Runaway Rockstar

by Mina Carter

  There was a harsh laugh, the reply scathing. “I would think so, this is probably all an elaborate publicity stunt. They’ll sell the story to a magazine for millions, proclaim themselves madly in love and in six months or so they’ll have an equally messy divorce. Celebs like her do it all the time.”

  Zette didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, sat numbly in the locked cubicle. Ice formed in her chest, spreading out through her limbs and making movement impossible. Even if someone had yelled ‘fire’ at this point she’d have just sat there staring at the door in front of her.

  Her eyes followed the grain of the wood absently, noticed the slight splodge of paint where it had run when it was being painted. Her eyes followed it; a tiny imperfection in the otherwise perfect paint job which suddenly seemed more important to study than anything else in the world.

  JJ was divorcing her. Not even married a day and he’d already planned to divorce her. She drew a shuddering breath, feeling the hot prickle of tears at the back of her eyes. Ruthlessly, she squashed them. She would not break down, not yet and not here.

  She knew better than to play the denial game. It had been too good to be true, everything had told her that but, like an idiot, she’d wanted to believe it. She’d wanted to believe she could have her Prince Charming. Her voice was bitter as she muttered, “Happy ever afters are for fairy tales, always have been, always will be.”

  Chapter 6

  The blonde had abandoned him after one dance, returning to the side of a boyfriend Logan hadn’t seen before. Not that a boyfriend bothered him overly much, especially not this one. Small and skinny he had the ‘office geek’ look about him. If he’d wanted to, Logan could easily have taken the blonde off him. She’d been giving him the eye all evening, covert little glances of interest. Obviously casting about for something better than she had.

  He wasn’t vain about his appearance but he knew he looked good. Knew he was attractive to the female sex and even some men. He suppressed a shudder. That was all fine and dandy if you were that way inclined but not for him thanks. He liked women, really liked women, in all their infinite sizes and shapes.

  Although he could, he couldn’t be bothered to winkle the blonde from her boyfriend.

  What would it get him other than another night’s meaningless sex? Perhaps great sex but still. He was fed up with one night stands and…well, it just being sex. It was most guys’ dream but Logan was getting tired of it, finding he needed something more. Something more fulfilling.

  He took another deep swallow from the heavy whiskey tumbler, leaning against the wall. He’d come out to the front of the hotel for some peace and quiet and to think on the slippery slope JJ was on.

  “Fucking idiot,” he murmured into the still air, leaning his head back against the rough stone as he thought. The plan was doomed to failure of course. Zette would find out, women always did in the end, and then JJ would be up shit creek not only without a paddle but without a damn boat either. Even if JJ didn’t realise it, Logan recognised the signs of a man in love. He was still in denial but he had it bad. And he was heading into trouble with this plan.

  Logan sighed, and studied the stars. It was a clear summer night, so they were out in force. Actually he’d not been joking when he’d said he’d have a crack at Zette if and when JJ was done with her. She was gorgeous and, from what he’d already seen of her, she had a wonderful personality. He chuckled to himself. Who was he kidding? The one woman he found interesting only had eyes for his best mate. Bastard.

  He watched idly as a taxi pulled up to the front of the hotel, one of a steady stream of vehicles that had been coming and going since he’d been standing outside. The day guests were long gone now but the evening guests were still arriving, even though the reception was in full swing inside. The main door opened, a brief splash of sound from inside intruding on the solitude of the night until it swung shut.

  Logan lifted his head as a feminine step crunched over the gravel toward the waiting taxi. He was a student of human nature, a ‘people watcher’ so to speak. There was a lot a person’s body language could tell you and he believed in using any weapon he could get his hands on. Even the sound of a person walking could tell you a lot about them. Currently this set of footsteps was telling him the owner was fairly small, female and pissed off. His eyes widened a little in surprise as they settled on the owner of the footsteps.

  Zette.

  Worse, it was a Zette devoid of the wedding dress and other bridal accessories and getting into a taxi, looking very much like she was leaving her own wedding reception. Minus the groom. He watched silently as she got into the taxi, her pale face half covered by her hair as the door closed and the vehicle moved away into the darkness.

  But the glimpse he got of her expression, the tortured look in her eyes, rocked him. She really loved that insensitive bastard, it was written all over her face. He watched as the tail lights of the taxi disappeared off down the half mile drive and sighed. He pushed off the wall. It was time to go and break the news.

  JJ had already noticed Zette’s absence by the time Logan appeared at his side, trying to spot her through the crowds in the hall.

  “Oh hey man. Have you seen my wife anywhere?” he asked, feeling an absurd swell of pride as he said that. Zette, his wife.

  “Strange as it might seem when she’s wearing a dress that size but I seem to have lost her. No doubt she’s been cornered by a couple of these piranhas someplace and needs rescuing,” he joked, indicating a couple of the ‘showbiz’ guests they’d been forced to add to the guest list.

  The wedding planner had warned them it was that or risk having them try and sneak in anyway. So they’d been invited and frisked for both recording devices and cameras, including camera phones, before they’d been allowed past the door. So far they were pretty much behaving themselves, although a few of the agents were eyeing both JJ and Logan with a speculative eye as they stood together. JJ gave them a hard stare, one that plainly said ‘don’t even think about it’.

  When Logan didn’t reply he turned, a frown forming between his brows. One look at the serious expression on the lawyer’s face brought him up sharply, a cold knot forming in the middle of his broad chest. Deep down, in that forgotten place where his heart was.

  “What’s happened?”

  “You might want to take this somewhere else,” Logan warned in a low voice, nodding toward the door beside the bar. Beyond it was the corridor that led to the hotel accommodation.

  JJ didn’t reply, just headed that way, his determined stride and expression making the guests part in front of him. In his mind he ran over all the deals they had in the works at the moment, wondering which one of them had gone belly up this time. Christ, if it was the Sharm el-Sheikh deal then he’d need to leave tonight to try and rescue it. And Zette wasn’t going to like that, not at all. He ran his hand through his hair as they stepped into the corridor, Logan closing the door behind him carefully and shutting out the noise.

  “It’s the Sharm deal isn’t it? What’s that pillock Reynolds gone and done now?” he demanded. “I knew we should have sent someone else! He just doesn’t have the balls for this type of work. How soon do we leave?”

  “It’s not the Sharm deal,” Logan’s voice was low, his eyes unreadable.

  “Then what is it?” JJ’s voice echoed with confusion. What else could be so important that Logan would drag him out of his own wedding reception?

  “It’s Zette. She’s gone.”

  “Gone? What do you mean gone?”

  “Gone as in done a bunk, done a moonlight flit, buggared off… Left. I just saw her getting in a taxi and, believe me, she didn’t look like she was nipping out for more wine.” Logan said, his voice colder than JJ had ever heard it.

  He focused on the other man, his heart lurching in his chest. A leap of panic from an organ he thought long dead as fevered chills ran over his skin.

  “Left?” he croaked, as though he couldn’t comprehend the word itself
. But he could, only too clearly. The reason he couldn’t spot Zette in the hall became clear. She hadn’t been there.

  “No, no. You’re wrong. She wouldn’t have left…” He trailed off, already turning. He shouldered the door to the stairs open, not wanting to waste time waiting for the lift, and thundered the couple of flights up the stairs heading for the bridal suite. His heart pounded as he all but sprinted along the corridor, the keycard only just in the door before he crashed through it.

  Her wedding dress was in a heap on the floor.

  “No…” Pain lanced through him. Sharp, immediate. Debilitating.

  Barely aware of what he was doing, he entered the room, picking up the discarded gown and smoothing the crumpled fabric before draping it across the chair. He’d known their marriage wasn’t forever, it wasn’t planned to be forever. So why did it hurt so much?

  He stood in the middle of the room, running his hand through his hair in distraction. He looked around, for once not sure what to do next and floundering. JJ always had a plan, he was the decisive one, the one who knew what he wanted and went all out to get it. But his plans had never included what to do if your wife of less than twelve hours walked out on you.

  Perhaps she wasn’t gone? Perhaps Logan was wrong and she was just in the shower, changing into something lighter than the full dress…even as the thought occurred to him, he dismissed it. Since when had he started doubting Logan? There was no way he’d lie to him, not over something like this.

  His eyes swept over the room, latching onto the envelope on the dressing table. He approached it with the caution of a soldier checking enemy bodies for booby-traps. A single white envelope, with the hotel’s logo on it. There was no name on it but he knew it was for him.

  He reached out, picked it up. It was heavier than just a letter, something clicking and shifting inside it. He knew what it contained before he opened it and looked inside. Sure enough, two rings nestled between the folds of the heavy white paper, the diamond of Zette’s engagement ring catching the light.

  JJ sat down heavily on the side of the bed. There was a letter as well, a single sheet of paper folded neatly and slid into the envelope next to the rings. He smiled despite himself, Zette was always neat and tidy. Drawing out the letter, he opened it.

  I know about the divorce papers. File them.

  “Crap.” JJ’s jaw tightened, a muscle jumping in the corner. He’d hoped this was retrievable but if she knew about the papers then obviously not. File them…and she obviously didn’t care.

  “Fuck it,” he muttered, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his cell. He flicked it open with a practised gesture, hitting speed dial. He wasn’t letting her get away as easy as this damn it! She couldn’t just walk out on him without him having the last word. Even if that last word was just to ask her where to send the damn papers.

  The distinctive ringtone of her phone went off behind him, on the other side of the room. JJ frowned, leaving his ringing as he tracked hers down by the sound, ending up rooting under the bed for it. She must have kicked it there by accident and forgotten it.

  “Great, now what?” He looked at the sleek silver device in his hand. The flashing icon in the corner caught his eye. She had saved messages. Unable to help himself, he pressed the call button and lifted it to his ear.

  “Ms. Matthews, this is Doctor Fisher. We’ve just received your test results back and I’m delighted to inform you that you are expecting…”

  “All I wanted…was a fairy tale ending…”

  Zette’s powerful voice was restrained as she sang, little more than whispering into the microphone in front of her. But it was enough. The raw emotion in her voice pulsed around the stadium, kept the crowd spell-bound, fascinated by the tiny figure on stage as though she was something rare and unique. An endangered species to be observed before it died out forever.

  JJ stood in one of the VIP boxes, watching from the shadows. His expression was fixed, eyes focused on Zette. She was unique. There wasn’t another singer in the world that could pull in such crowds, evoke such emotion in a crowd, in a listener. Make them feel the pain and sorrow that flowed through her voice.

  Especially her last album, Sleepless Nights and Broken Hearts. A departure from her usual full-bodied, full-on rock style, it was filled with soulful ballads that brought tears to the eyes. Or at least they had for JJ, hearing the anguish in her voice as she huskily whisper-sang the words. Critics raved over her ability to put so much emotion into her voice but he knew better.

  Zette sang from the heart, she always had. The pain and misery were real. And he’d caused them.

  “But my Prince Charming…you weren’t who I thought you were…”

  He winced, the world contracting, narrowing down to just the two of them. She could have been singing just to him. She was singing just to him. He’d known that the moment he’d heard her singing this track, catching it by accident on the radio in his car.

  He’d avoided listening to her new album. Pride. Stupid pride. She’d told him to file the divorce papers, wanted him out of her life even though she was pregnant. It had killed him but he’d done it, telling himself a woman who could walk out on her wedding was capable of just about everything. The baby probably wasn’t his anyway, he told himself, using the sort of crap men used to justify their actions. So when he’d turned on the radio and heard her, he’d already been moving to switch it off, but the note in her voice had stopped him. Then he’d listened to the words and he’d been lost.

  “…walking alone, always walking alone…”

  He’d sat in his car for the longest while, hours, without moving. Looking through the windscreen as the world moved on around him. He’d missed his entire afternoon’s meeting schedule, his PA going mad trying to get hold of him. She’d even run the hospitals thinking he’d had an accident.

  Which he had, but not the sort she was thinking of. No, it was his emotional state that resembled a train crash. Shocked, rocked to the core, realisation had hit him with the force and subtlety of a sledgehammer. He’d gotten it wrong. So wrong it wasn’t even funny unless you were thinking farce.

  He’d bought her album that night and sat up into the early hours listening to it. Each and every track resonated with him, some bringing tears to his eyes as he realised what a fool he’d been. But this song, Shattered Dreams, affected him on a level the others didn’t.

  It was about a little girl who’d believed in fairy tales, only to have them shattered one by one. The people she was supposed to trust and rely on rejecting her and abandoning her. At first he’d thought it was just about him, just about a girl losing her lover and getting her heart broken. But after about the hundredth time listening to it, he realised there was more to it than that. She wasn’t talking about one person, not just about him. The realisation had prompted him to do some digging. Digging into the past and what had happened all those years ago.

  He’d just returned from tracking her mother down. His jaw tightened at the thought. What he’d done to Zette was bad enough but what Ariadne had done had been far, far worse. What could possess a mother to abandon her child, albeit a nearly adult one, alone to fend for herself?

  No wonder Zette was so strong. She’d had to be to survive. His eyes wandered over her again. He couldn’t see her properly on stage at this distance but the cameras remained fixed on her, the two huge screens at the back of the stage displaying her from different angles. Whatever the angle, one thing remained the same. The protective hand she had curled around her swollen belly as she crooned into the microphone.

  “And I’ll walk alone, my fairy tales just a shattered dream…”

  Pride welled, deep and strong. His child. Without thinking about it, he knew Zette would never abandon her baby as she’d been abandoned. She’d be like a lioness defending her young and he seriously pitied anyone that tried to hurt a child of Zette’s.

  That included him. He might need some of that pity before the night was out. When she’d finished sin
ging, he was going to try and put things right. Apologise on his knees…grovel and beg forgiveness; whatever he had to do to put her shattered dreams back together.

  Forever.

  It had been a long concert, a hard one for Zette. But now it was over. She sighed in relief as she took a last bow, the roar of the crowd behind the dazzling lights lifting her spirits a little. It was hard not to take comfort in the fact that at least her fans loved her, even if it was only for her music. Right at the moment she’d take just about anything to soothe her battered soul.

  Finally she managed to escape off the stage, ducking past the stage crew and heading for her dressing room. She smiled as people called out to her but, now that she was offstage, she allowed her sheer exhaustion to show and they didn’t do more than shout congratulations on her performance.

  She closed the door of her dressing room and leaned against it. Her eyes fluttered closed for a moment, tension draining away from her body. Usually performing galvanised her, left her hyped up. But pregnancy had taken it out of her. Morning sickness and exhaustion, a cocktail guaranteed to make anyone feel like crap. Not that she hadn’t already felt that way.

  On automatic, her hand stroked over her bump. Six months gone now she was visibly pregnant. So far she’d refused to comment on her pregnancy or her ‘failed before it started’ marriage, despite repeated pleas from the media. Her PR people gave them the same answer every time. Zette’s personal life was not up for discussion. Ever. And any reporter, paper, magazine…hell even small town community newsletters, which printed anything about her or her baby that wasn’t sanctioned, would be on the receiving end of some very nasty attention from her lawyers.

  Fortunately JJ seemed to have the same approach to them. She hadn’t seen anything from him in the papers as yet. She knew her office shielded all her mail and checked the news to make sure. Hell, she’d even tried to retain Logan Fyre in case she needed some heavy duty legal muscle. He was JJ’s friend, but she could still appreciate that he was the best in the business.