Star Crossed (Stargazer #1)(38)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Wendy stood there with a white towel wrapped around her, gripping the terry cloth closed with both fists. Surprisingly, her hair was dry, with the same golden glow he’d always known, hanging in strange waves now that her braid was undone, but her face was wet. Her eyelashes were wet and dark, and he couldn’t tell from her expression whether she’d just washed her face or she was in tears.

Her shaky voice gave him the answer. “I am so sorry,” she sobbed. “I need your help.”

“Okay.”

“Because I’m not supposed to get the stitches wet. But I have to wash my hair. In this business it’s important that the smell of your hair doesn’t repulse people. You understand this.”

“Right.”

“And I tried but I’m not going to have enough hands. I’m going to get the stitches wet and then I’m going to have to go back to the hospital and while I’m gone Lorelei is going to have a threesome with a showgirl and a taxi driver and tweet the pictures and I’m going to get fired.”

He’d thought she was incredibly strong, seeming to shrug off the attack on her body last night. Turned out she just hid things well. Almost as well as he did.

“Hey.” He put out one hand, but hesitated to place it on her shoulder, which was wet and bare. He put it down. “I’ll help you. I would help you even if you weren’t naked.”

“Oh.” She heaved a deep sigh. “You just looked so . . . I didn’t think you were going to help me. You looked mean.”

“I didn’t feel mean.”

She tilted her head, considering him, and her long hair inched even farther down her bare arm. “Someone could make a poster with captions for all of your emotions and use the same photo for each one. Meanness. Anger. Happiness. Hunger. Giddiness. Lust.”

He raised his eyebrows.

She swallowed. “Embarrassment.”

“Charitableness,” he said. “What do you need me to do?”

She handed him a small plastic bag. “Hold this over my stitches while I wash my hair. If you think that’s gross, I have latex gloves, too.”

“I have my own latex gloves, but I don’t think it’s gross.”

“You have your own latex gloves? I thought I was being weird to pack mine.”

“You never know what you’ll encounter in this job. Especially in Vegas.” He took the plastic bag from her.

She slid another towel from the rack as she turned, then dropped it on the tile floor beside the shower. She glanced back at him. “To kneel on, so you don’t hurt your knees.”

“Do I look that fragile?”

She shrugged, which made her towel slip a little. She tightened it around herself, blushing. “I just . . . okay.” She kneeled on the towel herself and pushed back the shower curtain to reveal the still-gushing faucet. A cloud of steam escaped.

“Just a sec.” Daniel stepped into the hall, pulled off his T-shirt, and tossed it in the direction of the bed, thinking as he did so that reality was verging closer and closer to his fantasy of Wendy. He stepped back inside.

Wendy was watching the door for him, looking small and so sexy with the towel barely covering her br**sts. When she saw him, her eyes widened. He expected her to comment on his naked upper body, but she didn’t. She turned back to the tub.

He kneeled behind her on the towel. Parting her hair, he found the stitches in the back and held the plastic bag over them, cupping his hand to protect the wound without using too much pressure and hurting her. “Okay, go.”

She leaned forward to wet the front of her hair. His hand didn’t follow, and her head slipped out from under the plastic bag.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “You know what? I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you. Let’s switch jobs.” He brought her hand back and placed it over the plastic bag. “You hold it. Now lean forward.”

Obediently she held the front of her head under the stream again. Her long hair seemed to become part of the water, glinting golden and pooling on the bottom of the white tub. He reached behind him to the sink for the ice bucket, then filled that with hot water and poured it on her hair around the wound, carefully avoiding the stitches. He squirted out a handful of her shampoo, rubbed his hands together to spread it, and worked his palms through one side of her hair, then the other, massaging her scalp with his fingertips and lingering over the job way longer than he needed to. He was getting hard.

To steer himself away from the fantasy again, he joked, “You have a lot of hair.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It wasn’t an insult, just an observation. If you could see the expression on my face, you would know that. I’m grinning ear to ear.”

“I don’t believe it.” She moved as if she would turn to look at him.

He put his wet hand on her bare back. “No, don’t look. I’m almost done.” And he needed to get rid of this hard-on before she noticed. He filled the bucket with water again and carefully poured it around the wound, then over the rest of her hair. The suds slid away and vanished.

Finally he’d rinsed all of her hair. He should turn off the water and end this now. He was loath to do that. His bare chest was inches from her bare back, and steam transformed the bathroom into a sexy cloud.

This had to stop. He’d always prided himself on his professionalism. He wasn’t about to come on to a business rival. She thought he was okay to partner with up to a point. This was that point, and there was no need to give her a weapon to use against him later. Abruptly he reached over her and turned off the water.

He carefully patted the surface of her hair with a towel. “Lean back,” he commanded her. As she eased backward out of the tub, he caught her hair between the sides of the towel and scrubbed it. Now he stroked the towel closer to her wound. “There. Not completely dry, but your stitches aren’t soaked, either.” He gently moved her hand away from the back of her head. Lifting her under the arms, he set her on the side of the tub.

She looked down at him dully. Her face was stark white.

“Hurts?” he asked her.

She started to nod, but moving her head seemed to hurt worse. She swallowed.

“Maybe you should go home.” He didn’t want her to leave. The two of them had circled each other in New York for years, never crossing paths. He was afraid it would happen for another six years if he let her go. But she wasn’t well. She had a stalker in Vegas. “Let Stargazer send Sarah or one of your other agents to take over. I’ll fill her in and work with her like I’ve been working with you.”