“The devil made me do it.” She increased the pressure on his scalp. Other than the kisses and brief bouts of heavy petting he’d snuck from her, this was the best he’d felt in a long time. He made an effort not to push his head against her hand, encouraging, like his cat.
Without pausing in her massage, she asked him, “Do you remember telling me about your brother last night?”
“Yeah,” he grunted. “It’s not a secret. Just . . . ” With her hand doing these things to his head, he had a hard time thinking of what it was. “Sad.”
“What were you like before your brother died?” she asked.
He smiled. “I was in a band.”
“What did you play?”
“Lead guitar. I could practice with my headphones on without my dad hearing.”
“What kind of music did you play?”
“Oh, punk. We were a punk band when punk was out of style. We were very proud.”
She giggled. “Did you dye your hair green and spike it?”
“I wanted to, but I had to be at the breakfast table in the morning and the dinner table at night with my hair looking completely normal, or my father would have grounded me for life. I did what I could. I really know my way around a jar of hair gel.”
“Speaking of which,” she said, “I’m ruining your hairdo.”
“I can fix it,” he said quickly, because he didn’t want anything to interrupt the exquisite march of her fingernails across his scalp. “What were you like at sixteen?”
“I ran away a lot,” she said. “My dad was between jobs then, so he was drunk most of the time. When you played a gig at a club, I would have been the girl hanging around outside, wanting to look cool but too poor to get in, with an inappropriately old boyfriend. Except it was Morgantown instead of New York, so take that girl you would have seen outside your club and make her one fourth as worldly and sophisticated.”
“That girl would have been trouble,” he declared.
“Yep, that was me.”
“That girl would have eaten me for breakfast.”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
He knew so. Back then, he’d given his heart to music, to friends, to girls. He’d gotten shot down a lot, but that didn’t matter. He’d had deeper to dig and more to give. If he’d seen Wendy sitting with her legs crossed outside one of the dives he used to play, blond hair long, makeup heavy, stockings ripped, and then he’d heard her laugh, his resilient heart wouldn’t have stood a chance.
* * *
As Wendy watched, Daniel’s breathing slowed and the planes of his face went slack. He was asleep.
She returned to her laptop, typing press release salvage jobs and checking Lorelei’s posts, as if Daniel weren’t touching her. But he was touching her, and she was very aware of this. The past three days had been three of the worst of her life, and she feared the worst was not over . . . yet here, in a strange hotel room in a strange city, doing her work, she felt like she’d come home. Her face tingled with delicious awareness that Daniel was with her.
It was domestic and strange to host him on her lap. She fully realized how fleeting it was and how wrong she was to have any kind of inkling that her relationship with him would last beyond their launch of Lorelei and Colton’s promo. But she couldn’t deny that she felt better and more at peace in this moment than she had not just in the past three days, but in years. As she examined that thought and her fingers paused over the keyboard, she wondered whether she’d felt so at peace . . . ever.
She lightly traced one fingertip along the smooth, light skin over his cheekbone, then let it dance down through his black stubble to cradle his jaw.
He didn’t stir, his breathing deep and even.
She went back to work.
After several minutes she heard a key card slide through the lock and the door open. Sarah and Tom had made incredibly good time from the airport—too good. Wendy’s first instinct was to dump Daniel off her, but it was too late. The best course of action was to play this cool. After all, there was nothing really going on between her and Daniel. And it wouldn’t have been at all unusual for Sarah to fall asleep with her head on Wendy’s thigh. Daniel and Wendy were friends, just like Sarah and Wendy.
So she held her place and beamed at Sarah as she came around the corner.
With a glance at Daniel, Sarah grinned back. She sat in the upholstered chair beside the bed and pulled out her phone.
Ten seconds later, a text blinked onto Wendy’s phone.
Daniel Blackstone is totally in your lap
Wendy suppressed a laugh and texted back,
I know right?
Sarah replied,
In fact his face is in your lap
Wendy knew what Sarah was implying. She bit her lip and shook her head. Sarah raised one eyebrow and texted,
Normally your response would be I WISH
While Wendy still racked her brain for how to respond, Sarah texted again,
Tom is dropping off his bags, has key to this room, will come loping in any second. Wake Daniel or he’s going to be embarrassed. I’ll leave.
Sarah stood just as a key card slid through the lock and the door opened. “Honey, I’m home!” Tom called.
Daniel stirred on Wendy’s thigh, his face rolling down so that Wendy could feel the huff of his hot breath through her skirt and panties. She tried not to look alarmed. He shouldered himself up to sitting, blinking at the sunlight streaming through the window. Finally he saw Sarah and Tom watching him. He jumped off the bed in one motion.
“Hey,” Wendy started, about to tell him they were all friends here and he didn’t need to look like he’d just been caught—but immediately he had the situation under control. He rounded the bed with his hand extended to Tom. “Daniel Blackstone,” he said.
“Tom Ruffner,” Tom said.
Wendy should have been intervening, introducing, but the whole scene was so bizarre that she was shocked into silence. She’d feared her relationship with Daniel and her relationship with Stargazer were going to collide, but not like this.
Daniel waited until Sarah extended her hand before reaching forward with his own, a level of etiquette that Wendy had had no idea existed until Sarah had explained it in college. “Daniel Blackstone,” he murmured.
“I remember,” Sarah said, shaking his hand. “Sarah Seville.” When he released her, she still gazed up at him, then looked at Wendy. “So, you two are together.”
“No, we’re not,” he and Wendy said at the same time. Wendy tried to shoot daggers through Sarah with her expression. Why couldn’t Sarah keep her discoveries to herself for once?
Sarah’s eyes roved warily over Wendy, then Daniel, then Tom, then back to Wendy. “Yes, you are,” Sarah said.
Finally Wendy said carefully, “Sarah, sweetie, you know how you always imagine things when you’re off your medication.”
Sarah raised one eyebrow at Wendy.
Daniel waved uncomfortably at the bed. “I don’t know what that was. So. Excuse me a moment.” He passed Sarah and Tom, disappearing down the hall. The bathroom door opened, the lock clicked, water ran.
A suspicious Tom and a concerned Sarah turned to Wendy for an explanation. Wendy didn’t have one. Or rather, she did, but not one she wanted to share.
* * *
Daniel splashed water on his face and dried off. When that didn’t seem to reset him, he rested his forehead against the cool door and closed his eyes. He was realizing for the first time how incredibly whipped he was.
He heard Wendy exclaim out in the bedroom, “Scruffy! Why did you have to say that and come romping in here like a golden retriever puppy?”
“Why do you care?” Tom countered. “I think somebody has been moonlighting with the Blackstone Firm, if ya know what I mean.”
“I think somebody—” Wendy responded, but her voice faded, as if they’d realized Daniel could hear them, lowered their voices, and moved away from him, toward the window onto the Strip.
He jumped backward as a knock sounded on the door very near his forehead. “It’s Sarah. Let me in.”
He’d had hardly any interaction with Sarah in college, but he knew her by reputation. She was friendly. Helpful. And very persistent. She wasn’t going away until she’d said her piece. He opened the door for her, hoping she would castigate him about his relationship with Wendy, then leave.
Instead, she entered the room, forcing him back against the sink, and closed the door behind her. She focused on him with her big brown eyes. He felt like one of her clients whom she was talking down from a ledge as she coaxed him, “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Wendy and I aren’t together,” he said. “Not like you’re implying. I don’t know where you get that idea. Last night was rough, and this morning I just fell asleep while we were waiting for you. I thought you would be longer—”
“It wasn’t that you were in her lap,” Sarah interrupted. “It was the way you both acted about it. Alarmed that anybody else would see you, but reluctant to let each other see that you were alarmed. There’s clearly something you two need to talk about.”
At the moment he was more interested in what Wendy was saying to Tom. He strained his ears to hear, but he couldn’t make out a word. “Did she call Tom something weird just now?” he asked. “Scruffy?”
“She has a pet name for everybody she likes,” Sarah explained. “She names people after what she considers their most prominent body parts. She’s just teasing him about his lame half-assed beard and the fact that he doesn’t own an iron.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s her name for you?”
“Tushy.” Sarah waved her hand behind her tight little ass in her jogging pants.
That sounded too much like Wendy for Sarah to be making this up. He tested her. “What’s Wendy’s name for me?” He wanted to know more about this pet name habit. He also wondered if she liked him enough to have named him.
“Cheekbones,” Sarah said instantly, without thinking.
Daniel eyed her doubtfully. He wasn’t sure whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that Wendy had named him Cheekbones. He would have preferred Biceps.
“Listen,” Sarah said, “I’m not going to tell you or Wendy what to do, but . . . she let you know she’s in trouble with the firm, right?”
He nodded. He was feeling more and more guilty about taking her Darkness Fallz account.
“Her job was already in jeopardy,” Sarah said, “and now she’s expending extra resources by calling Tom and me out here to help her. She needs a win on this case. She does not need to start a relationship with you. Our bosses hate the Blackstone Firm.”
Daniel knew Sarah had Wendy’s best interests at heart. And though he regularly lied on the job for the sake of his clients, it pained him to think about lying to Sarah.
“I hear you,” he said.
But he wasn’t making any promises.
13
Wendy was starving. She figured a full stomach would do Daniel a world of good. And the tension in her room was getting so thick that they wouldn’t be able to move soon. She convinced them all to go with her down to the food court in the mall attached to the casino in search of brunch.
As they slid their trays onto a table together, they discussed a plan of action, with Sarah helping Daniel and Tom assisting Wendy with the day’s chores. After they’d eaten, Tom stood to get them all coffee. He was well versed in getting Wendy and Sarah coffee. This had been their version of hazing him when he joined the firm. Daniel said he couldn’t stay because he needed to leave to check on Colton, whom he hadn’t babysat all morning.
As he rose, Wendy couldn’t let him go without some moral support. Impulsively she hugged him around the waist. He put his arms around her, too, and gave her a quick squeeze. Electricity shot through her at his touch. Surprised, she tried not to miss a beat as she said, “Call me if you need me. Or fall down.”
He waved vaguely and headed for the corridor back to the hotel. She watched him until he disappeared around the corner. He was walking normally now, a fast gait that meant he was all business.
Finally she turned around and realized Sarah was watching her. Wendy plopped down across from her at the table.
“Wow,” Sarah said. “After talking to him about work for just a few minutes, I’m thinking, Mr. Blackstone, if only I could shadow you for a month.”
“He’s good,” Wendy acknowledged, trying to tamp down the hint of pride she heard in her own voice. “The thing is, he doesn’t give a shit about this job. I would kill to have his talent. It’s totally wasted on him.”
“I got that impression, too.” Sarah arched one eyebrow. “So, tell me what’s going on between you two. If I hadn’t seen his head in your lap, I still would have been able to tell you’re together by the way you were acting.”
Wendy eyed her suspiciously. “How was I acting?”
“Kind of, ah . . . ” Sarah looked into space, searching for the words. “Like a lady.”
Wendy snorted.
“Like you were very concerned that he heard you, and you heard him, and you understood each other. Normally you wouldn’t bother. If a guy didn’t agree with you, at the slightest provocation you would quote a feminist philosopher.”
“Or just tell the guy to f**k off,” Wendy added.
“Or both,” Sarah said.
“There has been all kinds of that,” Wendy said. “I’ve been giving him lots of attitude. You just haven’t seen it.”
“Oh really,” Sarah said. “Did you bend him over your knee and smack that tight ass?”