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.

She still didn’t feel capable of coping with whatever lurked on the other side of that door, so she pushed her hair out of her face and sat on the marble tub deck. She wanted to call someone, but she couldn’t burden Sasha right now, Meg was unreachable, and she wasn’t up to confessing her transgression to April, who would be so disappointed in her. A former rock-and-roll groupie had become her moral compass. As for her father…Never.

She made herself get up and tightened the sheet under her arms. The bedroom was empty, but her hopes that he’d left faded when she saw his clothes still on the floor. She shuffled across the carpet and out into the living room.

He stood at the windows with his back to her. He was tall. But he wasn’t NBA tall. He was her worst nightmare.

“Don’t say a word until the coffee gets here,” he said without turning. “I mean it, Georgie. I can’t deal with you right now. Unless you have a cigarette.”

Rage swept through her. She snatched up a couch pillow and hurled it at Bramwell Shepard’s rumpled tawny head. “You drugged me!”

He ducked, and the pillow hit the window.

She tried to go after him, but as he turned toward her, she tripped over the bedsheet, and it slipped to her waist.

“Put those away,” he said. “They’ve already gotten us into enough trouble.”

She had better luck connecting with one of his abandoned shoes.

“Ow!” He rubbed his chest and had the nerve to look outraged. “I didn’t drug you! Believe me, if I was going to drug a woman, it wouldn’t be you.”

She tugged the sheet into her armpits and looked around for something else to throw. “You’re lying. I was drugged.”

“Yeah, you were. We both were. But not by me. By Meredith, Marilyn, Mary-somebody.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“The redhead at the party last night. Remember those drinks she brought over? I took one and gave you the other-the one she made for herself.”

“Why would she drug herself?”

“Because she likes the feeling she gets!”

Georgie had her first inkling that, for once in his life, Bramwell Shepard might be telling the truth. She also remembered the way he’d confronted the woman and how angry he’d looked. She jerked up the sheet and lurched toward him. “You knew those drinks were drugged? You knew, and you didn’t put a stop to it?”

“I didn’t know. Not until I finished mine, looked at you, and realized I wasn’t totally repulsed!”

A rap sounded at the door, and a voice announced room service. “Get back in the bedroom,” she hissed. “And give me that robe! The tabloids have informants everywhere. Hurry up!”

“If you give me one more order…”

“Please hurry up, you dickhead!”

“I liked you better when you were drunk.” He pulled off the robe, tossed it over her arm, and disappeared. She threw the sheet behind the couch and knotted the sash on her way to the door.

The waiter wheeled in the serving cart and arranged the dishes on the dining room table, which sat under a gilded chandelier. She heard the shower go on in the bathroom. Word would spread that she hadn’t spent the night alone. Fortunately, no one knew whom she’d spent it with, so this might work to her advantage.

The waiter finally left. She made a dash for the coffee, then wobbled over to the windows and tried to pull herself together. Far below, tourists had gathered to watch the Bellagio’s fountain show. What had taken place in that bedroom last night? She couldn’t remember anything. Only the first time…

The day they’d met, she’d been fifteen, and he was seventeen. His beauty had left her dumbstruck, but he’d dismissed her with a bored grunt and a single sweep of those cocky lavender eyes. Naturally, she was smitten.

Her father’s warnings about him only intensified her crush. Bram was arrogant, sulky, undisciplined, and gorgeous-catnip for a fifteen-year-old romantic-but he ignored her during those first two seasons unless they were actually filming. She might have been on the cover of a dozen teen magazines, but she was still a skinny kid with gum ball green eyes, marshmallow cheeks, and a Silly Putty mouth. Her skin was perpetually broken out from the makeup she had to wear, and her curly orange Orphan Annie hair made her look even younger. Going out with a few cute teen actors didn’t bolster her confidence, since her father had arranged the dates for publicity. The rest of the time, Paul York kept her locked up tight, safe from Hollywood’s vices.

Bram’s glittering good looks, cocky manner, and street tough’s attitude stirred all her fantasies. She’d never known anyone so wild, so free of the need to please. She laughed too loud trying to get his attention. She bought him presents-a new CD he had to hear, gourmet chocolates that were the best ever, funny T-shirts he never wore. She saved up jokes to tell him, agreed with all his opinions, and did everything she could to make him like her, but unless the cameras were rolling, she might as well have been invisible.

The contrast between his rough upbringing and the polished preppy he played fascinated her, and she pieced together his history from his hometown buddies, loudmouth jerks who hung around the set.

Bram had grown up on Chicago’s South Side. From the time he was seven, when his mother died from a drug overdose, he’d had to look out for himself. His irresponsible father, a sometimes house-painter who relied on his girlfriends for beer money, had died when Bram was fifteen. Bram had dropped out of school not long after and started hustling. One day a wealthy forty-year-old divorcée spotted him while she was doing volunteer work and took him under her wing-maybe into her bed-Georgie had never been sure about that. The woman polished up his rough edges and talked him into modeling. After a high-end Chicago men’s store snatched him up for an ad campaign, he’d dumped his benefactor, taken some acting lessons, and eventually landed a couple of parts with one of the local theater companies, which led to his audition for Skip.

The show’s fourth season began. Georgie promised herself she’d make him see that she wasn’t a nuisance but had grown into a desirable eighteen-year-old woman. They started work in July, shooting on location in Chicago. One of Bram’s loser friends mentioned that Bram was chartering a yacht for a Saturday-night drinking cruise on Lake Michigan. Since her father was going to New York for the weekend, Georgie decided to crash the party.

She dressed carefully in a leopard-print halter dress and little platform sandals. As she stepped on the yacht, she noticed most of the women wore short shorts and bathing suit tops. R. Kelly blared from the boat’s sound system. The women were all in their twenties with gleaming hair, long legs, and sexy bodies, but Georgie held the fame card, and as the boat left the dock, they detached themselves from Bram’s homeboys to talk to her.

“Could I have your autograph for my niece?”

“Do you take acting classes and everything?”

“You’re so lucky to be working with Bram. He’s like the hottest guy on the planet.”

Georgie smiled and autographed, all the while keeping an eye out for Bram.

He finally emerged from the cabin. He wore rumpled shorts and a tan polo shirt. He had a woman under each arm, a drink in his hand, and a cigarette dangling from his lips. She wanted him so badly she hurt.

The moon came up, and the party got rowdier-exactly the kind of party her father had always kept her away from. One of the girls took off her top. The men hooted. Two of the women started kissing. Georgie would have been okay with it if they’d been lesbians, but they weren’t, and the idea of women making out just to put on a show for men disgusted her. When they started rubbing each other’s breasts, she slipped inside to the salon, where half a dozen guests were hanging out around the bar and lounging on a horseshoe-shaped white leather couch.

An air-conditioning vent sent a chilly blast over her ankles. She’d nurtured so many hopes for tonight, but Bram hadn’t even spoken to her. Above her head, the sound of catcalls grew louder. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t belong anywhere except mugging in front of a camera.

The door opened, and Bram ambled down the steps. This time he was alone. The hope that he might have followed her blossomed as he slouched into a bucket chair not far from where she was standing and looked her over. The combination of his preppy Skip haircut, golden beard stubble, and a brand-new tattoo circling his thin bicep just beneath the sleeve of his knit shirt thrilled her. He draped one leg over the chair arm and took a slug from his drink, his eyes still on her.

She tried to think of something clever to say. “Great party.”

He gave her his familiar bored look, lit another cigarette, and squinted at her through the smoke. “You weren’t invited.”

“I showed up anyway.”

“Meaning that Daddy’s out of town.”

“I don’t do everything my father says.”

“That’s not the way it looks to me.”

She shrugged and tried to look cool. He flicked an ash on the carpet. She’d never been able to figure out what she’d done to earn his dislike except get paid more, and that wasn’t her fault.

He pointed his drink toward the deck. “Party getting a little too wild for you?”

She wanted to tell him that watching girls demean themselves depressed her, but he already thought she was a prude. “Not at all.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t know me. You only think you do.” She’d tried to sound mysterious, and maybe it was working because his eyes slid over her in a way that made her finally feel as if he was really seeing her.

Her orange curls had gone wild with the humidity, but her makeup looked good. She’d used bronzy shadow on her eyes and nude-colored lipstick to downplay her mouth. The leopard-print halter dress wasn’t anything Scooter Brown would wear, and she’d emphasized the difference by sticking cutlets in her bra, but as his gaze came to rest on her breasts, she had the feeling he knew they were fake.

He blew a thin ribbon of smoke. “I bet you’re still a virgin.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m eighteen. I haven’t been a virgin for a couple of years.” Her heart began to pound at the lie.

“If you say so.”

“He was an older man. You’d know who if I told you, but I’m not going to.”

“You’re lying.”

“He had this hang-up about powerful women. That’s why I finally had to break up with him.” She loved how worldly she sounded, but his mocking smile wasn’t reassuring.

“Daddy Paul wouldn’t let an older man get near you. He never lets you out of his sight.”

“I got here tonight, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, I guess you did.” He drained his glass, ground out his cigarette, and stood. “Let’s go then.”

She stared at him, her confidence slipping away. “Go?”