“Anything else I should know before we get there?” she asked.
“Before I forget.” He pulled a business card out of his wallet and placed it on the table in front of her. “If we get separated for any reason, or something important comes up and you can’t get a hold of me, here’s the D.A.’s number. He’s the only other person I trust in my office not to leak your whereabouts.”
“Okay,” she said again, picking up the card and slipping it into her purse. “By the way, how am I supposed to buy anything if I don’t have my credit cards?”
“I’ll give you cash before we meet with Andrew. He’ll need to take you to buy some new clothes tomorrow morning, since you’ll definitely stand out in that outfit. But the guest ranch is all-inclusive, so you probably won’t need much in the way of money. If you do want to buy something at the ranch, just charge it to the room. “
Ugh…Roxxy had to take another swig of vodka to digest that information.
A few hours later, she found herself ensconced inside a bathroom at the Ride ‘Em Cowboy, a two-floor motel with a diner attached. The hotel appeared to be the only non-agriculture based business for miles and miles and it rented rooms by both the week and the night. Mr. Kass apologized profusely for putting her up there, but it was the closest hotel to Andrew’s guest ranch, and it allowed him to pay for a week up-front in cash, so he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone tracing his credit card to track her down.
She’d already been inside the bathroom for at least twenty minutes, staring into the mirror over the sink. Though she’d sworn off drinking alone—especially if it was alcohol after her second DUI—she was already halfway through the bottle of vodka. Her hands shook as she unscrewed the lid of her makeup remover.
Roxxy had always thought when she finally took off the crazy makeup and the wild wigs and the outrageous costumes, it would be for something big: an exclusive with a popular talk show host or the final number at her last concert or the inevitable “Where are They Now” special ten or twenty years after her unofficial retirement.
But her final concert had come and gone unannounced because she was too chicken to tell her mother she was done with music, and where she was now was in a motel bathroom. With a half-empty bottle of vodka.
““How much longer?” the assistant D.A. called through the door.
A cold shiver crawled down her back. The only thing scarier than being alone in close quarters with a guy without Dex nearby, was taking off her makeup so she could do it again in a seedy motel room. It felt like the equivalent of a soldier throwing away her shield just before she was about to engage in battle.
“We’re set to meet Andrew in less than thirty minutes,” Mr. Kass said, reminding her he was still outside the door and waiting for her to answer.
Roxxy took several more swigs of vodka. “I’m going to need at least twenty more minutes,” she called back.
Suddenly the room was no longer staying put the way it was supposed to. She turned away from the mirror just for a second or two, she assured herself, to give herself some breathing room. Looking around the bathroom, she took in the bathtub, solidly rectangular with a plastic shower curtain and no extra amenities like a Jacuzzi option or an array of expensive bath oils awaiting her on its ledge. There wasn’t even a bar of soap that she could see.
What really struck Roxxy, though, was the smell. Or rather the lack of smell—no Jasmine or other aromatic scent being pumped through the circulation system. No cleaning products still lingering in the air, giving away that the room had received an extra special cleaning in preparation for her celebrity arrival.
The toilet was a dull white and so was the sink, which was encased in scratched-up, mustard yellow formica, probably dating back to the sixties or seventies. Nothing in the room sparkled underneath the fluorescent lights. In fact, they made her look garish and silly in the mermaid outfit, which had looked so magical the night before.
Finally the room stopped spinning, and the vodka must have really decided to kick in, because Roxxy didn’t feel so scared anymore.
She turned back to the mirror and before she could think too hard about it, she poured a liberal amount of makeup remover onto a large cotton round. Then for the first time in over a decade, she began removing her makeup herself, with hard, determined swipes.
IT WASN’T LIKE STEVE WAS ONE OF THOSE HOUSEWIVES who read glossy magazines, lapping up news about the latest Roxxy RoxX exploits while clucking her tongue. However, he wasn’t unaware of her reputation for partying hard and kicking up a tornado’s worth of behind-the-scenes drama. That morning, in fact, he’d read all about her two DUIs and subsequent house arrest.
But he also knew she had millions of fans, and the truth was, he’d heard quite a few of her throaty bubblegum songs on the radio and he hadn’t always switched the station when he did. Sometimes he’d even found himself singing along. She had a really good voice, and they wrote those damn songs to stick in your head, even when you didn’t want them to.
But standing in the motel room, waiting for her to emerge from the bathroom, he couldn’t shake the nervous energy popping around inside of him. He, Steve Kass, would soon be the first regular person to see Roxxy RoxX outside of her elaborate hair and makeup in over a decade. If everything went to plan, and she was able to lay low at Andrew Sinclair’s ranch until they tracked down her stalker, maybe he’d be the only person to knowingly see her this way.
He was so nervous, he decided to busy himself with making her a cup of her special tea. Her monolith of a bodyguard, Dexter, had given it to him right before they left the station, with the instructions that Roxxy hated eating or drinking any beverage alone, so he had to drink it with her. Like a lot of people who worked for celebrities, the guy seemed to think his employer’s every peccadillo was sacrosanct and therefore should be accommodated by anyone who came in contact with her. Also, he’d noticed Little Miss Rockstar didn’t seem to have any problems guzzling vodka down on the plane.
But in this case, Steve didn’t mind indulging Dexter’s order. It gave him something to do with his hands. Maybe he and Roxxy could have a cup of it together after she came out, and that way he’d be able to cover up his nervousness about seeing the real her.
But the tea took less time to make than he thought it would. And soon it began to grow cold.
“How much longer?” he called through the door, now more worried about giving one of the biggest music stars in the world ice-cold tea.
No answer, but he was fairly sure he heard the distinct sound of a bottle clinking against the sink. Was she still drinking in there? Apparently the gossip blogs hadn’t been exaggerating about her party girl ways.
“We’re set to meet my friend in less than thirty minutes.”
“I’m going to need at least twenty more minutes,” she called back. Her words were slurred, which made Steve wonder if she was drinking because of the current stalker situation or because she was about to walk out of the room, looking like a regular person, for the first time in almost fifteen years.
Probably a combination of both, he thought twenty minutes later, after knocking back both cups of now-tepid tea, before refilling them with bottled water, and setting both to warm in the microwave.
He was just taking out two new packages of the special tea, when the first pain hit him. It felt like a thin flash of lightning slicing across his chest. But that was nothing compared to the second bolt of pain, which felt like nothing less than an iron hand squeezing his heart to the point that he couldn’t breathe. Something hot and sticky began to leak from his mouth as he banged a fist against his chest, trying to unhinge whatever had gotten a hold of his heart.
And for a moment it worked. The pain suddenly stopped, allowing him to breathe normally again.
“Mr. Kass?” a tentative voice came from behind him.
He turned around, and then once again reeled, this time with confusion. Because Layla Matthews, Andrew Sinclair’s ex-girlfriend, was standing in the doorway of the
bathroom.
“Layla, what are you doing here?” he asked. “Where’s Roxxy?”
“What?” she said. She stepped toward him. “Are you hurt? You’ve got blood coming out of your mouth.”
But before he could answer, a third pain exploded in his chest, this one more powerful than the first two combined. It blinded him and put him on his back.
I’ve been poisoned, he suddenly realized, his mind flashing to Roxxy’s overly protective bodyguard. He opened his mouth to tell Layla what he had just realized, and who had given him the tea, which had obviously been meant to kill both him and Roxxy. But he choked on the blood running down his throat and spilling from his mouth. All he could do was cough and gaze upon Layla with helpless, mute frustration.
It had been over a decade since he’d seen her last, but she was still so pretty with her short curls and impossibly large brown eyes. She looked like an angel, her head haloed in the motel’s fluorescent light.
For a moment he wondered if she was a hallucination, a by-product of whatever was working its way through his system. Or maybe this was what happened when you died. You got a vision of one of the nicest and cutest people you’d ever met to guide you home. If that were the case, then maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad.
Still, his last thought was to regret he would not be able to one day brag to his colleagues about seeing Roxxy RoxX in real life. Because his own life was over.
CHAPTER 4
FIRST she was downing the last half of a bottle of vodka in a motel bathroom, and then she was watching the man that had been in charge of escorting her to safety coughing up what looked like buckets of bloods before dying on the motel room floor.
This time she didn’t scream. Instead the room closed in on her, growing hot as a furnace and spinning to the point that her body compelled her through the door and out into the fresh air, lest she throw up all over the assistant District Attorney’s body.
It took several huge gasps of air before the urge to expel the small meal she’d had on the plane and the copious amount of vodka from her stomach passed. And even then, she only just managed to stagger to her feet, the world still swaying around her.
Unfortunately, not even the gruesome scene in the motel room was enough to sober her up after all the vodka she’d consumed, but she had to get Mr. Kass some help.
“Need pay phone,” she slurred to herself, stumbling toward the diner portion of the motel.
On her way into the room, she had noted the presence of an ancient, glass pay phone box between the motel and diner. She now started toward it, determined to call 9-1-1 and get someone to help poor Mr. Kass no matter how inebriated she was, even if the short walk to the pay phone felt like trudging through mud. The stilettos she was wearing were like sandbags attached to her feet, and her large designer handbag, which had somehow stayed on her arm through the whole ordeal, felt like one of the jumbo kettle bell weights her mother swore by for workouts.
She was halfway to the glass-enclosed box when someone behind her said, “Layla?”
What was with people calling her Layla? Mr. Kass had done it, too. But her name wasn’t Layla, so she ignored whoever it was.
But the man’s voice came again, this time closer and much louder. “Layla!”
Her plan was to keep on walking, no matter how much the starry night sky was swaying around her, but whoever it was grabbed her arm and turned her toward him.
She blinked, then blinked again. Standing before her in a cowboy hat and business suit, with the shirt collar open at the front, was maybe the hottest non-celebrity man she had ever laid eyes on. Long, lean, and clean-shaven with gray eyes, he’d actually give any number of the male celebrities she’d encountered a run for their money with a face that looked like it had been sculpted to please, from his long nose to his sharp cheek bones.
He stared back as if the sight of her had stunned him just as much as it did her. “Layla,” he said again. “What are you doing here? Where’s Nathan?”
She was about to tell him she wasn’t Layla and she had no idea who Nathan was, but could he please help her call 9-1-1 because, weird story, her stalker had obviously followed her to Middle of Nowhere, Montana, and now the assistant District Attorney of New York was lying dead in a nearby motel room.
But she didn’t have a chance to say any of this, because without warning, everything she had eaten that day and what tasted like the entire bottle of vodka came roaring out of her stomach, and yes, she threw up all over the hot guy’s hand-tooled cowboy boots.
“Sorry,” she managed to croak out right before she pitched forward and blackness enveloped her.
WHERE SHE LANDED WAS IN ANDREW SINCLAIR’S ARMS.
“What the hell?” he said, then immediately felt bad for cursing, because this was Layla, and he had always felt bad using explicit language in front of her. The only other time he’d ever really done it was when she announced, with tears in her eyes that she was breaking up with him because she was in love with his brother.
But then again, the Layla he knew would never show up in Montana unannounced, wearing what looked like a sequined mini skirt straight out of a music video and reeking of alcohol. He’d never seen her drink more than a glass or two of wine, much less enough alcohol to make her pass out. What was going on? And why was she here?
He pushed his many questions aside and shifted her so she was cradled in his arms. Then he bent down and picked up her large purse, which had slid off her arm when she fainted. Luckily the motel/diner, which didn’t see much of a clientele on weekdays—its local nickname was the “Food Poison ‘em Cowboy”—was particularly dead on this Monday night. So he didn’t have to deal with nosy townspeople asking him why he was carrying an unconscious black woman back to his vintage ’57 Chevy pickup.
Seeing as how he had just bought the entire ranch town of Frasier, Montana and renamed it Sinclair Township, this was not the kind of attention he wanted from the townspeople or its few visitors.
But he was less worried about that, and more about the woman in his arms. There was one other car in the parking lot, a rental, which he recognized as the same non-descript, mid-sized economy car Steve always drove when he dropped off his clients. He assumed Layla must have bussed into town, since the diner also served as a drop-off point for the Greyhound. But why would she take the bus as opposed to flying into Missoula and driving in?
After depositing her into the passenger side of his truck and cleaning off his boots the best he could, Andrew got out his cell phone to call his old roommate who he was supposed to meeting for a “highly sensitive drop off,” which Andrew assumed was code for yet another mob informant—someone Steve needed him to hide in one of his guest cabins until he was called to the stand to testify.
The truth was, Andrew had less than zero time these days. He was in the midst of converting Sinclair Township into America’s largest chain of guest ranches. But Steve was an old buddy, and even though he’d managed to disconnect from most of the people he used to hob-knob with back when he’d been an executive for his family’s steel company, he somehow couldn’t shake the slick roommate from New Jersey who’d grown up to be an even slicker assistant D.A. in New York.
However, now he had to let his old friend down or at least be late, both of which Andrew hated to do. But what was he going to do? Leave Layla passed out in his truck, while he went in and got some mobster from the diner?
“Hey, Steve,” he said, after the voicemail message finished. “Something came up and I need to meet with you later, maybe tomorrow morning. Call me back and we’ll set up a time.”
He re-pocketed his smartphone inside his suit jacket and looked over at Layla slumped down in the front seat. Steve’s mob client wasn’t the only thing he didn’t have time for.
Even passed out, she looked more beautiful than ever. She’d lost what had to be at least fifteen pounds, but not in a bad way. She’d clearly been working out. And her skin glowed in the moonlight, looking just as dewy and fresh as it had
back in college. With her hair also cropped short, like she’d worn it in college, it was hard to believe she’d aged a good twelve years since they’d dated.
Was it the Montana air? Because he hadn’t remembered her looking this good the last time he’d seen her at her wedding to his brother. Back then, he’d conceded her to Nathan like a gentleman. And he’d left Pittsburgh determined to think of her as a sister as opposed to his ex-girlfriend.
But the way his dick rose in his pants despite the vomit he’d had to wipe off his boots told him he definitely hadn’t succeeded in putting her in the friend zone. Before his mind could go any further with thoughts of what was under that ridiculous mini skirt of hers, he once again pulled out his phone and called his brother.
It went straight to voicemail. “Guess what? I’m on vacation and not coming back until August. If it’s important, leave a message and my assistant will get back to you. Otherwise, give me a ring when I’m back in town.”
“Hey, it’s your brother,” Andrew said after the beep. “Call me back when you get this. I think you know why.”
He hung up and frowned at Layla’s prone body. The last time Nathan had left his wife alone like this, they’d fallen out, due to a misunderstanding. As in love with Layla as Nathan had claimed to be back when Andrew saw them last, this could only mean one thing: they had broken up.
Again, Andrew’s dick jumped in his pants, this time demanding he take back what his brother had stolen.
But things had changed since the last time he and Layla saw each other, he reminded himself. Changed for the better. He had new life now, a better one, and had finally managed to shake free of his past.
There was no way he was going to allow anyone, even someone he loved as much as he used to love Layla Matthews, ruin that.
CHAPTER 5
ROXXY awoke to a feeling that used to be familiar, but that she hadn’t had ever since she swore off hard partying and vowed to get her act together. That was right after she spent a few months with an alcohol-monitoring bracelet around her ankle, taking court-mandated breathalyzer tests until she’d proved she was truly on the wagon. Many of her friends from back then had gone through the same thing, and went right back to partying after the bracelet was removed. But the whole situation had embarrassed and humiliated Roxxy to no end.
The Wild One Page 3