“Good thinking,” he said without turning around. “Photos of penis cake have sabotaged many a starlet’s career.”
“I’ve got so much to do before then. I can delegate more of this to Tom, though.”
“Four thirty?” Daniel asked.
“So noted. Listen . . . ” Wendy secured her phone in her computer bag, thinking hard all the while. “I’ll have to get rid of Tom and Sarah. Send them back to New York tonight on the red-eye.”
Daniel looked over his shoulder at her. “Why?”
“If they find out what we’re doing, they won’t let me.”
His expression turned somber. “Okay.” He glanced at his screen. “Here’s an eleven thirty opening for a wedding ceremony tonight. I can reserve it online. Do you want a drive-through wedding?”
“No,” she said, crossing behind him to look over his shoulder at the web page littered with tacky hearts. “If it’s outdoors, the paparazzi will see it’s not Lorelei and Colton getting married. It’s . . . ” Us, she should say. Us. She couldn’t bring herself to say it.
He’d already moved on. “Photos?”
“Absolutely not. If there are no photos, they can’t leak.”
“Right. Do you want the ceremony to be officiated by Elvis?”
“Yes, duh.” She reached around him to fold her own laptop. “I’ve got to run.”
“See you at the clerk’s office at four thirty,” he reminded her.
She gave him a short nod. She knew how bad an idea this was. She’d argued herself into acquiescing, but in her heart, she knew.
“Wendy.” Daniel stood and wrapped her in his arms.
She tried to relax and enjoy the hug. The tingles were back, for one thing. Her heart raced any time he touched her. And hugging seemed rare and strange for him. She felt lucky for the privilege. But this was all wrong. And she still held her laptop sandwiched between them.
He kissed her forehead, ran his hands up to her shoulders, and held her there while he looked her in the eye. “It will be fine, I promise. I won’t let this go bad.”
It already had, but she couldn’t think about that. She stuffed her computer in her bag on her way out the door, headed to her next appointment.
* * *
“We deleted all the pictures when we were done,” Wendy told Sarah.
“That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” Sarah said.
“I guess not,” Wendy said. “But I’m not the type of girl to encounter a sexy man in a hotel room and say, ‘This is inappropriate and we should probably stop.’ ”
“No, you’re not,” Sarah agreed.
Lorelei’s party would start any minute in the posh rooftop club of the casino. Wendy had spent the last hour checking and rechecking every detail from the caterer to the carefully screened photographers who would be allowed to take pictures of the cake-cutting at midnight. Sarah had joined her for the last fifteen minutes of frantic supervision. Now they both sat in cushioned chairs in the outdoor section of the club overlooking the Strip.
While they’d been sitting, Wendy had told Sarah casually that she should grab the red-eye back to New York. In fact, Wendy had already arranged with Stargazer to book the midnight flight for Sarah and Tom. Their work here was largely done. If they made it into the office tomorrow, the bosses would think Wendy’s problems with Lorelei weren’t so serious. Sarah had watched her gravely while Wendy explained this half-truth. She felt like death for misleading Sarah, and worse because Sarah would guess what was really going on and refuse to let Wendy go through with it.
Panicked, Wendy had launched into a description of what she and Daniel had been up to in the hotel room. If she admitted that they’d taken their relationship to the next level, maybe it would seem to Sarah that she wasn’t hiding anything else. So far it seemed to be working.
“In the beginning,” Wendy went on, “it was all completely innocent. Well, as innocent as dirty pictures can be. The next minute he was going down on me.”
Sarah arched one eyebrow. “What if he’d been a pervert who uploaded your p**n shots to the Internet?”
“If my face had been in them I would have been concerned, but it wasn’t. They were just crotch shots. You can upload my cooch to the Internet all day and I won’t mind, as long as my name isn’t attached. That is precisely why I’ve never had Wendy tattooed across my labia.”
Sarah snapped her fingers. “Damn it! I wish you’d said something before I got my labia tattoo last week.”
“Do your labia say Sarah? You can always get it changed, like dumbass stars when they break up with the girlfriends named in their tattoos. That way, when you took crotch shots in the future, nobody would recognize you. What could you get it changed to? Saaaa . . . ” She sounded it out.
“Saaaa . . . ” Sarah joined in. The pitch of her voice changed like a passing ambulance as she looked around the candlelit patio to make sure none of the waiters listened in on their discussion of their labia tattoos.
Wendy said, “Saaaaaaalad. Taste a sample of my sexy salad.”
“Sex salad,” Sarah said. “My salad bar of sex.”
“Take what you want and leave the rest,” Wendy said.
Sarah said, “All you can eat.”
They both shrieked with laughter and immediately shushed each other, trying to look innocent while several waiters inside pressed their faces against the glass wall of the club to peer at them.
Sarah choked out, “What are you going to tell your kids when they ask how you got together with Daniel? That is the most unwholesome damn thing I ever heard. You’ll have to make up some shit about going to Paris.”
Wendy grinned right through Sarah’s offhand comment about children. The longer Wendy’s fake relationship with Daniel went on, and the more pretend-serious it became, the more it hurt to joke about the trappings of a serious relationship that would never be. “Oh, we went to Paris, all right.” She winked.
“Yes! Daniel had salad in Paris.”
“Paris is famous for its salads, you know.”
Sarah looked perplexed. “I thought that was Bangkok.”
They both glanced toward the glass wall again as music began throbbing from the sound system. Straining her eyes to see through the shadows, Wendy realized that security was letting in the guests. “That’s my cue,” she told Sarah.
As Wendy rose, she braced for the suspicious comment she’d been expecting from Sarah. But Sarah kept her lips zipped, and Wendy couldn’t worry about it. She had too much else to do.