Star Crossed (Stargazer #1)(27)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Lorelei looked shocked.

“You’re actually kind of shy, right? And you think you can’t be shy in this business. You have to be ballsy and strong. You may be right about that when it comes to, say, contract negotiations. But when you’re a guest on somebody else’s TV show, no matter how big a star you are, maybe it’s okay, or even better, to act shy and polite, especially if that’s how you actually feel.”

Lorelei stared at her and nodded slowly.

Wendy prompted her, “Do you think you could do that?”

“Yeah.” Lorelei smiled at Wendy. “I think I could do that.”

“Another thing. Don’t talk to the reporters about your best friend the choreographer or your homie the housecleaner. If you do have relationships like that, we need to hide them as well as we can.”

“Why?” Lorelei pouted.

“The public wants to see you as larger than life. Even royals are just real people with lucky bloodlines, but commoners are sheep. They love to look up to somebody. They don’t want you consorting with them, because that makes you seem more like them. They want to hear about rock stars who are best friends with Oscar-winning actresses, and singers who are dating the governor of California.”

“You mean, I got it right with Colton, and now I’ve lost it,” Lorelei said dejectedly.

“Colton was great for your career.” Wendy thought for the millionth time that morning that she shouldn’t have turned Daniel’s offer down. But he shouldn’t have threatened her, and it was too late now. “I am not saying go back to Colton. I’m not saying fake a glamorous relationship. I’m saying hide the unglamorous ones.”

“But that’s just not how I am.” Hugging the guitar, Lorelei flopped over on the bed and lay on her side in the fluff. “I don’t think I’m better than other people. I’m not going to test each person when I meet them to see if they’re worthy of being friends with me or whatever. One of my best friends in the world is my limo driver back in L.A. I’ve spent Christmas with him and his wife and kids before, when I didn’t have my own place yet and my dad spent the holidays on his yacht in the Mediterranean with some stripper. I’m not going to drop that guy or pretend we’ve never met just because ‘my public’ doesn’t want to see that.” She let go of her guitar to make finger quotes. “ ‘My public’ can bite me.”

“I’m not telling you to lie if the TV station asks you about that,” Wendy said. “I’m telling you to withhold information and become a more private person. You can have relationships the public doesn’t know about. Just because somebody asks you a question doesn’t mean you have to answer. Especially if it comes from the paparazzi.”

“Oh.” Lorelei’s whole lithe body sank into the cloud of padding around her. “I can’t dis the paparazzi. A lot of those guys are my friends.”

And that was exactly why the public had known so much about Lorelei’s snockered coming of age. Lorelei had invited the paparazzi into her parties on occasion. Wendy was guessing that Lorelei was very lonely.

“We’ll work on this,” Wendy assured her. “It’s a process. We’re not changing you into a different person. We’re presenting a different side of you. It’ll be fun.” She hopped on Lorelei’s plush king bed like they were at a slumber party and opened her laptop.

She asked Lorelei to recite every rehearsal and appearance she’d planned for the week. Lorelei seemed to know where she was going. That was good. She remembered the events out of order, as they popped into her obviously scatterbrained head. That was bad. Wendy made a mental note to double-check the schedule with Lorelei’s wardrobe mistress and her agent.

“The biggest deal is probably the party I’m throwing Thursday night for my twenty-first-and-a-half birthday,” Lorelei said. “It’s here at the casino, but in the club on the roof, Wet Dream.”

“Good Lord,” Wendy blurted. “These club names were all made up by fourteen-year-old boys. Are you serving food? Is that even sanitary?”

Lorelei laughed, and Wendy realized she was lucky this star wasn’t as easily offended as the lead singer of Darkness Fallz. She needed to dial down. And despite the untoward name of the club, it was one of the hottest spots in Vegas right now. She wished the party weren’t so close to the awards show, but it had already been planned and she would work with it. “Will there be a cake shaped like a penis?”

“You are so funny!” Lorelei exclaimed. “Of course not. It’s a guitar.”

Lorelei sounded too cavalier for Wendy’s liking. She made a note on her laptop to check personally for penis cake. Stars ruined themselves being photographed with penis cake with almost the same frequency that they were arrested with their pants down in public parks.

Then Lorelei said, “Tonight there’s a party at the wax museum because they’re unveiling a statue of my mother.”

“What?” Wendy exclaimed, going back over what she’d already typed. Some of these shindigs had been forwarded to her by Lorelei’s agent. Not this one. “That’s a terrific public relations opportunity, but I haven’t heard a peep about it in the media.”

Wendy could picture it already. Lorelei’s kick-ass, rock star, heroin-chic mother in her ethereal and wasted blond glory standing next to her musical prodigy daughter, who, for all her faults, would look positively angelic in comparison. If Wendy didn’t keep tabs on Lorelei during the party after the unveiling of the statue, the night could go badly. The tabloids could run a drunken photo and say Lorelei was following in her mother’s staggering footsteps. But if Lorelei kept herself together, the public would see only that she’d inherited her mother’s talent and, despite a difficult childhood, had turned out okay, considering.

But it would all be for nothing if nobody showed up to the party. In fact, a tabloid report that Lorelei threw a party and nobody came would be worse PR than anything Lorelei had come up with yet.

Lorelei shrugged. “The museum said at first they were going to make a big deal out of it. I guess they decided not to, with all the shit that’s gone down.”

Wendy gripped the sides of her laptop. Any other day, she would have launched a tirade at Lorelei. The shit had not gone down, unattached to anyone, a misfortune Lorelei had unsuspectingly walked into. Lorelei and Colton had been the manufacturers of said shit.