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CHAPTER 6

Someone was following her! All the way to Southern California.Advertisement

Cassie had experienced the eerie feeling in the baggage claim area of LAX and then again, while waiting for a cab. Unseen eyes had followed her every movement.

Someone watching.

Someone waiting.

Her paranoia kicking into overdrive.

Don’t buy trouble, she told herself, as she was dropped at her apartment without anyone accosting her. Remember: It’s all in your head.

She watched the taxi pull from the curb, then walked around the huge stucco mansion to a private walkway. Still unnerved, she passed a manicured hedge then she hurried up the tiled steps to her apartment. After unlocking the door she stepped inside the space she’d rented for the past two years. Only then did she breathe a sigh of relief.

A quick look inside told her everything was as she’d left it except that now a fine layer of dust covered the coffee tables and counters. The potted ficus tree near the slider had given up the ghost, judging from the dry leaves littering the floor. Spiders had nested near the shower and the interior was sweltering, the air stale.

She’d thought she would feel some tug on her heartstrings upon returning, but found she couldn’t grab her things and get out fast enough. The charm of this little one-bedroom unit, once a nanny’s quarters tucked into an Old California–style home with arched hallways, red tile roof, and wrought-iron accents, was now lost on her. What had once been her haven, a place where she could get away from the noise of LA and the emotional stress of her family, now appeared tired and worn with the dust and dead insects trapped in the cobwebs in the corners, months-old magazines strewn over the coffee table.

Closing the door, she had a quick flash of the last time she’d seen Trent. He’d pounded frantically on the carved panels of the door, his fist banging loudly on the heavy wood. Watching him through the sidelight, she’d actually worried that he might break the window. As if he’d read her mind, he turned his attention to the old panes, his fist curled and raised. She’d held up her phone so that he could see her, that she was threatening to call 911, intending to place the call and have him hauled away by the cops. His jaw had been set, his knuckles bleeding, his eyes sparking fire as he glowered at her through the panes, but he’d hesitated.

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She’d backed up a step, put the phone to her ear, and watched as he’d sent her a hard, killing look, uttered something she couldn’t hear, then threw his hands over his head and walked stiffly away.

For damned ever.

“Good,” she said now, though her voice sounded a little uneven. She hated herself for her weakness where he was concerned, but wouldn’t even give herself the excuse of having just been released from the hospital. She’d always been a moron when it came to Trent. What kind of fool gets her heart broken not once, but twice, by the same man? What idiot marries the bastard after the first breakup and thinks things will change, that he’ll love her forever, that he won’t cheat on her? And especially with her own younger, more famous sister? “Stupid,” she muttered under her breath and spied a framed picture on the narrow table near the door. The 5x7 was of Trent on their wedding day.

Maybe she’d toss it later.

Then again, maybe not.

She was still legally married to him.

Why hadn’t she gone through with the divorce she’d threatened?

She cleared the sudden lump forming in her throat and decided she’d chalk up her inability to end an already-dead marriage to one more mental problem on her ever-growing list. Her eyes grew hot and she blinked hard rather than let a single teardrop fall. She’d cried her last tear for Trent Kittle. Her very last. Against her will she remembered that last fight, how his anger had radiated off him in waves and his fury had been etched in all the sharp angles of his face.

Shaking off his memory, she walked through the small apartment, which now seemed just an empty space with no heart, no soul. She probably should have let it go and moved months ago, during the filming of Dead Heat.

While Allie had moved to Portland and found her own place during shooting of the movie, Cassie, who was in far fewer scenes, had flown back and forth to LA or camped out at her mother’s house in Falls Crossing, or sometimes, when she was beat, rented a room in a hotel located a few blocks from the set. pqdm.com