Wendy’s heart beat painfully. She didn’t believe Daniel, but the story made a certain kind of sense, sort of like when she started with a new client and a lot of strange things happened and she finally figured out the star’s mother must be smoking crack, which explained everything. But she didn’t want this story to be true. It couldn’t be. “Rick’s not paparazzi,” she said.
“But he’s an opportunist,” Daniel said. “Right?”
“Right,” Wendy said faintly. “No. Why would Rick be here?”
“For you.”
Her blood went cold.
“When was the last time you saw him?” Daniel persisted.
“That night at college.”
“Did the police catch him?” Daniel prompted her.
“No. He’d stolen his uncle’s truck to drive up there. They found it ditched in New Jersey. There was never another trace of him. A couple of years later when my dad died, I was terrified he would be waiting for me in West Virginia, but he wasn’t there, and nobody had seen him.”
“You said he always wanted to go to Hollywood,” Daniel reminded her. “Maybe he went. He became a photographer, and now he’s followed the stars here to Vegas.”
A job with the paparazzi was exactly what Rick would be doing with his life now. But she couldn’t wrap her head around it. “No, Daniel. That’s too crazy. I spent a couple of years in New York staring out the front window of my dorm room, terrified that I would see him walking up the street. I’m not going to do the same thing in Vegas. I’ll be careful because whoever hit me is a crazy person who’s collecting for a wig, but he’s not Rick.”
Daniel stared at her, face hard and immobile. “Just in case,” he said, “don’t go out at night by yourself.”
“All right.”
“Call Detective Butkus. Did he give you his card? Tell him what you told me about Rick.”
Wendy made a face. “He’s not going to do anything about that. He’s going to scoff at me.”
“Maybe,” Daniel said, “but they should have that information on record. Promise me.”
“I promise,” she grumbled.
Sinking down to lie on the bed again, he let out a long breath. “On the bright side,” he said, “I doubt we have to worry anymore about Colton coming on to you.”
She laughed. “I don’t know. Some men like strong women.”
Daniel reached out to touch a long tendril of her hair, winding it slowly around his finger. This had turned her on when he did it in the club two nights before. Now her cheeks flamed, and her heart went wild.
He said, “Yes. Some men do.”
11
Late that night, Wendy was down a hundred dollars at poker in the casino. Lorelei was down two hundred. Franklin was down fifty. Two actresses from a wildly popular sitcom were down seventy-five and three hundred, respectively. Wendy wished Sarah were there. Her parents were bridge players, and she cleaned up at poker. When she played, she tried her best to give Wendy advice and drag Wendy along after her.
Wendy’s phone rang, giving her an excuse to back away from the sad table. She saw it was Daniel calling, and her heart did a dance to the jaunty rhythm of the slot machines nearby. She took a moment to close her eyes and take a calming breath through her nose so she wouldn’t answer the phone in the tone of an eighth grader with a crush. Then, afraid she’d waited too long and Daniel would hang up and she’d miss him completely tonight, she hurriedly answered.
“What’s up, lovah?”
“Hello, Wendy,” he said. “I need your help.”
“This should be good.”
“I’m at the Horny Gentleman.”
“The strip club? Or is this a personal problem?”
He laughed for a long time, which made her suspicious, because it wasn’t that funny.
Sensing that this conversation was going to be longer than a quick check-in to decide where Lorelei and Colton should hook up, Wendy glanced at the crowded poker tables, then headed across the floor toward a chocolatier storefront that had closed for the night, where she wouldn’t be overheard. “Oh, honey,” she said as she walked, “not again. What’s the matter? Do you need some money to pay your tab?”
“Listen,” he said. “I want you to know I did everything I could to prevent this. Judging from what you told me this morning, I figured strip clubs are not your favorite thing.”
“Perspicacious.”
“Colton was insistent,” Daniel said. “Of course, I couldn’t explain what my reservations were without telling him more about you than I would ever want him to know. And my turning down the invitation on some sort of moral grounds would not be a manly man thing to do, because duh.”
It was her turn to laugh at his appropriation of her language. He was in rare form. Possibly drunk.
When she stopped laughing, she warned him, “Colton’s going to get seen there at best and videoed there at worst. It’s going to look like he’s not interested in Lorelei at all. Obviously he needs an outlet for his misogyny.”
“Actually,” Daniel said, “Colton and Lorelei came here together on their first adult romp through Vegas last year. So it will be like an elderly couple retracing their steps on their first date.”
Wendy shouldn’t have been surprised anymore at much Lorelei and Colton did. “That’s sweet.”
“That’s why I need you to bring Lorelei down here. Right now Colton looks like a reject at a strip club. When she comes in, it’ll look like a fun, bawdy night they’re enjoying together. We’ll get Lorelei on the pole.”
“We’re not getting her on the pole,” Wendy protested.
“I’ll bet she can do it. Wasn’t that a fitness craze in Hollywood recently?”
“That was before her time. Now it’s boxing, remember? How much have you had to drink?”
“I was trying to have fun on the job, like you said. Too much fun.” He paused. “Look, just bring her down here, unless you have a better idea. That’s the only way I can think of to solve this right now. Reason only works with Colton when he’s not drunk yet. Now that he’s plastered, even if you have trouble with Lorelei, it’s going to be a lot easier for you to get her in here than for me to get him out of here. We won’t stay long, though. It’s so late already. Just come, let the paparazzi take pictures of her arriving and the two of them leaving the club together, and we’ll all call it a night.”