She's Far From Hollywood

BREE WAS USED to waking up in unfamiliar surroundings. She’d traveled nonstop as Miss California, and again as the wife of Damian Maxwell. When she joined the cast of Hot Hollywood Housewives, they were constantly being shuttled off to exotic locations to spice up the show. There were trips to Paris, Hawaii and even the Australian outback on a ridiculous survival challenge. She’d probably slept away from her beloved Malibu home as much as she’d slept in it.

But she still wasn’t prepared when the predawn light filtered through the thin cotton curtains and nudged her from a restless night’s sleep in Nell’s cottage. She sat up and blinked in confusion. Even the outback accommodations were fancier than this place. The bedroom barely managed to contain the queen-size iron bed and a dresser.

She stood and stretched slowly, sighing at the feel of her satin nightgown sliding against her skin. The luxurious fabric was a welcome reminder of her real life, which should be taking place right now far, far away from this country cottage. She’d packed the fancy sleepwear for her trip to her cousin’s baby shower over the past weekend. It was entirely appropriate to wear as a guest at Amanda and Blake’s historic home, or even at the lakeside resort they owned next door to Halcyon.

Here in this rustic whitewashed cottage? Not so much.

But she didn’t have a lot of wardrobe choices, since whatever she’d packed in her weekend bag was pretty much all she had left for clothing. She ran her hands down the expensive material and shook her head. It was ironic that the one thing she’d fought for throughout her adult life—indeed, the driving force behind nearly every decision she’d made—was her desire for security and stability. And now that she’d finally achieved it, some psycho had snatched it all away by torching her clothes and forcing her out of her home.

She jumped when her phone chirped in her purse, indicating an incoming text. The alarm clock on the bedside table showed it wasn’t even 5:30 yet. She grabbed her Hermes bag and dug around inside for the phone. Her personal phone had been left behind in Gallant Lake to prevent anyone from tracing her location. This was just a throw-away burner phone and only a handful of people had the number. She couldn’t imagine which member of that small club would be awake at this hour.

R U awake?

The text was from her cousin, Amanda. Bree grinned and was quick to type a response.

Barely. Why are YOU awake?

Instead of a responding text, the phone rang in her hand.

“Bree! How are you, sweetie?”

“Amanda, what on earth are you doing up at this hour? Did your ghost rattle some chains in the hallway or something?”

Amanda, normally such a level-headed woman, insisted the castle she’d remodeled for hotelier Blake Randall before marrying him was haunted by its original owner.

“Very funny. It’s not the original Madeleine that’s the problem. It’s her namesake. This baby kicks me awake earlier and earlier every morning. If she’s not born soon, I won’t be sleeping at all.”

Amanda not only believed that a ghost named Madeleine haunted Halcyon, she’d also insisted on naming her unborn daughter after her. A feisty five-foot-four, her cousin had been miserably uncomfortable at her baby shower, with the baby occupying a beach ball-size bump directly under her breasts.

“Yeah, well, little Maddy isn’t due for another month, so you’d better start grabbing naps during the day to get your rest.” She left the bedroom in hopes of finding some coffee, and almost swooned at the sight of a small coffeemaker sitting on the counter. She popped in a pod of Sumatra Dark and inhaled the rich aroma as her mug filled.

“Now you sound like Blake. He’d make me stay in bed twenty-four hours a day if he could.”

“That sounds like your husband, for sure. Is he home yet?”

“He won’t be back until next week. He wants to visit all of the resorts one last time before Maddy arrives. So tell me, how are you really doing? Did you get settled in without any problems?”

“Well, I don’t know if I’d call it problem-free, but yeah, I’m here in my temporary prison.” She sat on the blue plaid sofa and told Amanda about her arrival in Russell yesterday and the drama at The Hide-Away, as well as her introduction to Nell and the rustic cottage she was now calling home. She made her disdain for the rural setting very clear.

“Nell has horses and cows and...and pigs.” Bree jumped to her feet in agitation and walked to the front windows. Soft fingers of wispy fog moved across the fields like chiffon as the sun slid up over the horizon. There was a large white farmhouse across the road. It was her only visible neighbor other than Nell.

In the distance beyond the white house, a man on a tractor drove through the fog into the endless field of young plants. The wheels of the tractor kicked up a cloud of dust, and the man pulled his cap lower over his eyes. Oh God, she was living in the middle of a Norman Rockwell painting. She spun and returned to the overstuffed sofa, sitting down with a huff of frustration.

“Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad.” There was laughter in her cousin’s voice.

“This isn’t funny! I just walked the length of the living room in four steps. Four! It takes more than that to walk across my closet in Malibu. I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours and I’m already feeling like a caged animal. How am I supposed to last three or four weeks?”

There was a brief moment of silence before Amanda answered. “No, it’s not funny. You need to remember why you’re there in the first place. You’re safe, and you’re giving everyone time to track down the monster who’s stalking you. I don’t want you to be the next Nikki Fitzgerald.”

Bree swallowed hard. It was a little over five weeks ago that Nikki, a pretty up-and-coming actress, woke to find a crazed “fan” in her Hollywood Hills bedroom. He raped her, stabbed her repeatedly and then slashed his own throat at the foot of her bed. The gruesome murder-suicide made headlines around the world and sent a convulsion of fear through Hollywood. That was the moment Bree started to take her stalker a lot more seriously.

“I’d trust Caroline and her husband with my own life,” Amanda continued, “so I certainly trust them with yours. This is what they do for a living.”

Andrew and Caroline McCormack ran a security firm that provided protection for celebrities and politicians around the world. When Caroline heard about the stalker at the baby shower, it was her idea to send Bree to Nell’s. Bree leaned back against the cushions of the sofa and closed her eyes.

“I’m not sure we really thought this through. There must be other options. Instead of being cooped up in this miniature farmhouse, why couldn’t I stay in a luxury resort somewhere? Surely your husband has a suite open in one of his places?”

“Of course you could have gone to one of Blake’s resorts, but the celebrity websites all have standing offers to employees of hotels to leak information about famous guests. Blake does his best to control that sort of thing, but this is your life we’re talking about. Besides, this nut case knows we’re family, so he surely knows about all of Blake’s properties. Everyone agreed the best solution was for you to go somewhere totally off the grid where no one, including the stalker, would think to look.”

“Yeah, but I was still recognized an hour after I arrived.” She cringed at the memory of Emily’s reaction in The Hide-Away. “I should have left right then.”

“Yeah, probably not your best idea to rent a ridiculously expensive car and park it in front of a bar in the center of town in the middle of the afternoon. Why not just hire a marching band to announce your arrival while you were at it?”

She held her phone away and looked at it in surprise. Her cousin wasn’t usually so...blunt. Amanda noticed her silence, and rushed to apologize.

“Oh, damn it, I’m sorry! I swear it’s the hormones talking. I have no filter anymore. I’ve turned into that crazy pregnant lady who’s laughing one minute, crying the next and throwing a tantrum after that. Everyone is tiptoeing around me.”

Bree sighed. “No apology necessary. You’re right. I was an idiot yesterday, sweeping into town like I did. And then I made a scene by arguing with that guy in the bar. You know how I fall back on that snob routine when I’m nervous.”

Her skin tightened at the memory of the one man who didn’t take her crap for one second. Cole Caldwell had ripped through her carefully crafted persona with a couple of grunts and well-aimed insults.

“I get it,” Amanda said softly. “I know all about defensive walls and how to build them.”

Bree nodded. Amanda’s childhood had been dark and painful, and she’d buried that trauma deep until she’d met Blake Randall last summer, along with his orphaned nephew, Zachary, whom they’d now adopted. They lived in Blake’s century-old castle in the Catskills, along with that romantic ghost Amanda credited with their happiness. She’d married Blake six months ago, but they’d gotten a bit of a head start, and she was now eight months pregnant.

“Bree? Are you there?”

“Yeah, sorry. Just daydreaming.” She stood again, feeling restless. “This isn’t where I belong. I know that sounds awful and pretentious or whatever, but I don’t belong here. I mean, Caroline’s mom seems like a nice woman, but there’s a vegetable stand in her front yard. She bakes pies and bread. We have nothing in common.”

“Wait. She cooks? Didn’t you just write a whole book about cooking?”

“The title of the book is Malibu Style, and it’s about entertaining, not just cooking. Somehow I don’t think Nell would be interested in swapping recipes for my famous caviar and gruyere canapés.”

“You’ll never know until you ask. Maybe your next book will be about country style and bread-baking.” Amanda started to giggle. “Sorry, I just had a mental image of you posing for the cover in a ruffled country apron over your designer evening gown!”

They both laughed at that and ended the call with promises to stay in touch as they each counted down the next few weeks: Amanda to deliver her baby girl, and Bree to return to her real life in California.

After a shower and a bowl of cereal, Bree pulled on a pair of skinny jeans and a T-shirt from Gallant Lake, advertising her cousin’s resort.

Beyond the compact kitchen, the rest of the cottage consisted of one more bedroom, a small bathroom with a claw-foot tub, the living room and the front bedroom she’d slept in. The living room opened to a covered front porch facing the road. While the decor wasn’t awful, it was...simple. It reminded her of the plain suburban home she’d grown up in back in Corona, California. That might be why it made her slightly uncomfortable. It represented everything she’d been trying to run away from since her eighteenth birthday.

There was a small bookcase in the back bedroom, and she pulled out a well-worn paperback. The cover featured a bare-chested man with long, dark hair, clutching a red-haired woman in a green velvet gown. A rearing horse in jousting gear was in the background, in front of an imposing castle.

“If I’m going to be here alone for the next few weeks, I may as well enjoy a trashy romance novel.” She grimaced, partly at the book and partly at the realization that she was once again talking to herself. Out loud.

The brave heroine was just beginning to succumb to the brooding charm of her medieval captor when Bree was startled by a knock at the door. She was surprised to see it was almost noon. Her cheeks flushed in embarrassment for losing herself so completely in a bodice-ripper, as if she’d been caught being naughty. She tucked the paperback between the cushions of the sofa and went to the door. On the porch stood her biggest fan in the entire town of Russell, North Carolina: young Emily Caldwell. Emily grinned and raised her hands.

“I don’t have a camera, I promise! My mom and I are having lunch over at Miss Nell’s, and we thought you might want to join us. She made sweet tea and we’re having pimento cheese sandwiches on the porch. I promise not to act like a starstruck idiot today.”