Star Crossed (Stargazer #1)(33)
Author: Jennifer Echols

He remembered, but he said nothing. He didn’t want to upset her more.

“Of course you don’t remember,” she grumbled. “It was just another victory for you. I worked forty hours on that one paper, Daniel, making sure all my research was bulletproof. I didn’t sleep for the last two nights and probably suffered brain damage just to turn a perfect paper in.”

Daniel had worked sixty hours on that paper, even traveling by train to Philadelphia one afternoon to interview the president of an image management firm, a friend of his father’s, because he was so terrified that Wendy would beat him out for the Clarkson Prize and his father would be ashamed of him.

“You still beat me,” Wendy went on, “and you were the celebrated graduate at the top of the class. But since you didn’t want a job at Stargazer anyway, I lucked out and snagged it. I’m not giving up that job now. Not after six years of a ridiculous workload. Not just because of a bump on the head. Please, Daniel, please stay here.”

She was getting so agitated that he really did think it would be better for her to go alone. The decision would torture him, though. In his mind he would be with her in those bright, cold rooms. “If they let you out of the hospital tonight,” he said, “can I stay in your room with you? Or you stay with me. I have a suite. You can sleep on the bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

She hesitated. “You don’t have to take care of me.”

“If something like this happened to me when I was out on assignment, I would want a friend,” he said truthfully.

She sighed a long sigh. “Okay. Thank you. I’ll take your couch. But I’m going to remind you that you said this if you get hit in the head.”

“Fair enough.” He wrote his room number on her palm and slipped his extra key into her purse. “Do you want me to get some things from your room and bring them up?”

“Oh, man, would you? Yes, take my extra key. Promise you won’t look at the mess. I guess that’s impossible.” She closed her eyes and groaned softly. “You can’t let Lorelei know anything about this, okay? If she asks, some random woman was attacked in the back hall, not me.”

“Why not? Don’t you think she’s going to find out?”

“Not if you don’t tell her. She’s got a lot of important performances on her mind right now, and I’m supposed to be her rock. Nothing can happen to me.”

He wished that were true. Gently he stroked her hair away from her eyes. He felt the warmth of her body through his slacks. Every instinct told him to pull her closer and never let her go.

But he did let her go. At first he braced himself, thinking the noises from the depths of the exhibit might be the bad guy coming back, but it was only the paramedics weaving with a gurney around the wax statues. Reluctantly he moved out from under her. The paramedics worked over her on the floor, then lifted her onto a stretcher. He felt another wave of misgiving as they hovered over her. Now that he wasn’t touching her, she seemed to go limp. She didn’t look at him again. Though there was nothing for him to do, he stood there watching until they wheeled her out and disappeared behind the statues.

As he walked back into the party, Daniel gazed around at the drunken stars and hangers-on, laughing or arguing, wondering if any of them had hurt Wendy. But he suspected the guy was long gone. And the party was closing down. On Wendy’s behalf, he made sure there were no issues with the caterer or the museum. The museum’s administrators didn’t mind the notoriety that the mooning incident might bring them. To their credit, they seemed more concerned that someone had been attacked in an exhibit room. Daniel stayed to tell the police what he knew, simultaneously wrangling calls between Colton and his phone company to shut down access to his electronic files.

Finally Daniel hailed a taxi in the deserted street. After a quick call to Colton’s bodyguard to make sure Colton and Lorelei had been deposited safely, he texted Wendy:

They’re in bed. I’m coming to the hospital.

A minute later he got a response:

No, I’m on the way to the hotel. I’ll see you there. No concussion.

He breathed a huge sigh of relief at that news. His mind had been spinning with his plan of attack, offensive moves he could make to head off Lorelei’s photo going viral and the inevitable backlash against Colton. But as soon as he saw Wendy’s text, he stopped caring about work. He couldn’t concentrate on anything but his last glimpse at her being wheeled out between the replicas of stars.

At the hotel, he went straight to her room to gather her things for the night. His first horrified thought was that the place had been ransacked, possibly by the same person who’d hit her. It looked like several fashionable women had exploded. But as he carefully stepped around the outer edges of the piles, he realized there was some bizarre order to it all, and this was Wendy’s notion of unpacking. It rather resembled her logic. It seemed rude to rifle through it—though it was rifled already—so he just repacked everything, wishing he had more time to examine the bunny ears and cottontail, and headed for his own room.

As he exited the elevator, he spotted her in the hall in front of him. “Wendy,” he called softly, because, though Vegas, it was three in the morning.

She turned and stopped to wait for him. She was a small woman, but she’d never looked smaller than in this endless corridor with high ceilings. Her face was pale as paper.

When he reached her, he let go of the handle of her suitcase and encircled her in his arms.

She didn’t protest. It was only after he’d initiated the hug that he wondered what it meant, and what she must think of him now.

He didn’t have a clear view of the wound on the back of her head, but he could see a new pink streak down the middle of her hair.

He let her go and gently pressed her toward his room. “Did they give you good painkillers?”

“Not even.” She sounded bone-tired. “They gave me over-the-counter stuff. They said anything stronger could mask symptoms that come up later. You’re supposed to watch me, and if I forget what year it is or I fall down, you’re supposed to take me back to the hospital.”

“I can do that.” He unlocked the door and held it open for her while she ducked around his arm and walked inside.

“Wow, what’s up with all the booze?” she asked, gesturing to the bar. “Do you ask the hotel for this just because it looks cool?”

“Yes,” he admitted.