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Well, she wasn’t wrong. Teenage boys were among the most clueless creatures on the planet.
“Let’s get inside.”
Skylar slid out of the backseat and walked along the path leading to the back of the house.
Her mother, however, turned to me and plastered on the biggest fakest smile I had ever seen. “She’s a delight, isn’t she?”
Well, I could see that Skylar was a little more sassy than I had anticipated. Still, it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.
A scream caught our attention, and I rushed out of the car. “Stay here,” I said to Everly. Fear like I had never known it gripped my heart and I couldn’t breathe. I followed the path Skylar had taken and found her frozen a few meters away from a black package.
“What is it, sweetheart?”
She pointed at the parcel. “That package made that weird rattling sound. I picked it up thinking it was another one from one of mom’s fans, but it made that noise, and I dropped it. I know what a rattlesnake sounds like.”
Everly came sprinting around the corner. “What is going on?”
“I told you to stay in the car, babe.” Reverting back to the nickname I gave her that weekend all those years ago, came far too naturally.
“My daughter was screaming, I wasn’t going to stay away.”
I didn’t even think before I spoke next. “She’s my daughter too and I was handling —”
“What?” Skylar’s eyes widened just as I realized what I had said.
I turned to Everly who was just glaring at me. Her eyes softened as she turned to Skylar. “This is not how we wanted to tell you, honey.”
“Mom, there is no way you could soften this. Like I said, you had a bomb to drop.”
I stood alongside Everly. There was no way I would let her feel alone at a time like this. “Let’s deal with one crisis at a time.” There was a package making a noise near my daughter. That was one thing I could do something about. “Sky, go with your mom back to the car. Ev, call Nick. I’ll check the parcel, if we’re overreacting, we can call him back. Otherwise, I want to check for a note or something.”
I waited for them to do as I asked before approaching the package. The barking inside the cottage drew my attention and was probably the reason the package was left so far from the door.
Skylar was right, it was rattling. I opened and then closed as soon as I spotted the red diamond rattlesnake. A note fell to the ground and I picked it up to read it.
You will not dismiss me. Now that you’ll be a star again, we’ll be together. G
8
G
Icannot believe I had to resort to such childish antics in order to get her attention. She had been off my radar for so long. After the release of her debut album thirteen years before, she had all but disappeared from the public eye. I had seen her once or twice since the night we met at Smirk but after she fulfilled whatever obligations she had with the record label, she was gone.
Not even that brief affair she had with another singer could keep her in the public eye.
Of course, it all boiled down to the time she spent with Moore. I recognized him, of course. Everyone in my business knew who he was. Who knew he would be on the scene all these years later. Then again, I didn’t even know she had a kid.
If it wasn’t that I recognized her voice singing the intro song to some teen drama, I would never have known where to start looking for her. I had sent her some fan mail over the years but I wasn’t sure if she got any of it. But thanks to the writing credit on that song she performed, I knew her real name and it was easy to track her down.
The waitress at the quaint diner offered me a smile. “Would you like to hear the specials, or do you know what you want?”
The girl couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen. She could’ve been younger, with her dark hair in such a high ponytail, she looked no older than a freshman. But I believed the owner of the diner was a stand-up guy and wouldn’t hire anyone underage. “I’ll just have a cheeseburger, fries and a coke.”
She nodded and stepped away. Her sneakers squeaked on the black and white checkered tiled floor as she made her way to the counter. She punched in the order on a desktop computer, then entered the kitchen.
The ring of the bell over the door had me pulling my baseball cap a little further down. Not so much that I looked suspicious, but enough that I wouldn’t be easily recognized. The teenagers, a few tables away, got my attention. They were celebrating a birthday. Based on the crown on her head, I guessed it was the blonde wearing it.
The waitress, who seemed to be the only one working that afternoon, used her hips to swing the kitchen door open as she brought over a big two-tiered cake with two candles in the shape of a one and a five. The table started singing happy birthday. They were loud and full of smiles.
