Star Crossed (Stargazer) by Jennifer Echols Read Free Book Online Page A

wasn’t trying to lose the hundred grand, though.”
    At that admission, Daniel took another, bigger sip of bourbon. He might not be much of a drinker, but for once he wanted to chug the contents of the glass and pour himself another. He couldn’t, though. He had too much work to do today. He asked Colton, “What’s the deal with Lorelei?”
    Colton’s jaw tightened. “We were great for the past three years. Then, as soon as we left the TV show and she started her own band, the whore cheated on me with her drummer.”
    Daniel winced internally at Colton’s brutal language for his ex-lover. “Maybe we’re having trouble with definitions here,” he said. “A whore is what was sitting next to you downstairs at the blackjack table,where everybody in America could take pictures of you together. Lorelei is your costar from a children’s TV show—”
    “It wasn’t a children’s show,” Colton said testily. “It was for teenagers, and a lot of adults watched it, too.”
    Daniel waited for Colton to hear how immature that statement sounded. After a few seconds of silence, he realized that was not going to happen. He cleared his throat and went on, “—and Lorelei is also your ex-girlfriend. You shared your life with her for three years. The public expects you to have sore feelings about your breakup. Anybody would. But they don’t expect you to call her names on the web. You can’t say things like that about a young lady. She’s twenty-one years old, Colton.”
    “She’s plenty old enough to know exactly what she’s doing.”
    “She’s not much older than my sister.” Daniel said this with more vehemence than he’d intended. He could tell, because Colton raised his eyebrows in surprise.
    Daniel was surprised, too. He wasn’t sure where that outburst had come from. Since when was he human? He cleared his throat. “When you insult a young lady, you’re trying to make her look bad, but you’re the one who ends up looking bad. And things are about to get worse for you. I heard that Lorelei has hired Stargazer, which is one of the best PR firms she could have brought on board, besides my own.”
    Colton frowned. “What does that mean?”
    “Stargazer’s very good. If they send certain people, I won’t know quite what to expect. But if they send Sarah Seville, I’ll know we’re in trouble. Sarah is a smooth talker, very friendly, and she’ll become Lorelei’s new best friend and persuade her to use a soft touch with the press. If they send Wendy Mann, we’re in more trouble. Wendy is a drill sergeant. She has a reputation for whipping people into shape and getting them to do things they never dreamed they could do themselves. Before you know it, she’ll have Lorelei dressing in lace and pearls and hosting tea parties for charity.”
    “If she’s so good, why don’t I fire you and hire her?” Colton asked in the tone of a petulant child. “Maybe she wouldn’t have dragged me away from the tables when my luck was turning.”
    “Your luck wasn’t turning,” Daniel said. “There’s no such thing as luck. The probability that you’ll get a good hand is exactly the same every time you play.” He could tell by Colton’s wandering gaze that Colton was losing interest, so Daniel stepped back from the lecture on applied math and returned to the subject that Colton seemed most interested in: Wendy Mann. “And if you hired Wendy, you wouldn’t like her. I guarantee you wouldn’t lay eyes on a blackjack table the rest of the time you spent in Vegas.”
    “But with you, I can? I don’t think it would be good for publicity if I stayed in my room until Friday. Thatwould make it look like my handlers had shut me down because there was something seriously wrong with me. It would be an admission of guilt.”
    “That’s very insightful, Colton. If you’d been that smart for the past month, you wouldn’t need me.”
    “It’s Lorelei. I wouldn’t have gotten so plastered last night if my driver