Star Crossed (Stargazer #1)(52)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Daniel Blackstone is totally in your lap

Wendy suppressed a laugh and texted back,

I know right?

Sarah replied,

In fact his face is in your lap

Wendy knew what Sarah was implying. She bit her lip and shook her head. Sarah raised one eyebrow and texted,

Normally your response would be I WISH

While Wendy still racked her brain for how to respond, Sarah texted again,

Tom is dropping off his bags, has key to this room, will come loping in any second. Wake Daniel or he’s going to be embarrassed. I’ll leave.

Sarah stood just as a key card slid through the lock and the door opened. “Honey, I’m home!” Tom called.

Daniel stirred on Wendy’s thigh, his face rolling down so that Wendy could feel the huff of his hot breath through her skirt and panties. She tried not to look alarmed. He shouldered himself up to sitting, blinking at the sunlight streaming through the window. Finally he saw Sarah and Tom watching him. He jumped off the bed in one motion.

“Hey,” Wendy started, about to tell him they were all friends here and he didn’t need to look like he’d just been caught—but immediately he had the situation under control. He rounded the bed with his hand extended to Tom. “Daniel Blackstone,” he said.

“Tom Ruffner,” Tom said.

Wendy should have been intervening, introducing, but the whole scene was so bizarre that she was shocked into silence. She’d feared her relationship with Daniel and her relationship with Stargazer were going to collide, but not like this.

Daniel waited until Sarah extended her hand before reaching forward with his own, a level of etiquette that Wendy had had no idea existed until Sarah had explained it in college. “Daniel Blackstone,” he murmured.

“I remember,” Sarah said, shaking his hand. “Sarah Seville.” When he released her, she still gazed up at him, then looked at Wendy. “So, you two are together.”

“No, we’re not,” he and Wendy said at the same time. Wendy tried to shoot daggers through Sarah with her expression. Why couldn’t Sarah keep her discoveries to herself for once?

Sarah’s eyes roved warily over Wendy, then Daniel, then Tom, then back to Wendy. “Yes, you are,” Sarah said.

Finally Wendy said carefully, “Sarah, sweetie, you know how you always imagine things when you’re off your medication.”

Sarah raised one eyebrow at Wendy.

Daniel waved uncomfortably at the bed. “I don’t know what that was. So. Excuse me a moment.” He passed Sarah and Tom, disappearing down the hall. The bathroom door opened, the lock clicked, water ran.

A suspicious Tom and a concerned Sarah turned to Wendy for an explanation. Wendy didn’t have one. Or rather, she did, but not one she wanted to share.

* * *

Daniel splashed water on his face and dried off. When that didn’t seem to reset him, he rested his forehead against the cool door and closed his eyes. He was realizing for the first time how incredibly whipped he was.

He heard Wendy exclaim out in the bedroom, “Scruffy! Why did you have to say that and come romping in here like a golden retriever puppy?”

“Why do you care?” Tom countered. “I think somebody has been moonlighting with the Blackstone Firm, if ya know what I mean.”

“I think somebody—” Wendy responded, but her voice faded, as if they’d realized Daniel could hear them, lowered their voices, and moved away from him, toward the window onto the Strip.

He jumped backward as a knock sounded on the door very near his forehead. “It’s Sarah. Let me in.”

He’d had hardly any interaction with Sarah in college, but he knew her by reputation. She was friendly. Helpful. And very persistent. She wasn’t going away until she’d said her piece. He opened the door for her, hoping she would castigate him about his relationship with Wendy, then leave.

Instead, she entered the room, forcing him back against the sink, and closed the door behind her. She focused on him with her big brown eyes. He felt like one of her clients whom she was talking down from a ledge as she coaxed him, “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Wendy and I aren’t together,” he said. “Not like you’re implying. I don’t know where you get that idea. Last night was rough, and this morning I just fell asleep while we were waiting for you. I thought you would be longer—”

“It wasn’t that you were in her lap,” Sarah interrupted. “It was the way you both acted about it. Alarmed that anybody else would see you, but reluctant to let each other see that you were alarmed. There’s clearly something you two need to talk about.”

At the moment he was more interested in what Wendy was saying to Tom. He strained his ears to hear, but he couldn’t make out a word. “Did she call Tom something weird just now?” he asked. “Scruffy?”

“She has a pet name for everybody she likes,” Sarah explained. “She names people after what she considers their most prominent body parts. She’s just teasing him about his lame half-assed beard and the fact that he doesn’t own an iron.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s her name for you?”

“Tushy.” Sarah waved her hand behind her tight little ass in her jogging pants.

That sounded too much like Wendy for Sarah to be making this up. He tested her. “What’s Wendy’s name for me?” He wanted to know more about this pet name habit. He also wondered if she liked him enough to have named him.

“Cheekbones,” Sarah said instantly, without thinking.

Daniel eyed her doubtfully. He wasn’t sure whether it was a good thing or a bad thing that Wendy had named him Cheekbones. He would have preferred Biceps.

“Listen,” Sarah said, “I’m not going to tell you or Wendy what to do, but . . . she let you know she’s in trouble with the firm, right?”

He nodded. He was feeling more and more guilty about taking her Darkness Fallz account.

“Her job was already in jeopardy,” Sarah said, “and now she’s expending extra resources by calling Tom and me out here to help her. She needs a win on this case. She does not need to start a relationship with you. Our bosses hate the Blackstone Firm.”

Daniel knew Sarah had Wendy’s best interests at heart. And though he regularly lied on the job for the sake of his clients, it pained him to think about lying to Sarah.

“I hear you,” he said.

But he wasn’t making any promises.

13

Wendy was starving. She figured a full stomach would do Daniel a world of good. And the tension in her room was getting so thick that they wouldn’t be able to move soon. She convinced them all to go with her down to the food court in the mall attached to the casino in search of brunch.