Page 3 of Fame And Secrets

Chapter One

Phoebe

I stood in the doorway, blinking into the morning sun and waving as the truck pulled away. “Thanks for nothing, assholes.”

We’d subleased our home in the Hollywood Hills for only a week, and so far, the city hadn’t won any popularity contests with me. LAX lost my luggage, and the movers just now delivered the final four boxes. It seemed they’d ended up on the wrong truck in Manhattan, headed to Boise.

The idiots dropped them in the foyer and took off. Apparently, they were perfectly okay with a woman carrying a box of electronics up a flight of stairs.

Not like I’m almost seven months pregnant or anything.

Kicking the box down the hallway, I yelped as my sandal flew off and my toe jammed into the hard corner. “Shit!” I held my stomach and gave the box a hefty shove with my still-sandaled foot. The box flew across the hardwood and crashed into the wall, the contents rattling with the announcement I’d just destroyed Julian’s Xbox.

This week could go to hell.

Life was supposed to be a bouquet of tranquility once we moved to the West Coast. At least that was what Julian promised when I left the only life I’d called my own since escaping my horrific hometown.

Moving to New York City from North Carolina was supposed to be an exercise in self-sufficiency and mental stability. I never anticipated meeting and falling in love with a hard rock front man. I fought him every step of the way.

He led life in the spotlight for the world to pick apart. I had to hide in the shadows from a monster.

We both had our personal demons to fight. His demon stalked him relentlessly like a rabid fan. Unfortunately, my demon had been missing for three years and could pop up at any second. However, Julian Bale wore me down. To force my hand, he’d made his manager pull strings to make me his biographer.

Then he made me love him.

As if our lives weren’t scripted for a soap opera enough, in the middle of a stalker and an on-again, off-again relationship, I got pregnant. Julian said it was because we were meant to be. I still blamed faulty pill packaging.

After his stalker attacked us, the publicity did two things simultaneously: it made Julian a household name, and it brought my monster out of hiding. Julian’s band, Lords of Lyre, had been contemplating a move to Los Angeles before he met me. After sales skyrocketed, it was inevitable. Julian rationalized that moving across the country would keep me safe.

Picking up a box marked kitchen, I padded across the floor when a broadcast caught my attention. With Julian away on press tours, the background noise became my only companion. Normally, I didn’t care for the news, but a caption caught my eye, and I grabbed the remote off the back of the couch, turning up the volume. My chest constricted as the pretty blond anchor read the story with a sorrowful expression.

“Los Angeles County Police found the body of a woman in Griffith Park early this morning. Ride operators on the iconic Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round called 9-1-1 dispatchers after they discovered her when opening the popular attraction. While official reports haven’t been released, it has been confirmed that the woman’s death appears to be a homicide, the body dumped postmortem. The official cause of death, according to lead detective Alex Carmichael, was a series of seven stab wounds to her abdomen. The victim has been identified as twenty-year-old Elisabeth Cayden, assistant manager at Hill Heights Apartments in the Hollywood Hills.”

Abdominal stab wounds.

I ran my fingertips over my protruding belly. The puckered, scarred skin displayed more prominently as my stomach grew.

Seven in all.

I couldn’t speak. My focus centered on a sudden, intense pain radiating all over my body. I realized with a racing heart I couldn’t breathe, and started to hyperventilate. An internal terrorist attack raged inside me, and I wanted to run for my life…only I couldn’t.

I hadn’t had a panic attack in months. I’d been on medication for years, triggered by an attack in college, but they couldn’t be taken during pregnancy. Without my anxiety meds, stopping the attack proved hopeless. Panic hit me like a rollercoaster ride with no one at the controls.

The first pain literally knocked me off my feet. I gasped and fell over the box sitting in the middle of the foyer. Kneeling on all fours, I held my breath as the second contraction slammed into me.

No, it’s too early.

I purposely forced new air into my lungs in a vain attempt to ward off another twist from the abdominal vice clamp. Counting through the pain didn’t work, and tears fell, darkening the cardboard on the boxes.

“Pheebs? What the hell is wrong with you?”

I opened one eye and looked at the tall, slender woman’s face. As I recognized the blond waves splayed across her shoulders, adrenaline drained from my body in relief. Wrapping one hand around my stomach, I mumbled unintelligible words as she shackled a firm grip on my arm. With the other, she pulled me tightly against her chest.

“Jesus Christ. What’s happening?”

“Baby. Pain…please help.” Through blurry eyes, I watched her perfectly waxed brows furrow in indecision, then relax in resolve.

“Okay, I don’t know what I’m doing, but hold onto me. We’ll drive around until we get to the hospital or run out of gas.”

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