Star Crossed (Stargazer #1)(36)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“I don’t have to look at that other garbage. People in my office in New York keep track of it and alert me when there’s a problem. I have to do this job, but I don’t have to enjoy it.”

“Really!” Wendy was aghast.

“Well, yeah.” He’d thought this was obvious, that all PR people felt the same way. “Stars hire me to come here and tell them what to do. I present them with the key to unlock the box and fix all their problems. And then they don’t do what I say. They’re paying me for nothing. If they’re alcoholics or drug addicts, that’s its own problem. But if they’re just obstinate? I don’t understand how they’ve worked so hard to get to this level, or at least lucked their way into it, and now they’re going to throw it all away purely out of stubbornness. I’m Sisyphus for dummies.” He expected to edge further back into her good graces with this joke.

She didn’t laugh. “Look at it from their side. They may be famous, they may be especially talented, but they’re all real people. They get tired. They get frustrated. They want to have fun and do their own thing. It’s hard being a brand name all the time. You should know that better than anybody.”

He looked sharply at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She gave him an innocent smile. “What do you do for fun? Or, to narrow it down, what have you done for fun since you’ve been in Vegas?”

“I got punched the first day. You got hit on the head last night. It hasn’t been fun.”

“You could look at it that way. On the other hand, I let myself enjoy dressing up last night and having my hair done. I get tired sometimes of being the dull workhorse tagging along while my clients enjoy all the glamour. I can have some glamour, too. And the night before, I enjoyed an appletini and got a mani-pedi a few booths away from Lorelei, where she wouldn’t see me. I found a way to have fun despite everything that’s happened. Have you done anything since you’ve been here that wasn’t by the book?”

He gestured to his computer. “I’m having fun surfing the news. I’m interested in politics.”

She gazed at him blankly. “For fun. That’s your fun.”

“Well, for a job. A job I can’t have. You know how they say that if you love your job, you’ll never work a day in your life?”

She gave him a bemused smile like she thought he was kidding. “So what’s this job you can’t have? You want to run for office?”

“Oh, God, no. I want to be behind the scenes, doing basically this same PR job but for politicians whom I actually support.” He paused. “You know, I was class president.”

“I remember.”

“That was just on a whim. My dad was furious because it took so much time away from my class work.”

“Well, your whim got you elected leader of a class of five thousand at a prestigious university, and you still managed to win the Clarkson Prize. I’d say you balanced everything okay.”

He hadn’t told anyone this. He took a breath to speak. Then paused. How could he trust her? This secret wouldn’t ruin him, but it would certainly embarrass his family.

She arched her brows expectantly. And he realized he wanted rather desperately to tell her. She was a colleague in the same industry, a classmate from college. Though she wasn’t an old friend, he was seriously beginning to wonder why not.

“Senator Rowling offered me a job,” he said.

Wendy’s blue eyes widened. “No shit! Doing what?”

“Press secretary for her New York office.”

“Dude!” Wendy leaned across the coffee table between them and shoved his shoulder. “That would be perfect for you! I can see you now, holding a press conference, batting those pesky Times reporters down like flies. Are you going to take it?”

“Nah,” he said with even more reluctance than he’d felt before, now that someone was seconding what a great idea it was.

“You’re not?” she exclaimed. “Then why’d you apply?”

“I didn’t apply. I worked on her campaign when I was in college. They offered me a job then, too, but I couldn’t take it because I had to work for my dad. I still know some people there, and they’ve kept tabs on my work. They came asking for me. I haven’t officially turned them down, because I guess it’s a little . . . ” He opened his hands.

“Heartbreaking,” Wendy finished for him.

“I was going to say ‘disappointing,’ but if you want me to feel even worse about it . . . ”

She laughed halfheartedly. “Why don’t you accept it?”

He shook his head. “I can’t. My dad expects me to take over the firm next month so he can retire.”

“That sounds like his problem, not yours.”

“No, I have to run the place because my sister really wants to work there. She’s still in college.”

“That sounds like her problem.”

“And my brother . . . ” He looked up at the ceiling, unable to go on. It was impossible to explain his brother, who’d been the only member of the firm killed that morning because he went to work so early to impress their father. Daniel’s voice cracked a little as he said, “You don’t understand.”

“Explain it to me,” she persisted.

“Like . . . ” He was talking with his hands, fingers splayed in front of him, and he’d opened with like—two things his father had constantly belittled him for when he was young. He put his hands down. “Before my brother died, I was interested in history and rhetoric and politics and progress and forward thinking. Nobody told me I couldn’t pursue that, because my brother was there to take over the firm. And then after he died . . . ” Daniel forced himself to put his hands down again. “There was this double whammy. He died, and I couldn’t do what I wanted anymore. But somehow that second lesson never quite sank in.”

“Or,” Wendy said, “you still want that dream career for yourself, and the career you have now is for everybody except yourself.”

He shook his head. “You don’t get it.” She had no idea about that feeling he had sometimes, that he’d had since he was sixteen, of shoring up his whole family so the world didn’t cave in on them.

“Okay,” Wendy said evenly.

He looked over at her. There was absolutely no judgment in her face. She’d been grilling him a few seconds before, but now her expression was devoid of blame.