I look at him, and if I didn’t have any witnesses, I would put a bullet right between his fucking beady little eyes. “Should have shot my right side, motherfucker,” I tell him, and I fire my shot. It hits him right in the shoulder, and his arm jerks back, and the gun falls to the floor with a loud clunk. I run to her as men with their weapons drawn survey the room. Each has their own mission as they secure the house and make sure another threat isn’t in the house.
“Are you okay?” I ask, going to the ropes around her waist first as my heart returns to normal. Seeing the gun drawn and pointed at her, I felt my heart stop, my breathing stop; everything in me stopped, and the only thing I could do was get to her. She looks down at me, her eyes finding mine. Even with all the commotion around us, her eyes never leave mine. “Baby,” I say once the ropes around her waist are loose.
“We told you to stay back,” Jake hisses at me, and I don’t even pay attention to him. The only thing I’m looking at is her.
She turns her head when she hears Hunter’s voice coming from somewhere close. “You’re lucky he let you keep your balls.” He’s squatting in front of Tommy. “Stupid bastard, you think you could touch her, and he wouldn’t do anything?” He shakes his head, laughing. Two uniformed cops are around him. One sits him up while the other one cuffs him, and he winces out in pain. “Pussy,” Hunter mumbles.
“Are you hurt?” I ask her, and now she turns to me and sobs. I grab the knife from my thigh and cut the duct tape from her wrists. She flies into my arms; her arms go around my neck, and she buries her face in my neck, crying. My arms go around her waist. “Baby, I need to cut the tape from your feet,” I say quietly to her, and she just shakes her head. “I promise you that you can come back into my arms. Just let me get you free.” She slowly leans back and then looks at my arm that has been leaking blood, but I ignored it until I got to her. I look down at where her eyes are and see that a small puddle has formed.
“We need a paramedic!” she shouts and then starts to cry again, looking around for someone to pay attention to her, but everyone is busy doing their own thing. I reach for her face and cup one side, and she winces. I can finally see the swelling from where Tommy hit her and a small gash on her cheek. “Someone get him help.”
“It’s a flesh wound,” I say to her and finally cut off the duct tape from her feet. Standing up, I pick her up and carry her out of the house. The whole place is now lit up, and I see twenty cop cars, all parked with their headlights aimed at the cabin and all the lights shining on us. Two ambulances are waiting with the paramedics sitting on the back of the ambulance. The doors open, a gurney is inside. “I think she needs stitches on her cheek,” I tell them, and she just shakes her head while they move to the side. I step into the ambulance and place her gently on the gurney, then move out of the way for the girl paramedic to come in and check her cheek.
She doesn’t even make it to her, pushing her hand aside, and saying, “He got shot.” She points at me while one paramedic fixes her and the other pulls up my sleeve.
“It just grazed you,” he says to me, “but you’re going to need stitches.” I go and sit next to Kellie, holding her hand in mine.
“You are both going in,” the paramedic says. “Are you going together?”
I look at her and say, “She doesn’t go anywhere without me.” The guy nods at me, and they both jump out of the back. After shutting the door, he blares the sirens as we make our way to the hospital.
When we get to the hospital, I get up and open the back door of the ambulance when I hear them slam their doors. I step out and wait for them to get her out and wheel her in. “He is the one who is shot!” she yells, trying to get up off the stretcher.
My phone beeps, and I take it out to see a text from Hunter.
Hunter: Press is on the loose. Getting everything ready to shut down the hospital. There in two minutes.
The nurses try separating us, but after one look at my face, they know that isn’t going to happen. They instead wheel us to a bigger, more private area. “Close the blinds.” The nurse nods her head and goes to close them, then comes over. “The press have gotten hold of the story,” I tell the nurses and then look over at Kellie, who is now sitting with eyes wide open. “It’s going to be okay.” Walking to her, I say, “Hunter is here. But you need to let the nurses check you, okay?”
She nods at me, and the nurses go over to her. I give them room to do their thing. One checks her blood pressure while the other assesses her cheek. “We can probably glue this, and the scar will be very minimal.” I look over at the door and see them coming in with another gurney for me.
The nurse who looks like she can probably take me out even though she is five foot two points at the bed, so I go. She rolls up my sleeve and just nods while my phone beeps. She cleans the wound, the stinging doesn’t stop me from reading the texts with my team.
Dante: Press is all over, man.
Dante: I found a couple in the ER waiting room.
Hunter: I say we have a fifteen-minute window. What is your ETA?
I look at the nurse who is finishing my arm. “We need to get her out of here in the next fifteen minutes or a mob will descend, and it’ll be a dangerous situation for everyone.” She looks at me and just nods when two detectives come into the room. Their eyes go straight to me, and I know one from when I did security for some rap guy who decided it was a good idea to carry a weapon through airport security. I nod at the one I know, and he just looks at me.
“Brian, she needs to give a statement before she leaves, or she needs to come down to the precinct.”
“You have fifteen minutes,” I tell him, and he understands what I’m saying. “After that, she is going, so if it’s longer than that, you need to schedule it with her attorney.”
He nods at me and then walks over when the nurses finally finish with her. The doctor checks her over and then walks over to me to check out my stitches and cover it up.
“Miss Hudson,” he starts, and she looks at him, “I’m Detective Glashow, and this is my partner, Detective Schneider. We have a couple of questions for you, and then we can let you go on your way.”
“Anything I can do to help,” she tells them softly, and then she looks at the doctor and the nurses who quickly exit the room. I get off the bed and move to stand beside her.
“If you can explain to us how you got to that cabin?” Detective Glashow asks her.
“I have no idea really,” she tells them. “The only thing I remember is stepping off the stage, walking with him to my dressing room, and then he told me he had a surprise for me.”
“How did he get you in the car?” he asks, looking up from the notepad he’s writing on.
“I have no idea. I do remember feeling a pinch,” she says, touching her neck. I move closer to inspect it and see a little red mark.
“She has a tiny puncture wound,” I tell them and ask them, “What difference does it make how she got there?”
He just looks up from his pad and then looks at Kellie, ignoring me. “Did you go with him willingly?”
“No.” She shakes her head while speaking. “I was going to get on a plane and take off an hour after my show.”
“Did Mr. Surray tell you anything?” he asks her, using Tommy’s last name.
“He said that we were going to be married,” she says softly, looking at me while I stand here with my legs open. I put my hands in my back pockets and try not to freak out. “He said that he’s been taking money from me, and that if he married me, I wouldn’t hate him.”
“Son of a fucking bitch.” I shake my head. I take my phone out and text Rachel.
Rachel: Tommy took money from Kellie; check accounts.
“Who tied your hands and feet together?” he asks, and now I’m about to lose my shit.
“Get to the point, Detective.” My eyes leer at them.
“Miss Hudson, Mr. Surray is under arrest and will be in court tomorrow morning on charges of fraud,” he says, and she
looks at him with her mouth open. “He’s been embezzling funds from all of his clients, leaving most no choice but to file for bankruptcy.”
“Oh my God,” she says, bringing her hand to her mouth.
“Mr. Surray said you went with him willingly, and it was your plan all along to marry him in the morning,” Detective Schneider says, and she shakes her head.
The tears fall now. “I was never going to marry him, and I told him that he should just shoot me now since there was no way I was going to marry him.”
“Well then,” Detective Glashow says, “I can see why you two fit so good together.” He looks at me, putting his pad away. “I’ll call you if we need anything else.” He nods, and they both walk out the room. Cori rushes in, her face white with tears streaming down her face. She rushes to Kellie’s side, taking her in her arms.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobs, “I should have followed you, but I was just talking to Trisha, and by the time I walked back to the room, you weren’t there, and I just had an uneasy feeling.”
“It’s okay.” She comforts her while rubbing her back. “You couldn’t have known it was Tommy.”
She finally leaves her arms and then walks to me. “I’m so sorry I didn’t keep her safe for you.”
She hugs me, and I whisper to her, “I trust you with her life.” She just nods. “If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have known where she was,” I tell her. “You called the minute you found out, and it solved the whole case really.”
“How did you find me?” Kellie finally asks me, and I just look at her, finally able to smile.
“I’ll always find you no matter how far you run,” I say softly to her. She looks like she is going to say something to me but doesn’t because Hunter comes in.
“Hey.” He looks at Kellie. “I’m glad you’re okay, but …” He looks at me. “The press has tripled. I saw a CNN van, and I also saw a Fox News van. You have reporters at both penthouses and her house in LA.”
“We need to move,” I say, walking over and taking her into my arms. She wraps an arm around my shoulder and then lays her head on my shoulder. I nod at Hunter and walk out of the room. Hunter stays in front of me, and Cori is on our side. We walk out the back door, and I climb into an ambulance and place her on the stretcher. Cori gets in, followed by Hunter, who gets in and closes the door. “Go,” I say to Dante who is in the front driving. We pull out of the hospital without the sirens and without the press even finding out we left.
Once we get to the airfield, the plane is there waiting for us. Hunter opens the doors and is joined by Dante who looks at Kellie.
“I should have been closer to you,” he says, and I know he will feel the guilt. It’s in us to feel it.
“No one could have known,” she tells him when I put her down on her own two feet. She walks to him and hugs him, and I try not to yank her back to me. “You helped save me.”
“I saved you,” I tell her, and she looks over at me. I finally see her smile while Hunter and Dante chuckle. “We have to go,” I tell her, and I grab her hand, nodding at my boys. We walk up the steps and into the plane.
“Where is Cori?” she asks him when she looks over at the attendant who is closing the door.
“She is going to meet us in a couple of days,” I tell her. “She needs to make sure things are set up, and then she’ll meet us.”
“Where are we going?” she asks me, and the long speech that I had planned for tonight is gone. Instead, I go with the condensed version.
“I just bought a house in Montana.” I sit next to her and buckle her in first and then myself. “We have to talk.” She looks at me. “There are a lot of things to say.” I put an arm across the back of the couch, my hand touching her shoulder and my thumb rubbing circles on it. “But the first thing I’m going to say is that I love you.” With everything that she went through, the only thing I could think of was that I never told her I loved her. I never got a chance to say those three words, so I knew it was the first thing I would say to her. “I’ve loved you for a long time.”
“But you told …” she says now, her voice cracking, and I put a finger on her lips to stop her from talking.
“Did you really think the first time I said anything about me loving you was going to be to someone who wasn’t you?” I smile at her, and she blinks. A lone tear runs down her face, and I wipe it away with my thumb. “That is for you and only you,” I say softly, moving closer to her “Only you, baby.” I lean in and kiss her lips softly. “I love you.” My hand cups her cheek softly. “All of you.” I kiss her cheek with the cut. “Every single part of you.” I move to the other cheek. “For the rest of my life, I’m going to love you with everything that I have.” Her hand comes up and holds the wrist to my hand holding her face.
“Mr. Kitch,” the flight attendant says, “we are ready to take off. Oh, and your father is waiting for your phone call.”
“Mr. Kitch?” she asks me, and I see the question in her eyes. Her eyes go to the television in the corner that has been playing. Suddenly, my picture flashes on the screen. It’s a picture of my father and my brother. Then the picture of us out in New Orleans flashes onto the screen with the ticker at the bottom,
“Oil tycoon billionaire’s son falls for Hollywood’s Princess.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Brian
The wheels hit the tarmac, jostling her awake. “We’re home,” I whisper. After I professed my love for her, she put her head on my shoulder and fell asleep in minutes. I pulled her to me and let her sleep while I touched base with everyone on the ground. We definitely had things to discuss, but she needed to eat first, and then she needed to sleep. I let her walk off the plane, and the truck was there waiting for me. I hold her hand, walking to the truck, and wait for her to get in before walking to the driver’s side and getting in. The GPS is already set with address in it.
“Where are you taking me?” she asks me, looking over at me. “Are we in Montana?”
“Yes,” I tell her. “We are going home.” I don’t say anything else. Instead, I reach out my hand and hold hers while she looks out the window at the mountains in the distance. When we pull up to the full iron gate, I press the button on the remote on the sun visor.
The gate opens, and we drive up, and I finally get to see the house I bought. “This isn’t my house,” she says, and I just look at her.
“No, it’s ours,” I tell her, driving past the little creek that runs through the land and then finally seeing the house. The outside lights are on, and you see that it’s two stories. The front of the house looks like wooden logs. Six windows cover the side of the house, showing you the inside, so we are definitely going to have to get blinds. I drive under the awning, but it’s really where the game room sits, and it attaches to the four-car garage that is hidden on the side. It’s held up by thick rock wall arches.
I get out of the car and open hers while she gets out and her mouth just hangs opens. “This house looks magical,” she says, and I look up at it closely and see it really does. There are so many windows all over that you never really could tell in the pictures. The front door sits on the side of the house at an angle with five stairs.
The door is glass as well. “We need to change this door,” I tell her and grab the keys from my pocket to unlock the door. I open the door. “Welcome home, baby,” I tell her, leaning down to kiss her and wait for her to walk in. She does and then she stops right there in the entryway. The house has the open concept with a ceiling so high you need to strain your neck. The back of the house has the same windows as in the front. A staircase on the side leads you upstairs. Walking farther into the house, you see a huge rock wall with a fireplace in the middle of the house. There are four master bedrooms in the house all on the second floor, the hallway in a square around the house and all you see are doors. The railings have clear glass. “We have to go furniture shopping also,” I tell her, looking around and seeing that it’s very rustic, and there are more wooden antlers
than I care for.
“This house is so beautiful,” she says, and then she looks at me. “You bought this house?”
“Well,” I start to say, “technically, I bought it, but my mother picked it out.”
She stands there, looking at me. “Are you hungry?” I ask her, and she shakes her head.
“I want to get out of these clothes,” she says, looking at the outfit that she wore on stage. I grab her hand, and we go up the side stairs and see that the walls are all rock, the long hallway in rich dark wood.
“I have no idea which room you want, so how about we start in there and then work our way around the house?” I suggest, opening the first door I see. “All the rooms have their own bathrooms,” I tell her and see the big king-size bed and a huge window in the middle of the room.. “I’m going to get your bags, so why don’t you take a shower?” I say. Leaning in to kiss her on the lips, I then walk out before I take her against the shower. I jog back downstairs, looking for our bags, and they are right there sitting on the couch.
By the time I walk back upstairs and pull out a pair of her sweats and a shirt, she is walking into the room with a towel wrapped around her. “Your turn,” she says, coming up to me. “I’ll wait for you here,” she whispers. She goes to her bag on the bed and tosses it on the floor along with her clothes, then slides under the covers. And by the time I finish my shower, I find her softly snoring. I walk to the door and flip off the light, and then walk over and slide into the bed with her. I pull her to me softly, not wanting to wake her, and for the first time in over a week, I fall asleep peacefully.
* * *
When I finally open my eyes, the sun is shining bright. “It’s about time you woke up.” I hear from beside me and look at her, sitting up in bed with her back to the headboard. She leans over and kisses my lips. “Morning.”
Hollywood Princess Page 20