Hot and Bothered
1
HAVEN HOYT SIPPED her water, smoothed her napkin over her lap and cast yet another glance toward the door of Charme, the see-and-be-seen Manhattan restaurant. Her newest client was late, but that didn’t surprise her. Mark Webster had a reputation for being all kinds of unpredictable. Compared to some of the reasons his name had been splashed in the press, late to lunch was a minor sin.
She surveyed the restaurant again to make sure she hadn’t missed him. She loved this place, with its half-circle booths like enormous club chairs and high ceilings baffled with great swoops of black and white. Light flooded the room through big front windows and from a million tiny halogens. She knew the restaurant’s owner and its interior designer. And the publicist who had made it a sensation was a friend of Haven’s—she made venues the way Haven made people.
Speaking of people Haven had made, Amanda Gile was dining with a well-known fashion writer two booths over, her adorable short haircut drawing attention to her high cheekbones and long neck. Haven smiled. A year ago, Amanda had opened a small boutique on Amsterdam. The New York fashion retail world had been ready to chew her up and spit her out, but Haven had transformed her into a celebutante—invited everywhere, fussed over, photographed. Haven had enjoyed every minute of the process—the shopping, the makeovers, the parties in the Hamptons where she’d draped her client over actors, producers, musicians and news makers. Amanda’s success had boosted Haven’s stock, too.
Mark Webster was going to be a lot more challenging than adorable, innocent Amanda Gile, but Haven had no doubt she could resuscitate his image. His pop group, Sliding Up, had taken high school girls by storm nine years ago, but now he was a has-been guitarist with a bad reputation. He boozed, he womanized, he brawled and he partied—and not in a slick, arm-around-an-it-girl way. He favored dark, sketchy clubs that he often managed to get himself tossed out of. And the sin that overrode all sins was that he put his foot in his mouth ninety percent of the time.
But as one of New York’s premier image rehabilitators, Haven knew better than anyone that bad publicity was still publicity, and a star’s light never went out.
The sound of a commotion at the door told Haven that Mark Webster had arrived. She’d done her homework, of course. She’d searched a million pictures of the guy online and couldn’t help her tingle of interest at the fascinating contrast between his clean-cut boy-band self and the disaster he appeared to have become. As a band member, he’d been golden and dimpled and damn cute. These days, his hair was too long to be sexy, his beard was a fungus trying to colonize his face, his eyes were often puffy and bloodshot, and he looked drunk in every photo.
Just like the guy who was leaning on the hostess stand now, an expression on his scruffy face that—on a less permanently pissed-off man—might have been pleading. But Mark looked sullen and faintly threatening. He was much bigger than Haven had guessed from the photos—tall, broad, built, undiminished by whatever hard living had taken the shine of youth off his features.
“I don’t own a tie. Or a jacket. I’m meeting someone here, okay? She’s over there.” His voice was loud enough for Haven to hear now, his jaw thrust forward, his eyes narrow. He wore torn jeans, a gray T-shirt and a leather bomber jacket that looked as if it had been through a thresher. He was a sharp contrast to the polished perfection of Charme and its diners, a collection of people confident about where they belonged in New York City and life.
She felt a little pang of sympathy for him, even if she knew he’d brought this on himself. In her email to him, she’d noted that dress was business casual. And yet... Somehow she knew he would have felt even more out of place if he’d dressed the part. The clothes he was wearing were a shield. Against the restaurant, against what was being demanded of him, against what she was about to put him through.