Bram should be dead by now, killed by his own excesses, but the bony body she remembered from Skip and Scooter had grown tough, its wasted elegance transformed into hard muscle and long sinew. Beneath the sleeve of his white T-shirt a tribal tattoo banded a formidable bicep, and his navy swim trunks revealed legs with the taut, extended tendons of a distance runner. He wore his thick, bronzed hair rumpled, and the pale skin that had been as much a part of him as a hangover had disappeared. Except for the air of decadence that clung to him like a bad reputation, Bram Shepard looked shockingly healthy.

“He works out now,” Trev interrupted with an exaggerated whisper, as if he were divulging a juicy bit of scandal.

“Bram never worked out a day in his life,” she said. “He got those muscles by selling what was left of his soul.”

Bram smiled and turned his badass angel’s face to her. “Tell me more about this plan of yours to get your pride back by marrying Trev. Not quite as interesting as the pubic hair conversation, but still…”

She clenched her teeth. “I swear to God, if you breathe a word to anybody-”

“He won’t,” Trevor said. “Our Bramwell has never been interested in anybody but himself.”

That was so true. But she still couldn’t bear knowing he’d overheard something so humiliating. She and Bram had worked together from the time he was seventeen until he was twenty-five. At seventeen, his selfishness had been thoughtless, but as his fame had spread, his behavior had become more deliberately reckless. It wasn’t hard to see that he’d only grown more cynical and self-centered.

He drew up his knee. “Aren’t you a little young to have given up on true love?”

She felt a hundred years old. Her fairy-tale marriage had failed, putting an end to her dreams of finally having a family of her own and a man who’d love her for herself instead of what she could do for his career. She flipped her sunglasses back over her eyes, weighing the danger of the jackals lurking outside against the danger of the beast in front of her. “I am not talking to you about this.”