He couldn’t get past the security guards running in from the casino floor. They spread their arms in front of the crowd to hold them off. At least this gave Daniel a clear view of the young women in sequined clubwear and the bouncers piled on top of them. Wendy was nowhere in sight.
“What happened?” Daniel yelled to the man next to him.
“These crazy ladies were screaming that they’d found Colton Farr,” the man said. “You know, the washed-up actor in the online war with his girlfriend? They were trying to tear his clothes off. Probably wanted to sell them online. The Internet has made us all into animals.”
“But . . . ” Daniel silenced himself. It hadn’t really been Colton. Daniel would have seen him leave the inner room and stopped him.
The man verified what Daniel had been thinking. “It wasn’t even him. I got a good look at the guy. Strong resemblance, though. This guy could impersonate Colton Farr and make a killing.”
The bouncers stood the women up and cuffed them. The security guards lowered their arms, and the crowd flowed in to fill the empty space. Daniel looked around for the Colton Farr lookalike. It might be the same guy he’d seen at the blackjack table with Colton earlier, the one who’d disappeared so quickly when the guards arrived. Even if it was, Daniel had no real reason to think the guy was paparazzi.
He made his way through the club and stepped from the crowded, noisy bar into the quiet of the casino. After a slow survey, he spotted Wendy leaning against an enormous Roman column, laughing into her phone, where a drunken Lorelei wouldn’t notice her when she exited the club.
He stopped. Standing in the middle of the passageway was awkward, but interrupting her phone conversation would be rude. The ringing in his ears from the dance music began to fade, and the happy noise of the slot machines grew. The casino hadn’t been quiet after all. Everything was relative.
Finally she slipped her phone into her handbag, looked up, and spotted him. “Hey, lovah,” she called.
He walked over. “All set with your limo?”
“Yep.”
“Maybe Colton and I will come with you.”
Her smile never faltered as she calmly said, “Nope.”
“We’ll just happen to show up there.”
“We’re getting away from you.” Wendy yawned. “I’m really just trying to get her to bed. The bar we’re headed to closes at two, so Franklin will have a good reason to make her call it a night. My God, it must be so late already, and I haven’t even begun to adjust to Pacific time. What time is it in New York?” She opened her purse to pull out her phone again, then thought better of it and waved the whole problem away as impossible. “I’m really not adjusted to Eastern, either, though. I just spent weeks in Seattle and then eight hours in New York. I’m so confused.”
“Eighteen or nineteen o’clock,” he said.
She pointed at him and grinned. “That is exactly how I feel.”
“Or negative five,” he said. “I’ve been up since I got the call about Colton pissing in the fountain at the Bellagio at four a.m.”
“Oh, you poor baby!” she exclaimed.
Daniel eyed her dubiously. She sounded sincere, just as she had earlier when she told him to take care. His heart warmed strangely.
He must be coming down with something. Funny—after so much world travel in the past six years, he thought he’d become immune to everything.
The moment passed. Her gaze shifted over his shoulder. “Here come my peeps. Good night, Daniel.” She stuck out her hand.
He looked down at her perfect pink nails. “A handshake?” he asked. “Really?”
With a small smile, she leaned forward and wrapped her slender arms around him.
He’d only been joking. Ribbing her about the fact that she needed him. Reminding her how intimately they’d explored the matter earlier. Now he wished he hadn’t teased her. As her body settled perfectly against him and his hands touched her hair, he wanted her—wanted to bury his face in her neck and sniff her perfume until he’d had enough, wanted to take her back to his room and unzip that goddamn skirt—but he would never have her.
He didn’t like this game anymore.
Suddenly, he drew back in surprise. “You’re missing a hunk of hair.” He turned her around to make sure he’d felt what he thought he’d felt under his hand. Sure enough, one long golden curl was missing, with a jagged edge in its place, as if the lock had been cut quickly. He took her hand and put it to the ends left over.
Her lips parted in horror, and her blue eyes flashed toward the club. “I thought I felt a little pull.” With hair that long, she must be very attached to her crowning glory. He watched with admiration as she switched gears and made light of the situation in the space of two seconds. “This is what happens when you come to Vegas, right? I was half expecting to cut something sticky out of my hair anyway while I’m here.”
“But someone cutting your hair . . . well. I was going to say I’ve never seen anything that bizarre even in Vegas, but come to think of it, I have.”
“Me, too.” She laughed, belying her uneasiness. She still pressed her hair with one hand. “I’d better tail Lorelei before she loses me.”
Daniel glanced at Lorelei, Franklin, and two giggling women tottering through the archway that led to the hotel lobby. “We weren’t through talking about Lorelei and Colton,” he reminded Wendy.
“Call me tomorrow,” she sang over her shoulder, already power walking across the casino floor. Daniel watched her until she disappeared through the archway after her star.
Reluctantly he turned back to the club, where dancers thrashed like the damned in hell. He wished he’d been able to talk Wendy into letting him and Colton tag along. Now his night looked grim. He would find Colton inebriated and covered in Lorelei’s drink. He hoped not too many pictures of Colton’s humiliation had been snapped and posted online. It might take a couple of hours to talk Colton into calling it a night, but the faster Daniel could pull it off, the faster he could get to bed himself. Tomorrow was a new day. He would call Wendy, convince her to work with him, and solve the problem.
The music in the bar was so loud that nobody heard him shout, “Damn!” as he realized he didn’t have Wendy’s number. She’d purposefully neglected to give it to him. And he had no way to get it, because her New York office would know better than to hand it over. If she’d wanted him to have it, he would have it. The night had given him a high he hadn’t felt in forever, but right now he was as low as he’d been in a while, feeling positively bereft of her. Muttering to himself, he gave the bouncer a surly wave and stepped back into the reality star’s party.
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.”