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Chapter One
Cromline NY, 2011
Jenna Black sat frozen in her seat as spilled tea fanned toward the edges of her coffee table. She’d broken her favorite cup—English bone with a pattern of pale pink rosebuds and celadon colored leaves. Shards of china now lay scattered at her feet, but she made no attempt to clean the mess. She remained motionless and staring at the television as a reporter grated on about the latest bombshell to hit the world of entertainment. Actor Eric Laine’s perfect marriage to Bree Davis Laine was ending.
Pictures of the striking, A-list couple flashed on the screen—each with the intensity of a slap. Squinting, Jenna watched in the same manner one would view the more grisly scenes in a horror movie. “Oh my God,” she whispered as another picture, one too intimately familiar, stared back at her. For the first time since moving to Cromline four years ago, she had cause to worry. Grabbing her keys, she headed to her car, leaving a steady stream of amber liquid trickling onto the floor.
Less than ten minutes later, head tipped down, she stole into her local supermarket. Jenna, usually a bright offering of courtesy, brushed by people sharing the aisles. At the checkout counter she grabbed copies ofTrend, Celebrity Weekly,andThe Inquisitor, paid for everything, and rushed from the store.
Once home, she tore into the periodicals. The lead articles were all the same. Former entertainment manager Bree Davis had molded her handsome, young husband into a superstar. But Hollywood’s most glamorous duo had called it “quits.” Jenna droppedThe Inquisitorinto a box by her fireplace. She’d have to burn it before her eight-year-old daughter Janie returned home from her scout meeting.
Jenna rubbed her burning eyes and picked upTrend.If there was anywhere a more sensational accounting of Eric’s life could be found, it would be there, in the same magazine that had ripped open her own throat a decade ago. Her fingers shook as she turned the pages.
Pictures of a younger Eric, the beautiful boy she had once loved, were in the magazine’s centerfold. A wistful sigh spilled from her lips as her eyes coasted from glossy photo to glossy photo. She turned the page, and the easy task of breathing became a sudden struggle.
Photos of herself, taken when she’d been a wide-eyed popstar known as Angel, gleamed on the paper, next to them grainy images of Eric being led away in handcuffs by the police. Headlines like splashes of blood were on the pages.
Jenna tossed the magazines into the fireplace. She struck a match and watched the pages blacken and curl. The last image she saw before the mass erupted into flames was of Eric’s friend Mark Chambers—the man who raped her and stole her life.
Chapter Two
Eric Laine connected wires to the back of the television he’d ordered from a local appliance store. He plugged and unplugged the cords, but nothing appeared on the screen except pixilated shadows.
“Shit.” After waiting all day for the delivery, the damned thing didn’t even work.
A week ago, he’d fled from his Pacific Palisades mansion to go to North Carolina and the acreage he’d purchased sight unseen. Anxious to get away from the West Coast, he paid list price for a ramshackle farmhouse surrounded by overgrown fields, barns on the verge of collapse, and a stable that sheltered a dozen swayback horses. The house was no better. Walls were covered in yellowed paper, and his spartan collection of furniture consisted of a dinged table, two chairs with shredded caning, and a sofa covered in a snaggle of ripped fabric. Since his top-of-the-line flat screen TV was bent on rejecting a signal, it fit right in.
“Shit,” he cursed again. The college basketball finals were starting that night, and he had a date with a pizza and a six-pack. Static lifted just long enough for him to hear the latest spin on his divorce. “Great. That crap the satellite dish picks up.”
The screen again turned to snow before the name of his latest dalliance was revealed.I hope I had a good time with whoever she is. Supermarket rags linked Eric to every one of his more recent costars. The papers also hinted about a torrid affair he was purportedly having with a twenty-year-old singer, a young blonde who resembled Angel, the first Mrs. Laine.
Not even close, he’d thought when he’d first seen the article.Not even close.
He grabbed his leather jacket from the newel post on the rickety banister and headed outside to adjust the dish.
Later, after an hour of fiddling, he came to the sad conclusion that a night of watching college hoops wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. He hadn’t run from California to watch TV. He’d come East to shelter himself deep within the hilly grid of pines to escape the press, his agent, and most especially, his wife Bree.
He loped to the stables and checked on the horses. As he walked along the wide planks of pine, they poked their huge heads from their stalls. He scratched ears and muzzles, and they nickered thank you as if they knew he’d saved them from the slaughterhouse. Eric had been raised by an unforgiving hand and felt sorry for the defenseless animals. He hired grooms to tend to the horses as if they were champion thoroughbreds.
He ambled back to the house and scanned the rising knolls. The property wasn’t like any of the others he owned. No decorative shrubbery skirted the house, and no tall palms lined, rank and file, to guard the driveway. No high-tech lighting system illuminated an outdoor spa or tennis court—things Eric didn’t give a shit about and didn’t care to see anyway.
Before becoming famous, he’d been a carpenter and planned to renovate the old farmstead himself rather than throw money at an interior designer. Nothing would ease his troubled spirit better than hard work and feeling the weight of a hammer in his hand.
He hiked the property, and afterward, still in denim perfumed with hay and horse, he lay nestled in a hammock. As he gazed up at the stars, his heart thrummed easy and content for what felt like the first time in years. Banishing all thought from his mind, he stretched aching muscles, yawned, and drifted into a peaceful sleep under the open sky. He left his burdens, past and present, to slip quietly into darkness till morning.
****
Daylight and reality arrived all too early. Eric lifted his head and rolled his neck from side to side, but the rest of his body resisted giving up the comfort of the hammock. The sun rose from the eastern hills and a blending of birdsong announced its arrival. Dew coated grass dotted with dandelions blanketed the fields. He stretched and swung himself out of his makeshift bed and walked back to the house, kicking clods of dirt as he went. He had to fly to L.A. for a meeting with his lawyers.
With most of his comfortable clothes caked in mud and damp with sweat, he donned a suit and tie. A limousine transported him to the airport and back to the reality of his life as a celebrity. He hadn’t missed it. He preferred the simplicity of his derelict farm. Jeans and scuffed boots reminded him of a time when his life had been complete.
****
News about Eric’s divorce played in an unending loop. Maybe it didn’t, but to Jenna it certainly seemed to. Tabloid television and magazines latched on to the story like a junkyard dog shaking its prey till the life bled from it. She knew all too well how that worked.
A fleeting thought of how life would have been if she hadn’t fled Hollywood drifted through her mind. She dismissed it quickly. Dwelling on the money and fame she had given up led her to thoughts of the brief marriage she had forsaken and to the man who’d forgotten her as easily as her fans.
She stepped outside and picked up a pair of clay caked sneakers lying by the front door. After a hard rap against the porch railing, the red-brown dust fell to the ground. Eric sidled his way back into her thoughts. How was he dealing with the ups and downs of fame? How did he deal with living a life as unpredictable and temperamental as the weather? Why were he and Bree Davis splitting up?
