something she would do if she thought he was unattractive. She didn’t want him to get that impression. It wasn’t true at all. Or, it was something she would do if she found him extremely attractive and was afraid of letting him know. That was true, and she didn’t want to give him that impression, either.

These panicked thoughts flashed through her brain in about two seconds, and then hormones took over as his tongue swept inside her mouth. She forgot what impression she was trying to give him or why as she responded to his kiss, opening for him. She pressed her hands against his crisp white shirt.

He shifted his solid arm up her back, holding her there, and wove the fingers of his other hand into her hair. His tongue slipped past her teeth and massaged inside her mouth.

Tingles rushed up and down her arms, through her chest, down to her thighs, making her legs weak. She felt herself sliding closer to him on the velvet bench, placing one shoe between both of his so that her thigh grazed his and his knee brushed her crotch.

His lips left hers, but his face hovered near. He looked into her eyes and brushed his lips against hers once more. Then he lifted his middle finger to stroke a
long blond lock away from her face. “Good enough?” he murmured. “Colton was watching.”

Oh. Of course. He hadn’t kissed her because he’d wanted to. He’d done it because she’d asked him to, for the sake of her job.
Oh.

WITTY COMEBACK. She should make a WITTY COMEBACK now, but her mind was empty of words again. It was full of pleasure, an insane lust for him, and disappointment that he didn’t feel the same.

Then, thankfully, she produced the comeback after all. She hadn’t held this job for six years for nothing. She grinned at him and quipped, “Now
that
is how you do PR.”

“Good.” With one hand he stroked her bare back. With the other he twisted a lock of her hair into a rope and wound it around his finger, reminding her that she’d allowed herself to be caught. “Because now
I
need a favor from
you
.”

W
endy gazed up at Daniel, her blue eyes dark with the kiss they’d just shared, her jaw set against the favor he was calling in.

He had no idea what
he
must look like to
her
, but he
felt
like he’d gotten high and lost his mind.

Reluctantly he let go of her silky hair and slipped his hand out from under her blouse. He wished he could have explored her mouth with his until they were both wild with want. Without exchanging a word, they would escape from this crowd and make their way up to his room or hers, where he would zip her out of that sexy skirt. But she wouldn’t have allowed it. She’d been clear from the beginning that she was only using him. He might protest for show, but he was very, very happy for Wendy Mann to use him all she wanted. However, he kept in mind that in the end, they were both here for one thing, and it wasn’t a lay.

Unfortunately.

“What kind of favor?” she asked.

Daniel smiled. He could feel that the smile didn’t quite make it to his eyes—which was good, because the bruise on his cheekbone had begun to ache all over again when Wendy got his blood pumping with that kiss. He said stiffly, “I have a proposition for you.”

Wendy raised her golden brows. “Do you, now.”

He let his eyes dart briefly to the inebriated dancers crowding their table. Colton wasn’t watching anymore—he and the Lakers player had followed the famous mistress of a shamed governor across the bar—but Daniel let Wendy think he was surveying his client as he covered her hand with his. “It’s great that we’ve gotten together like this. We’ll keep playing it up and serve as a good example. As you know, the public loves it when star couples reconcile. All we have to do to fix Colton
and
Lorelei’s PR is get them back together before the awards show on Friday.”

“No!” Wendy exclaimed, jerking her hand out from under his.

Momentarily stunned by her quick refusal, he gathered himself and said, “You haven’t even let me explain what I had in m—”

“Absolutely not,” Wendy said. “He’s violent.
He hit you
.”

“He hit me by accident.”

“That’s what battered women say, too. Every bruise on their bodies was an accident.” Her voice rose. He was very thankful that he was the only one who could
hear her over the loud music as she said, “I’m not letting Lorelei near him, and if you were any kind of man, you wouldn’t, either.”

That blow stunned him more than Colton’s had. “Colton swung at the paparazzi,” Daniel said. “I got in the way. You think I would let him hit me on purpose?”

“No,” she admitted. She watched the crowd for a few moments, reconsidering. “You want them to get back together for real? Or should we just release it to the public that they hooked up?”

Daniel shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters,” Wendy said. “Lorelei is in a fragile state right now.”

“Not too fragile to sniff coke off her dead mother’s Stratocaster,” Daniel pointed out.

“That was three years ago, and it was a
rumor
,” Wendy said sternly. “I don’t want to tell Lorelei what to do. She’s free to make her own choices.”

Daniel was astounded. “What
planet
are you from?”

Wendy lifted her chin. “Lorelei has loved and lost. The last thing she needs right now is to get involved again with your client, who publicly demeans her.”

“Wendy,” Daniel said reprovingly. “You got kicked off the Darkness Fallz case this morning. You must be in hot water at Stargazer. If Lorelei loses her concert tour because she won’t stop tweeting photos of her underwear, you’re done in this business. How are you going to repair her reputation so quickly without my help? You need me.”

Wendy frowned. She was still beautiful when she frowned—but she doubted him. He wasn’t concerned about Lorelei’s bodily safety in a relationship with Colton, but Wendy truly was. She was playing Daniel straight, at least on that point.

He needed her to agree to this plan. Getting Colton and Lorelei back together, or simply putting out the word that they’d made up and forcing them to play along, would assuage the awards ceremony and do wonders for this pivotal week of their careers. But he knew that even if Wendy did say yes, and even if they did continue to play at this game of being lovers, Vegas would be no fun for either of them. They wouldn’t be riding the roller coaster at the New York casino, or hiking the Red Rock Canyon, or falling into bed together. All their fun was over.

“I just got here,” she murmured. “I haven’t even introduced myself to Lorelei yet. I haven’t had time to assess the situation with her. I don’t think it’s a good idea, and this is definitely not the place to discuss it.”

He leaned forward with his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand. “Then let’s discuss it tomorrow.”

She sank back exactly as far as he’d moved toward her, shaking her head no. “Avoiding each other, and having Lorelei and Colton avoid each other, would be a better course of action.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Oh, you’re going to avoid me? Don’t expect me to make out with you anymore, then.”

“We weren’t exactly making out,” she grumbled.

“Don’t expect me to pretend we’re together, either,” he said lightly. “Your choice. I’m not the one with the problems at work.”

She opened her mouth to respond—and he was really looking forward to what she would say—when a commotion distracted them both. All the dancers had stopped and faced the center of the room as if a dance-off were going down for cash. The disturbance was so intriguing that someone notified the DJ, who lowered the volume on the electro-garbage until they could hear the beat of different music in the outer room, and above it all, very close by, Colton bellowing.

Daniel and Wendy recognized his voice and jumped up at the same time. While Wendy pushed through the dancers and disappeared in the direction of the disturbance, Daniel walked around the edge of the crowd, toward the bar, until he spotted Colton’s bodyguard in the shadows against the far wall, deep in conversation with Colton’s driver. Daniel waved to get the bodyguard’s attention, then opened his hands toward the crowd. The bodyguard looked surprised and hustled his big body in that direction. Either he’d been the only person in the bar not to realize that Colton was involved in an altercation, or he’d thought Colton getting in an argument in public didn’t break the threshold of occasions when he should intervene. Daniel mentally added lecturing the bodyguard to his long to-do list for tomorrow.