“Are you sure you’re okay?” my sister and assistant, Camilla, asked for the fortieth time as I sat in the dark living room of Grace Murphy’s little house with my phone to my ear. It was late—nearing midnight. I needed to go to bed, but my thoughts wouldn’t slow and my mind wouldn’t ease. After the tense encounter of this morning, the injury, and an endless stream of producers going over various details of the movie, I needed a little mindless chatter with my sister to take the day away.
I’d questioned early on whether involving family in my professional life was a good idea, but Camilla had turned out to be one of the best personal assistants in the business. Other celebrities were constantly trying to steal her away from me with fancy cars and promises of obscene money, and in the end, having a blood tie to keep her loyal to me wasn’t such a bad thing.
“I’m fine. The doctor came and went three hours ago—” A point of contention, by the way, with many, many people. Mariah, Camilla, Jason, two of the producers—they’d wanted me to be seen immediately, but there was no way in hell I was going to let it interrupt my schedule for the day. I’d wrapped my hand loosely with gauze over the salve Glen had put on and agreed to a visit after I finished my meetings. “The burns are only first degree, and I did the right thing by putting it under cold water. He wasn’t thrilled that it’d been running from the tap, but he didn’t see any signs of long-term damage. Plus, the cop who helped me put salve on it, right after getting it cooled made the active burning stop.”
“Ooh,” she cooed, my injury temporarily forgotten. “Hot cop tending to your wound. Sounds sexy.”
I laughed and pulled the blankets covering me in my huddle on the couch up higher. Even with the heat turned up to seventy-five, I was fucking freezing. It probably didn’t help that I’d naively packed silk camisoles and matching short-shorts for my pajamas.
“Not quite. Glen was very nice, but he’s middle-aged and has a daughter in college.”
I kept my mouth pointedly sealed about the cop who was hot—offensively so. He’d ruined any chances he had to star in my daydreams by being a colossal prick, and I didn’t need Camilla hounding me about him.
“Bummer,” she muttered glumly, and I laughed.
“I’m here to work. Not fall in love.”
“That’s the best time to fall in love!” she insisted. “When you’re lost in your work and don’t see it coming. Other celebrities do it all the time. Look at Channing and Jenna!”
I smiled and mindlessly picked at the quilt covering my knees. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I don’t think this is like that.”
“You never know—” Camilla started, but the flash of headlights through the front blinds caught my attention and distracted me.
“Who the hell is that?” I whispered without thinking.
Camilla picked up on the uncertainty in my voice immediately. “Where? What’s going on? I thought you were at your house.”
I jumped from the couch and ran to the front window, peeking through the blinds as discreetly as I could. The beams of the headlights blinded me, so I couldn’t see much.
“I am,” I murmured to Camilla. “Someone just pulled into the driveway.”
The love-bitten version of my sister was gone in an instant, and in her place, my assistant Camilla took charge. “No one is supposed to know you’re staying there, Ivy. Call the police.”
I rolled my eyes and argued. “They’re probably just turning around. I’m not calling the police.”
“I thought the house was in the woods.”
A shiver ran down my spine. “It is.”
Oh my God. What if Mariah was right, and this is my stalker?
“Ivy, call the police,” she ordered, just as the headlights shut off and the shadow of a man inside cut a menacing shape through the windshield.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered, true panic taking hold for the first time since he’d pulled in. “Camilla, he just turned out the headlights.”
“I’m calling the police!” she snapped before the line went dead.
My previously steady breathing devolved into pants as I sat there, frozen in the moment. After nearly a minute, he opened the door to the truck and moved to get out.
I jumped back from the window and, heart fluttering a hundred miles an hour, I backed up until my ass hit the couch.
Jesus Christ, what was I thinking, demanding that production secure Grace’s house for me? Sure, stepping inside her world was the easiest, realest way to learn to be her, but she’d been murdered by a serial killer! She had lived in the middle of nowhere!
Yeah, and now you’re here, in the middle of nowhere with a strange man outside…
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Footsteps crunched in the gravel out front, and I had a fleeting thought that I might pass out.
I had no weapon, no means to protect myself, and I was in lingerie, for shit’s sake.
Oh God. This is it. This is how it ends.
First rape, then murder.
The door creaked and cracked as the man on the other side forced it out of the frame and into the space of the small living room. My muscles locked, and everything inside me turned cold.
And my heart—it was beating so fast it felt like it wasn’t beating at all.
The door shut, and his heavy shadow weighted the room. He was big and I was defenseless, but I had to try. “Stop right there!” I ordered on a nearly shrill scream.
He jumped at the sound of my voice, spewing curses left and right before finally finding the light switch next to the door.
At the sight of Levi Fox—not my stalker, thank God—standing there, five feet away, in the small living room of the house I’d rented for my time here, you could have knocked me over with a feather.
He looked good in all the ways he hadn’t this morning, and it was painfully evident that this was his normal. But for all the tanned, warm skin and clear blue of his eyes, the shocked line of his mouth and the furrow of his brow stood out so starkly it was like all of his perfect features didn’t exist.
“What in the fuck are you doing here?” he finally roared, his volume just shy of glass-shattering.
“I live here!” I yelled back. “What are you doing here?”
“This is Grace’s house.” His voice was raw and his edict unarguable. Something in the sandy rasp of his voice made me gentle mine.
“Her family rented it to the production company for me to stay in.”
He shook his head almost violently, turning in a circle, and gave the wall next to the front door a look so vile, I was almost certain I’d be getting the opportunity to learn a thing or two about drywall repair.
He reeled it in, though, somehow, and turned back to look at me. His eyes were intense, and his appraisal of my body made me shake.
I wasn’t decent, I knew that much. I was just a step up from pornographic, if I was honest. But sexy sleepwear was a guilty pleasure, and I clearly hadn’t been expecting anyone out here.
He sounded strangled as he asked, “What are you wearing?”
Despite indisputable knowledge of how absurd I looked, I kept my answer simple. “Pajamas.”
I got lost in the flare of his eyes for a second, maybe two, but ultimately, the clench of his fists was too obvious to ignore.
But what I found when I let myself look at them closely wasn’t obvious at all.
“Is that nail polish?”
For half a second, he was self-conscious, but it didn’t take him long to talk himself out of it. Apparently, the asshole inside of him was much better at battle than the insecure man.
“I was babysitting tonight. Not that that’s any of your fucking business.”
“It may not be my business, but I’m pretty sure CPS should be involved. Whoever leaves their kids with you can’t be a good parent.”
“Watch your fucking mouth,” he snapped, his voice harsh to the point of scary. The old wood floor creaked with his weight as he leaned forward menacingly. “You don’t know anything about me, and you sure as fuck don’t know anything about Jeremy and Liza.”
I was uncomfortable, a little scared of how badly he could hurt me if he was inclined, but as much as it looked like he might have wanted to, he didn’t come any closer. I fought back with words and truth, the only way I knew how. I hoped they’d be enough to make him leave.
“I know you’ve shown up here, at my home for the moment, in the middle of the night, and accosted me.”
“Accosted,” he scoffed. His skin whitened at the roots of his hair, so rough was the hand he ran through it. “Sure is a fancy fucking word. No doubt something they taught you in Hollywood.”
“What would you call it, then?” I shouted. “You showing up here in the middle of the night and treating me to this scene?”
His face was vehement, and his words weren’t far behind. “Bad fucking luck. I didn’t know you’d be here. Trust me, if I had, I’d have driven forty miles in the other direction.”
It stung, his hatred. I felt the same way about him, and yet, somehow, I loathed that his opinion of me was so low. I guessed it was the people-pleasing part of me; it wanted acceptance no matter the people—even assholes.
Well, sexy assholes.
God, I hated my brain sometimes.
Lack of validation for that segment of my personality fueled another, though. The bitchy part.
My throat burned as I spat, “Dramatic, Officer Fox. Sounds like I’m not the only one with a penchant for Tinseltown.”
“I don’t need this bullshit,” he grunted on an angry turn toward the door. As if he was the one inconvenienced by his unannounced arrival at my house.
I followed his retreat indignantly, bare feet smacking against the wood floor with every step, feeling emboldened to take a jab at him now that I knew he was leaving. “What’s the matter, Levi? You can dish it out, but you can’t take it?”
“A goddamn joke,” he muttered as he ran his eyes over me once more and found only disgust. “Choosing you to play her. Red hair, green eyes, and a set of tits do not a Grace Murphy make.”
“They chose me based on more than her appearance!”
His smile was lethal. “Keep telling yourself that, honey.”
“What would you know about it?” I yelled, getting even more in his face. He planted his feet and bore my attack without moving.
He hadn’t been in my audition. He hadn’t cried the tears I had while letting Grace Murphy’s last words haunt me. He didn’t know shit.
His sapphire eyes moist with emotion, his voice was no more than a whisper. “More than you ever will.”
The power in those five words rocked me.
Time jammed and slowed as I realized how off base my pride had taken me. How arrogant I’d been in my stubbornness.
Officer Fox.
For just a fraction of a moment, I was back in my audition, reading the scene where Grace lay on the floor, bleeding from her wounds and fighting for her life. There’d been a man there, tending to her, his face fuzzy through the ebbs in her consciousness. The script notes had said only one thing.
[The glint of his nameplate shines in her eyes. It reads “Officer Fox.”]
Christ. He was the one. Grace, in a pool of agony and desperation, had died in this man’s arms. That was why I’d recognized his name.
I’m such a fool.
There were a million stories and haunted memories in his eyes, and I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen it sooner. He’d known Grace well, better than I could even fathom in my limited time getting to know her through secondhand information. And like a vampire’s vow, he’d just sworn to himself and me that I would never know the details of any of it.