Playing Dirty (Stargazer #2)(2)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“Wendy Mann,” Sarah said. “She just went on maternity leave.”

“I know!” the exec exclaimed. “When I called and begged her to help us, she recommended you. She said you’re as good as she is at saving stars’ careers.”

This was a lie. Wendy thrived on challenges and confrontations. Sarah got a thrill from figuring out the psychology of famous, creative people and helping them improve their quality of life, but she didn’t enjoy giving tough love. And she definitely wasn’t good at it.

The exec added, “But my boss told me you’re the one who handled Nine Lives.”

At the mention of yet another of Manhattan Music’s acts, a chill coursed through Sarah in the hot car. Only a few days ago, she’d returned to New York after nine months in Rio with rock star Nine Lives. She’d finally pried his album from his emaciated fingers: triumph! And now he was in a Brazilian jail: fail.

The exec went on, “Wendy told me she’s your supervisor, and she’ll direct you in handling the Cheatin’ Hearts. That was good enough for me. Or . . . at least, the next best thing.”

“Thanks.” Sarah took a few more notes from the hysterical executive. After hanging up, she texted Wendy.

You told Manhattan Music you would be giving me directions?

She got Wendy’s reply almost immediately:

No. Well, yes, I TOLD them that, but I’m not giving you directions. I’m on maternity leave. I’m busy glowing.

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut. Wendy had warned her that she’d had a conference with their superiors at Stargazer. Even though Sarah had just extracted an album from a lunatic, they weren’t happy he’d wound up in prison in a different hemisphere afterward, because their client Manhattan Music wasn’t happy. Now Sarah’s job was in jeopardy. Wendy thought if Sarah took on another act that was a perennial problem for the record company, it would go a long way toward smoothing things over. Wendy had said she’d be on the lookout for a job fitting that description for Sarah.

And this was it? Sarah longed for a nice girl group with no worse problem than big mouths, like she used to handle. Romantic jealousies between band members were the worst work for public relations salvage agents. These crises almost always signaled that the band would break up, no matter what the PR agent did. That would be a strike against Sarah, to go along with the one she already had, courtesy of Nine Lives. And nobody at Stargazer—not even Wendy—knew how bad the Nine Lives situation had gotten. Yet. If Nine Lives managed to spring himself from jail and showed up at the Manhattan Music office to enlighten everyone, that would be Sarah’s strike three.

She opened her eyes and texted:

You shouldn’t have gotten me into this. It’s a bad one. I’m not going to be able to get them out.

Wendy replied:

You will. You’ve just lost confidence. Nine Lives is a superfreak and you worked a miracle getting an album out of him. Do the same with the Cheatin’ Hearts. Just a lot faster. And maybe keep them out of prison?

With a wistful laugh, Sarah looked up again at Vulcan’s bare behind. This was what her life had been reduced to. Her divorce would be final any day now. She had no boyfriend and no prospect of ever having a family of her own. She’d spent the last three quarters of a year in hell. And now, to top it all off, she was about to lose her job, on a hundred-degree day in the Deep South under a statue’s naked ass.

She called the band’s publicity office and stressed, in her best imitation of Wendy, that they’d better stay there until she arrived.

Back on the parking lot Birmingham called a highway, she dialed up a Cheatin’ Hearts album and plugged her MP3 player into the car. She hated country music, but business was business. She might as well make use of this downtime to familiarize herself with the wildly popular songs that she’d been sent to secure more of.

Despite her dislike of their genre, she’d definitely heard of the Cheatin’ Hearts before her wee-hour assignment. Everyone knew they should have won the Country Music Award for Top New Vocal Group their freshman year but were snubbed because they were an affront to family values. They were also something of an affront to Manhattan Music.

Word around PR circles was that they were conniving as well as raucous. They’d always denied lead singer and bass guitar player Quentin Cox’s cocaine addiction, blaming his frequent trips to the emergency room on asthma or allergic reactions. After signing with the record company two years ago, the band immediately started a foundation for pediatric asthma and allergy research at a hospital just down the avenue from the Manhattan Music offices, as if thumbing their noses under the company’s watchful eye.

By the time the convertible reached the next mountain on the trek toward the Cheatin’ Hearts’ publicity office, Sarah had made it through the group’s first album and was listening to the second, Ass Backwards. She inched the car forward again, then examined a printout of the cover. Erin relaxed in a lawn chair in her Daisy Dukes, considering the muscular backsides of her three nude bandmates. Sarah was surprised Manhattan Music had approved this photo for distribution. Maybe Target plastered a big price sticker over the offending parts.

On the flip side of the cover, each band member was pictured individually, clothed, in a cowboy hat. All were about her age, thirtyish. She shuddered at the thought of thirtyish—her thirtieth birthday was coming up fast—then went back to her examination. Quentin had a piece of hay hanging out of his mouth. Erin winked false eyelashes. Could these people get any more cornball?

As if Erin’s bleach-blond hair and the wink and the cowboy hat weren’t enough to get the point across, she wore heavy eye makeup and a red push-up bra. Owen, the drummer with whom Erin was having her fling, was handsome, huge, and blond. His photo reminded Sarah of the pictures in the football game programs from her high school, with the linebackers trying to appear as tough and emotionless as possible, necks stiff, eyes elsewhere. Martin, the guitar player, apparently the musical genius of the group, looked like a mad scientist in crooked thick-framed glasses, despite the cowboy hat.

Sarah let her gaze return to Quentin’s photo. Dark green eyes glared defiantly from under his hat brim. Long lashes framed and softened those eyes. A few boyish brown curls peeked around his ears under the hat. Surely he would have had those curls Photoshopped out if he’d noticed.

Sarah made a mental note to look up the photo on the Internet when she stopped in at her hotel room, and to e-mail it to Wendy, who needed a thrill. She and her husband Daniel had stopped having sex when Wendy was five months pregnant because they had agreed it was like Daniel was making love to a waterbed. Poor Wendy had only wanted to start a family with Daniel. She hadn’t counted on the waterbed factor, the nausea, or the crippling sciatic nerve pain like a bullet in the butt cheek (she said) that had come to visit in the second trimester.