Strip club.
Ben stopped so abruptly he nearly fell over backwards. Oh man, oh man. All he’d wanted was to get the paparazzi off his back, but in retrospect, he really should’ve studied his surroundings before ditching his car. He’d parked in front of a damn strip joint.
So much for avoiding scandals.
Resisting the urge to hit himself over his own stupidity, Ben was startled when he noticed a crowd beginning to gather at the curb. He moved closer, growing more and more uneasy as he spotted an army of police officers and yards of yellow crime-scene tape.
Surrounding his shiny silver Lexus.
What the fuck?
Taking a step back, Ben tried to blend into the crowd. The Lexus, he noticed when he peeked over a woman’s head, was stripped completely. The doors were gone, the engine too, from the looks of it, and it looked like a pack of hyenas had pounced on it sometime during the night and picked it clean. That didn’t surprise him. What did was the presence of New York City’s finest.
Why did the cops care about his car?
Ben found out soon enough as the woman in front of him leaned over and whispered something to her friend.
“It’s Ben Barrett’s car,” she hissed.
Her friend, a chubby blonde, let out a gasp. “The movie star?”
“Yep. I heard one of the officers mention it.” The woman lowered her voice to a breathy whisper. “They think he’s been abducted.”
What?
It took every ounce of willpower to keep his jaw off the dirty sidewalk.
Head spinning, Ben edged away from the murmuring crowd and walked as casually as his legs would allow. He reached into his back pocket for his cell phone but found nothing. Damn, his cell had been in the car. He glanced around, noticed the coffee shop at the corner, and made a beeline for it.
He knew he had to call his agent and clear up this whole ridiculous mess, a plan that became vital the second he entered the café and heard his name blaring from the television screen over the counter.
“Bad-boy action star Ben Barrett is believed to have been abducted,” a nasal-voiced reporter was saying into her microphone. “His car was found stripped and abandoned in front of a local New York City club, and police fear the worst.”
Shoving the rim of his cap as low as it would go, Ben paused in front of the long chrome counter and glanced at the screen. He instantly swallowed a groan when he noticed that the female reporter was reciting her broadcast from the sidewalk directly in front of the Lester Hotel.
He bit back a curse when the skinny desk clerk entered the frame.
“I’m now talking to Derek Dorsey, an employee of the hotel where Ben Barrett was last seen. Derek, what can you tell us about your encounter with Barrett?”
Ben curled his hands into fists.
“Well, he looked very agitated,” the kid said, his eyes darting from the microphone to the camera trained on him. “He looked nervous too.”
“And what do you mean by nervous?”
“I think he was on drugs.”
The reporter feigned shock. “How tragic!”
“And he wasn’t alone,” the kid added, then waved at the camera and mouthed, “Hi, Mom.”
“Are you saying Ben Barrett met someone here last night?”
“Not someone. A woman. She came in an hour after he did and requested the key to his room.” Dorsey grinned, which caused his bony face to jut out awkwardly. “I think they were engaging in sexual relations, Bette.”
The blood rushing to his head prevented Ben from hearing the end of the interview. Fists clenched, he stalked across the deserted café and headed for the payphone in the narrow corridor leading to the restrooms.
He punched the number for the operator and made a collect call to his agent.
“Ben, are you okay?” Stu Steinberg’s voice boomed after they’d been connected.
“I’m fine,” Ben said with a sigh. He rubbed the stubble dotting his chin. “What the hell is going on?”
“You’re asking me?” Stu shot out a string of four-letter words. “Why was your car found gutted in front of a strip joint?”
“I was trying to lose the press. Then I checked into a hotel to get some sleep.” Even to his own ears the answer sounded feeble at best and preposterous at worst.
“And who’s this hooker you were with last night?”
Ben’s features hardened. “I wasn’t with a hooker, Stu. You know that’s not my style.”
His agent’s voice mocked him from the other end of the line. “You want to know what I do know about you, Ben? You’re a fucking idiot. You just inherited ten million bucks from a woman you had no business sleeping with—”
“Gretchen and I never—”
“So I told you to lay low, but did you listen? Oh no, you went out and caused a media storm. Do you realize how many calls I’ve gotten from the press this morning? Not to mention the police.”
“Stu—”
“They think you were abducted by a crazed whore, for Christ’s sake!”