to her feet in agitation and walked to the front windows. Soft fingers of wispy fog moved across the fields like chiffon as the sun slid up over the horizon. There was a large white farmhouse across the road. It was her only visible neighbor other than Nell.
In the distance beyond the white house, a man on a tractor drove through the fog into the endless field of young plants. The wheels of the tractor kicked up a cloud of dust, and the man pulled his cap lower over his eyes. Oh God, she was living in the middle of a Norman Rockwell painting. She spun and returned to the overstuffed sofa, sitting down with a huff of frustration.
“Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad.” There was laughter in her cousin’s voice.
“This isn’t funny! I just walked the length of the living room in four steps. Four! It takes more than that to walk across my closet in Malibu. I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours and I’m already feeling like a caged animal. How am I supposed to last three or four weeks?”
There was a brief moment of silence before Amanda answered. “No, it’s not funny. You need to remember why you’re there in the first place. You’re safe, and you’re giving everyone time to track down the monster who’s stalking you. I don’t want you to be the next Nikki Fitzgerald.”
Bree swallowed hard. It was a little over five weeks ago that Nikki, a pretty up-and-coming actress, woke to find a crazed “fan” in her Hollywood Hills bedroom. He raped her, stabbed her repeatedly and then slashed his own throat at the foot of her bed. The gruesome murder-suicide made headlines around the world and sent a convulsion of fear through Hollywood. That was the moment Bree started to take her stalker a lot more seriously.
“I’d trust Caroline and her husband with my own life,” Amanda continued, “so I certainly trust them with yours. This is what they do for a living.”
Andrew and Caroline McCormack ran a security firm that provided protection for celebrities and politicians around the world. When Caroline heard about the stalker at the baby shower, it was her idea to send Bree to Nell’s. Bree leaned back against the cushions of the sofa and closed her eyes.
“I’m not sure we really thought this through. There must be other options. Instead of being cooped up in this miniature farmhouse, why couldn’t I stay in a luxury resort somewhere? Surely your husband has a suite open in one of his places?”
“Of course you could have gone to one of Blake’s resorts, but the celebrity websites all have standing offers to employees of hotels to leak information about famous guests. Blake does his best to control that sort of thing, but this is your life we’re talking about. Besides, this nut case knows we’re family, so he surely knows about all of Blake’s properties. Everyone agreed the best solution was for you to go somewhere totally off the grid where no one, including the stalker, would think to look.”
“Yeah, but I was still recognized an hour after I arrived.” She cringed at the memory of Emily’s reaction in The Hide-Away. “I should have left right then.”
“Yeah, probably not your best idea to rent a ridiculously expensive car and park it in front of a bar in the center of town in the middle of the afternoon. Why not just hire a marching band to announce your arrival while you were at it?”
She held her phone away and looked at it in surprise. Her cousin wasn’t usually so...blunt. Amanda noticed her silence, and rushed to apologize.
“Oh, damn it, I’m sorry! I swear it’s the hormones talking. I have no filter anymore. I’ve turned into that crazy pregnant lady who’s laughing one minute, crying the next and throwing a tantrum after that. Everyone is tiptoeing around me.”
Bree sighed. “No apology necessary. You’re right. I was an idiot yesterday, sweeping into town like I did. And then I made a scene by arguing with that guy in the bar. You know how I fall back on that snob routine when I’m nervous.”
Her skin tightened at the memory of the one man who didn’t take her crap for one second. Cole Caldwell had ripped through her carefully crafted persona with a couple of grunts and well-aimed insults.
“I get it,” Amanda said softly. “I know all about defensive walls and how to build them.”
Bree nodded. Amanda’s childhood had been dark and painful, and she’d buried that trauma deep until she’d met Blake Randall last summer, along with his orphaned nephew, Zachary, whom they’d now adopted. They lived in Blake’s century-old castle in the Catskills, along with that romantic ghost Amanda credited with their happiness. She’d married Blake six months ago, but they’d gotten a bit of a head start, and she was now eight months pregnant.
“Bree? Are you there?”
“Yeah, sorry. Just daydreaming.” She stood again, feeling restless. “This isn’t where I belong. I know that sounds awful and pretentious or whatever, but I don’t belong here. I mean, Caroline’s mom seems like a nice woman, but there’s a vegetable stand in her front yard. She bakes pies and bread. We have nothing in common.”
“Wait. She cooks? Didn’t you just write a whole book about cooking?”
“The title of the book is Malibu Style, and it’s about entertaining, not just cooking. Somehow I don’t think Nell would be interested in swapping recipes for my famous caviar and gruyere canapés.”
“You’ll never know until you ask. Maybe your next book will be about country style and bread-baking.” Amanda started to giggle. “Sorry, I just had a mental image of you posing for the cover in a ruffled country apron over your designer evening gown!”
They both laughed at that and ended the call with promises to stay in touch as they each counted down the next few weeks: Amanda to deliver her baby girl, and Bree to return to her real life in California.
After a shower and a bowl of cereal, Bree pulled on a pair of skinny jeans and a T-shirt from Gallant Lake, advertising her cousin’s resort.
Beyond the compact kitchen, the rest of the cottage consisted of one more bedroom, a small bathroom with a claw-foot tub, the living room and the front bedroom she’d slept in. The living room opened to a covered front porch facing the road. While the decor wasn’t awful, it was...simple. It reminded her of the plain suburban home she’d grown up in back in Corona, California. That might be why it made her slightly uncomfortable. It represented everything she’d been trying to run away from since her eighteenth birthday.
There was a small bookcase in the back bedroom, and she pulled out a well-worn paperback. The cover featured a bare-chested man with long, dark hair, clutching a red-haired woman in a green velvet gown. A rearing horse in jousting gear was in the background, in front of an imposing castle.
“If I’m going to be here alone for the next few weeks, I may as well enjoy a trashy romance novel.” She grimaced, partly at the book and partly at the realization that she was once again talking to herself. Out loud.
The brave heroine was just beginning to succumb to the brooding charm of her medieval captor when Bree was startled by a knock at the door. She was surprised to see it was almost noon. Her cheeks flushed in embarrassment for losing herself so completely in a bodice-ripper, as if she’d been caught being naughty. She tucked the paperback between the cushions of the sofa and went to the door. On the porch stood her biggest fan in the entire town of Russell, North Carolina: young Emily Caldwell. Emily grinned and raised her hands.
“I don’t have a camera, I promise! My mom and I are having lunch over at Miss Nell’s, and we thought you might
