The commercial break ended, and as the last segment of the show aired, Wyatt unobtrusively studied Phoebe, wondering what all she'd been through. By her own admission, this wasn't the first time someone had tried to force her into something. She tried to pretend it was no big deal, but he'd seen the raw fear in her eyes when Taylor had had her pinned against the wall. He'd seen the relief when he'd pulled Taylor off her. And he'd seen the sadness just now.
She'd been through hell.
Now all Wyatt could think about was making sure nothing bad ever touched her again. He felt responsible for this morning's disaster. He owed her.
The show ended, and everyone agreed they'd pulled it off. His hosts had come up with a plausible excuse for Taylor Shad's absence, and the game had worked out better than expected. But instead of taking care of the million details in preparation for tomorrow's show, Wyatt followed Phoebe into the dressing room where she'd gone to gather up her things.
'So, what did you think?' he asked.
'I think you're doing a great job.'
Her praise pleased him all out of proportion. 'Would you like to come back?'
Her hands stilled. 'You mean, to do makeup?'
'My regular person quit. I need to hire someone, and you obviously know your stuff.' He could get used to being around her, he decided. 'I wouldn't blame you if you weren't interested, after what happened-'
'Would you please forget about that? I don't want you thinking of me as some kind of victim, or a fragile little thing that needs protecting.'
Hell, that's exactly how he was thinking of her. 'I won't mention it again.' But he wouldn't forget it.
'Good.' She smiled. 'I'm a lot tougher than I look. Don't forget, I swam with the Hollywood sharks. Taylor Shad was just a minnow.'
'What about the job?'
She hesitated. 'What are the hours, and what does it pay?'
He told her. She dropped a makeup brush. 'No kidding?'
He suspected it was more than she made at the spa.
'What about weekends?' she asked.
'No weekends.'
'That'd be perfect,' she murmured. Then, louder, she said, 'No, I really don't think-' She stopped. 'What am I saying? Of course, I'll take it.'
Wyatt's relief was palpable. 'I assume you'll need to give notice at the spa. I'm sure I can find a substitute-'
'I can start tomorrow. My boss at Sunrise fired me this morning.'
'Why?' he asked.
'Because I was coming here. Because I refused to let her push me around.'
'I got you fired?' It just got worse and worse. His debt to her kept growing.
'No, you gave me a great new job. Where do I sign up?'
Wyatt took her to Personnel, where she got some forms to fill out. He also got a five-hundred dollar check cut for that morning's work. Then suddenly, at eleven-fifteen, she looked at her watch and got a panicky expression in her eyes.
'Oh, my gosh, I have to go,' she said breathlessly. She grabbed her case and her purse, then pulled the visitor badge off her collar and handed it to him.
'You have another job or something?' he asked, keeping pace with her, as she headed for the station's front doors.
'Or something. What time tomorrow?'
'We'll talk about it later.'
Then she peeled out of the studio as if her pants were on fire. Wyatt sat down in the nearest chair, feeling like he'd been run over by a bulldozer. Had he just hired Phoebe Lane to be on the staff of his show? His grandparents would be pleased. But he would see her every day. Which meant that every day he would have to resist his attraction to her. He knew better than to have a relationship with someone on his staff.
Just as well, he tried to tell himself. He didn't need a woman in his life right now. Anyway, Phoebe had made it abundantly clear she wasn't interested in him, either. As pretty as she was, she was probably used to setting boundaries in clear terms, up front. If she didn't, she'd be hit from all sides.
When Phoebe got home from her classes that night, she noticed Wyatt's car in his carport. That in itself was unusual-he was almost never home. Even more unusual was the note on her door from him. 'Call me when you get in-we need to discuss tomorrow's show. Wyatt.'
'And what's wrong with leaving a message on my answering machine?' she murmured as she let herself into her apartment. But she was coming to realize Wyatt never did anything the ordinary way. He was altogether unpredictable.
She was tired and achey and out of sorts. Her organic chemistry test hadn't gone well, and she had another test tomorrow-calculus-that she had to study for tonight. Having to squeeze in a meeting with her new boss should be making her feel even crankier.
But she looked forward to seeing Wyatt. Normally she didn't like it when an employer infringed on her personal time. But for some reason, she didn't begrudge Wyatt his request. She went straight to the phone and called him.
'Phoebe.'
He sounded pleased to hear from her.
'You rushed away so quickly today I didn't have a chance to brief you about tomorrow's guests. You want to go out for coffee, and I can give you the rundown?'
Phoebe didn't want to be difficult, but going out didn't sound like much fun. She'd been gone all day, and more than anything she wanted to put on her fluffy robe and slippers, and curl into her beanbag chair with her books. 'Why don't you come over here?' she said brightly. 'I'll put a pot of coffee on.' She would need it for the late night of studying she had planned.
'If you'd rather. See you in a few.'
Phoebe put on the coffee, then quickly picked up her apartment, careful to stow her schoolbooks in the bedroom. She'd told almost no one about trying to get a college degree. Daisy and Elise knew, and Wyatt's grandparents, but they'd all been sworn to secrecy.
After moving to Phoenix, she'd gone to a career counselor and taken some tests to find out what, aside from acting and makeup, she might be good at. She'd been floored when she got her test results back. She'd made almost a perfect score on the SAT, and the IQ test had placed her at near-genius level.
'My mother would faint' was the first thing Phoebe told the counselor. Olga, who had immigrated to America from Denmark when she was a child, had never pressured Phoebe to make good grades. 'God did not give you that gorgeous face and body so you could become a nuclear physicist,' Olga had said more than once. 'You've got everything you need to become a movie star or land a rich husband, or both.'
Olga, despite looking very much like her daughter, had done neither. Phoebe's factory-worker father had disappeared when she was three, and Olga had never remarried, though she'd tried awfully hard and was still trying. As for show business, the pinnacle of Olga's career had been when she played a Swedish maid for two weekends at a dinner theater.
That didn't stop her from having sky-high hopes for her daughter-acting classes, dance classes, speech classes to get rid of that New Jersey accent, and beauty school, just in case.
For a while, Phoebe had bought into Olga's fantasy. She'd skated through high school with straight Cs because she figured she wouldn't need an education. Later, after Phoebe moved to L.A. and changed her name, all of Olga's dreams for her daughter seemed to be coming true.
But Phoebe's success had been fleeting, a lucky first break that didn't lead to much of anything. Olga had been crushed when Phoebe had announced she was leaving Hollywood and giving up show business. Her worst
