But the next morning, Daniel got lucky.
6
Daniel had finished his free weight reps and was pounding out his fourth mile on the treadmill when Wendy jerked open the door of the hotel fitness center. The entire gym was one long room overlooking the Strip from a high floor. Except for the attendant behind the desk, they were the only occupants in the dead calm of late morning. Wendy’s eyes went straight to him.
He saw all of it flash across her face: recognition. An instinct to back out the door before he saw her. A realization that it was too late. An attempt to act like she’d never even thought about leaving just because he was there. Who, her?
Her steps slowed on the way to the desk as she wondered whether she should confront Daniel first thing and get it over with. He let her off the hook. Without breaking stride, he held up one hand in greeting, as if they were strangers who saw each other every day at the deli on his corner in Chelsea.
She waved back just as casually, signed in, and crossed to the abdominal machine. She did a few sets of reps on each machine, obviously finding them familiar, and didn’t look up at him a single time. That was the giveaway that she was very aware of him.
Because she never glanced up, he felt free to stare at her as she went through her workout. Unlike the occasional slob wearing a cotton tee who’d happened in and left again while Daniel was jogging, she wore workout gear in the latest style that fit her perfectly—just like he did, because he never knew whom he might run into even during his downtime. She’d tied up her long hair with studied sloppiness, trying to look like she wasn’t trying at all, because that was the fashion. Tendrils stuck to her face with perspiration as she pumped through her exercises in perfect rhythm, never pausing long, because she thought he might be watching.
Not that he was above that kind of self-consciousness himself. He ran faster. He ran so fast that his lungs burned. She wasn’t looking, but he knew she could hear his footsteps.
Finally the machine shut down. He slowed to a walk and inched through gathering his towel and bag, giving himself time to catch his breath. When he was reasonably certain he wouldn’t trip over his own feet and pass out in front of her, he sauntered over. Uninvited, he sat down on the machine next to the one where she was working her biceps.
He pulled his phone from his bag and—ignoring six calls from his father—scrolled through to add a new contact. “What’s your number?”
Through three more reps, she studied him silently. She knew he was trying to hammer a wedge into her door.
“I’ll call you so you’ll have my number,” he persisted. “That way, anytime today’s hottest stars make you feel uncomfortable, you can phone me for a booty call.”
Her pealing laugh mixed with a slam as she lost her grip on the weights. Giggling, she recited her number. He plugged it into his phone. He did his best not to grin back. He’d figured her out. He could get her to do just about anything by making her laugh.
Or by kissing her.
He affected a Brooklyn accent, not a very good one. “You work out a lot?”
Whether the impression was good or not, it was funny. Wendy giggled uncontrollably. Finally she forced herself to say, “I actually do work out a lot, just to keep Sarah Seville off my case. I know you have trouble remembering me from college, but maybe you remember her.”
He knew Sarah by reputation. He didn’t remember much about her from class. She’d been competent but reserved. She’d dressed way down in workout wear, even for business presentations. What he did remember about her, clear as day, was a glimpse he’d caught of her junior year, a very poignant glimpse.
Wendy had been pulled out of the middle of marketing class. While waiting for advertising class to start, he’d noticed she still hadn’t returned to the crowd. And then he overheard a couple of guys saying her father had died.
What made Daniel do it, he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t dating this girl. He wasn’t friends with this girl. He didn’t even like this girl. But he’d walked back down the hall, toward the entrance of the building, and glanced through the glass wall of the business dean’s office. Wendy stood facing Daniel with glistening trails of tears down her cheeks. Sarah stood on one side, holding her hand and talking to her. A couple of cops stood awkwardly on the other side, dwarfing the girls. Wendy stared out at Daniel, not seeing him, not turning her head as he passed.
He was fascinated by her. It had only been a few years since his brother’s death, and when he had died, his father had made sure Daniel didn’t feel anything at all. Wendy looked now like he’d been supposed to feel then. And with a kick in the gut, he felt it.
He’d never skipped class before. His father would have hit the roof if Daniel had blown class off and let his grades slip. But this day he kept walking down the hall, out the door, across the sunny lawn, as far away from Wendy as he could get.
“Sarah Seville?” he asked. “Yes, I remember her vaguely.”
“She’s ultra-fit,” Wendy said. “Runs marathons.”
“And she makes you run them, too?”
“Let’s not go that far. But I let her hound me into exercising, so I have an excuse to hound her about other stuff. And honestly, I do feel better after I work out. When I’m traveling, I try to snag some exercise whenever I can, because I might not get another chance for a while. Also vegetables.”
He chuckled. Strange, but traveling did deprive one of vegetables. Fruits. Friends. Normalcy. He knew what she meant.
“So,” he ventured, “about getting Colton and Lorelei back together.”
Her smile vanished. “I told you no.”
“You told me you would speak with Lorelei and we could revisit it.”
“I just said that to get rid of you. Colton is obviously a loose cannon. The farther Lorelei stays from him, the better.”
In annoyance, Daniel tapped one finger on the bench of the workout machine, then realized he was doing it and stopped. “Honestly, Wendy, when he punched me, it was an accident. I’ve never heard of any violence between Colton and Lorelei. Have you?”
“Maybe not,” Wendy said, “but he’s calling her a whore to anyone who will listen, including—whoopsie—the entire world. Naming her a criminal who sells sex is the first step in dehumanizing and objectifying her, so that when he does hit her, in his mind, she’ll deserve it.”
“I see your point, but—”
“Kind of like sitting way above everyone else so they have to climb a mountain to greet you. Or pretending you don’t remember a rival when you meet her again. If you put everyone on a lower footing than yourself, you can do anything you want to them and feel just fine about it.”
He felt a twinge of guilt, but he couldn’t let her see it. “Come back to the table.” He patted the bench hard enough to get her attention. “You’re not talking about our clients anymore.”
As she eyed him suspiciously, he studied her in the bright light of morning. She’d dressed for her workout as if she might run into someone important, but her vanity hadn’t extended to makeup, as it would have for a lot of women he encountered in this business. Her face was scrubbed clean. She looked pretty and young, like an English country lass in a commercial for milk or apples, except the look in her eye said she had some sharp farm implements she would like to stab him with back in the barn.
“I’m sorry I made you feel that way,” he said sincerely.
She shrugged. “It’s your modus operandi.”
“Speaking of which,” he said, jumping on the chance to change the subject from himself back to work. “I want you to consider my offer seriously. It’s Tuesday, the awards show is on Friday, and Colton and Lorelei both seem hell-bent on continuing along the path that led them to this mess in the first place. If we don’t make positive progress in the next twenty-four hours, I have no doubt that the show will drop both of them. Getting them together—or faking it, if that’s what you prefer—is the fastest, best way to regain the public’s interest and support.”
Wendy
shifted uncomfortably on her bench. “It just seems like a lot of trouble to fake their relationship. I suspect all the time that Hollywood couplings are faked, but I don’t imagine a PR person engineering it. There are too many factors to control, too many mouths to shut up. It’s not worth the effort.”
“It depends on what’s at stake. Sometimes it can be the perfect solution for both parties.”
“Like whom?”
He hesitated. Like whom was his greatest triumph and his most closely guarded secret. If he told her, he’d be taking a huge risk. If he didn’t tell her, he doubted he could convince her to go along with his plan.
She prompted him, “You talk like you’ve done this before. Do you want me to work with you or not? Spill it.”
He looked over his shoulder to make sure the gym was still empty save for the attendant, whose desk was far enough away that she couldn’t overhear. Satisfied, he turned back to Wendy and confided, “Olivia Query and Victor Moore.”
Wendy stared at him a moment without comprehending. “Yeah. I’d heard you repped both of them. Did you introduce them and they fell in love?” Then she understood what he was telling her. “You engineered that marriage?”
“Shhh. Yes.”
Wendy was astonished into silence. When she regained speech, she lowered her voice to match his. “But . . . Olivia is pregnant with Victor’s baby!”
“It’s not his baby,” Daniel said.
“But . . . they had five hundred guests at their wedding.”
“Right.”
“But . . . they rented an island.”
Daniel smiled enough to show her his smugness, but not enough to make the bruise under his eye hurt. “You don’t believe me?”
“Um.” She squinted at him, unsure whether to believe him or not.
“You don’t want to believe me,” he said. “You’re caught up in the same romance that every other non-celebrity gets caught up in, looking on with admiration and longing at this rich, famous, talented couple in love.” He cocked his head at her. “But you do believe me, don’t you, Wendy? You don’t know me very well, but you know me by reputation. I can do anything I set out to do in this business. Make a star. Ruin a star. Fabricate two stars’ entire lives.”
She didn’t deny it. “But why?” she murmured.
“Olivia got pregnant with her hometown sweetheart’s baby and insisted on keeping it. He absolutely refused to live a celebrity life with her. He’s got some secrets he can’t have exposed right now if the media dig into his past. And Victor is gay.”
“What!” Wendy exclaimed so sharply that even she looked over Daniel’s shoulder to make sure the attendant wasn’t listening to their conversation. She inched closer to Daniel on her bench and lowered her voice again. “Victor Moore is gay? He’s the heterosexual hunk of the century! That would be a scandal of Rock Hudson proportions!”
“Correct,” Daniel said.
“But . . . why doesn’t he just come out? The stigma isn’t there anymore.”
“The stigma’s still there,” Daniel said. “It’s not a career-ending stigma, but it’s a career-changing one. You’re disappointed to hear that he’s gay, right?”
“Disappointed?” Wendy echoed in confusion. “No, I’m not disappointed at his sexual orientation—”
“Yes, you are,” Daniel interrupted. “When you watch his movies, you fantasize about yourself with him. Before, there was the remotest possibility it would happen. He would have to leave his wife and baby and somehow find you and fall in love. Now, there’s no possibility, and you’ve lost interest.”
“That’s not true,” she said confusedly. “That’s not how fantasy works.”
“That’s exactly how fantasy works,” Daniel told her, “and that’s why Victor hasn’t come out. He could still get cast as the gay guy or the lovable sidekick, even the hero of a movie in which his sexuality wasn’t front and center. But he would never get cast as the swashbuckling, hard-loving straight hero again. He’s signed five contracts to play that part over the next three years. After that, he’s divorcing Olivia.”
Wendy gasped. “Does she know?”
“Of course she knows,” Daniel said impatiently—and maybe a tad let down that Wendy wasn’t keeping up. Or jealous that she really had swooned over Victor Moore. That was a totally stupid thought on his part. He shrugged it away and went on, “Victor and Olivia are Hollywood’s golden couple right now. They generate a lot more public interest together than they would apart. He’ll milk the prime of his career for all it’s worth. She’ll do the same in her career. The divorce date is already set. I have the press releases on file. I’ll just need to tweak them a bit to match their future movie titles and charities. A year after that, Victor will quietly start dating the boyfriend he’s secretly been with for years already. His agent will move him toward those quirky sidekick parts, Best Supporting Actor material. Olivia will move from leading lady parts to motherly parts. With the spotlight off her, she’ll marry her boyfriend.”
Wendy’s blond brows knitted as she worked through what Daniel had said. “So you’ve saved two careers by putting two romances on hold.”
“I guess. But we’re not talking careers in accounting. As you know, we’re talking multimillion-dollar movie careers.”
“Still, they’re careers these stars don’t really want in their heart of hearts, right? Victor is gay. Is it really his heart’s desire to play heterosexual hunks? Is that career worth putting off being with his soul mate?”
“He said it was.”
“Ah, and that’s where you and I approach the problem differently,” Wendy said. “You get stars what they say they want. But if it seems to me that the stars don’t genuinely want that, I say, ‘You don’t really want that.’ It’s making more work for myself, but I think my long-term results are better.”
Daniel nodded. “Unless you’re trying to convince the lead singer of Darkness Fallz to kick meth.”
Wendy glared at him. “Touché.”
“And I guess you didn’t even broach getting him to go out in public without the rubber devil costume.”
“He has an eczema problem that he’s sensitive about,” Wendy said stiffly.
“Ah. But in your world, he gets what he really wants, which is to stay on meth.”
“That’s not fair,” Wendy said.
Daniel knew it wasn’t fair, and that she was getting pissed at him. But he’d been right about his plan for Victor and Olivia, and he would make sure Wendy knew it. “In my world, maybe Olivia and Victor delay what they really want, true. But in the end, everyone lives happily ever after.”
“Until someone talks,” Wendy said. “If one florist or dog walker leaks the story to the tabloids, your stars’ careers will never recover.”
“Nobody talks,” Daniel insisted. “I made sure of that. The only people who know are the key players.”
“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 l
istening 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.”
7
Wendy 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.