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until the day she died. Stubborn Kat.
    He’d spent years hustling for her, lying for her, believing in her, tolerating her occasionally outrageous demands, covering up indiscretions large and small. If he hadn’t known her so well, her mercurial moods, her tremendous incapacity for boredom, her inability to commit to anyone but herself, he might actually be hurt by her offer to cut him loose. Well, he wasn’t going to help her destroy the career he’d created. If Kat wouldn’t do the sensible thing and take a squeaky-clean date to the Pics and Pans and smile sweetly for every camera pointed in her direction, Herb would have to do it for her.
    He searched through his cell for a number he might have dialed once.
    Bingo.
    Kat’s body double had a stake in this, too. She was next on the list of people out of work if Kat’s career tanked. She answered on the second ring.
    “Cindy? Herb Benson. How ya doin’? Good. Listen, I’ve got a little favor to ask you—”
    Damage-control mode. All it would take was a little fast work, and by next week this would be so over. Why pay attention to reality when you have publicity?
    After all, this was Hollywood.
     
     
    “I think the diamonds are a bit much.” Bonita fingered her neck uncertainly. There had to be a hundred carats in the diamond collar that surrounded her throat.
    “It’s just right. Stop fidgeting. Anyway, I like the symbolism. Our little secret, right?”
    Bonita hadn’t thought about that. She grew wet under the minuscule white lace thong Kat had picked out for her to wear beneath her dress. Her gown was white, as Kat had promised, but under the incandescent stage lighting in Kat’s bathroom, it glittered. The shiny material was shot through with metallic rainbows, and everywhere the eye came to rest sparkled with silver sequins and delicate glass beads. The thin straps left her pale shoulders bare and showed a hint of cleavage. Silk slid over her breasts, belly and thighs like a cool waterfall. The slit up the back stopped at the knee, skirting the edge of decency, yet giving her plenty of room to maneuver in her slightly too-high, definitely too-expensive shoes.
    Kat’s dress made no attempt to be decent. It was fire-engine red and screamed, “Look at me!” It showed her breasts nearly to the nipple. In fact, Bonita was sure if Kat turned around too quickly, one of her boobs would pop right out of the nonexistent side of the dress. It was short, too, and Bonita wondered how she would manage to sit down without displaying her panties…if she was wearing any.
    Oh, God, that thought made her even wetter. Bonita closed her eyes, trying to clamp down on the insistent ache building between her thighs. When she opened them, Kat was staring at her with a wicked smile on her glossy red lips.
    Bonita glanced into the mirror at the image of them together. The makeup artist, hairdresser and Kat’s personal stylist had just left. It was a far cry from the last time they had gotten ready for a date together. Bonita and Kat had spent hours before the high school prom primping, plucking and painting in front of the three-by-three mirror in Kat’s upstairs bathroom. The effects they had achieved then couldn’t hold a candle to what Kat’s team had wrought upon them tonight. Bonita stared into the mirror in disbelieving wonder.
    “It won’t look so extreme under the lights,” Kat reassured her.
    “I didn’t know I could look this good.”
    Kat’s gaze swept over her, and she frowned. “Something’s not quite…hmm.”
    Kat stood behind her, looking over her shoulder into the wall-sized mirror, examining every detail of Bonita’s appearance, from the smooth, restrained up-do that was all Grace Kelly, down the silver slide of her sparkling dress, to the beaded straps that surrounded her ankles. Kat’s hands found Bonita’s hip bones under the smooth fabric of her dress and pulled her backward into the curve of her body.
    “Stop—you’ll mess me