Star Crossed (Stargazer) (13 page)

“And me,” Wendy said.

“You won’t talk,” Daniel said. “You know how easy it would be for me to ruin you. So here’s what we’ll do.
After you discuss the plan with Lorelei, we’ll sit down and coordinate her schedule with Colton’s. Make sure they’re seen together at events. Arrange some encounters that appear to be impromptu. The tabloids will start asking whether they’re back together. When the time is right, we’ll announce jointly that they
are
together. The public will forgive all their behavior up to now. The two of them won’t look like ill-bred young adults behaving badly anymore. They’ll look like they’ve finally learned that the ones you truly love are the ones you hurt the most. They will have moved through that dark stage in their relationship and emerged into the light on the other side. Viewers will tune in for that triumphant story on Friday night.”

Wendy stared past Daniel’s shoulder and said nothing. At first he thought she was staring into space so she could process all the information he was giving her. But as he neared the end of his plan, he got the distinct impression she was tuning him out. “Wendy,” he prompted her. “Are you listening to me?”

“No.” She grabbed the handles of the weight machine and swung herself up to standing. As she stalked away across the gym, she tossed over her shoulder at him, “You lost me when you threatened to ruin me. You and your client need to work on your lines.”

W
endy marched to the treadmill Daniel had vacated and took it over as her territory. She leaped onto it, set it to a higher speed than she was used to, and hoped to God he would leave soon, before she hacked up a lung.

On the other hand . . . she would miss the scenery if he left. He was so handsome slouched on a weight machine, long legs bent, biceps and muscled chest straining against his tight shirt, glaring at her. He was gorgeous when he was angry. At least, she
thought
he was angry. She still had a hard time telling his emotions apart, unless he was laughing.

And then he was gone, as she knew he would be. He wasn’t one to hang around and sulk, or to beg her. In a few swift steps he left the gym, tossing his balled-up towel over his shoulder and ringing the hamper with it after the door was already closing. He’d tried
with her. He’d failed. He would move on to plan B for revitalizing Colton’s career. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t talk to her again while they were in Vegas. Their relationship was over.

That was fine with her. She’d agreed that telling the public Lorelei and Colton were back together would be a great way to repair their images before the awards show. Maybe the only way. She’d also agreed that if she didn’t succeed with Lorelei, her career in PR was done. But she absolutely would not let Daniel bully her.

Her anger at him pushed her through a more exhausting workout than she’d thought possible. She returned to her room, half hoping to pass him somewhere along the way so she could pointedly ignore him. After a shower—a longer shower than she intended, because she kept getting lost in little fantasies about an apologetic Daniel joining her after his own hearty workout, and making up to her for being heavy-handed—she took the elevator to the penthouse level and knocked on Lorelei’s door. The wardrobe mistress let her in, saying Lorelei was always slow to get up in the morning.

Wendy took the opportunity to step straight into the huge closet. In a whisper, she asked the wardrobe mistress to show her the outfits she’d planned for Lorelei’s next few public appearances. Wendy could work as hard as possible and drag Lorelei along with her, but all their efforts could easily be negated with one slipped bra cup and an unplanned nipple calling hello
to the world. Judging from Lorelei’s past run-ins with the paparazzi, Wendy thought this was unlikely. Lorelei had done and said many stupid things in public, but none of them involved wardrobe malfunctions. If unseemly parts of her were showing in pictures, that’s because she’d taken the photos herself.

Lorelei’s clothes were beautifully made and edgy without being trashy. Wendy complimented the wardrobe mistress with the truth: “I’ve got my work cut out for me, as you know, but I’ve never worried about her wardrobe. You always make her look like a million bucks.” The wardrobe mistress replied with a brilliant smile and protestations that she only helped. Lorelei herself had a terrific eye.

And ear, Wendy thought, as the strum of an acoustic guitar and pitch-perfect humming meandered down the hall and into the closet. Lorelei was awake.

Replacing a gorgeous sequined skirt on the rack, Wendy slipped past the wardrobe mistress and tiptoed into the bedroom. Lorelei sat at the head of the bed, leaning back against the pillows, eyes closed, singing one of her mother’s hard-rocking classics. Lorelei was tall and thin, but that only added to the impression that she was young and hadn’t yet grown into her long limbs. The sun rendered her linen nightshirt and shorts translucent but not tawdry on her slender frame. She strummed the guitar. Her long fingers worked a complicated countermelody on the strings. Her high voice warbled half a lovely tune with nonsense words. Wendy was transfixed.

The morning sun backlit Lorelei’s messy curls and shone in a halo around her face. She wasn’t a stereotypical beauty—her eyes were narrow and wide-spaced, her nose long, and of course there were the diminutive boobies—but she was pretty enough for girls to want to be her, and not so pretty that they hated her. Wendy had always thought Loralei’s offbeat looks added to her appeal—back when she had appeal, that is.

Her song ended. She kept her eyes closed, basking in the warm sun streaming through the window, listening to her last guitar chord ring through the room. Finally she opened her eyes, saw Wendy leaning against the wall, and flared her nostrils. “No, bitch,” she said firmly. “I told you to take your weave and your cheap ass home.”

Wendy had lots of experience with West Virginia schoolgirls taunting her. And with bratty young stars who possessed all the eloquence and sophistication of those schoolgirls. In either case, Wendy’s usual response would be to let herself get angry and to dish it out just as well as she could take it.

This time she had her career to worry about. She needed to shut Lorelei down in a way that made Lorelei want to thank her for it later. Being nice was doubly difficult when Lorelei had punched her in her soft spots: insulting her hair and calling her cheap.

Reaching deep inside herself, she came up with this: “Hey, pretty girl.” She didn’t remember much about her mom, but she remembered
pretty girl
was what her mom had called her in a quiet, loving moment.

Lorelei stared uneasily at Wendy.

Exactly what Wendy wanted. She continued in a chipper tone, “You hired me to get you
out
of this little PR scrape. I’m certainly not going to let you fire me. That’s just going to get you deeper
in
trouble, especially when you’re accusing me of . . . what are you accusing me of, again? Having long hair?”

Lorelei let her guitar slide down to her lap and crossed her arms. “Stealing my boyfriend.”

“Colton’s not your boyfriend anymore,” Wendy said firmly. “But in any event, you don’t need to worry about me and him, because I’m with Daniel.”

Lorelei squinted at Wendy. “Who?”

“Daniel!” Wendy repeated in an exasperated tone, as if her relationship with Daniel Blackstone were the most obvious thing in the world. “He was sitting right next to me in the club last night.”

“Wait a minute!” Lorelei exclaimed, pointing at Wendy. “Isn’t he Colton’s new PR guy? No way! You’re sleeping with the enemy.”

Wendy shrugged. “I fell in love with him before he was the enemy. I promise we’ll be able to keep our personal and professional lives separate. So . . . ”

Lorelei still stared at her as if stunned. Wendy had the advantages of surprise and a confident delivery. As long as she could keep Colton off her and Daniel
on
her, she doubted she’d personally have any more trouble from Lorelei.

She needed to keep going, capitalizing on her momentum. But here she lost her train of thought, distracted
by the fantasy that she and Daniel had fallen in love.

Forget it. She pressed on, “We need some ground rules for getting you out of this mess. First, no throwing drinks in anyone’s face.”

“But Colton called me—” Lorelei started.

“Sticks and stones,” Wendy interrupted. “Throwing anything at anybody could be construed as assault. Do you want to go to jail? Again?”

Lorelei’s slim shoulders sagged. “No.”

“No posting pictures of your lady parts online,” Wendy persisted. “Your pics from the beauty shop bar last night were adorable. They were of you and your friends and your nightlife and your fingernails. Judging from the responses, the fans seemed to love them. We need more of that. Okay?”

“Okay,” Lorelei said reluctantly.

“No calling your new PR specialist a twat.”

Lorelei looked up sharply at Wendy, suspicious again.

“You hate it when people judge
you
without meeting you,” Wendy pointed out, “or knowing the facts, or giving you a chance.”

“Okay,” Lorelei grumbled, looking out the bright window.

Wendy had won the battle, it seemed. Lorelei had accepted her authority. But they couldn’t win the war with an absence of negative publicity. They’d have to generate the positive, too. The sunlight glowing in Lorelei’s curls gave Wendy an idea.

“We need to get you on TV,” she burst out. Lorelei’s TV performance wouldn’t be nearly as special as the song Wendy had just witnessed, snatched from thin air. The sunlight wouldn’t stream in behind Lorelei. She would insist on wearing her usual heavy makeup. She would be wearing leather and sequins instead of soft clothes to sleep in. Belatedly Wendy realized she wanted Lorelei to look like she’d just gotten out of bed, and that was kind of perverted.

But even without these details, Lorelei’s real talent and her easygoing, sweet nature—when she didn’t feel threatened—would come through on the small screen, possibly for the first time ever.

“TV!” Lorelei drawled. “TV and I don’t agree with each other.”

“You’ll like this kind,” Wendy said. “Let’s see. You’ve got the awards show on Friday night. So at lunch on Thursday, between your rehearsals for the show, we’ll get you into a local news studio to play a few songs. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but they’ll post the video of your performance to their web page. We’ll link to it and make sure it goes viral before the awards show.”

Lorelei tilted her head, confused. “How can you make sure it goes viral?”

“We’re Stargazer PR. We have our ways,” Wendy said mysteriously. Daniel Blackstone might be able to engineer a wedding on a private island and convince megastars to maintain a fake relationship for a span of years, but Wendy could make a video go viral with a few phone calls. So there.

“Even if it does, how will that help?” Lorelei asked.

“Trust me,” Wendy said. “It will help that people see you being yourself. Except don’t tell the anchors or the audience to fuck off.”

Lorelei laughed. “I was about to say,
that’s
me being myself—”

“Yeah,” Wendy said. “Don’t do that. It might even be okay not to talk much. Sometimes you tell people to fuck off, or you say something else to them that seems inappropriate and too harsh in retrospect, because you couldn’t think of anything else to say, right?”

Lorelei looked shocked.

“You’re actually kind of shy, right? And you think you can’t be shy in this business. You have to be ballsy and strong. You may be right about that when it comes to, say, contract negotiations. But when you’re a guest on somebody else’s TV show, no matter how big a star you are, maybe it’s okay, or even better, to act shy and polite, especially if that’s how you actually feel.”

Lorelei stared at her and nodded slowly.

Wendy prompted her, “Do you think you could do that?”

“Yeah.” Lorelei smiled at Wendy. “I think I could do that.”

“Another thing. Don’t talk to the reporters about your best friend the choreographer or your homie the housecleaner. If you do have relationships like that, we need to hide them as well as we can.”

“Why?” Lorelei pouted.

“The public wants to see you as larger than life. Even royals are just real people with lucky bloodlines, but commoners are sheep. They love to look up to somebody. They don’t want you consorting with them, because that makes you seem more like them. They want to hear about rock stars who are best friends with Oscar-winning actresses, and singers who are dating the governor of California.”

“You mean, I got it right with Colton, and now I’ve lost it,” Lorelei said dejectedly.

“Colton was great for your career.” Wendy thought for the millionth time that morning that she shouldn’t have turned Daniel’s offer down. But he shouldn’t have threatened her, and it was too late now. “I am
not
saying go back to Colton. I’m not saying fake a glamorous relationship. I’m saying hide the unglamorous ones.”

“But that’s just not how I am.” Hugging the guitar, Lorelei flopped over on the bed and lay on her side in the fluff. “I don’t think I’m better than other people. I’m not going to test each person when I meet them to see if they’re worthy of being friends with me or whatever. One of my best friends in the world is my limo driver back in L.A. I’ve spent Christmas with him and his wife and kids before, when I didn’t have my own place yet and my dad spent the holidays on his yacht in the Mediterranean with some stripper. I’m not going to drop that guy or pretend we’ve never met just because ‘my public’ doesn’t want to see that.” She
let go of her guitar to make finger quotes. “ ‘My public’ can bite me.”