Star Crossed (Stargazer #1)(11)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Colton’s jaw tightened. “We were great for the past three years. Then, as soon as we left the TV show and she started her own band, the whore cheated on me with her drummer.”

Daniel winced internally at Colton’s brutal language for his ex-lover. “Maybe we’re having trouble with definitions here,” he said. “A whore is what was sitting next to you downstairs at the blackjack table, where everybody in America could take pictures of you together. Lorelei is your costar from a children’s TV show—”

“It wasn’t a children’s show,” Colton said testily. “It was for teenagers, and a lot of adults watched it, too.”

Daniel waited for Colton to hear how immature that statement sounded. After a few seconds of silence, he realized that was not going to happen. He cleared his throat and went on, “—and Lorelei is also your ex-girlfriend. You shared your life with her for three years. The public expects you to have sore feelings about your breakup. Anybody would. But they don’t expect you to call her names on the web. You can’t say things like that about a young lady. She’s twenty-one years old, Colton.”

“She’s plenty old enough to know exactly what she’s doing.”

“She’s not much older than my sister.” Daniel said this with more vehemence than he’d intended. He could tell, because Colton raised his eyebrows in surprise.

Daniel was surprised, too. He wasn’t sure where that outburst had come from. Since when was he human? He cleared his throat. “When you insult a young lady, you’re trying to make her look bad, but you’re the one who ends up looking bad. And things are about to get worse for you. I heard that Lorelei has hired Stargazer, which is one of the best PR firms she could have brought on board, besides my own.”

Colton frowned. “What does that mean?”

“Stargazer’s very good. If they send certain people, I won’t know quite what to expect. But if they send Sarah Seville, I’ll know we’re in trouble. Sarah is a smooth talker, very friendly, and she’ll become Lorelei’s new best friend and persuade her to use a soft touch with the press. If they send Wendy Mann, we’re in more trouble. Wendy is a drill sergeant. She has a reputation for whipping people into shape and getting them to do things they never dreamed they could do themselves. Before you know it, she’ll have Lorelei dressing in lace and pearls and hosting tea parties for charity.”

“If she’s so good, why don’t I fire you and hire her?” Colton asked in the tone of a petulant child. “Maybe she wouldn’t have dragged me away from the tables when my luck was turning.”

“Your luck wasn’t turning,” Daniel said. “There’s no such thing as luck. The probability that you’ll get a good hand is exactly the same every time you play.” He could tell by Colton’s wandering gaze that Colton was losing interest, so Daniel stepped back from the lecture on applied math and returned to the subject that Colton seemed most interested in: Wendy Mann. “And if you hired Wendy, you wouldn’t like her. I guarantee you wouldn’t lay eyes on a blackjack table the rest of the time you spent in Vegas.”

“But with you, I can? I don’t think it would be good for publicity if I stayed in my room until Friday. That would make it look like my handlers had shut me down because there was something seriously wrong with me. It would be an admission of guilt.”

“That’s very insightful, Colton. If you’d been that smart for the past month, you wouldn’t need me.”

“It’s Lorelei. I wouldn’t have gotten so plastered last night if my driver hadn’t gotten me talking about her. She makes me crazy, man.” Colton took off his trucker hat, rubbed his hair, and put his hat back on, a gesture Daniel had seen many times before. Other actors got this agitated about women. So did rock stars, celebrity chefs, and professional football players. Daniel himself did not, so he couldn’t empathize.

“You’ve got to help me get her back,” Colton pleaded.

“After she cheated on you and you called her names all over the Internet?”

“Yes!”

People in love were foreign and strange. “I’m not a high-priced relationship counselor,” Daniel pointed out. “I can’t help you get her back. I’m a public relations specialist. The best I could do is make it look like you’ve gotten her back.”

“Then do that,” Colton said, “and maybe the rest will follow.”

He had a point, actually. Daniel didn’t care whether Colton fixed his relationship with Lorelei, or whether that was even a good idea. But the two of them getting back together right before the awards ceremony that they both were starring in would be terrific PR. He surveyed Colton coldly, like he was a penguin behind the glass in the Central Park Zoo, and began to plot how he could use the star’s heartbreak to repair his reputation.

“Let me think about it,” Daniel said vaguely, as if dismissing the idea. “In the meantime, we need a short-term game plan. I don’t want to institute martial law”—actually, he did, but instituting martial law only made stars more likely to go on a bender and land in jail—“but I do want to be notified of where you’re going and why.”

“Giuliana Jacobsen reserved the back room of the Big O club here in the hotel for tonight. I was planning to go to her party.”

Daniel kept himself from wincing or laughing out loud at the name of the club, so provocative it was ridiculous. He said only, “Giuliana Jacobsen, the reality star?”

“Yeah, I know. That’s kind of slumming. But it’s Monday night, so there aren’t a lot of parties to choose from.”

“You mean, Lorelei will be there.”

Colton grinned sheepishly. “I don’t know that for sure, but Lorelei’s staying here in the hotel. It would be easy for her to go. Lorelei likes stuff to be easy. And she doesn’t miss a party.” He gazed out on the Strip. His voice turned dreamy as he said, “I love that about her.”

The trucker hat cast a shadow across Colton’s eyes. Daniel studied him. He knew Colton was twenty-one, but in his hat and sweatshirt and mauled jeans, sitting on the tailored sofa, he looked like a fourteen-year-old after a growth spurt. “What are you planning to wear?” Daniel asked.

Colton looked at him in confusion and gestured to the attire he had on.

Daniel frowned at him.