The next day on-set Malcolm could have told me I was the worst actress in Hollywood and I wouldn’t have cared. I was sleep-deprived but it was amazing what a night like last night did for a girl’s confidence. We flew through the day’s schedule and even Malcolm seemed surprised when we finished early.

“Well done, everyone. Well done, Chloe, good work,” he told us when we wrapped up.

Coming from him, it was rare praise indeed.

“Alright, spill,” demanded Faith as we walked back to our trailers.

“Spill what?” I replied innocently.

“Don’t make me hurt you. Why are you so happy?”

“I’m always happy.”

“Happier than usual.”

I laughed, linking arms with her. “Yes, alright. I might be a bit happier today. Gabe and I had dinner last night.”

Faith’s eyes narrowed. “It went well?”

“Very well.”

“You fucked him!”

“Faith!” I shot a desperate look around us.

“You did!”

“No, I did not—not that it’s any of your business.”

“Then why are you so happy?”

“It was a good night. You’ve been on a good date before, haven’t you?”

She huffed. “Dating’s not really my thing.”

“Well, you’ve enjoyed the company of a man before, then.”

A slow grin spread across her face. “Yeah, you could say that.”

I ignored her innuendo and decided to change the subject. Despite my brave behavior in the restaurant last night, I still wasn’t sure I was ready to talk about it to my girlfriends. “Hey, I think you left your jacket in my trailer from this morning.” We’d shared a coffee between scenes earlier and I’d spied it as I’d left my trailer before.

“I’ll grab it. Samantha’s clothes aren’t really my thing.”

I smiled. Faith’s character was a lot more prim and proper. She pulled it off well, but I had to agree—I preferred Faith’s edgier dress sense.

She followed me into my trailer and I gestured to the table. “Just over there.”

As she picked it up, I went over to my cell phone, which I’d left on the counter. I hid a grin as I spied a few messages from Gabe. There was also a message from Mama and Damon, plus a number I didn’t recognize.

I stared at the unknown series of numbers, but it was the preview of the message that caused my happiness to evaporate. It said: Attachment 1.

I hesitated. It wouldn’t be from the same person, would it?

Surely not. That had been some random person with a sick, twisted sense of fun who wanted to shock me and I hadn’t received anything since. How long had it been? Two weeks? Three?

I forced myself to breathe, easing the tightness in my chest and opened the message.

The image was grainy and dark but I could still make it out. It was Gabe and I facing each other in the doorway of the restaurant. Taken from outside. It must have been taken before we kissed. Before we . . .

“Oh my God,” I heard myself say.

Someone had been watching us. But how? Viktor had been right outside.

“What?” Faith asked as she threw the jacket over her shoulder.

I didn’t answer. My gaze dropped to the message below the image:

I know what you’ve been up to.

“No,” I said loudly. “No.”

“Alright, whatever it is, I get that you don’t like it.” Faith strolled over while I remained unmoving, staring at my phone.

“Chloe, what’s up?”

I didn’t have time to turn the screen off. If I’d been less shocked and more myself, I would have acted like everything was fine because I didn’t want anyone knowing about this. But everything wasn’t fine and I was so far from OK I could barely move.

Faith frowned and looked at my phone. “Holy shit. Give me that.” She snatched it out of my hand and viewed the image. “That’s you and Gabe.”

My hands remained holding thin air while she squinted at the picture.

“Is that the restaurant last night?”

I didn’t answer, couldn’t answer.

“Chloe!” She grabbed my shoulder and shook me.

I blinked. “What?”

She waved the phone in front of my face. “Is this you and Gabe last night?”

I frowned and tried not to look at it because if I did it would mean it was real. “Yes, I think so,” I admitted.

“Someone was stalking you?”

“I . . .” I shot her a desperate look. “I’m not sure. I’ve had one message before this.”

“What?” Faith hissed. “Show me.”

I carefully took the phone out of her hand like it was a ticking bomb and scrolled through my messages until I found it. “Here.”

“Son of a bitch. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t think it was anything to be worried about.” Liar, my subconscious shrieked.

“So you haven’t told anyone?” It was unusual to hear Faith so incredulous.

“I . . . ” Shit. What a mess.

“Spit it out.”

“I told Lena about the first one so I could get Marc to look into it. Ally happened to be there when I discussed it.”

A sharp look of pain flashed across Faith’s dark eyes, but then it was gone. “Good. At least you had the sense to tell someone.”

She was hurt. I’d hurt Faith Martin. I didn’t think it was possible, but even she wasn’t that good an actress and she was upset I’d chosen not to tell her.

“I didn’t want you to worry,” I said uselessly.

“I’m not your mother. Does she know about this?”

“No. God no! You remember my mother, right?” Aside from her dramatics, she’d have Viktor on round-the-clock watch if she so much caught a whiff of this.

Faith sighed. “Yeah. Come on, grab your things. We’re going to pay Lena and Marc a visit.”

*

VIKTOR HID HIS SURPRISE well when Faith jumped in the back of the car with me and instructed him to drive us to Lena’s. He went to say something, but Faith snapped, “Just do it.”

He met my eyes with a silent question. It was after ten at night and the request was more than a little unusual.

“Please, Viktor. It’s important.”

He nodded once and started the car. There would be questions later, but I couldn’t think about that now.

I shifted to face Faith. “Are you going to warn them we’re coming?”

“Already on it.”

We rode the rest of the way in silence to Lena’s expansive Hollywood Hills estate. If it bothered Marc that he was sharing the house Lena’s producer ex-husband had bought, he never showed it. Then again, he didn’t strike me as the sort of man to be worried about material things. Lena had often commented on his distrust of fame. It was very obvious to all those who knew him that the most important thing to Marc was Lena. It was almost as if he didn’t notice the grandeur of her estate. Or care about it.

The security guard at the gatehouse let us in after a brief chat with Viktor. I glanced back at the gates to the estate. They were imposing and so were the towering concrete walls that surrounded Lena’s property.

Is this what life would be like for me now? Lena’s fame had always brought her unwanted attention and earlier in the year she’d been forced to increase security measures in all aspects of her life. If anyone knew what I was currently going through, it was Lena.

Viktor parked in front of the grand entrance and I asked him to wait outside. He didn’t look happy about it and I promised we wouldn’t be long.

Lena was already opening the front door as we made our way up the marble steps. She was wearing a satin robe that revealed her impossibly long legs and her hair was tied back loosely in a ponytail. It was the least made-up I’d ever seen her but she still looked effortlessly elegant.

She hugged me as I came to the door. She didn’t tell me that it would be alright and for some reason that calmed me. Just having her know what it was like was enough.

“Chloe.” Behind Lena, Marc came down the last steps two at a time wearing a pair of jeans and pulling a T-shirt over his head as he did so.

Lena called the winding staircase her Gone With The Wind steps, but its beauty was lost on me right now.

Marc padded toward me on bare feet. “It’s from the same number?” he asked, holding out his hand.

I handed him my cell. “No, a different number, but I think it’s the same person.”

His dark eyes locked onto mine. “Why?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. I just have a feeling it is, that’s all.”

Marc seemed to accept my answer and studied the image and message. “They’re getting bolder.”

“ ‘They’? Aren’t we talking about a ‘he’?” Faith interrupted.

Marc tilted his head at Faith. He didn’t bother to greet her. “I don’t have enough evidence yet to make a call on that either way.”

“But the messages are sexual in nature, so it fits,” Faith persisted.

“What? Wait!” I cried. “Sexual? How?”

Marc gestured for us to walk through the foyer into Lena’s open-plan kitchen area. He spoke as we walked. “There haven’t been any sexual remarks directly, but the images imply it.”

“Because I’m with Gabe?”

“Because someone doesn’t like you being with Gabe,” he corrected.

“But why?” I hated the pleading note in my voice.

“Whoever this is sees himself with you. Or if it’s a woman, she thinks Gabe belongs to her.”

I closed my mouth. I didn’t have an appropriate response to that.

Marc set my phone down on the kitchen counter when we entered the room. “Just be glad they’re only messages at this stage. No attempts have been made to get near you or break into your property.”

I shuddered. “Could they?”

“It’s a possibility. Whoever it is got reasonably close in order to take the photo of you in the restaurant.”

Which was Marc’s way of saying he didn’t know. I guess when you dealt with crazy people for a living they were kind of unpredictable. Lena unfortunately knew that firsthand. Her estate had been breached on a number of occasions and I know it had been hard for Marc to stop thinking of himself as Lena’s personal bodyguard.

“I’ll need to speak to your security team,” he said.

I shot Faith a desperate look.

“Don’t look at me. I agree with him,” she said.

Marc watched our exchange with interest. “You haven’t told anyone else, Chloe?”

“No,” I said miserably. “I was hoping it was just a one-off.”

“Doesn’t look like it. For now it would be wise to increase your security detail. Your boyfriend’s too. If things escalate, he could be in danger, too.”

I collapsed onto one of Lena’s kitchen stools. Great, just great. Why now? Why when I was falling for someone really special did this horrible mess have to come and intrude on my happiness? Gabe might have been in a famous rock band, but he liked to fly under the radar. This would change everything for him.

“I don’t think he has a bodyguard or any security when he’s not in the band,” I said to no one in particular.

“Then it’s time he does.”

I barely heard Marc’s response. If this changed everything for Gabe, would it change everything for us? Would this level of scrutiny be too much for him? I’d seen firsthand how hard it had been when Ally had gotten involved with Jake. All the media attention had nearly broken them apart, and having a stalker had been too much for her and she’d retreated home to New England for a time.

Sure, Gabe was more used to it than Ally. But right from the start, getting to know Gabe hadn’t been easy thanks to our conflicting schedules and the constant public scrutiny.

“Hey.” Lena sat beside me on one of the stools. “You’re tired. You should go home to bed. You have to be on-set again tomorrow, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“Marc will take care of everything.”

“I know he will. Thanks Lena. Thanks Marc.” Despite my sense of sick unease, I was hugely grateful. If I didn’t have friends like Faith, Lena and Marc, how much worse would I feel right now?

“I’ll get her home,” Faith told them, and a faint smile touched Lena’s lips.

“I know you will. Thanks, Faith.”

I let Faith lead me back outside and Marc strode ahead of us to speak with Viktor. It only took a few words from Marc for Viktor’s entire countenance to change. His rugged face turned stony and his jaw clenched. Anger radiated off him, but to my surprise he shook Marc’s hand and gave him a respectful nod.

Faith opened the door of the car for me. I scooted across the back seat and kept my eyes down when I heard the driver’s door open then close.

Faith sat beside me and the engine started as she shut her door.

“Chloe.”

I met Viktor’s eyes reluctantly. To my surprise I saw only tenderness in his blue eyes.

“We’ll take care of you. There’s nothing to worry about.”

His reassurance was almost worse than his anger because I knew what it meant. After this, I would be treated like a child and handled with kid gloves.

I knew I should be more worried about the danger the ugly messages posed, but as far as I was concerned, those two little messages had already done their damage.

I might be an adult, but from now on I could say goodbye to my independence.