He felt a twinge of guilt, but he couldn’t let her see it. “Come back to the table.” He patted the bench hard enough to get her attention. “You’re not talking about our clients anymore.”
As she eyed him suspiciously, he studied her in the bright light of morning. She’d dressed for her workout as if she might run into someone important, but her vanity hadn’t extended to makeup, as it would have for a lot of women he encountered in this business. Her face was scrubbed clean. She looked pretty and young, like an English country lass in a commercial for milk or apples, except the look in her eye said she had some sharp farm implements she would like to stab him with back in the barn.
“I’m sorry I made you feel that way,” he said sincerely.
She shrugged. “It’s your modus operandi.”
“Speaking of which,” he said, jumping on the chance to change the subject from himself back to work. “I want you to consider my offer seriously. It’s Tuesday, the awards show is on Friday, and Colton and Lorelei both seem hell-bent on continuing along the path that led them to this mess in the first place. If we don’t make positive progress in the next twenty-four hours, I have no doubt that the show will drop both of them. Getting them together—or faking it, if that’s what you prefer—is the fastest, best way to regain the public’s interest and support.”
Wendy shifted uncomfortably on her bench. “It just seems like a lot of trouble to fake their relationship. I suspect all the time that Hollywood couplings are faked, but I don’t imagine a PR person engineering it. There are too many factors to control, too many mouths to shut up. It’s not worth the effort.”
“It depends on what’s at stake. Sometimes it can be the perfect solution for both parties.”
“Like whom?”
He hesitated. Like whom was his greatest triumph and his most closely guarded secret. If he told her, he’d be taking a huge risk. If he didn’t tell her, he doubted he could convince her to go along with his plan.
She prompted him, “You talk like you’ve done this before. Do you want me to work with you or not? Spill it.”
He looked over his shoulder to make sure the gym was still empty save for the attendant, whose desk was far enough away that she couldn’t overhear. Satisfied, he turned back to Wendy and confided, “Olivia Query and Victor Moore.”
Wendy stared at him a moment without comprehending. “Yeah. I’d heard you repped both of them. Did you introduce them and they fell in love?” Then she understood what he was telling her. “You engineered that marriage?”
“Shhh. Yes.”
Wendy was astonished into silence. When she regained speech, she lowered her voice to match his. “But . . . Olivia is pregnant with Victor’s baby!”
“It’s not his baby,” Daniel said.
“But . . . they had five hundred guests at their wedding.”
“Right.”
“But . . . they rented an island.”
Daniel smiled enough to show her his smugness, but not enough to make the bruise under his eye hurt. “You don’t believe me?”
“Um.” She squinted at him, unsure whether to believe him or not.
“You don’t want to believe me,” he said. “You’re caught up in the same romance that every other non-celebrity gets caught up in, looking on with admiration and longing at this rich, famous, talented couple in love.” He cocked his head at her. “But you do believe me, don’t you, Wendy? You don’t know me very well, but you know me by reputation. I can do anything I set out to do in this business. Make a star. Ruin a star. Fabricate two stars’ entire lives.”
She didn’t deny it. “But why?” she murmured.
“Olivia got pregnant with her hometown sweetheart’s baby and insisted on keeping it. He absolutely refused to live a celebrity life with her. He’s got some secrets he can’t have exposed right now if the media dig into his past. And Victor is g*y.”
“What!” Wendy exclaimed so sharply that even she looked over Daniel’s shoulder to make sure the attendant wasn’t listening to their conversation. She inched closer to Daniel on her bench and lowered her voice again. “Victor Moore is g*y? He’s the heterosexual hunk of the century! That would be a scandal of Rock Hudson proportions!”
“Correct,” Daniel said.
“But . . . why doesn’t he just come out? The stigma isn’t there anymore.”
“The stigma’s still there,” Daniel said. “It’s not a career-ending stigma, but it’s a career-changing one. You’re disappointed to hear that he’s g*y, right?”
“Disappointed?” Wendy echoed in confusion. “No, I’m not disappointed at his sexual orientation—”
“Yes, you are,” Daniel interrupted. “When you watch his movies, you fantasize about yourself with him. Before, there was the remotest possibility it would happen. He would have to leave his wife and baby and somehow find you and fall in love. Now, there’s no possibility, and you’ve lost interest.”
“That’s not true,” she said confusedly. “That’s not how fantasy works.”
“That’s exactly how fantasy works,” Daniel told her, “and that’s why Victor hasn’t come out. He could still get cast as the g*y guy or the lovable sidekick, even the hero of a movie in which his sexuality wasn’t front and center. But he would never get cast as the swashbuckling, hard-loving straight hero again. He’s signed five contracts to play that part over the next three years. After that, he’s divorcing Olivia.”
Wendy gasped. “Does she know?”
“Of course she knows,” Daniel said impatiently—and maybe a tad let down that Wendy wasn’t keeping up. Or jealous that she really had swooned over Victor Moore. That was a totally stupid thought on his part. He shrugged it away and went on, “Victor and Olivia are Hollywood’s golden couple right now. They generate a lot more public interest together than they would apart. He’ll milk the prime of his career for all it’s worth. She’ll do the same in her career. The divorce date is already set. I have the press releases on file. I’ll just need to tweak them a bit to match their future movie titles and charities. A year after that, Victor will quietly start dating the boyfriend he’s secretly been with for years already. His agent will move him toward those quirky sidekick parts, Best Supporting Actor material. Olivia will move from leading lady parts to motherly parts. With the spotlight off her, she’ll marry her boyfriend.”