by L A Dobbs
Some friend.
Dino took a deep breath and knelt in front of Stacy again, taking her hands in his and giving her a small smile. Her green eyes were glassy and dazed, and he doubted she’d remember any of this evening tomorrow. “Listen, why don’t you let me take you for something to eat, maybe some coffee. You’re too thin, and I’m worried about you.”
“You are?” His innocent attention drew her flirtation, and she cupped his cheek and leaned closer. “Worried about me, I mean?”
“Yes.” He pulled her hand away from his face and held it tightly in his. “But not that way.”
“What about my money?” Her sweet tone turned belligerent again.
“What about it?” He banked on her chemically addled brain working in his favor. “I gave it to you already, remember?”
“You did?” She frowned at him, her expression confused. “When?”
“In the alley.”
“Oh.” She started to open the little purse strapped around her wrist then stopped. “Where’s Erin?”
“Who’s Erin?”
“My friend.”
The redhead. “She went back inside.”
“You’re cute.” She tilted her head at Dino, as if seeing him for the first time.
“Thanks.” He stood and brought her to her feet, keeping his arm firmly around her waist to keep her upright. “My car’s this way.”
“Where are we going?” She giggled.
“Home.” He glanced back at the casino entrance and found Erin standing there again, watching him warily. “I’m taking her home to sleep it off.”
“I know who you are,” Erin called from behind him. “If anything happens to her, I’ll tell the cops.”
“Yeah, you’re an awesome friend. Thanks.” He didn’t turn back to see her reaction and instead hustled a stumbling Stacy across Main Street and over to his six-year-old Tahoe. Not exactly the muscle car he’d dreamed of owning at this point in his life, but it was paid for and dependable, and these days that was all he could ask for. He balanced Stacy on one hip while he opened the door then slid her into his passenger seat and buckled the seat belt around her before jogging around the SUV and climbing in behind the wheel.
She rolled her head toward him and watched him through half-closed eyes. “Where are we going again?”
“Back to my place. You can stay on my couch tonight.”
5
At eight fifteen the next morning, Jan sat on the same stool in her kitchen where she’d been the day before when Dino had been there, a cup of chamomile tea clutched in her hands. If she’d had hopes that her stalker would limit his activities to sending texts and emails, last night had proved that wasn’t the case.
She’d been awakened from a deep sleep by the buzzing of her phone. Over and over and over again, the texts and the calls had come in until she’d thought she’d lose her frigging mind. After two hours of non-stop calls, she’d gotten up to hide her phone away somewhere and made the mistake of peeking out her bedroom window to the backyard below. That’s when she’d seen him. Her stalker. Prowling around her backyard as if searching for a way in.
She’d thought of calling the police but then remembered Lou’s words from the day before. The cops couldn’t help if no one had threatened her. And no one had threatened her. Not yet. Only hang-ups and those weird texts and emails that could be interpreted either way. And, of course, now, the heavy breathing.
For the first time in over seven years, she’d almost wished she owned a gun. Almost. Guns had actually never bothered her before Donny’s death. She’d even learned to shoot them herself when she’d lived in Nashville. But the brutal senseless shooting of her uncle had affected her deeply, and now, the very sight of one made her stomach turn and her hands shake. Even though she wanted to have something to protect herself with, she couldn’t stomach the idea of holding a gun again.
So she’d done the only thing she could think of. She’d grabbed the giant chef’s knife from her kitchen, the one whose blade she kept honed to a razor-sharp edge, and slept with it beside her on the bed. It had probably been a good thing she’d stayed awake most of the night, praying whoever she’d seen out there wouldn’t come into the house—otherwise she might have rolled over on the knife and cut herself to ribbons in her restless slumber.
Of course, the alarms would go off if anyone tried to come inside, she’d reasoned with herself, and that would be good. Then again, the alarms should’ve gone off when they’d entered her backyard, and they hadn’t, so that would be bad. Very, very bad.
The sound of tires on her cobblestone drive and the cutting of an engine brought her back to the present, and she all but sprinted to the front door. Dino was here.
She yanked the heavy wooden front door open and watched as he climbed out of his Tahoe. He looked as exhausted as she felt. Dark circles shadowed the skin under his eyes, and his normally tanned, chiseled face looked drawn and pale. Great, the last thing she needed was a bodyguard that wasn’t on the top of his game.
He took one look at her and stopped, his expression concerned. “What’s wrong?”
“What? Nothing.” Did she look that bad? “Well, not nothing. I didn’t sleep good last night. More texts and phone calls. I forwarded you the texts, did you get them? And I think someone was lurking in my backyard.” She was sure someone was there but didn’t want to sound like a panicked diva who was seeing things that weren’t there. The calmer she was, the more seriously Dino would take her.
Dino's concern turned to alarm. His gaze scanned the yard as he took her arm and guided her back toward the door. “Let’s get inside. If there is someone stalking you, you need to stay covered.”
“What do you mean if someone’s stalking me?” She shook off his hand and frowned. “I’m not making this stuff up.”
“No one says you are.” His placid tone set her already-frayed nerves further on edge. Was he not taking this seriously, or was this the way he always acted with clients? “Now tell me again. You got phone calls again last night?”
“Yes. Seven.”
“Okay. And e-mails?”
“I haven’t had a chance to look yet.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“Yes. As I said, someone was in my backyard last night.”
He closed his eyes and inhaled slowly. “You have a seven-foot privacy wall around your backyard and motion-sensor activated lights and alarms. Not to mention that this is a gated community.”
“Yeah? And somehow someone got past all that.” He had a point. Could it be one of her neighbors? She doubted that, they were all quite wealthy and had no reason to be stalking her. She didn’t even know them.
“Show me.”
She led him through the house to the back patio doors. “I came out here early, after sunrise, to see for myself—”
Dino turned and scowled at her, their bodies inches apart as he looked down at her, a good foot taller than her own five-foot-four-inch frame. “Let me get this straight. You saw an intruder in your yard. You didn’t call the cops. You didn’t call me. You went out there and looked yourself?”
“Yes.” Heat prickled her cheeks. It had seemed like the smart thing to do after the sun was up and she wasn’t scared anymore, but when he put it that way… “Lou said the cops couldn’t help us right now, anyway.”
“Well, Lou isn’t the security expert here, is he?”
“No.”
“No.” He cursed and turned away. “Stay here.”
“Nope.” She followed him out onto the back patio. “It’s my home, and besides, I want to show you where I saw the footprints.”
“Footprints?”
She gave him a superior smile. “Yes. I have proof I wasn’t making it all up.” She gestured for him to follow her across the square section of grass toward the back wall. “Right here.” She pointed toward several shoe-shaped prints, disjointed and trampled in the ground. “See?”
“Yeah. I see.” He glanced at her feet then met her gaz
e, a glint of irritation in his eyes. “Only problem is now you’ve traipsed all over them, and there’s no way to know which set might belong to an intruder, and which set might belong to you, and which set might belong to the gardener.”
“I was very careful not to step on any of the prints that were already here.”
“Well, the cops won’t see it that way. Do you know for sure there were no prints here before? You have people maintain the shrubs and plants, right?”
Jan nodded.
“Don’t you think these prints could be from them? Did you actually see someone out here last night?”
Heat flushed Jan’s cheeks.
He leaned closer to her, a muscle ticking near his tense jaw. “If you see someone out here again, you call me before you come traipsing around out here.”
Furious, she turned and stalked back toward the house. How dare he treat her like some stupid idiot. He worked for her, dammit. And his job was to find this weirdo stalking her, not to doubt her evidence. She stomped back into the kitchen and poured her now-cold tea down the drain.
“Ready?” he asked, walking back into the kitchen.
“Beyond.” She brushed past him and grabbed her purse on the way out the front door. Once he’d followed behind, she set the security system then climbed into the passenger side of his SUV, crouching low in the seat out of habit as she fastened her seat belt. The windows were tinted but not dark enough that she couldn’t be recognized. As they passed the guard station near the front gate, another car pulled up in the opposite lane, a gray sedan filled with people who looked suspiciously like paparazzi.
Perfect. Just what she needed today. She hunched lower in her seat and scrunched her shoulders up to her ears.
As they headed out of Summerlin and into Las Vegas proper, Dino glanced over at her and chuckled. “What the hell are you doing over there?”
“Hiding from the press.” She held up one hand to shield her face from the outside world.
“Guess being famous isn’t all glitz and glamour, huh?”
“No. It’s not.” She sighed and straightened a little, pulling her phone from her purse. “I can’t remember the last time I went anywhere without being hounded by photographers.”
“That must be tough.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’d hate to lose my privacy like that.”
“Privacy? What’s that?”
He smiled and winked. “Point taken.”
Jan sat back in the seat, her temper cooled. Dino was just trying to do his job, part of which entailed deciphering the clients interpretation of what happened in the middle of the night. He probably ran into lots of clients that made things seem worse than they were. She wasn’t doing that, but they hadn’t seen each other in years, how was he to know that she wasn’t the type to exaggerate? She was jittery and out of sorts and it wasn't fair that she take that out on Dino. Best to work with him if she wanted to catch the stalker and return to her normal life.
“Let me check my e-mails, and I’ll forward you any new ones from the stalker that I find.” She kept her tone friendly, then tapped in her passcode then clicked the mail icon and scrolled through her many messages. “Did you have a chance to look at the other ones I forwarded yesterday?”
“Yeah, last night.”
“Find anything threatening?”
“Not sure. Some of the wording was a little ambiguous, so I sent them on to Rockford’s IT team to have them check it out. I should hopefully hear something back from them soon. They’ve got all kinds of tricks to trace people who don’t want to be found.”
“Sounds scary. Is that legal?”
“Don’t know, but it is effective.”
She focused on her e-mails and found three more from the same seemingly untraceable e-mail address as the others. She forwarded them to Dino’s personal e-mail account then shut off her phone. Jan glanced out the window and spotted her favorite coffee shop on the corner. Caffeine sounded like the cure to all of her problems at the moment. “Hey, let’s stop and grab a coffee on the way to the studio—the coffee there leaves a lot to be desired.” She pointed to the café then smiled at Dino. “My treat.”
“You don’t have to ask me twice when there’s coffee involved.”
He swerved into the parking lot, and they walked to the front door, her taking two steps for each of his long strides. She noticed that he’d been taking care to make sure his gun was not visible under the black leather jacket. Whether that was for her benefit or just something he did in general, she wasn’t sure, but either way she appreciated it.
At the door, he slipped off his mirrored aviator shades and hung them from the collar of his black T-shirt then placed a protective hand at the small of her back to escort her inside. An innocent touch … or something more? She glanced up at Dino, only to find him scanning the small café, apparently unaware he’d touched her at all.
While they waited at the counter, the weird tingle on the back of her neck started again, and she glanced around, sure she was being watched. With her large sunglasses still in place, she could see others without them seeing her gaze, but she found no one staring at her.
“You want your usual?” he asked as they reached the cashier.
“Um, okay.” She was curious to see if he remembered her favorite drink all these years later.
“One venti double espresso and one venti caramel macchiato, please.”
He had remembered. That simple fact twisted Jan’s heart and she instantly regretted being so snappy toward him earlier.
The cashier rang up their order, and Dino pulled out his wallet before she could even get her purse open. “Hey, I said it was my treat.”
“A gentleman never lets a woman pay.” Dino opened his wallet then scowled.
She looked from him to his wallet then back again. “What’s wrong?”
He exhaled and snapped his wallet shut. “Forgot to hit the ATM this morning. Guess it is your treat today. But I’ll buy tomorrow.”
“Don’t be silly,” Jan said, pulling out her debit card and handing it to the cashier. “You’re working for me. The least I can do is make sure you’re properly fueled up for the job.”
He glanced over at her. “Thanks. For the fuel, I mean.”
“You’re welcome.” She sidled down to get their drinks at the other end of the counter. “Don’t say I never gave you anything.”
“I won’t.” His warm grin reached all the way to his blue eyes.
Her pulse quickened, and Jan swallowed hard, doing her best not to get caught up in him again. She knew where his empty promises led, and she knew better than to trust anyone, especially him, with her heart. She’d been there, done that, and knew if she went down that road again, it would only lead to heartbreak.
6
Dino opened the door to Treble Studios and held it for Jan then followed her inside. With traffic and the wait at the coffee shop, they were a tad late, but she was a country music star. That status had to offer some leeway, right?
“Where the hell have you been?” Lou rushed up to them. His expression was stern and his movements agitated as he ran a hand through his thinning hair and gave Dino a dirty look. “I’ve been trying to reach you for over an hour.”
“Sorry.” Jan took off her sunglasses and held up her coffee cup. “We had to stop for fuel.”
“We have coffee here.” Lou took her arm and all but dragged her toward the stairs leading up to the recording studios. Dino followed a few steps behind, keeping an eye on the obviously disgruntled manager. They were only ten minutes late. So much for that leeway theory. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“I shut it off after I checked my e-mails this morning in the car.” She gave him an apologetic look. “It kept me up most of the night.”
They reached the second floor, and Lou led Jan into the largest of the three recording studios. Dino lagged a bit behind, as much to assess the area around them and the people occupying the space as to keep from speaking up about the way Lou seemed t
o manhandle Jan. He’d assumed that given her stature as a performer she’d led a pampered life. Apparently he’d been wrong. And that line of thinking led him into dangerous territory. Because if he’d been wrong in his assumptions about Jan’s new life, maybe he’d been wrong in wondering if she’d been overreacting about her alleged stalker this morning. He got the sinking feeling that this wasn’t just a case of an overactive imagination.
Dino walked into the production area of Jan’s recording studio and spotted her already in the sound booth. The guy at the mixing board adjusted the controls while Lou spoke to her over a mic. “Okay. Let’s try the vocals on that new track again.”
Jan nodded and pressed her large headphones closer to her ears, closing her eyes as the instrumental track they’d apparently recorded earlier with her band played over the sound system. Lou counted down the intro, and soon Jan’s voice drifted over Dino once more.
He’d not heard it in person since high school, and the effect was like a sucker punch to his defenses. The velvety, husky timbre of her vocals reminded him of the times they’d spent alone in her bedroom. He’d sketch out plays for the next game while she’d strum her guitar and sing her songs for him. Only him. His chest constricted, and his heart ached for those simpler times, the times when everything was fresh and new and they’d believed they could take on the world. The lyrics seemed to match his melancholy, nostalgic mood:
Life deals you cards you want to fold
And whispers doubts as you get older
Things had worked out well for Jan. Things could’ve worked out for him too, if he hadn’t screwed up his knee. He shifted his weight and crossed his arms. Given the fact that the two of them were back together again after fifteen years, even temporarily, wasn’t something he’d ever foreseen, so who knew? Maybe things could still work out for him yet.
When I’m with you, you let me know
There’s nobody that you want closer
