“But you’re not like that,” Ellie whispered. “Not really.” Then Ellie frowned. “Good gracious how did you wind up with Margo? Lover’s spat?”
Adam rolled his eyes. He really didn’t want to get into that. “In a manner of speaking. It’s not important. I just want you to know that you’re right. I’m not like that.”
Ellie stood up. She was moving toward the door. She was going to leave. Adam had the oddest urge to stop her. Why was she going?
“You’re right,” Ellie told him. “You’re not like that. So, I’m going to remind myself that I’ve got no reason not to trust you. And then I’m going to go back and try to do some more investigating on this case. There has to be an answer to those letters. An answer that makes a whole lot more sense than Westin Bainbridge.”
“Who will be here tonight, by the way,” Adam reminded her. “So, you can’t leave. Remember?”
He had followed her to the door of his office. Had he meant to do that? Somehow, Adam wasn’t entirely sure he had. He was pretty sure his legs were working on their own. His brain was doing its own thing. His body had its own agenda now and Ellie Pierce was at the top of the list.
“Ellie,” Adam murmured.
She turned and stared at him. She wasn’t much shorter than he was, just an inch or so. A good pair of heels and she could probably be taller than he was and yet she didn’t seem it. She seemed petite and feminine. Incredibly feminine with excellent muscle tone and a body that she kept in perfect shape. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to feel that shape next to him.
“Adam, I should go.” Ellie spoke softly, but she could not meet his gaze.
Adam gently put two fingers under her chin and lifted it until she had to meet his eyes. “Ellie, you are one hell of a woman. Do you know that? Do you have any idea just how attractive you are?”
“Come on,” Ellie chided in a low voice. “You hang out with women like Kari Jo Mounds every day. You probably have other clients, too. Ones that aren’t so high maintenance, but who are beautiful women.”
“And none of them could hold a candle to you, Ellie Pierce,” Adam decided.
Adam pressed his lips into a line. Then he leaned forward and brushed a kiss over her lips. He waited, but she didn’t pull away. She didn’t smack him. And when he looked at her, her eyelashes were fluttering against her cheeks as though she had closed her eyes when their lips touched.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know this is totally inappropriate, but I’ve wanted to do this almost since the moment I met you.”
She looked scandalized. “The moment you met me? I was acting like a total shrew when we met. I think even I was embarrassed by the way I was acting. And you think that was somehow attractive?”
“Yes, I know,” he teased. “Call me crazy.”
He wanted to hold her. But it was too soon. It was too soon for most things. She wasn’t your typical woman, the kind you just took in your arms and made love to until the sun came up. That wasn’t Ellie. Ellie would scratch your eyes out if you took that sort of liberty with her. Adam knew it without a doubt.
“I’m not going to call you crazy.” She whispered the words and he watched her mouth form every single one. She had the most sensual lips he’d ever seen. “I’m going to call you Adam and just wish that this moment would never end. It’s like a dream and I’m afraid I’ll wake up.”
He leaned forward and took her lips in another kiss. This one was longer, deeper, and fuller. He let his tongue skate lightly over the petal soft contour of her mouth. The seam of her lips parted on a sigh. Lightly dipping his tongue into her mouth, Adam sampled her sweetness and found himself longing for more. Always more. Always with her. He would always want more.
She whimpered. It was the softest, sweetest noise he’d ever heard. Her lips parted just a bit farther and he felt her put her arms around his neck. It was everything that he’d been waiting for and more. She tangled her fingers in his hair and lightly scratched the back of his neck. Blood rushed through his veins and culminated at a point between his legs until he felt as though he was lightheaded from the abrupt shift in his body’s equilibrium.
Adam slipped his arms around Ellie and eased her closer to his body. He felt her strength, the way her muscles relaxed against him in such a trusting manner. He’d never felt anything like it. That slow slide of his tongue against hers, her spicy taste on his lips… she was sweet and wild and hot and more than he’d ever dreamed of having in a woman.
She kissed him back and Adam thought his head might spin right off. He’d never had a woman kiss him like Ellie did, like she meant it. Demanding with each movement of her mouth against his, begging him without words to surrender himself to her, to give her everything. He wanted to surrender. He wanted to be hers.
But this was too soon. It was enough for now to feel his arms around her and to know that she welcomed his kisses. So, with that thought in mind, Adam eased back just enough to breathe and put space between them. She gave a whisper of protest that he savored for the compliment that it was.
“Ellie, you’re going to be the end of me,” Adam whispered in her ear. “I’ve never met anyone like you before.”
“I suppose I should be glad to hear that.” She pulled back and gazed up at him with a sort of adorable shyness that he never would have expected yet fit right in with the full picture of Ellie that he was building in his mind and heart. “I don’t want to be like everyone else. Not with you.”
“Never with me,” he agreed.
She waited for a moment. They stared at each other. It was strange how just one moment could seem to spool into millions of them and then soon enough you were almost frozen in that one slice of space and time because you never wanted it to end.
Knock. Knock. Knock. “Uh, Mr. Cathcart?”
Adam exhaled a sigh. “That would be the real world intruding,” he murmured.
“Mr. Cathcart, we can’t actually find Kari Jo. She’s supposed to be in the green room. She goes on in fifteen minutes, but she seems to have never showed up.”
The words might have been drifting through the door, but Adam figured they might as well have been coming straight from Hell.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was hard to concentrate on anything after that kiss. Ellie lightly touched her fingertips to her lips. She had a dumb grin on her face. The kind of smile that makes people think you’re hiding something from them. Ellie wasn’t sure she cared what others thought.
She followed Adam out of his office because… well, she probably would have just followed him anywhere at the moment. Ellie had to remind herself there was a missing country star. A total brat to be sure, but still. She was evidently missing.
Adam seemed much more in control of his faculties than Ellie. He stared at the stage crew member who had interrupted their—interlude. “She’s not in the theater?”
“No, Mr. Cathcart. I’m sorry. We’ve been looking for her everywhere.” The young woman was wringing her hands and looking very upset. “I don’t know what might have happened, but she’s definitely not here at the Star. Can you call her?”
Adam already had his phone out and was calling. He began moving energetically toward the green room tucked into the hallway that traversed the entire exterior of the theater and provided access to every dressing room, practice room, and even storage areas. Ellie followed behind him, the vigorous movement chasing the fog from her mind.
She wasn’t actually sure that she liked the removal of the fog. It was a sensual fog, all thanks to Adam’s kisses. Ellie figured she would have preferred to hang onto that spine-tingling, toe-curling sensation as long as possible.
But this was reality. Her client was missing. Sort of. “Adam, is there anything I can do?” Ellie called out to him.
He was on the phone, his ear pressed to the smartphone screen and an expression of pure annoyance on his face. As they neared the green room, Ellie could see the live feed from the stage on the big flat screen hanging on the wall
. She watched Ron Skaggs wrapping up his performance. He would exit on the other side of the stage and then it would be time for Kari Jo Mounds to walk on stage for her performance. There was no more time. Kari Jo should have been there now.
“She’s not answering her phone, dammit!” Adam growled and looked at the phone screen once again. “I’m calling her mother. Maybe she’s at least heard from Kari Jo.”
Ellie looked at the stage hand. “You’ve checked the storage rooms and all of the dressing rooms?”
“Yes. Everything but the lobby. But if she was out there, you’d think we’d have heard about it. And why would she be out there anyway? The show started half an hour ago!” The little stagehand was pacing back and forth as though she was sure she was going to be fired. “Oh, I hate this! That woman is so rude!”
Ellie drew back. Her mind was already taking in this new information and trying to fit it into the puzzle they had been building of Kari Jo Mounds and who might be willing to stalk her so thoroughly that they killed her recurring beau, if you could call DJ Aston Ryan a beau.
“Has this ever happened before?” Ellie asked, keeping her tone steady in an effort to help the crew member remain calm.
The girl bit her lip. “Well, no. Not like this.” On stage, Ron Skaggs was waving to the crowd, his puppet madly wagging its arms. “She’s done some pretty mean and stupid shit to him.” The girl jerked her head to indicate Adam. “But not like this. Do you think something has really happened to her? What if someone hurt her? Oh my God, can you imagine what would happen if they kidnapped Kari Jo? She would be such a pain in the ass they’d be paying us to take her back!”
The stagehands hated Kari Jo Mounds, that much was plain. Ellie hung onto that information. It was an interesting development. What would they be willing to participate in? Would one of them be so disgruntled that they were willing to put threatening letters in Kari Jo’s hand when they scooped up the rest of the offerings left by her fans in order to deposit them in her dressing room? It was something Ellie and Adam had not yet considered.
“I’m going to have to go out there.” Adam’s voice was tight and his expression had turned hard and angry. He spun around and looked right at Ellie. “That spoiled brat is a no-show and I get to go tell all of those people what she’s done.”
Ellie swallowed the lump that had suddenly appeared in her throat. She couldn’t help it. As sorry as she felt for Adam right now, there was no way in hell Ellie could go deal with all of those people.
“Go find Ray,” Adam barked at the stage hand. Ray was the Garth Brooks impersonator, who should not have been going on stage for another thirty minutes at least. “Tell him Kari is a no show and he should report as soon as he can to keep the show going.”
“Yes, sir.” The stagehand bounded away as though her feet were on fire.
Ellie reached out and grabbed Adam’s arm. “Are you sure?”
He jerked his head toward the flat screen television. “Do you hear them? The audience? The house lights are down and they’re wondering what’s going on. Kari Jo should be walking out on stage right now. I have to take care of this. God help us when Lightman hears about this. I won’t be able to save Kari Jo from his wrath then. She’ll be all on her own.”
Ellie watched Adam steel himself for a moment. Then he walked out on stage. A spotlight appeared, following him even though he was not the intended target. Ellie saw Adam appear on the live video feed in the green room. But that just wasn’t enough.
Creeping closer to the edge of the stage, Ellie peeked out and saw the restless crowd whispering to each other. No doubt they were wondering what was going on. Adam was good looking, but he certainly wasn’t a twenty-two year old country starlet.
Adam reached the microphone stand at the center of the stage. It crackled with feedback for just a moment and then his warm baritone filled the huge theater. “Good evening ladies and gentlemen! I hope you are enjoying yourselves this evening.”
There was a round of applause and then someone in the audience shouted. “We want Kari Jo!”
A few more people picked up the chant. Ellie spotted Westin Bainbridge in the third row near the center aisle. He had used his free tickets like they had expected him to. If there had ever been something to push a potential stalker and serial killer over the edge, this would be it.
The theater resonated with the sound of customers’ voices shouting at the top of their lungs for Kari Jo Mounds. Ellie was stunned to hear the outcry. Didn’t these people realize she was a fraud? This was not a little bit of country and a little bit of rock and roll. This was Kari Jo Mounds who talked about one life and lived another. She didn’t even tell the truth in her interviews!
“Ladies and gentlemen, please!” Adam called out. “Please listen to me! There has been a problem. Kari Jo is…”
“Right here!”
The entire theater went silent. Spotlights swung in crazy patterns around the audience and the stage and finally the back of the theater as the crew sought the voice they all recognized. Adam put a hand over his eyes to shield them from the bright light.
“Kari Jo?”
“Hi everybody!” Kari Jo waved from the very top of the stadium seating area. She was in full costume standing at the top of the stairs. With a microphone in one hand, she sang a few of the opening lines from her smash hit, “Raised Country.”
“Don’t you want the show to go on everybody?”
The roar of the crowd practically shook the building. Ellie clapped her hands over her ears as the speakers shrieked in response. The sound guys in the booth did their best to keep the feedback down, but it was hard when the microphone was moving through a bunch of yelling, screaming fans.
“And who did you come here to see tonight, everyone?” Kari Jo asked her adoring fans.
Kari Jo! Kari Jo! Kari Jo!
“That’s right! You came here tonight to see me! And don’t nobody ever forget that!” Kari Jo pointed at Adam. “That’s my manager everyone. Poor Adam. I gave him a scare! Let’s give Adam Cathcart a round of applause folks. I’m sure he done deserve it!”
Her speech cadence was so fake. It was an obvious attempt to sound what? Like she’d been raised in the hilly, rocky Ozarks? Even the accent was all wrong. Kari Jo whistled and danced and sang a bit here and there as she trotted her way down the stairs to the stage at the bottom of the U-shaped stadium style theater.
“Ladies and gentlemen, you are my fans! I’m here because of you!” Kari Jo waved her hands in the air and hopped up on stage.
Ellie watched her pandering to the crowd. It was like watching a bunch of sharks swarming toward the scene of an accident because they smelled blood in the water. Mob mentality plain and simple. If those people hadn’t been Kari Jo’s fans before, they were now. They would never forget the excitement they’d felt this evening. That rush. It wouldn’t matter that they should be focusing on the fact that a snooty little girl pretending to be a star had rudely jerked around everyone’s emotions and made them all think there was not going to be a show at all. Nope. That’s not what people would remember.
“She’s out of control,” Adam said weakly as he emerged from stage left back into the green room. He looked up at the television screen and shook his head. “I’ve created a monster.”
“Well, unfortunately that is the best looking Frankenstein monster the world has ever seen,” Ellie told him wryly. She pointed to the flat screen. “Look at her. She’s got them all eating out of her hand. And it doesn’t matter if they had gotten upset about not getting what they paid for, she probably would have just left them all high and dry. Had they not reacted like that and begged for her to sing, she wouldn’t have done it.”
“You are correct.” Adam sighed and reached for Ellie.
It felt odd to be embraced like that, in what amounted to public. But Ellie didn’t stop him. She knew what he needed. Just the contact, the sensation he wasn’t alone even though he probably felt it acutely. She felt his arms close about her
body and she gave him a hug as they both watched Kari Jo own the stage and her crowd.
“What do you mean she just showed up?” Ray stomped into the green room with his shirt unbuttoned and his shirt tails half hanging out of his black jeans. He was trailing the poor little stagehand behind him like a kite. “Are you telling me I just kicked my ass getting ready for nothing? That bitch!”
Ray was fuming. Ellie felt Adam’s whole body shudder as he anticipated this confrontation. Letting go of Ellie, Adam turned to face Ray. “I can’t thank you enough for responding so quickly. I don’t know what happened. One minute she was totally MIA and the next she was heading down to the stage.”
“Oh, you don’t know what happened?” Ray shouted. His voice was rising and rising and Ellie couldn’t help but wonder if the audience sitting closer to the stage wasn’t able to hear the ruckus going on behind the curtains at stage left. “That’s bullshit, Adam! We all know what happened. That bitch just hijacked my audience. She’s not warming them up for me, she’s stealing them and you all freaking know it! What is wrong with you?”
Ray reached for a table covered in snacks and drinks and pulled it over so that the whole thing crashed to the ground. There was a clatter of aluminum cans hitting the ground as the contents of the table spilled to the floor. But Ray wasn’t done. He started kicking the cans. Sending them flying across the room where they smacked into things that poked holes in the thin aluminum skin and caused the contents to spew out like sticky little fountains.
A few of the cans even found their way on stage. Adam jumped to retrieve them, but Ellie grabbed his arm. “No,” she said quickly. “These are her consequences. You don’t go out there. You have to stop cleaning up her messes.”
“I do?” Adam said roughly. His face looked haggard. He was tired. She could see that plain as the nose on his face. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop cleaning up her messes. You should go out front like we talked about. See if Westin Bainbridge puts a letter on the stage tonight.”
Rock Wolf Investigations: Boxset Page 41
