“Lucky bastard. Dude can’t act for shit.”

“As opposed to your incredible box-office record. I have to admit, though…you’re looking good.” She patted her purse. “Don’t let me walk off without the name of your fabulous plastic surgeon.”

He uncrossed his ankles. “Jade called me a few years back, but I was so out of it I never called her back. That’s the real way drugs screw up your brain, but nobody ever warns kids about shit like that.” The doors opened on the twenty-eighth floor. He grabbed her elbow. “Party time. Let’s go.”

“Let’s not.”

He dragged her out. “Come on. I’m bored.”

“Not my problem.” She tried to dig her heels into the thick carpet that ran down the middle of the opulent hallway.

His grip tightened. “You must have forgotten what I overheard at Trev’s house, or you’d realize you’re basically my slave.”

She’d been the target of too many of Bram’s cat-and-mouse games not to see where this was headed, and she didn’t like it.

He steered her around a corner. “Do you have any idea how much money I could make selling the story of sad, desperate Georgie York begging a man to marry her?”

“Even you wouldn’t do that.” Except he might.

“I guess it depends on how good a slave you are. I hope you’re wearing some sexy underwear because I’m in the mood for a lap dance.”

“I’ll make a phone call for you. There are a lot of desperate girls in Vegas.”

He rapped on a door with the back of his knuckles. “I’m only admitting this to you, Scoot, but I’m pretty much shit-faced from all those martinis they were pouring down my throat. Since I want to be cold sober for your lap dance, I’m sticking to club soda for the rest of the night.”

He didn’t look shit-faced, but she’d learned from past experience that he could consume vast quantities of alcohol before he slurred a single syllable. He was probably messing with her mind about the lap dance, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t conjured up something just as evil to use as blackmail. She could have a big problem on her hands, and she needed to figure out fast how to cope with it.

The door opened, and he swept her into a spacious private suite filled with marble, gilt, fresh flowers, and some very young, very beautiful women only slightly outnumbered by men. Judging by their height, most of them seemed to be basketball players except for a couple of unctuous-looking agents wearing pricey suits, expensive watches, and anxious expressions hanging out in the corner.

“It’s Scooter!” One of the basketball players rose to his feet and flashed a couple of gold teeth. “Damn, girl, you look good. Come on over here and have a drink.”

“Your adoring public.” Bram made a sweeping gesture, then headed for the bar where the women perched.

With only an empty hotel room waiting for her and plenty of women to claim Bram’s attention, she decided she could safely stick around for a while. Besides, she wouldn’t let Bram see her run. She soon discovered most of the men in the room played for the Knicks. The one who’d called her over turned out to be a goofball, but his teammate was a charmer. Kerry Cleveland had sexy dreadlocks, long dark eyelashes, and an infectious enthusiasm. Halfway through her first chocolate martini, she began to enjoy herself. She didn’t have to worry about cameras snapping away, and Bram was too preoccupied with the pretty young things hanging all over him to bother her.

Sometime around two in the morning, the party moved to a private gaming room, where Kerry taught her to play craps. For the first time in months, she was having fun. She’d just made her initial bet when Bram appeared at her side. “You do realize those are five-hundred-dollar chips.”

“I do, and I don’t care. You’re way too uptight.”

“I don’t think you’re uptight, Bram.” A lethal-looking redhead with a cigarette voice tried to drape herself around him, but he shrugged her off and announced he was playing, too.

When it was Georgie’s turn to roll, Bram placed his chips on the Don’t Pass Line. She threw the dice. A cheer went up as she rolled a winning six and five. Only Bram had bet against her.

“Too bad,” she whispered. “I know money’s tight for you, but I’ve heard male prostitutes can make a fortune if they find the right clients.”

“Always looking out for me.”

“That’s what friends do.”

The redhead kept trying to get Bram’s attention, and he kept ignoring her. She finally disappeared, only to return with two fresh martinis. She pressed one in Bram’s hand, but as she lifted the other to her lips, he took it away from her and handed it to Georgie. “Maybe this will loosen you up.”

The redhead looked so undone by his rejection that Georgie would have felt sorry for her if she hadn’t been so pushy. Bram rolled the dice and came up with a seven. So far, he’d broken even, while Georgie was down a few thousand. She didn’t care. This was fun. She sipped her martini and cheered Kerry on when it was his turn.

Time slid by, and the world began to whirl into a kaleidoscope of color. The dice bounced against the table’s edge. The stick swept across the green felt. The chips clicked. Suddenly, everything was beautiful, even Bram Shepard. They’d once created small-screen magic. Surely that counted for something. She rested her cheek against him. “I don’t hate you anymore.”

He draped his arm around her shoulder, sounding as happy as she felt. “I don’t hate you, either.”

Another beautiful minute ticked by, and then, for no reason at all, he pulled back. She wanted to protest as he walked away, but she felt too good.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him approach the redhead. He looked angry. How could he be mad on such a beautiful night?

The dice clicked and clicked again. Bram reappeared at her side. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

That was the last thing she remembered until the next afternoon, when she made the mistake of waking up.

Chapter 4

Georgie groaned. Her head throbbed, her mouth tasted like battery acid, and she had a septic tank where her stomach should be. As she curled her knees to her belly, her bottom brushed against Lance’s side. His skin was warm and-

Nooooooo!

She popped open the eye that wasn’t buried in her pillow.

A cruel blade of afternoon sunlight seeped through the draperies and picked out her lacy white bra lying on the bedroom carpet of her suite at the Bellagio. One of last night’s heels peeped out from beneath a pair of men’s jeans.

Please, oh, please, let those jeans belong to that sweet basketball player.

She buried her face in the pillow. What if they didn’t? What if they belonged to-

They couldn’t. She and the basketball player…Kerry-his name was Kerry…They’d flirted up a storm over the craps table. It had felt so good to flirt. So what if he was a younger man?

Okay, she was naked, and this was awkward. But now Lance was no longer the last man she’d slept with, and that was a sign of progress, right? Her stomach rumbled unpleasantly. She peeled her eye open again. She’d suffered through a few hangovers, but nothing like this. Nothing that had ever wiped out her memory.

The thigh rubbed against her bottom. It felt exceptionally muscular, definitely an athlete’s thigh. But no matter how hard she concentrated, the last thing she remembered was Bram dragging her away from the party.

Kerry must have come after her. Yes, she was sure she remembered him stealing her from Bram. They’d come back here where they’d talked till dawn. He’d made her laugh and told her she had more fortitude than any woman he knew. He’d said she was intelligent, talented, and a lot prettier than most people realized. He’d said that Lance had made himself look like an idiot walking out on a woman like her. They’d started talking about having children together-beautiful biracial babies, unlike Lance’s future pasty-faced kid. They’d agreed to sell the photos of their beautiful baby to the highest bidder and donate the money to charity, which would be especially touching after the Drudge Report dug up news that Jade Gentry had used all the charity money she’d raised to buy herself a yacht. Then Georgie would win an Oscar, and Kerry would win the Super Bowl.

Okay, wrong sport, but her head was hammering, her stomach churning, and a hard knee was trying to wedge deeper into her bottom.

She had to put herself out of her misery, but that would involve turning over and dealing with the consequences of what she saw. She needed water. And Tylenol. An entire bottle.

It began to dawn on her that liquor didn’t give a person total amnesia. This was no ordinary hangover. She’d been drugged. And she knew only one person corrupt enough to drug a woman.

She drove her elbow into his chest with as much force as she could muster.

He gave an oof of pain and rolled over, taking the sheet with him.

She buried her face in the pillow. Soon the mattress sagged as he got up. She heard the muffled sound of his footsteps dragging toward the bathroom. When the door shut, she fumbled for the sheet and made herself sit up. The room tilted. Her stomach roiled. She wrapped the sheet around her, wobbled to her feet, and staggered to the second bathroom, where she leaned against the sink and buried her face in her hands.

What would Scooter do if she’d been drugged and woke up naked in bed with a stranger? Or not a stranger. Scooter wouldn’t do anything because nothing this horrible had ever happened to her. It was easy to be all feisty and optimistic when you had a full-time writing staff protecting you from the real crap life tossed out.

As she let her hands drop, a horrifying image greeted her in the mirror, like early Courtney Love. A witch’s brew of tangled cherry-cola hair didn’t hide the beard burn on her neck. Blotches of old mascara smudged her green eyes like mud around an algae pond. Her wide mouth sagged at the corners, and her complexion was the color of bad yogurt. She made herself drink a glass of water. All her toiletries were in the other bathroom, but she washed her face and swirled some hotel mouthwash.