Wendy nodded. “He’s an actor who pisses in fountains. He understands all about professionalism. I think you got me into this mess, anyway. Did you mention me to Colton before I got here?”
“I’d heard Stargazer was sending someone to help Lorelei,” Daniel admitted. “I discussed you as one of several possibilities. Why?”
“Did you describe me as some sort of dominatrix?”
He blinked at her. “Maybe.”
She laughed. “Really? Is that my reputation?”
He gave her the smallest smile. “Yes.”
“I guess that’s kind of cool.”
“If you say so.”
“I guess that’s Colton’s type. Lorelei is a dominatrix in training, like a fluffy kitten with a Taser.”
There! She thought she saw it for a split second: Daniel laughing. Almost laughing, but as soon as one corner of his mouth turned up, he regained control and turned his face impassive again.
Disappointed, she went on, “You don’t really want me hooking up with your client, do you? I would totally pervert him. Besides, it would be bad PR. That cougar story only sells to one demographic: the cougars themselves. The rest of the public just thinks it’s gross.”
“You’re—” Daniel said on a laugh. He cleared his throat, collected himself, and started again. “You’re twenty-eight years old, aren’t you? Not a cougar by any stretch of the imagination. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll tell him to stop hounding you.”
“You don’t know yet whether he’ll follow your orders. I can’t take that chance. Besides, you’ve already opened the can of worms. In Lorelei’s mind, without you, I’m available and therefore a threat. Dating you is the only way I can take the can of worms off the shelf. I’m really sorry, Daniel, but I’m going to have to insist that you help me. You got me into this mess. You have to get me out.”
“By acting like your boyfriend?” Daniel’s face was utterly blank.
She acknowledged him with a grim nod. “Here where Colton and Lorelei can see.”
His eyes slid away from her to the crowd undulating before them in the lush darkness. He seemed to be looking for Colton and considering his options.
And Wendy was fed up. She was out of options, because of Daniel. “I don’t think you quite understand,” she said. “I’m not asking you. I’m telling you.”
This tactic worked on a lot of people. It had even worked on the lead singer of Darkness Fallz up until he nearly had her fired. It didn’t seem to work on Daniel. He simply stared at her coldly.
She tried to hold on to her own steely gaze. But inside she was cowering. She was that eighteen-year-old girl all over again, daring to leave her home state and her controlling boyfriend behind to pursue her dream, only to have him track her down and hurt her.
“Do you still have that crick in your neck from the flight?” Daniel asked. “Turn around.” He put his hands on her shoulders and started to turn her.
Maybe he was going to help her after all—although a neck rub wasn’t quite what she’d had in mind. She wasn’t sure how convinced Colton and Lorelei would be that Daniel and Wendy were lovers just because he worked the kink out of her neck, but it was better than nothing. She turned away from him, bent her head, and pulled her hair forward.
He smoothed his hands along her skin and across the shoulders of her blouse. Then his lips were at her ear. “My God, why are you so tense?”
She gave the smallest shrug. She’d nearly been fired today, she had an impossible job to do or else she would be fired tomorrow, and the hottest guy on earth was touching her. No stress there.
“Relax, Wendy,” he whispered. “It won’t look like we’re lovers if you don’t let go.”
With a shiver of pleasure at his voice, she took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and softened under his hands, as instructed.
She tried to suppress her gasp of surprise and pleasure as his hot fingers pressed into her shoulder muscles. Now she wasn’t so worried that they wouldn’t look like lovers. For her at least, this was the sexiest event of the past six months, since her last night with an on-again, off-again boyfriend. She felt self-consciously like a neglected dog rolling over happily for anyone who would rub his belly. The longer Daniel’s hands deftly moved up and down her spine and along her shoulders, the more boneless she became.
“Better?” he growled as he took his hands away.
She nodded a little, so sorry the session was over, but hopeful it had been enough to stave off Colton for a few days. Though a kiss would have been better . . .
She was just telling herself not to go there, not to entertain the possibility, because she was going to be disappointed. But as she faced Daniel, he was looking at her mouth.
The beat of the music, the volume, the frenzy of it, seemed to escalate with her heartbeat as he bent toward her. But he advanced lazily, like a hot southern afternoon. They were a special effect in a film, moving in slow motion, just the two of them, while their surroundings whirled.
She wouldn’t falter. She wouldn’t look away shyly. She’d asked him for this. She held his gaze as his hand moved down her back and underneath her blouse. It was all she could do to keep from shuddering with anticipation now that the silk didn’t separate them. His skin met her skin as he bent closer over her. His lips touched hers.
She froze against him, simultaneously telling herself she shouldn’t be freezing. That was something she would do if she thought he was unattractive. She didn’t want him to get that impression. It wasn’t true at all. Or, it was something she would do if she found him extremely attractive and was afraid of letting him know. That was true, and she didn’t want to give him that impression, either.
These panicked thoughts flashed through her brain in about two seconds, and then hormones took over as his tongue swept inside her mouth. She forgot what impression she was trying to give him or why as she responded to his kiss, opening for him. She pressed her hands against his crisp white shirt.
He shifted his solid arm up her back, holding her there, and wove the fingers of his other hand into her hair. His tongue slipped past her teeth and massaged inside her mouth.
Tingles rushed up and down her arms, through her chest, down to her thighs, making her legs weak. She felt herself sliding closer to him on the velvet bench, placing one shoe between both of his so that her thigh grazed his and his knee brushed her crotch.