Trevor answered the door. “Are you crazy?” He grabbed her wrist, jerked her into the cool foyer, then stuck his head back out, but his L-shaped entry offered enough privacy to shield her from the paps who’d be pulling over on the shoulder of the Pacific Coast Highway.

“It’s safe,” she said, an ironic statement, since nothing felt safe these days.

He rubbed his hand over his shaved head. “By tonight’s E! News, they’ll have us married and you pregnant.”

If only, she thought as she followed him into the house.

She’d met Trevor fourteen years ago on the set of Skip and Scooter when he’d played Skip’s dim-witted friend Harry, but he’d left his second-banana roles behind long ago to star in a series of successful gross-out comedies that were required viewing for eighteen-year-old males. Last Christmas she’d given him a T-shirt that read I BRAKE FOR FART JOKES.

Although he was barely five foot eight, he had a nicely proportioned body and pleasant, slightly cockeyed features that made him perfect to play the goofy loser who still managed to come out on top. “I shouldn’t have barged in,” she said without meaning it.

He silenced the baseball game playing on his plasma TV, then frowned at her appearance. She knew she’d lost more weight than her naturally slender dancer’s body could spare. It was heartache, not anorexia, that made her stomach rebel.

“Any reason you haven’t returned my last two phone calls?” he said.

She started to take off her sunglasses, then thought better of it. Nobody wanted to see the tears of a clown, not even the clown’s good friend. “Hey, I’m way too self-absorbed to care about anybody but myself.”