She said, “Yes.”
15
Great,” Daniel said on an exhalation, which sounded like relief. He nudged Wendy’s laptop aside and opened his own on the desk. “Let me see what I can set up before I go.”
Now that his back was turned and the clicks of his keyboard filled the silence, Wendy slid off the bed. She buttoned her blouse, which seemed awfully wrinkled, but she had no time to re-iron. Daniel wasn’t the only one with a busy afternoon. She found her skirt and shimmied into it, then searched the floor for her panties. Their whereabouts were not immediately apparent. She felt kind of stupid about this. A lady should always know where her underwear was.
She looked up at Daniel. He was rising from the chair to pull her panties out of his pocket. He held them out to her.
She took the wad of silk. “You had my panties in your pocket,” she complained, half accusing, half teasing.
“Sorry.”
“Were you going to give them back?”
He gave her a brilliant smile. “Maybe.”
She couldn’t help grinning back at him. For that brief moment, the complications and jealousies between them fell away, as they did every so often, as if their relationship were meant to be.
Then he turned back to his laptop, and she wiggled into her panties.
“This is a problem,” he called. “All the wedding chapels close at midnight or so. I had a four a.m., end-of-the-night wedding in mind.”
“That would be good, but this is better,” Wendy said to the mirror over the dresser as she ran a brush through her hair and repinned the bun hiding her missing locks. “Lorelei is supposed to cut her birthday cake at midnight. We’ll schedule the wedding for eleven thirty. Around eleven we’ll spring the whole thing on her and Colton. We’ll ask them to be our witnesses, and we’ll all take Colton’s limo to the chapel. The paparazzi will see them leaving the casino and go wild. Some of them will follow the limo straight to the chapel.”
Daniel spun in his chair to beam at her. “Right!”
“We’ll get lots more attention that way than if we do it in the wee hours,” Wendy went on. “Some photographers will have given up and gone to bed by four, but this will be prime time. Then we’ll skate back into the casino just in time for Lorelei’s cake cutting. If we’re fashionably late, so much the better.”
“Colton and Lorelei will act innocent,” Daniel said, “because they will be. For once. But the tabloids will assume they got married on her big day of celebration, right before their TV reunion, and they’re just being coy about it. Wow.” He turned back to the laptop and resumed typing. “We may be too good at this.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying.”
He ignored that comment. “There’s no blood test or waiting period, but we do both have to apply for a marriage license. Can you meet me at the county clerk’s office at five?”
“It’s going to be tight.” She retrieved her phone from the bed and thumbed through her schedule. “I have to get changed for the party fairly early so I can supervise. There is to be absolutely no penis cake.”
“Good thinking,” he said without turning around. “Photos of penis cake have sabotaged many a starlet’s career.”
“I’ve got so much to do before then. I can delegate more of this to Tom, though.”
“Four thirty?” Daniel asked.
“So noted. Listen . . . ” Wendy secured her phone in her computer bag, thinking hard all the while. “I’ll have to get rid of Tom and Sarah. Send them back to New York tonight on the red-eye.”
Daniel looked over his shoulder at her. “Why?”
“If they find out what we’re doing, they won’t let me.”
His expression turned somber. “Okay.” He glanced at his screen. “Here’s an eleven thirty opening for a wedding ceremony tonight. I can reserve it online. Do you want a drive-through wedding?”
“No,” she said, crossing behind him to look over his shoulder at the web page littered with tacky hearts. “If it’s outdoors, the paparazzi will see it’s not Lorelei and Colton getting married. It’s . . . ” Us, she should say. Us. She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
He’d already moved on. “Photos?”
“Absolutely not. If there are no photos, they can’t leak.”
“Right. Do you want the ceremony to be officiated by Elvis?”
“Yes, duh.” She reached around him to fold her own laptop. “I’ve got to run.”
“See you at the clerk’s office at four thirty,” he reminded her.
She gave him a short nod. She knew how bad an idea this was. She’d argued herself into acquiescing, but in her heart, she knew.
“Wendy.” Daniel stood and wrapped her in his arms.
She tried to relax and enjoy the hug. The tingles were back, for one thing. Her heart raced any time he touched her. And hugging seemed rare and strange for him. She felt lucky for the privilege. But this was all wrong. And she still held her laptop sandwiched between them.
He kissed her forehead, ran his hands up to her shoulders, and held her there while he looked her in the eye. “It will be fine, I promise. I won’t let this go bad.”
It already had, but she couldn’t think about that. She stuffed her computer in her bag on her way out the door, headed to her next appointment.
* * *
“We deleted all the pictures when we were done,” Wendy told Sarah.
“That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” Sarah said.
“I guess not,” Wendy said. “But I’m not the type of girl to encounter a sexy man in a hotel room and say, ‘This is inappropriate and we should probably stop.’ ”
“No, you’re not,” Sarah agreed.
Lorelei’s party would start any minute in the posh rooftop club of the casino. Wendy had spent the last hour checking and rechecking every detail from the caterer to the carefully screened photographers who would be allowed to take pictures of the cake-cutting at midnight. Sarah had joined her for the last fifteen minutes of frantic supervision. Now they both sat in cushioned chairs in the outdoor section of the club overlooking the Strip.
While they’d been sitting, Wendy had told Sarah casually that she should grab the red-eye back to New York. In fact, Wendy had already arranged with Stargazer to book the midnight flight for Sarah and Tom. Their work here was largely done. If they made it into the office tomorrow, the bosses would think Wendy’s problems with Lorelei weren’t so serious. Sarah had watched her gravely while Wendy explained this half-truth. She felt like death for misleading Sarah, and worse because Sarah would guess what was really going on and refuse to let Wendy go through with it.
Panicked, Wendy had launched into a description of what she and Daniel had been up to in the hotel room. If she admitted that they’d taken their relationship to the next level, maybe it would seem to Sarah that she wasn’t hiding anything else. So far it seemed to be working.
“In the beginning,” Wendy went on, “it was all completely innocent. Well, as innocent as dirty pictures can be. The next minute he was going down on me.”
Sarah arched one eyebrow. “What if he’d been a pervert who uploaded your porn shots to the Internet?”
“If my face had been in them I would have been concerned, but it wasn’t. They were just crotch shots. You can upload my cooch to the Internet all day and I won’t mind, as long as my name isn’t attached. That is precisely why I’ve never had Wendy tattooed across my labia.”
Sarah snapped her fingers. “Damn it! I wish you’d said something before I got my labia tattoo last week.”
“Do your labia say Sarah? You can always get it changed, like dumbass stars when they break up with the girlfriends named in their tattoos. That way, when you took crotch shots in the future, nobody would recognize you. What could you get it changed to? Saaaa . . . ” She sounded it out.
“Saaaa . . . ” Sarah joined in. The pitch of her voice changed like a passing ambulance as she looked around the candlelit patio to make sure none of the wai
ters listened in on their discussion of their labia tattoos.
Wendy said, “Saaaaaaalad. Taste a sample of my sexy salad.”
“Sex salad,” Sarah said. “My salad bar of sex.”
“Take what you want and leave the rest,” Wendy said.
Sarah said, “All you can eat.”
They both shrieked with laughter and immediately shushed each other, trying to look innocent while several waiters inside pressed their faces against the glass wall of the club to peer at them.
Sarah choked out, “What are you going to tell your kids when they ask how you got together with Daniel? That is the most unwholesome damn thing I ever heard. You’ll have to make up some shit about going to Paris.”
Wendy grinned right through Sarah’s offhand comment about children. The longer Wendy’s fake relationship with Daniel went on, and the more pretend-serious it became, the more it hurt to joke about the trappings of a serious relationship that would never be. “Oh, we went to Paris, all right.” She winked.
“Yes! Daniel had salad in Paris.”
“Paris is famous for its salads, you know.”
Sarah looked perplexed. “I thought that was Bangkok.”
They both glanced toward the glass wall again as music began throbbing from the sound system. Straining her eyes to see through the shadows, Wendy realized that security was letting in the guests. “That’s my cue,” she told Sarah.
As Wendy rose, she braced for the suspicious comment she’d been expecting from Sarah. But Sarah kept her lips zipped, and Wendy couldn’t worry about it. She had too much else to do.
And she was proud of herself for the job she’d done that day. Between the endless press releases, the media calls, Lorelei’s TV appearance, and this party, Wendy had also managed to enjoy oral sex with Daniel, meet him for a marriage license, run a few more errands, and purchase a party outfit for Sarah. With her hair swept up and her makeup done correctly, Sarah was as beautiful as any plastic starlet who’d scored an invitation to this party. Her tiny dress hugged her athletic body, and her gold sandals were exactly right. This makeover was the crowning achievement of Wendy’s day. She honestly believed her bosses were fools if they fired her. That knowledge would be cold comfort if she did get axed, but it was something.
She made her way into the club, which was quickly growing crowded. After that, her sense that she had a handle on her life and command of her job faded into a blur of sequins, laughter, and vague dread. Lorelei and Colton arrived together as planned, with Daniel close behind. Lorelei was photographed by a legitimate entertainment mag while having an animated conversation with a rock legend who’d been close friends with her mom and had nevertheless survived. This was a publicity coup, but Wendy found herself standing in a corner, smiling vaguely at the scene as it unfolded in front of her, and in her head yelling at herself to wake up. She wasn’t drinking, but she felt besotted with worry about what she was about to do with Daniel.
She did return to reality for a moment when Sarah and Tom hugged her good-bye before snagging their bags from their rooms and hurrying for their flight. Sarah had drunk more than usual during her short stay at the party. She leaned into Tom as they left. In the last glimpse Wendy caught of them as they exited the club, Tom was laughing and putting his arm around Sarah.
Poor Sarah. This was what her marriage should have looked like. Wendy couldn’t picture Sarah with Tom. The two of them seemed to have the same type of sibling relationship that Wendy enjoyed with Tom. But Sarah deserved to dress up. She deserved to go out. She deserved to have the arm of an adoring man around her, happy that she was having fun, rather than a husband who never wanted to do anything with her and, on the rare occasion when he gave in, acted like the night was all about him. Wendy sighed across the room and into the empty doorway where Sarah and Tom had been.
The chill that wrapped around her bare shoulders wasn’t caused by Sarah’s plight, though, or the club’s air conditioning system. It was about Wendy herself. She deserved to dress up and go out and be valued like this, too. At some point, though, she’d forgotten. She’d given up. So she might as well get married to a professional acquaintance for business purposes.
One she’d completely fallen for, she thought with dismay as she spotted Daniel in the shadows, coming toward her. Her heart sped into overdrive. Her brain woke up, hoping for the chance to joke with him, like a kid in grade school about to be let outside onto the playground. She tried to back herself down. He didn’t consider her the highlight of his evening. He needed to find her and discuss a PR matter with her so he could check it off his list.
But when he stopped very close to her, he didn’t sound businesslike at all. He eyed her up and down and murmured, “Is that what you’re going to wear?”
“I know,” she said, feeling herself blush. “Tacky for a wedding. But changing clothes or wearing something that didn’t look right for this party would draw attention we don’t want.”
“It’s not tacky,” he said. “It’s completely appropriate for you to get married in a red sequined minidress.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“You look stunningly beautiful,” he whispered. “You always do.” He reached out to touch a tendril of her hair. “When we were talking about the wedding this afternoon, we forgot something. Rings.”
“I didn’t forget,” she said triumphantly, opening her purse. Looking past him to make sure his body hid her hands from a nosy crowd, she pulled out the cheap, pre-engraved gold ring. She’d bought it on a whim from a cart in the middle of the mall food court as an ironic protest.
Handing it to him, she said, “It has a message on the inside. I wanted to get you one that said, ‘Happily ever after for at least a few weeks,’ but they were all out.”
He held it between them and peered at the tiny letters in the dim light. “ ‘Happiness,’ ” he read. “Thank you, Wendy.” He cracked his gorgeous smile.
But just as quickly, an awkward silence settled over them. Wendy dropped his ring back in her purse.
“Oh, I got you one, too.” He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket and held the ring out to her.
Her lips parted, but she was so surprised that she couldn’t even gasp at the enormous diamond on a delicate band. She had hardly any breath to choke out, “Is that real?”
“Of course it’s real!” If he’d had facial expressions, she would have thought he was almost offended.
“Did you expense it?” she squeaked.
“No!” He hid it in his pocket, then took both her hands in his. “Everything we do from here on out is real.”
She stared at the lapel of his coat, where the ring had disappeared. She should have bought him a real ring instead of a toy. Or should she? They stood in a rushing river with their former lives as corporate enemies on one bank and a future as lovers on the other. Every time she made a decision to head one way, he turned in the opposite direction.
“Wendy,” he said. “Are you still with me?”
She nodded.
He watched her for a moment more, looking for something in her eyes. Whether he found it or not, she had no idea, but he let her hands go. “Now we need to tell Lorelei and Colton that we’re getting married and we want them to be witnesses. Remind Lorelei we work for rival companies and we have to keep it secret. That way, she won’t squeal in the middle of the party.”
“I know,” Wendy said. “We went over this before.”
“Just making sure.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “You don’t look well.”
Right. She needed to get over her sentimental squeamishness. She still had a job to do.
She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. “See you at the limo.”
* * *
“Would you like to say a few words?” Elvis asked Wendy.
She glanced at him, then over his shoulders at the massive display of plastic calla lilies on the dais where they stood. Daniel waited in front of her.
Lorelei and Colton w
atched from the red carpet that stretched down the aisle of the tiny chapel, standing at a noticeable distance from each other. She thought she’d seen them having an argument at the party. She’d been afraid Lorelei or Colton would storm out of the club, and she’d hurried over to placate them. But they’d insisted everything was fine.
The aisle stretched past four rows of empty pews to the chapel doors. There were no windows for photographers to take pictures through, thank God, or all this would have been for nothing. There were windows above the doors, though. Both bodyguards and Colton’s driver waited outside, guarding their privacy from the paparazzi. Their cigarette smoke curled behind the glass.
No, Wendy thought. She didn’t want to say a few words at her own wedding. She just wanted to get this over with.
But Daniel looked haggard at the end of his fourth long night in a row, with the purple bruise not quite faded under one eye, and oh so handsome. She probably shouldn’t, but she did have something to say to him.
“Daniel,” she began.
His eyes widened at her, warning her not to make a joke and give them away.
She wanted to tell him to chillax. Instead, she said, “This year, I’ve traveled to Los Angeles, Seattle, Paris, and Rome to assist the rich and famous with their problems. This month I’ve resurrected the career of Satan and his band, and I’ve tried and failed to stop a rock princess from having her bare buttocks posted online.”
Wendy was interrupted by a farting noise. She, Daniel, and Elvis all looked toward the red carpet. Lorelei’s tongue was sticking out. She was blowing Wendy a gentle raspberry.
Wendy turned back to Daniel. “And yet I can unequivocally say that the most interesting time of my whole life has been the time I’ve spent with you.”
She expected his face to remain unchanged, even if his emotion actually went from patient to exasperated. To her astonishment, she detected a movement in his jaw, as if she’d elicited an actual emotion so strong that it made his face move—almost into a facial expression. She still couldn’t tell which one.