Star Crossed (Stargazer #1)(8)
Author: Jennifer Echols

Sarah opened her hands. “I heard his dad is retiring and Daniel is taking over the firm soon. I doubt that’s happened yet or we would have heard. It’s feasible that Daniel is in Vegas right now, notching his belt with one last triumph.”

“Notching his belt,” Wendy muttered. “Better than his bedpost, I guess.” She dabbed her fingertips under her eyes, checking for smeared mascara, feeling completely dead.

“I know this sounds unlikely,” Sarah said, scooting to the edge of her chair, “but I actually came in here to make you feel better.”

“It’s okay,” Wendy croaked. “I’m glad you warned me.”

“Don’t sit here thinking about it,” Sarah said. “Thinking helps most people, but you tend to do better with no thought whatsoever.”

“Thanks.”

Sarah rose. Wendy did too, and they embraced after all, just as they had when Sarah got married, and when Wendy got Sarah the job at Stargazer, and when all Wendy’s college boyfriends broke up with her with final salvos of bitch!—every single one of them—and when Daniel Blackstone beat out Wendy for the Clarkson Prize.

Rubbing Wendy’s back, Sarah pulled away and looked her in the eye. “If you get in trouble, Tom and I will come help you on Stargazer’s tab. Now go. You can do it.” She turned and disappeared into the hallway.

Wendy went after her. “Sarah,” she called.

Sarah paused at her own door.

“If I do get fired while I’m gone,” Wendy said, “and you’re sent to clean out my office and you happen to come across some crack, just flush it down the toilet.”

Sarah arched one eyebrow. Tom must have been standing near the door of his office, listening, because he slowly leaned into the hall to peek at Wendy, and slowly disappeared again.

* * *

Half an hour later, as the doors of the elevator in Wendy’s apartment building slid shut in front of her, she grinned at her reflection in the polished brass. She couldn’t afford to dwell on the very real possibility that she was about to lose her job. She had to capitalize on her small chance to save the job she’d worked her ass off to snag in the first place. A positive attitude could do just that if she managed to couple it with whipping Lorelei Vogel into shape.

When she smiled like this, with her long blond hair cascading around her shoulders, a stranger might mistake her for a model, or even a starlet like the ones she shoveled out of trouble. She’d been told her features came from the mother she’d hardly known—though Wendy gave those natural looks a generous helping of maintenance and grooming and product. She took very good care of herself. She’d overheard boys in high school saying she was the most beautiful girl at the party until she opened her mouth. Ever since, she’d worked hard at staying the most beautiful girl, because her mouth was going to open sooner or later, and she couldn’t seem to control what came out of it. Facials were so much easier than staying silent.

That had to change. For the entirety of this trip to Vegas, she would need to pretend she was a benevolent, motherly person. As the second floor, the third floor, the fourth floor slid past, signaled by dark spaces through the crack between the doors, she winked at her reflection good-naturedly. Now she looked like a stranger. Which might be a good thing at this point.

At her own floor, she opened her apartment door carefully in case her turtle was behind it. He wasn’t there, but an unopened package was, piled with a scarf and a coat she hadn’t worn since March. When she wasn’t on a difficult case, she was very neat. When she was on a difficult case, which was most of the time, she lived at the office or on location with her client and used her apartment as a dump. Sarah said Wendy’s apartment looked like the inside of Wendy’s mind, which was probably true. She tried to straighten up between jobs, but this time she’d missed her chance. She had a plane to catch.

She could clean for the turtle, though. She scrubbed his terrarium and filled his reservoir with fresh water. Then she scanned her apartment for him. He wasn’t in the potted tree by the window, where he usually hung out. She looked around the ramp she’d propped there so he could get out of the pot if he wanted. After a cursory search of her living room, she realized she was going to need to conduct more than a cursory search, because there were too many sweaters, sheaves of paper, files, and packages of books on the floor. He could be behind or inside any of them.

Oh God, she was going to miss her flight because her turtle was lost. She’d nearly been fired today, and now her turtle was going to starve to death in her absence. She resisted the urge to call to him. She didn’t know whether he would come or not. She’d never had the patience to test this. Even if he did come when called, it would take him five years.

On a hunch, she opened the closet door wider and peered into the dark corner behind mounds of her shoes. There he was, exactly where she’d found him six years before when she moved in—the last owner’s cast-off pet and a kindred spirit for Wendy, who’d felt like her father’s afterthought.

She inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, relieved her turtle was safe.

She picked him up, a small but solid mass, and gave him her usual stern warning: “Don’t pee on me.” She carefully placed him in the terrarium, secured the jar of turtle food under her arm, and picked up the tank with both hands. She negotiated the door of her apartment with some difficulty and gently kicked the next door, hoping she wasn’t waking Bob.

She heard him move toward her from across his apartment. The footsteps paused as he looked through the peephole at her. Opening the door, he was already holding out his arms for the tank. She tried not to stare, but it was always shocking to see him without his wig and makeup and corset.

“Thanks a million,” she said. “Sorry to do this to you again so soon. It’s almost like he’s your turtle instead of mine.”

“Hi, Wendy,” a voice called from the depths of the apartment.

She leaned around the doorframe and called back, “Hi, Marvin.” Bob’s boyfriend probably didn’t want to greet her in person because of what he was wearing. Or not.

“It’s no problem,” Bob told her. “Turtles don’t bark.” He slid the terrarium onto a table near the door and took the jar of food from her. “Plus banana?”

“Just a tiny bit of whatever fruit you’re eating, yeah.”

“How long this time?”