He was already in the elevator when he began to have second thoughts. A heart? He’d encircled the blurb with a heart? He hadn’t done something that dorky since his punk band dedicated a song to a girl he liked who promptly walked out of the club in response. And Job saved! Great work! was something he would say to one of his employees, not his wife.
He entertained the thought of going back to the room and retrieving the paper before she could see it, like a total loser. Glancing at his watch, he saw that would make him late for breakfast with a second movie producer interested in having Colton audition. He tried to get his head back into work and let Wendy go.
Only he couldn’t. All through his meal with the producer, he thought about the way her hair had spun golden across the pillows. When their meeting ended, he found she’d texted him in response to the newspaper article—Yay!!!!—and he stared at one word and four exclamation points for a long time, trying and failing to come up with something clever to text back. For the next few hours, as he met with reporters gathered at the theater to cover the awards show, he remembered his night with her, how he’d spent his scant three hours of sleep spooning her with his hands underneath her T-shirt, on her breasts, and she had folded her hands possessively over his. Finally, when he got a free moment an hour before the awards show began, he called her.
“Hey, lovah,” she answered.
“Where are you?”
“In Lorelei’s dressing room, getting our hair done. Where are you?”
“In Colton’s dressing room, making sure he doesn’t produce a flask.” He grinned at Wendy’s musical laughter.
Colton scowled across the room at him, and not because he’d heard Daniel’s low words. More likely, he was confused that Daniel was laughing. Daniel was confused, too. Confused and happy. He stepped into the bustling corridor.
“When’s your flight to L.A.?” Wendy asked.
“Tomorrow afternoon. How about your flight to New York?” He didn’t cross his fingers, but he wanted to.
“Same time,” she said. “So, what’s on your schedule after this show?”
The loaded tone of her voice made his groin tighten. He said, “A honeymoon.”
“I can’t wait,” she whispered.
After they hung up, he called for reservations at the nicest restaurant he could think of. It was a huge struggle, possibly the single hardest thing he’d done on this trip, to wipe the smile off his face before he reentered Colton’s dressing room.
Hours later, as the awards show drew to a close, he stood at the back of the packed theater, watching Colton announce the last number from Lorelei and her band. As soon as the most anticipated award was announced and the credits rolled, Colton and Lorelei would be hustled by security into the waiting limo and hurried out of town. With only five minutes of air time left for the stars to screw up, Daniel started to relax. His job here was done.
A movement in the corner of his eye caught his attention. Wendy had the same idea he’d had. On the other side of the theater, she came in through another back door and leaned against the wall, watching Lorelei’s band start playing in a cloud of dry-ice fog. Then Wendy saw Daniel and smiled. They walked toward each other and met in the middle.
For the rest of the song, they stood next to each other. He didn’t want her to catch him staring at her, but he took surreptitious glances. She wore a stylish gray suit with a deep blue blouse that made her eyes stand out, as blue as the Vegas sky. She’d caught her hair back in a long, loose ponytail.
Gorgeous as she was, though, the prettiest thing about her was her smile. Seeming to forget he stood beside her, she gazed at Lorelei onstage like a proud sister. He was glad this job had finally worked out for her. She deserved this moment.
The song ended. The applause was thunderous. Lorelei bowed for the standing ovation long after the on-air lights had blinked off and the show had cut to the last commercial. When the crowd finally died down to the point that they could hear each other, Daniel leaned over and said in Wendy’s ear, “Wow.”
Wendy beamed. “Isn’t she great?”
“She is,” Daniel said. “Her concert tour is definitely saved.”
“And Colton has been riveting and charming!” Wendy sounded exactly as astonished by this as Daniel felt.
He laughed. “You told me a couple of days ago that everyone famous has some talent. I’m beginning to see your point. Colton has been totally unlike himself tonight. He’s a terrific actor.”
“See?” Wendy’s smile faded as she asked, “Have you noticed he and Lorelei aren’t as into each other as they were when we caught them macking on the couch? I think they had a fight.”
“He hasn’t mentioned it to me,” Daniel said, “but yeah, I think they’ve cooled off. I hope it won’t be a problem. I’ve been thinking a lot about something else you said, that we need to make sure our solutions for the stars are what’s good for them long-term. I’ve tried to impress on him that even if he and Lorelei break up for good, he can’t attack her again, publicly or otherwise. That’s not how adults operate, even famous ones.”
“Unless he gets a reality show.”
Daniel almost didn’t say it because he didn’t want to jinx it. But he was becoming accustomed to sharing everything with Wendy, and he couldn’t keep this in. “Talks are going well. I think we’ll get him a movie. A big one.”
Wendy nodded and grinned. “After his performance tonight, I’d say it’s a sure thing.” She held out her arms.
Daniel walked into her hug. His whole body woke up when she whispered in his ear, “Congratulations.” As the on-air lights blinked and the audience obediently applauded for Colton’s last stage entrance and the last award, Daniel and Wendy gave each other one last squeeze and backed away. He noticed she still wore the diamond ring.
* * *
“You really know how to take a girl to dinner,” Wendy said.
They sat at a terrace table for two, with tourists strolling the Strip below them, palm trees and strings of lights above them, and a gentle breeze fingering Daniel’s hair. She hadn’t seen service like this since a stop at Commander’s Palace on a mission to New Orleans last year. The food was delicious, plentiful, and not too eccentric, just the way this West Virginia girl liked it. And after her half of a bottle of wine, she’d lost most of her worries over where the night was leading them.
Maybe the wine was tricking her, but she thought he was enjoying himself as much as she was, even though he hadn’t said so. She teased him, “You’re being awfully quiet, even for a quiet person. What’s wrong? Having second thoughts?”
“Actually, yes.”
She kept smiling. There was no reason to be angry with him about this. He’d said from the outset that this wedding, though real, wasn’t serious. If she’d fallen for him in the meantime and was beginning to be sorry the marriage meant nothing, that was her own fault.
He said, “I wanted us to get married because it solved a problem. That’s what I do.”
“Right,” she said sharply, wishing her tone would cut him off.
No such luck. “You told me you didn’t want to do it, and I bullied you into it.”
“Oh.” This wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. “Well,” she began again in a softer tone, “you made a logical argument and I agreed with you. I wouldn’t say you bullied me.”
“I know women take weddings very seriously,” he said. “There are so many reality shows about weddings and cakes and dresses. People have subscriptions to whole magazines about this, and they keep the subscriptions even when they’re not getting married. Women pick out their wedding dresses when they’re eight years old.”
“You sound awfully familiar with this scenario, Mr. Blackstone. Do you have a collection of veils that you want to tell me about?”
He winked at her. Then shushed her because she was laughing too loudly.
“No,” he said, “but I’ve dated this scenario repeatedly, and my sister is the same way. I knew all that, Wendy, but I made you feel, if that was your personal position, that you should give it up for the sake of business. That’s what I’m sorry for. I was watching your face during the ceremony. There was one point when I was sure you were going to faint.”
“And that would have been terrible PR,” Wendy joked. “Difficult to cover up. These pesky ambulances that keep following us around.”
“You’re not listening to me.”
“I am,” she said with equal gravity. “I hear you. But I’m not that girl. I’ve met this girl you’re describing. There are a lot of her out there. That girl is in love with weddings, or with the idea of getting married. I was never like that. In West Virginia, people didn’t understand me. When I first got to New York, though, I thought I would get married someday. I would meet some fast-talking funny guy who loved art and good parties and traveling. He was part of my new future.
“But even then, I concentrated more on the fact that we would be soul mates and we would bop around New York together. The idea of what dress I would wear to my wedding never entered my mind, I promise you. And gradually, even the idea of this guy faded, because he didn’t exist. I dated, but nothing ever lasted. I discovered, to my utter astonishment, that I am hard to get along with.”
She choked a little on her last few words and was embarrassed into silence. He watched her solemnly, his face unreadable as ever. The neon lights of the Strip danced behind him.
She found her voice again. “Even when I thought it would happen, I didn’t care so much about the wedding itself. I cared about the vow. Some people wouldn’t want to swear to love someone for the rest of their lives if they didn’t really mean it because God would be watching them. Some people wouldn’t want the government to sign off on that officially if they didn’t mean it. But to me, the person I feel like I’m letting down is myself. I mean, both our jobs are set up around spinning the facts. Coming as close as we can to lying without going over. Going ahead and lying if that’s what we need to do to get the job done. But at the end of the day, I guess I don’t want to lie about that. I don’t want to lie to myself, about myself.”
He took a sip of wine. The cheap gold band she’d given him glowed on his finger in the soft light. She marveled all over again at how he could look so masculine and elegant simultaneously. But what she saw was what she got: a professional, an elitist, with his priorities in all the wrong places, but at heart a genuinely kind man.
She prompted him, “You’re still awfully quiet for a quiet guy.”
He smiled grimly. “You’ve made me feel worse.”
“Don’t. I could have said no.” She reached forward and covered his hand with hers. “Anyway, to me, the real beauty of a wedding isn’t the dress or the flowers or the chapel or Elvis. It’s finding the right person to be with, and—”
He broke in, “I already have.”
She flushed with warmth. “I was about to say the same thing.”
He looked at their hands on the table for a moment, then looked up at her. He held her gaze for so long that her skin tingled with anticipation. She knew exactly what he meant by that look, and what he wanted.
However, because he was Daniel, he asked politely, “Would you like dessert?”
“Yes, I would,” she said with gusto. “If you know what I mean.”
He gaped at her in outrage but couldn’t hold the expression when he was overtaken by a laughing fit. He held up one finger and the check suddenly appeared in front of him. As he took out his wallet, he said under his breath, “This night is going to be even better than I thought.”
* * *
He shut the door of their room behind them. The lamps were off. The only light was the neon in the panoramic view of the casinos across the street. She watched his body move in that soft glow as he turned the dead bolt. They were locked in together.
He turned and stopped, seeming surprised that she was watching him. The vague light softened his features but highlighted his cheekbones and the perfect arch of his brow, like a stylized sculpture of a man rather than the real thing. His eyes were so dark that in the shadows, she could only tell he was looking at her by the reflection of the window, a light in his eye that disappeared momentarily when he blinked.
The silence stretched into awkwardness. She wanted to tell him that he might be racking his brain for something to say in the uncomfortable silence, but she was not. She was content to pause in this rare, magical space between one stage of their relationship and the next, taking in how handsome he was, and how lucky she was that he had ever kissed her.
His lips parted. He took a slow breath to speak. She was afraid he would say he’d changed his mind. They’d gotten married for work, and now they should go their separate ways.
To prevent those words from crossing his lips, she spoke up so suddenly that he blinked again. “My friends will die when I tell them we waited until we got married to have sex.”
He threw back his head and laughed. Then tried to stop himself from laughing and couldn’t, holding his side and choking a little.
She loved to watch him laugh. It happened so rarely, and this was the longest she’d seen his laughter go on. To prolong it a bit more, she added, “I don’t know about you, but saving myself for marriage is somewhat out of character for me.”
Still laughing, he placed one hand on the wall behind her and leaned in, so close that she caught a whiff of his cologne. She suppressed a shudder at the chill that raced through her.