Stuck With a Rock Star

by Amelie Bloom

  “Remember what I taught you,” I mouthed, hoping he could make out my words.

  “What are you saying to him?” Miss Stabby demanded.

  “I told him not to make any sudden moves,” I said. “I don’t want you to end up doing something you’ll regret, just because you’re jittery.”

  “I’m not jittery,” Miss Stabby insisted.

  She was jittery. Even her voice shook, and I hoped her nervousness would work to Jax’s advantage.

  “Lilith’s here!” I yelled and darted away around the side of the cabin and away from Miss Stabby and Jax.

  I hoped that Jax would recognize my move for what it was, a ploy to throw Miss Stabby off-guard, rather than a signal that reinforcements had actually arrived.

  I hoped he wouldn’t misinterpret my announcement as a suggestion that he should sit tight and wait for Hugo and Sven to collectively incapacitate Miss Stabby by some means unknown.

  I continued to sprint around the side of the cabin. My plan was to circle the cabin and approach Miss Stabby and Jax from behind.

  If Jax hadn’t yet executed the moves I’d taught him, at least I’d have the option of taking out Miss Stabby at the knees and trying to wrest the knife from her grip before she cut anything important—like Jax’s beautiful face.

  As I rounded the front of the cabin, I could see headlights slowly advancing up the rocky road.

  Unless the paparazzi were back, it had to be Lilith, accompanied by Hugo and Sven.

  I just hoped they wouldn’t arrive to see Jax covered in blood from a slash to the face, or worse yet, bleeding from a serious stab wound.

  I should have put more faith in both my teaching ability and Jax’s presence of mind.

  As I bounded past the back porch, I noted that the fire still smoldered around the edges of the wet comforter, but there was no longer any danger of the cabin becoming engulfed in flames any time soon.

  I looked around for Jax and Miss Stabby. At first, I didn’t spot them, which terrified me. Had the deranged woman managed to march Jax off into the forest?

  She had not.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Instead, Miss Stabby was on the ground with Jax on top of her. It would have been an easy hold to get out of, but clearly, Miss Stabby had not been a student of my online self-defense trainings, and let’s just say I wasn’t planning on suggesting she take my card as I turned her over to the police.

  Jax and Miss Stabby were engulfed in the shadow cast by the cabin, so I struggled to read Jax’s expression, but there was no doubt that he had her completely subdued.

  “Where’s the knife?” I asked, coming up for a closer look.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Did you get cut?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Did Miss Stabby?”

  Jax’s stalker didn’t seem to appreciate her nickname because she let loose a string of abuse that would have peeled the paint off the outside of the cabin, had there been any to peel. The impact of her insults was a bit blunted by the fact she was still impersonating Peppa.

  I didn’t even bother reacting, other than to mildly point out that I was not a professional sex worker, neither were the exact configuration or health status of my lady bits any of her business.

  “Hold her there for a little longer,” I told Jax. “I’ll be right back.”

  I found an old chair on the back porch and stood on it while I used my knife to cut off a section of the bedsheet rope still dangling from the roof. Then I tore the fabric into strips.

  I finished tying up Miss Stabby hand and foot. I was debating if I should remove the Peppa head or if that would just encourage her to spit at me, when I heard a car roll to a stop, followed by an incessant banging on the front door.

  “You’d better go tell Lilith where we are before she has Sven kick the door down,” I told Jax. “The back door is already ruined; I’d hate to see the front door in splinters.”

  “You go,” said Jax. “I’ll keep an eye on—”

  “Our detained guest.”

  Miss Stabby didn’t like that much better because I heard her muffled objections as I rounded the corner of the cabin to intercept Lilith.

  The front porch light was on, which was a shame because it allowed Lilith to get a good look at me. She stumbled back so abruptly that Sven had to catch her.

  “What happened to you?” she said.

  It was uncharacteristic of Lilith to ask about my welfare when she hadn’t yet seen what condition Jax was in. I hoped she wouldn’t freak out too badly about the bleeding bump on his head.

  I was toying with the notion of blaming that bump on Miss Stabby. She deserved it.

  My hair was wet from having the sodden comforter fall on my head, and my hands were dirty from grappling with Miss Stabby while tying her hands and feet with the torn sheet.

  “I’m not bleeding, am I?” I asked.

  That was the wrong thing to say.

  “Bleeding?” Lilith squeaked. “Why should anyone be bleeding? And why are you outside? Where’s Jax? Is Jax OK?”

  “I smell smoke,” Hugo said.

  Sven grunted his agreement.

  “You’d better sit down,” I told Lilith just as Jax rounded the corner.

  “You’re supposed to be watching Miss Stabby,” I told Jax. “Please tell me she didn’t get away?”

  “She didn’t get away,” said Jax. “I took the head off, and she’s fainted.”

  I suspected that Miss Stabby might have only pretended to have fainted. I’d had a feeling she might lose a considerable amount of bravado once her identity was no longer concealed by the mask.

  I sent Hugo around the side of the cabin to keep an eye on her and Sven back to Lilith’s SUV to get a flashlight and fire extinguisher to deal with the still-smoking floorboards and door at the back of the cabin.

  “You’d better sit down,” I repeated.

  Lilith, who was not usually so docile, sat down on the front porch step and listened to what I had to say.

  When Jax and I got done with our rather disjointed tale of the events of the evening, Lilith took out her phone to dial 911.

  “It’s no use,” I told her. “To get coverage, you have to hike up or down the road half a mile or climb the scree field behind the cabin.

  When Sven came back and announced that the fire was completely out, Lilith tasked him with calling for help.

  I went around the cabin to see if Miss Stabby had come to.

  “She’s breathing, and her heartbeat is regular,” Hugo told me,” so I don’t think there’s much reason to be concerned.”

  When I leaned down to confirm for myself, she appeared to be much younger than I’d expected. I wondered if she was even over 21, but I knew better than to further provoke her by asking for her particulars.

  Just as I was straightening up from leaning down to get a look at her face, Miss Stabby miraculously regained consciousness long enough to spit at me.

  She belatedly discovered I was out of range and immediately went back to pretending to be out for the count.

  “So, you and Jax, eh?” said Hugo. “I had no idea all this time we were engaged you were—”

  “Unaware you’d gotten another woman pregnant?”

  I couldn’t see Hugo’s expression clearly in the shadow, but I imagined it was registering shock.

  “Were you and Bettina carrying on an affair behind my back this whole time, or was it just a one-time thing during our last breakup?”

  “I didn’t intend this to happen,” said Hugo.

  He sounded so miserable I wondered if he was all that thrilled about moving straight from a relationship with me to a relationship with Bettina.

  “I think I deserve an answer to my question. Were you having an affair with Bettina?”

  “I wasn’t. It was just the one time.”

  Hugo’s voice went way up in pitch when he said it. His voice only did that when he was lying.

  I decided to let the matter
rest. It didn’t really matter one way or the other what Hugo and Bettina had been getting up to behind my back. The bottom line was that Hugo and I were over, and nothing was going to change that.

  “I wasn’t having an affair with Jax,” I said, managing to keep my voice neutral. “We’re nothing more than just close colleagues. Those pictures of us at the grocery store—”

  “Really? We just work together?”

  I heard Jax speak from a few feet behind me. Hurt and anger reverberated in his voice.

  “I didn’t mean that,” I said, turning to face Jax in the moonlight, then turned back to my ex-fiancé. “I never cheated on you, Hugo. Jax and I were just close work colleagues.”

  I don’t know why it seemed so vitally important to justify myself. Hugo had almost certainly been cheating on me, but my sense of moral outrage at being unjustly accused wouldn’t allow me to let the matter rest.

  “Were?” Hugo asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I think you’d better explain what you are to each other now.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “I don’t need to explain anything to you, Hugo,” I said.

  “Abby never cheated on you,” Jax told Hugo. “Up until you broke up with her, she didn’t seem to have eyes for anyone but you.”

  Hugo grunted but didn’t contradict Jax.

  “I’m not ashamed to admit that I started to fall a little bit in love with Abby the moment she pinned me to the floor of Lilith’s office three years ago,” Jax continued, “and it’s a feeling that’s been getting stronger ever since.”

  Jax was in love with me?

  I couldn’t quite believe it. I wondered if it was just hyperbole born of anger and hurt because I’d denied to Hugo that Jax and I were any more to each other than professional colleagues.

  I wondered what Miss Stabby was making of all this. She was the last person I’d have chosen to have listened in on Jax Fitzroy confess that he’d fallen in love with me at first sight. Hugo was the second to last person I’d have chosen to be witness to a love confession from Jax.

  This was not my lucky day.

  I was saved from having to formulate an appropriate response by Lilith coming around the corner to inform us that the police were on their way.

  “Can you unlock the cabin?” Lilith asked. “I’d like to use the bathroom.”

  That was when I realized, despite my clever plan to get us out the upper story window, I’d failed to ensure we could get back inside. I’d left the keys sitting on the kitchen counter.

  “Somebody’ll have to shimmy up those sheets hanging off the back porch.”

  That person ended up being me. The rope, which had started off ending six feet up, was now eight feet off the ground since I’d hacked two feet off the bottom to tear into strips to tie up Miss Stabby.

  Sven and Hugo both declined to climb up, and I agreed with their fears that they were too heavy. Jax volunteered, but Lilith nixed that idea.

  I got up on the old chair and jumped for the dangling end of the rope and tried to get a grip on it but failed.

  “You’re going to break your neck doing it that way,” said Hugo and grasped me around the waist and hoisted me off the chair before kicking it away. “I’ll lift you up.”

  “Take your hands off her,” said Jax.

  “Are you kidding me?” said Hugo, swinging me around to face Jax.

  “I don’t like you touching her,” said Jax.

  For a few seconds, Hugo froze, and I was afraid he and Jax would end up in a fight. That wouldn’t end up well for Jax, or Hugo, when he got blacklisted for life for beating his employer to a bloody pulp.

  “Listen!” I said, but I never got to finish because Hugo dropped me so abruptly that I fell to the ground.

  “Suit yourself,” said Hugo and stalked off around the side of the cabin.

  “What did you do that for?” I demanded. “I’m glad Lilith is still at the front door waiting for someone to let her in.”

  Jax just shrugged.

  “You’d better lift me up,” I told him, “and then go make sure somebody’s keeping an eye on Miss Stabby.”

  As I scrambled up the roof, I looked down to see Jax standing over Miss Stabby’s huddled form.

  “I thought I had a security team to take care of things like this,” he called up to me.

  “This is what happens when you fire your best bodyguard,” I said.

  I let Lilith in, picked up a throw off the couch to cover Miss Stabby, who must be freezing on that cold ground, and headed outside intending to stand guard until Sven got back.

  Hugo was sitting in Lilith’s SUV with the engine running and the headlights on, clearly seething.

  I tapped on the window, and he rolled it down.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded. “Jax ended up having to watch the prisoner. Isn’t that what you’re in charge of?”

  “You want the police to find us, don’t you?” Hugo blustered.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I know it looks kind of bad, but it’s true that I never cheated on you. Up until a few days ago, I didn’t even have a clue how Jax felt about me.”

  “I believe you.” All the fire had gone out of Hugo’s voice, and he sounded terribly tired. “I guess I didn’t have a clue, either.”

  That was an unusual admission of being less than perceptive. I was tempted to rub it in, but an ambulance from Heavenly had arrived, followed a few minutes later by a squad car.

  One officer untied Miss Stabby, who persisted in pretending to be out for the count. The officer in charge instructed the paramedics to load her into the ambulance, which took off within minutes.

  I hoped Miss Stabby didn’t miraculously revive at a stoplight and bolt out the back of the ambulance.

  It took the police quite a while to sort out why we’d tied up a juvenile—although it turned out she wasn’t nearly as juvenile as she looked. We’d later learn she was Miss Christina Howard, age twenty-two, from Long Beach.

  I hoped the police were going to take this thing seriously, but it wasn’t my job to make sure proper evidence was collected in order to press charges. Lilith was much better at that sort of thing.

  As soon as the ambulance took off, Lilith read the officers the riot act about sending off a perpetrator of attempted murder without anyone to guard her.

  Lilith used phrases like municipal liability, and professional incompetence, and culpability after the fact.

  Finally, the younger of the two officers suggested to his superior that perhaps one of them really ought to get down to the emergency clinic in South Lake Tahoe and keep an eye on the patient.

  I think me handing over Miss Stabby’s latest threat note and the barbequed rat I’d retrieved from under the porch steps might have gone a long way to swaying the officers’ minds.

  Lilith wanted Jax to get checked out for injuries, but I was eager to get as many miles between us and Miss Stabby as possible, and Jax agreed with me.

  “I’m perfectly fine,” he said. “Right now, all I really want to do is go home.”

  “I’ll send Sven with you,” said Lilith. “Hugo and I can finish up here and then go to the police station to give our statements.”

  Whoever was manning the Heavenly precinct was going to love that. I was guessing that Lilith would subject them to a detailed outline of every hideous offering Miss Stabby had ever made to Jax, including photo documentation.

  Not that I thought that was a bad idea, I just felt sorry for the poor underling who was going to have to convince Lilith that he or she was treating the situation with sufficient gravity.

  “I don’t want Sven to go with us,” said Jax.

  “I thought you fired Abby,” Lilith pointed out.

  “I did, but given that Miss Stabby is in custody, do I really need additional security tonight? I’ll have Abby.”

  He would? I’d been counting on going home to my own cozy apartment, curling up in a fetal position on the couch, and watching trashy television in wha
t would probably prove to be a futile attempt to pretend none of this had ever happened.

  “You can’t expect her to work for free,” Lilith pointed out. “What exactly is the status of your relationship?”

  “To be determined,” said Jax.

  “I’d be the last to interfere in your personal life,” said Lilith, “but—”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  In reality, Lilith was usually the first person to interfere in Jax’s personal life. She meddled more than his own mother, but I refrained from pointing that out.

  “Then don’t meddle,” Jax told Lilith.

  “Do what you want,” said Lilith in a voice suggesting that whatever decision Jax might make on his own would be a grave mistake and lead to inevitable disaster.

  “I will do what I want,” Jax said. “Let’s go, Abby.”

  It would have been a dignified exit, and a real coup for Jax in the perpetual power struggle between him and Lilith, if I hadn’t been forced to remind him that we couldn’t go anywhere.

  Our Jeep had four flat tires thanks to Miss Stabby and her trusty switchblade.

  “We’ll wait, then,” said Jax. He sat down on the steps of the porch and pulled me down beside him.

  “You do both realize you’re going to have to make up your minds what you want me to say to the press,” said Lilith.

  “Why should you have to say anything to the press?” Jax protested.

  “There’s malicious speculation that you impregnated one of your employees while she just happened to be engaged to one of your other employees,” said Lilith. “I think that’s something that’s going to have to be addressed.”

  Lilith had a point.

  “We’ll worry about it tomorrow,” said Jax. “What’s taking Hugo and Sven so long?”

  By the time the smoldering wood on the back porch was completely cool to the touch and Sven was willing to leave it, the time was well past midnight.

  “I’ll make a visit to the police station tomorrow,” said Lilith. “I’ll drive back up here in the morning. Right now, we need to get Jax home. Never mind the rest of us.”