by Cindy Dees
Of course, in his line of work, it was all about being invisible. Unnoticed. Sliding in and sliding out unseen and unheard. It was the polar opposite of her existence. She could have this fame and celebrity stuff. He’d take the obscurity and complete absence of recognition of his work over her life.
“Let’s blow this joint,” he muttered.
“I need to swing by my dressing room and pick up my purse first.”
He nodded and led the way backstage, stopping outside the room she’d changed in earlier. She stepped in to fetch her bag.
A muffled scream had him shooting through the door before he was hardly aware of moving.
She stood frozen in front of her dressing table, her hands pressed to her mouth, a look of horror on her face. He glanced up and swore. Scrawled across the mirror in some red, greasy substance were, “YOU DIE NEXT.”
He moved around the space fast, checking it for intruders. Thankfully, there weren’t any hidey-holes that could conceal a person. He turned to Silver and gathered her trembling form in his arms.
“I’ve got you, baby. You’re safe. Nobody’s gonna touch you on my watch.”
She shuddered and burrowed against his chest, her face buried in his shirt.
He muttered, “Let’s go. I’ll call the police and have them come check this out. Can you walk or do you need me to carry you?”
She leaned back far enough to stare up at him. “You’d carry me?”
“If that’s what it takes to get you out of here.”
“You’re in luck. I can walk.”
He kept his arm tightly around her shoulders, her body tucked against his side as he turned for the door. He saw Saul standing there, gaping at the scrawled threat. “Lock this door and don’t let anyone in until the police get here. Tell the cops to come in plain clothes, through a back entrance,” Austin ordered quietly. “If you can manage to keep hotel security out of this for a day or two, that’d be helpful. LVMPD will appreciate having the breathing space to do their job before Harold crawls up their—” He broke off. “Well, you get the idea.”
Saul nodded knowingly and pulled out his cell phone. As Austin whisked Silver out of the room, the older man was already on the horn to the police.
He rushed her out a backstage exit, emerging into a service hallway leading to the hotel’s laundry. She directed him to a service elevator, and he ushered her inside with a quick look in either direction down the deserted hall. He randomly punched a button and the elevator whooshed upward quickly.
“Are you okay?” he asked in concern.
She nodded, but she still looked badly shaken.
“I gather writings on your mirror are not common occurrences?”
She smiled halfheartedly at him. “Not so much.”
“You’re not gonna faint on me again, are you?”
She replied bravely. “Thanks for worrying about me, but I’ll be fine. Everything’s proceeding as it should.”
He frowned. Strange way to describe her health. She looked momentarily alarmed, then asked quickly, “What’s on the twentieth floor?”
“Huh?” He glanced over at the elevator’s control panel. “Oh. We’ll transfer to an elevator that will take us up to the penthouse. Nothing special about twenty. I just punched any old button. Odds of someone being there waiting for us are close to zero.”
“You really take this security stuff seriously, don’t you?”
Surprised he glanced down at her. “I spend most of my life around people who will die if I don’t do my job to perfection. I don’t get assigned to the popular guys who are beloved by their people. I guard the guys everyone wants to kill.”
She shuddered. “That sounds so dangerous.”
He shrugged. In point of fact, it was more dangerous than she knew. Daily, he lived in real danger of being shot or blown up in an assassination attempt. The fact that he was only sporting a busted eardrum after the latest attempt to kill one of his principals was a minor miracle.
“Have you actually come close to dying before?” she asked curiously.
He snorted. “You’re joking, right?”
She looked up at him innocently. What must it be like to be that unaware of how deadly the world could truly be? A need to protect her naiveté surged through him, to keep her just like this—sweet, trusting and sheltered from life’s harsh realities.
Except this was Silver Rothchild he was talking about. The way he heard it, she’d seen a whole lot of life’s harsh realities already.
He blurted, “How did you stay so innocent through all the stuff you did?”
She stared up at him, saved from answering by the elevator door opening. He stepped out quickly, cleared the empty halls and gestured for her to follow him. It was a short jaunt down a hallway to a guest elevator. He swiped his key card and the elevator leaped upward toward the penthouse level.
He turned to look down expectantly at Silver. For her part, she looked disappointed that he hadn’t forgotten his question.
Finally she answered. “What makes you think I’m innocent? I’ve done some pretty wild things in my day.”
He frowned. “Then how do you maintain your positive outlook on life?”
Her hand drifted to her stomach as she laughed shortly. “The alternative is to slit my wrists. And I’m too much of an optimist to give up that easily.”
The elevator jerked faintly beneath his feet, but it was nothing compared to the jolt coursing through him. “Is your life really that bad?” he asked. “You have wealth and fame and a family that cares about you.”
“My family meddles in everything I do. Living with the press hounding you 24/7 sucks. My career is dead, my personal life is nonexistent and money isn’t everything. Next argument for how great my life is?”
He laughed. “Ahh. There’s the cynicism I expected out of you.”
She sighed as he opened his door and ushered her into his villa. “I’m sorry. I try not to go there if I can help it.”
“Why not?”
“It’s toxic to my soul. I have a ton of things to be grateful for, and I’m not about to whine about my life. It’s no more perfect than anybody else’s life, though. Everyone’s got problems of their own—rich or poor, old or young, the problems may be different, but we all have garbage to deal with.”
“True. So what garbage fills your plate?”
“Nothing you’d care to hear about, I’m sure.”
“On the contrary. I want to know everything about you, Silver Rothchild.”
She threw him a startled look. Then the expression cleared. “Oh. So you can figure out who’s trying to kill me.”
No, because he was fascinated by her and becoming more so by the minute. But he bloody well wasn’t about to admit that to her. Not yet. She was still far too distant from him to hand her a weapon like that. The first order of business was to test her interest in him to see if she reciprocated any of his desire to take this relationship further.
He commented, “You’re gonna have to cancel your lunch date with Bubba. No public places for you today. Not after that message on your mirror.”
“Gee. Darn.”
He frowned over at her. “What the hell’s going on between you two? You’ve got no chemistry, you’ve obviously got nothing in common and, if you have a lick of sense, the guy has to drive you crazy.”
She sighed. “No comment.”
Maybe not now. But he’d get her to tell him the truth sooner or later.
“Speaking of meals, I’ve got dinner with my family tonight. But never fear. It’s at my dad’s house. Do you think you can handle the whole Rothchild clan?”
“If you can, I can, darlin’.”
She rolled her eyes. “Sometimes they’re too much for me.”
“If you need to bail out, just give me the signal, and I’ll pull you out of there.”
She blinked up at him. “What signal?”
He grinned back at her. “Just throw me one of those come-hither looks of yours that I can�
��t resist, and we’ll be out of there before you know it.”
“You mean like this?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. That had been a mistake. A major tactical mistake to admit she had that kind of effect on him. He gathered her in his arms, ignoring the startled look she gave. “Yeah. That look, little minx.”
She looked up at him, gazing through her thick lashes, blatantly flirting with him.
That was better. He couldn’t stand that haunted look of terror lurking in her eyes. “What am I going to do with you?” he murmured.
She mumbled against his chest, “Keep me safe and never let me go.”
If only he could do both.
If only.
Chapter 10
Silver gazed up at the Rothchild estate as Austin whistled under his breath beside her. The mansion was daunting even to her, and she’d spent a good chunk of her childhood there. Not that she’d ever felt that she truly belonged in the place. Candace and Natalie had seen to that. When her mother had married their father, they’d made sure she felt like the ugly stepsister she in fact was. In her opinion, it was a vast karmic joke that she’d grown up to have the striking looks and talent that she had.
To Austin she murmured, “It’s just a house.”
He grinned over at her. “Yeah. Twenty thousand gaudy square feet of just house.”
She shrugged. “There is that.” They walked up the front steps to the columned, Italianate half circle of the front porch. “I never can quite shake the feeling of being an intruder here.”
Austin looked over at her in quick surprise. “Why do you say that?”
“Harold’s not my biological father. When he married my mom, he adopted me and I changed my name to Rothchild. He said it would serve me better in life than my father’s name would have.”
“What happened to your father?”
“He made some bad business decisions. Couldn’t face the music and killed himself when I was little.”
Austin swore quietly, then said, “I’m sorry, Silver.”
“I don’t remember him much. Harold’s as close to a father as I’ve ever had.”
“Then I’m doubly sorry for you.”
Startled, she started to ask him why he’d said that, but the front door opened just then to reveal Harold himself. She blinked, stunned. Since when did he open his own doors? It was almost as if he’d been waiting for them!
And then, over the next few minutes, Harold was shockingly cordial to Austin. Usually her father treated the hired help like, well, hired help. But he fawned on Austin as if the guy was some kind of rock star. Which was ironic, because she actually was a rock star and merited only an absent kiss on the cheek.
Most of the clan was already assembled in the billiard room, sipping on cocktails and snacking on canapés before supper. The shrimp salad and curried-something petit fours did nothing for her, and she opted for a club soda while the others arrived.
Jenna Rothchild, Natalie and Candace’s younger sister, drifted over to say hello. She was yet another tall, gorgeous female with the capacity to make Silver feel like an inadequate midget. But in Jenna’s defense, she had always been kind to Silver. Although they were several years apart in age, they’d been good friends over the years and throughout their various antics.
As a blissfully happy-looking couple strolled toward them, Austin’s hand came to rest possessively on the small of her back. His familiar touch ruffled and soothed her at the same time, and she was abruptly aware of how good he smelled. It wasn’t the sort of thing she usually noticed in a man. But then, there wasn’t much about Austin Dearing that she didn’t notice. The guy completely filled her senses, commanding every bit of her attention.
“Austin, this is my sister, Natalie, and her fiancé, Matt Schaffer. He’s in charge of security for a major casino chain, which I might add is a competitor of The Grand’s. But we forgive him because he makes my sister so glowingly, obnoxiously happy. Nat…Matt, this is Austin Dearing—my new bodyguard compliments of Daddy dearest. He’s some sort of military officer.”
The two men nodded in mutual recognition like a pair of fellow warriors.
Eyeing Austin appreciatively, Natalie commented, “I gotta say, sis, this model’s a vast improvement over the last one.”
Silver tensed at the jab at Mark but forced herself to relax under Austin’s all-too-perceptive hand. Okay, so it hadn’t been the smartest thing she’d ever done to recruit Mark to help her with the whole secret-baby thing. But the deed was done. There was no backing out on their deal, whether she liked it or not.
Desperate to change the subject, she asked Matt, “Any progress on the investigation of Candace’s murder?”
Austin went on full alert beside her. Mission accomplished. The boy was officially distracted from the subject of Mark Sampson.
Matt frowned. “The FBI forensics folks are certain from the angle of impact that Candace was pushed forcefully to have sustained her head injuries. But as for who did it, there’s not much to go on.”
“Are there any suspects?” Austin asked quickly.
Matt shrugged. “Since my Aunt Lydia was ruled out as a prime suspect, our best lead is whoever wrote those letters to Harold.”
“What letters?” Austin asked ominously, looking pointedly at Silver.
She winced. “The threatening ones Dad got recently saying that all of the Rothchilds are going to die one by one.”
Austin’s jaw clenched. “That’s the sort of thing guys like me need to know about, Silver. Have you got any more juicy little tidbits along those lines that you haven’t shared with me yet?”
Like, oh, she was pregnant and he was guarding two lives, not one? Aloud, she replied, “Nope, that’s it.”
“You’re positive?”
The significant undertone in his voice didn’t escape her. What was he hinting at? Surely he didn’t know…
She sighed. “Yes, I’m positive.”
Thankfully, Matt laughed, breaking the tension between her and Austin. “You gotta be on your toes with these Rothchild women, buddy. They’ll lead you on a merry chase.”
Austin glanced down at her wryly. “So I’ve noticed.”
She muttered in an undertone pitched for his ears alone, “Good thing you’re not chasing me, then.” It was a petty thing to say, but it really bugged her that he’d made such a point of telling her he had no intention of getting involved with her. It was apparently all well and good to have wild bunny sex with her but only as long as she knew up front that he was going back to his military life at the first possible opportunity.
He replied teasingly, “Don’t knock it. You probably couldn’t handle me, anyway.”
Hah. She darned well could handle him! He’d loved it when she’d handled him last night, thank you very much. She stuck her tongue out at him and held out her empty glass. “Make yourself useful, and get me another club soda while I catch up with my sister.”
Austin took her glass without comment, but he did cast a thoughtful look down at it and back up at her before he turned away. His being so observant might be a good thing when he was looking for bad guys, but it was a pain in the rear when he was nosing into her personal life.
“Wow, Silver. He’s a hunk. Where can I get a bodyguard like that?”
“Hey,” Matt protested. “What about me?”
Silver laughed along with her sister. It felt good to be getting along with her like this. For too long, she’d been at odds with Natalie. In retrospect, it had been mostly Candace leading the way with Natalie following her forceful twin’s lead. Now that Candace was gone, Natalie seemed to have settled down considerably. Candace had always portrayed Nat as the instigator, but Silver had recently revised her opinion on the subject. Now that Natalie was operating on her own, it had become clear that Candace had been stirring the pot all along to sabotage Silver’s career and reputation.
Of course, she’d long ago accepted her own part of the blame in letting Candace get away with it. Ever since t
hey’d been children, she’d secretly wanted to be like her flamboyant sister, and it had been her enduring Achilles’ heel. Candace had always been the center of attention and the center of the action. So cool. So hip. Funny how, even at the height of her own fame and popularity, she’d always felt like a fraud compared to Candace.
Maybe all that time she’d been chasing Candace’s idea of the perfect life and not hers. In a flash of insight it occurred to her that maybe that was why Candace had always been so jealous and vindictive toward her. So, if being a rock star had been Candace’s dream, why was she diving back into the pop music game again? Guilt over her sister’s death, maybe?
She rolled the idea over in her head. Nah. She was sorry Candace was dead, but she didn’t feel any lingering debts or regrets toward her.
Her hand crept to her as yet flat belly. If she’d learned nothing else from watching how Candace had lived, always hovering on the edge of broke, living off of nothing more than the notoriety of being a Rothchild, using and abusing everything and everyone around her, it was that she was not going to follow Candace down that path.
She’d do the shows at the Grand out of respect for the generous gift that they were. But that was where her obligation to Harold—or anyone else—it ended. She’d do the shows her way, with her music. She made a silent promise to herself. From here on out, her career—her life—would go forward strictly on her terms and no one else’s.
“Earth to Silver, come in,” a voice said laughingly nearby.
She looked up, startled, at her sister. “Sorry.” She added quietly, “You look good, Nat. You seem at peace with yourself.”
“I am. I wish you the same happiness I’ve found.” She glanced adoringly at Matt.
Simultaneously, Silver and Natalie stepped forward and hugged each other. Silver couldn’t remember the last time they’d been so close. It was a shame that it had taken Candace’s death to finally bring them together like this.
They drew back, and awkwardness settled between them. There was so much to say, but Silver had no idea where or how to get started. Finally she asked, “How are Candace’s boys? I keep meaning to drop by Jack’s place and see them.” Jack Cortland was Candace’s ex-husband and the boys’ father.