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Shep disappeared into the back bedroom and I was left to entertain myself on a floral settee in a sunny room behind the kitchen. Bookshelves lined the buttercup-yellow wall. Fresh organic coffee steamed in a rose-patterned bone-china teapot. A spread of delicate cups, moist lemon squares and fragile doilies graced the coffee table. It was like visiting Poppy’s parents in Connecticut. I guess Shep was taking his entrée into the sisterhood more seriously than I thought.

I put three sugars in my coffee, stuffed an entire lemon square into my mouth and waited. The treat was tart, buttery, sweet and…I wanted a second one. I stuffed another in my mouth and daintily brushed confectioner’s sugar from my jeans.

Stephen puffed a sigh of disgust at my lack of manners and handed me a People magazine before he left to conquer some thrilling assistant’s task. I chewed vigorously and read the titles on the bookshelf. It didn’t appear that any of the bindings had been cracked.

I was alone for less than a minute when Gunter Heidelbach, soap star and puppy-loving spokesperson, strolled into the room wearing deconstructed jeans and a pink Johnny Cupcakes T-shirt. I lost my grip on my cup and the coffee splashed the saucer. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that he’d show up here to speak with me. Poppy would have shit a brick if she knew Gunter was sequestered in her cousin’s cushy apartment just off Park Avenue. She’d have knocked me down and come for this appointment herself. Served her right. I nearly texted a quick, Neener neener, you loser, because here was her obsession in the flesh.

I had to admit at this close proximity I could well appreciate her interest.

Gunter Heidelbach wasn’t your typical buffed and polished Hollywood actor—like our host, who was still finding trousers somewhere down the hall. Gunter was spare but broad shouldered, rough with a sparse morning beard that I found distressingly masculine. He held an unlit cigarette tight between two fingers and his dirty blond hair was slick from the shower. His feet were bare and tan. He had the polar opposite appeal of Shep McNamara—and in a way, he reminded me of Dan.

Until he opened his mouth.

“Hullo, Liebling. You ah my bodyguard? I am Gunter, but you will call me Gun, yes? It will be your job to keep my body guarded this weekend. Very lucky job for you, right?” He grinned, unrepentant of his own conceit. “But, Sheppard didn’t warn me you were attractive. Do you jujitsu?”

What the hell could I say with my mouth crammed full of lemon squares? I swallowed and stood to shake his hand, not knowing what else to do. Gunter took my outstretched hand carefully, trapping it inappropriately between his, while, wide-eyed, I choked down the rest of my treat. I pulled to withdraw from his grip, and his smile deepened and his hold tightened. He had unsettling apple-green eyes framed by laugh lines, and I was as caught by his gaze as I was by his hands.

Dude was strong.

He smiled broadly. “You’re too slight to be a bodyguard. Are you Shep’s?”

I licked my sugary lips and found my voice. “No, I’m the caterer. I’ve come about the party.” I wrestled free from his clutches. “I’m not slight. I’m average height.”

“Oh. I know you now. I saw you on the Internet. You ah the ex.”

“Internet? No. I’m sure you’re mistaken.” I didn’t cop to the ex. I sat on my end of the sofa, steadfastly ignoring the temptation of a third lemon square, and waited for the ex.

The plate of dessert beckoned. Maybe just one more…

Gunter plopped down beside me on the couch, tucked a foot under his tight butt and twisted around to offer me the brilliance of his full attention. Startled, I leaned back into the arm of the couch. Gun’s eyes sparkled. “You ah Caesar Romano, the roommate and the first luff. The secret college lovah. Three years. You ah a mystery—Shep has been discreet, if you can belief that.” He chuckled and I was concerned. What had Shep said? “But he let some things slip and thus, I just read about you.”

“About me? Why?”

“Because Shep is a curiosity—making the big show of his sensitivity and homosexuality just in time for the awards, I think. He’s shoplifting my niche. I need to know to whom I am against, and so, I researched. Also it’s very dull here this morning. His apartment lacks zest.”

“Well, you’re pretty well-known, don’t you think? Lots of airtime lately. With the puppies. And kittens.”

“Yes. This is the case.” He took a lemon square and placed it in my palm, then carefully licked confectioner’s sugar from his fingertips, his eyes locked on mine. His tongue was very red. I squirmed a little. What the hell was with this guy? He was really too much. “My life has become a media circus, and so I must be careful.”

“Surely it’s not that bad.”

“It is. Some scandals ah worse than others.”

Gunter’s accent was flavored with Germanic undertones and clipped, but only enough to make him sound exotic, not entirely foreign. I expected him to speak like Colonel Klink, since that’s how he came across on Poppy’s soap. He was about my age, late twenties, but he’d lived a little. He didn’t look concerned about anything today. He seemed more interested in flirting—but he was an actor, he could be hiding murderous intent behind a charming smile while selling you toothpaste and cracker snacks. Actors were not to be trusted.

I glanced at Gun and he stared with ill-concealed longing (an act, surely) at a spot just above my lip. I wiped my face with a floral napkin and winced when I grazed the split.

Gun chatted, spilling beans happily. “As for me? I am hiding from the press in this boring apartment until after the weekend, and then I leaf for California. Now I cannot go outside without some sort of ruse. Baseball hat and sunglasses. Not even to have a cigarette.”

“You’re hiding here? I thought…” I thought nothing, actually. If Dan was working for Gun—and he was—well, he usually kept the details of his job hidden under his own ball cap. Which was fine by me. But…I was intrigued. Was Dan protecting Gun? Digging for dirt or concealing it? This would be the topic du jour over lunch. Gun watched me closely and I said, “I thought you were Shep’s new lover showering in the back bedroom.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t, luff.”