Page 86 of Dream On

The rest of the stylists scatter to clean the room and collect their belongings as my heart rate triples, nearing detonation. A knock sounds at my hotel door.

I spin around when it whips open, and Lex’s agent, Rudy, zips through, dressed to impress in a peach-hued suit, garnet tie, and a pair of kitschy glasses. Light-hazel eyes pop against warm brown skin and a mop of inky hair.

“Stevie, you’re up,” he says, waving me forward with two fingers. “Limo’s outside. Paps are out in full force, so try not to panic. I can handle panic, but I don’t love it. I’m used to Lex and his nonexistent feelings and stone-cold heart. Are you good to go?”

He says it all with a smile.

I glance around the room, as if Mom or Dad or Joplin will materialize from the walls and hold my hand. “I–I think so. Should I say anything? To the photographers?”

“Eh.” He makes a face. “Not yet. We’ll go over lines when we get there.”

“Lines?”

“The story. We’re being vague and mysterious, so the lines will be brief. We’ll give them just enough to wonder and whisper but not too much. We want to keep milking this.”

“Vague…mysterious…” Frowning, I blink back to him. “How long are we milking this?”

“Time to go.” He spins around, giving me an animated hand gesture while Luda douses me in a final cloud of hair spray and waves me off. “This is Castle, the muscle. He’s solid. Literally. He’ll keep you safe and sound,” Rudy rambles off before I’m even able to catch up to him in the hallway. Castle hangs back, waiting for me. “Lex is in the limo. There’s champagne if you need it. Bubbly for the butterflies. Any questions?”

I skip ahead on my bedazzled heels, sending the bodyguard a nervous smile. “How long are we milking this?”

Rudy scratches the back of his head. “As long as we can.”

I’m not sure how much we can accomplish in one night, but before I can overthink his answer, we’re in the hotel lobby, and flash photography is blinding me through the double doors.

Rudy holds the door open for me, his eyes gleaming with premature apology, and then the world narrows to a pinprick.

I don’t remember stepping outside.

I’m just here, standing amid a cloudburst of noise and lights, shell-shocked and wide-eyed. Frozen. Incapacitated. I don’t know where to look, what my name is, or how to breathe.

Snap, snap.

“Stevie!”

“Miss St. James!”

“Are you and Lex official?”

Flash, flash.

“Can we get a statement?”

“You look amazing!”

Click, click.

I lift a hand to shield my eyes, squinting through the ambush of incessant flashes and strobes. All I hear is my heart. Pounding, hammering. An embarrassing wave of panic slams into me, washing over my chest—exactly what Rudydidn’twant.

But I wasn’t expecting this. I wasn’t prepared.

Knees wobbling, I reach out for something, for balance, and just as my stiletto twists from under me and I nearly go down, he’s there.

An arm flies out. A warm hand.

Lex is beside me, catching me before I make a further spectacle of myself. He pulls me up to my useless spaghetti legs and steers us forward to the limo.

“Lex!”