Her Secret Life

Michael’s harrumph was about what she’d expected.

“I just wanted to let you know, before I go, that I don’t have good news for you, Kace.”

Her heart dropped as she watched a purple-haired, multipierced couple walk by her car, looking at her to see if she was, you know, someone.

She never left the studio in makeup or wig, and without them, could usually move around without recognition.

“What did you find out?” she asked slowly. “Who did it?”

“That’s just it. I didn’t find out who did it. I don’t know. I’ve got a couple of things yet to check, but it seems whoever posted that picture didn’t hack your email account.”

“That’s good, then, right? But I thought you said they used it to open that account...”

“It looks like they know your password, Kacey. It seems they went on the server and deleted the confirmation email that was sent to your address, which is why neither you nor Lacey ever received that email. They’d have to know your password to log on to the server.”

“But...I’ve never given that password to anyone, and I’m positive Lacey hasn’t either.”

“She said the same.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“I’ve got a couple more things I can check. Your password was so personal it’s pretty hard to believe that anyone could have figured it out even knowing you well. I’ll go through the list of names you sent, too. But in the meantime...I’m sorry I didn’t find more.”

“You’re being a great friend to me, Michael. Don’t you dare apologize.” She just wished she could be as good a friend in return. Wished he would let her get close enough to him to know what she could do to return the favor.

“Your sister tried to pay me.”

Shit. She hadn’t thought about Lacey’s penchant for detail.

“I’m so sorry, Michael,” she said, quickly. “Please don’t be offended. I just... Since you haven’t seemed to want anyone to know we’re friends, I didn’t tell Lacey how close we are. She wouldn’t insult you for the world by trying to infer that you’re no more than a business associate...”

“It’s all good,” he told her, as though that’s all that was going to be said about it.

“So...did she pay you?”

“Of course not.”

And then it occurred to her—she’d have been really hurt if Michael tried to pay her for a favor, but what if... “It won’t offend me a bit to get a bill, Michael. You know that, right?”

“You want me to send you a bill.” Statement. Not question.

Wait. Was that wrong? Oh, hell, again. She just wasn’t good at the nuances. She spent her days pretending to be something she was not in a world where what seemed right one day was suddenly twisted into wrong the next. “Honestly?”

“Wasn’t that our deal? What you asked me for? Honesty?”

“Yes.” She’d needed to have someone to tell if she drank too much. Someone to be accountable to so she’d feel like crap if she screwed up. “Honestly, it never even occurred to me that I would pay you for helping me. I mean, if you asked me to do something and then tried to pay me for it, I’d be hurt. But I don’t mean to assume, or impose or...”

His chuckle stopped her. “You’re fine, Kace. It never occurred to me that you’d pay me, either, and it would have offended me had you tried. I just wanted you to know that the issue came up, because I have a pretty good feeling your sister is going to mention it to you.”

He’d covered her ass and was still doing it. He knew how important it was to her that she not screw up or look like a loser to her sister. Ever again.

“Okay.” She watched a group of about four older couples stop and look in the window of the tourist shop. “So...for now...”

“For now there’s nothing for you to do. I’ll do my checking, but I want you to know that I’m not sure I’m going to find anything.”

“What do we do then?”

“There’s not a lot we can do. Except that I’ll keep a tight monitor on that account. If a crime had been committed, we could call the police and try to get a warrant for surveillance video from the internet café for the date and time the photo was posted, but we don’t have any evidence of a crime. One Photoshopped picture of a celebrity is not going to get anyone’s attention in LA.”

He was right, of course. “Nor should it,” she said, thinking of the rise in violent crime that was taxing a police force that was thinner than it had once been. “But what if it happens again?”

“In a way, I hope it does. Then we have more of a chance of catching whoever did it.”

“And if it doesn’t, I really don’t have anything to worry about. Lacey and I can just close that account...”

“No.” He didn’t leave room for discussion. “I’ve already told her the same thing. For now, I want you to keep sending each other emails, just as you would normally do. Just do so knowing that someone else could be seeing them.”

“Don’t say anything private,” she translated.

“Right. That way I can monitor the account. I’m not comfortable with the fact that someone went to the trouble to Photoshop a recent picture of you and then used your email account to post it. I’d like to have a shot at finding out who and why.”

Tears sprang to her eyes.

Because she’d screwed up at work. Hadn’t slept well the previous night.

But they weren’t tears of sorrow. They were tears of relief.

“You’re good for me, Michael.”

“You’re good for me, too.”

Now wasn’t the time for platitudes. “No, I really mean it. You...you’re special. Unlike anyone else in my life. I just want you to know...I don’t take you for granted. At all. I appreciate you so much...”

His long pause was no surprise. What came out of the blue, after a full thirty seconds, at least, was a response.

“I meant what I said, too, Kacey. You are good for me.”

“I don’t see how. I don’t have a lot to offer people. I can act. And I know how to dress and put on makeup. Beyond that, I’m not really trained or...aware enough to...”

“Stop. You might not have Lacey’s acute ability to read people and situations, but you’re aware, Kacey. Remind me sometime when I’m not in a hurry, and I’ll tell you how I know that.”

She’d kept him talking when he had a much more pressing matter to tend to.

“I’m sorry. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“No reason to be sorry. I changed pants while we were talking and am in my car. I’ve got another mile or so to go...just not enough time to give the conversation its proper due.”

The conversation. Him telling her that she was good for him.

She thought of the scene with Tom that morning. Her aversion to Simon telling her that he was developing feelings for her. The way she’d superimposed Michael into that scene when she’d never seen Michael in Simon—or Tom—before.

For a second, she was afraid.

And then she wasn’t. Michael wasn’t Simon. And he definitely did not have those kinds of feelings for her.

And even if he did...she could think of worse things.

A lot worse.

CHAPTER SEVEN

MIKE BROUGHT WILLIE home to spend the night with him. Ostensibly he made the offer because he was taking his brother to school in the morning to sort out the cheating issue with Willie’s biology teacher, Mr. Weatherby.

He’d been one of Mike’s favorite teachers. Aeons ago.

The underbelly truth was that their father was at his wit’s end with Willie. He’d been in and out of trouble since junior high, refused to follow even the simplest of requests like keeping his music down or honoring a curfew.

And yet he always seemed to stop far short of felony status.

At his core, Willie was a good kid, a decent human being. He just had a mountain of guilt to get over.

“Wow, who’s this babe?” his brother called out to him, and Mike’s stomach sank.

He walked from the kitchen through to the family room that was almost consumed by a wall-size screen, an entertainment center couch and a myriad of technological wonders lining the two side walls.

If Willie had his way, he’d never leave the room.

On the couch, with a state-of-the-art wireless keyboard on his lap and Mike’s computer called up on the big screen, the blond, blue-eyed high school senior was staring at the Photoshopped picture of Kacey and practically drooling.

With the push of a button on one of the many towers on a shelf next to the couch, Mike shut down the machine.

He never left his personal computer on. Never.

Except when he was talking to a woman on the phone as he was changing and was not aware he’d be bringing anyone home with him, which would have made him doubly focused on shutting everything down.

Still, if there’d been a break-in while he was gone...

Stupid. He’d been talking to Kacey and had made a stupid mistake. One that could have had repercussions for some of his clients and his business.

Most personal information was kept on secure drives at the office, and the cases he’d be working on from home were on separate flash drives. But he’d called Kacey’s up before he’d phoned her...

“Wo-ho! Man!” Willie’s chuckle didn’t sound innocent. Or kind. “You’ve got a babe? Big brother Mikey has a babe? That looks like that?”

The boy, with his long hair falling over his cheekbones and the corners of his eyes, was looking at the computer tower. The screen. Not at Mike. Never at Mike.

At least Willie wasn’t staring down at his shoes, which was where his gaze usually landed when he and Mike were in the same room.

Mike picked up the glasses of chocolate milk he’d carried in from the kitchen. He’d set them down to shut off the computer and now handed one to his baby brother.

“I do not have a babe.” That much had to be made clear from the get-go. And the rest... “You were on my computer.” The truth was safest for all concerned. “She’s a client.”

It wasn’t like Willie had ever been inside the Lemonade Stand, or would ever have cause to know any of the women or workers there. No reason to recognize Kacey.

That part of his life—the counseling and the work he did there—was his alone. Off-limits to his family.

And none of them had any knowledge of his association—his friendship—with the famous Kacey Hamilton. None of them even knew he’d met the actress.

Part of Santa Raquel’s allure to Kacey was that no one there recognized her or knew who she was. And for Lacey’s sake, they kept it that way.

Willie slurped the chocolate milk and nodded, his focus on the bottom half of the now empty screen. “Sure. That’s cool.” He mumbled something. Mike couldn’t make out the words, but the derogatory tone had him on alert.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Nothing.” Willie grabbed one of several controls in the console between the reclining seats. “Flip on the game station, man. Let’s get this night going.”

The brothers were pretty much neck and neck in a yearlong interactive world-building video game. They built police forces, got jobs, voted for politicians. They took risks and could get sick, hurt, maimed or killed. For once Mike didn’t feel like playing.

“No.” Finishing his milk, he set the cup on a side table and sat down on the couch—opposite end from his brother. “I want you to tell me what you just said.”

“Let’s get our game on, that’s what.” The boy dropped his glass in the holder and stared at it.

“Will, tell me what you said.” Why was he pushing so hard? The kid was already on the verge of complete rebellion.

“I said, ‘Of course she wouldn’t be your babe.’” He spoke in a loud voice, his head half bowed, his gaze aimed somewhere near Mike’s elbow. “It was... I just... You know, like, how great would that be...if you had a babe that looked like that.”

Willie had hoped Kacey was his girlfriend. The idea made his little brother happy. The opposite...he’d been bitter.

“I’m sorry, okay?” Willie tapped his foot on the floor and his hand against his thigh. “I shouldn’t have said it. I... Look, man...”

With another remote in hand, Mike pushed buttons and a game came on the screen. He queued it up to where he and Willie had left off. “It’s not a problem, Willie,” he said now. “And for the record, I don’t have a girlfriend because I choose not to, not because I can’t get one.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Willie grabbed a control.

And started racing his car down a busy street.

* * *

WEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY were killer days on the set. Kacey worked from seven to seven to get the week’s scenes shot within the new four-day workweek. She’d barely had time to text with Mike. The biggest news had been the name of the shop where he’d traced the IP address, an internet café not far from her condo where she sometimes took her tablet to read news while she enjoyed a cup of coffee.

Oh, and he’d been able to straighten things out with his younger brother. The kid got to stay in class. And keep his grade. Michael had said something about counting the days until graduation. He actually knew how many were left.

She loved that about him. That he cared that much. That he was so...aware.

“Now, when you first meet them, my folks can be a little overwhelming.” Bo broke into her thoughts and she was back in his Jaguar, dressed in a short tight-fitting black dress with three-inch heels and almost as much makeup as she wore on set.

Her necklace, an angel pendant with multicolored Swarovski crystals, was big and bold on her bare chest, hanging almost to her cleavage. At the last minute she’d changed the matching earrings for the ones Lacey had given her. Diamonds and Swarovski went hand in hand.

“And my brother, he can be a bit of a nerd, but he’s harmless.” Bo was embarrassed by his brother. He hadn’t said so, but the thought came to her anyway.

It wasn’t a normal Kacey observation. But then, she’d just been thinking about Michael and his brother troubles.

Mostly, she wasn’t her usual happy-go-lucky, take everything at face value self. She couldn’t shake the fact that someone was out to sabotage her. And she was exhausted.

Definitely not up to meeting the folks.

Bo reached for her hand and squeezed it. “You okay?” The smile he sent her was as gorgeous and adoring as they came.

“Of course.” Sending him an equally engaging smile, she squeezed back. She liked Bo. He seemed to support the changes she was making in her life. Sure, there was an occasion now and then when he wanted to go to an after-party and she insisted on going home.

But he was trying.

“Thank you for doing this. You have no idea how much it means to my folks.”

His words brought a bit of a clench to her heart. She and Bo...they were together, but not together together. Not yet.

She supposed they were heading that way, and wasn’t fighting the possibility. Bo, whose last gig was playing the heartthrob star of a sitcom, was currently considering his options on his way to becoming one of the nation’s top stars. Their lives would be busy and exciting and everything she’d always envisioned.

But he also had family he cared about. Down-home, earthy, real-life stuff.

Suddenly glad to do this, she gave his hand another squeeze. “I’m anxious to meet them,” she said. If she and Bo made it all the way, the people she was about to meet could be her family someday.

And she’d discovered over the past year that family was what she valued more than anything.

* * *

MIKE SAW A photo of Kacey during his routine client surfing Friday morning. He’d been searching her name continuously since their Monday lunch meeting and had seen more beautiful, sexy and revealing shots of the woman than he’d needed, if his nighttime sweats were anything to go by.

The whole thing was off. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen images of beautiful women before. To the contrary, he saw them all the time in his line of work and had pretty much grown immune to them.

But these photos weren’t of a stranger. Or even just a client. They were of Kacey. Except for the one in question, they were also all legitimately posted, including the one from the night before.

It was a seemingly random shot by a journalist who happened to be having dinner at the same place as Bo and Kacey and Bo’s parents. A common occurrence in Beverly Hills.

Still, as he dressed in jeans and a cream-colored button-down denim shirt, ran his fingers through the blond mop that had once won him a “best hair” award and headed toward the computer shop outside the Lemonade Stand, he couldn’t get the vision of Kacey’s short black dress and remarkable cleavage out of his mind.

Neanderthal had been looking at that cleavage.

Kacey’s smile was directed toward the older couple holding their hands out to her.

The caption read, “New family ties in the making?”

Had she seen it?

He couldn’t wait to hear what she had to say about the shot.

Unless she thought it was great...

Wait.

The thought stopped his self-talk cold. If she thought it was great, that was cool. Totally cool.

She was his friend. He wanted her happy.

And if joining Neanderthal’s family made her happy, then he was happy for her.

Period.

CHAPTER EIGHT

KACEY DIDN’T HAVE a lot of time in Santa Raquel on Friday. The studio benefit scheduled for that evening started with hors d’oeuvres at the home of one of the Rich and Loyal producers. They’d move from there to a yacht that would be taking them out to sea for a five-course meal. A new record label was providing entertainment. Tom and his partner were hosting one of the after-parties.

Ever since she’d asked Bo to be her date for the evening, he’d been talking about it.

Her hair appointment was scheduled for eleven and would take at least three hours. Getting highlights to look like they’d grown in wasn’t an easy task.

She had nails and a pedicure scheduled right after that, and then the appointment to pick up the dress she’d ordered. They’d need at least half an hour to make any adjustments, which was why she had her makeup person meeting her there. The jewelry she’d be wearing was already in her bag, as were the shoes and evening bag she’d bought for the occasion.

She loved the entire ritual. Had loved it even more when she and Lacey were doing it together.

Getting ready for the event was usually more fun than the event itself—a secret she and Lacey used to share.

Her class ended at nine, so that gave her a few minutes to stop by Michael’s office at the Stand.

She entered the building from the secure and private resident walkway. His office door faced the back door, and she was glad to see him sitting at his desk. Michael’s casually styled hair, the shoulders that filled out his shirt, eyes that could see all the way inside a person...

Not just her, everyone. The residents. People who worked for him at the computer shop. Customers. Everyone. He understood people.

“Hi.” Out of habit, she shut the door behind her as she stepped quietly into the room. These meetings had started by accident. They’d both been working with the same woman—a resident at the time—who’d been trying to change her lifestyle of drunkenness, as well as recover from beatings by her abusive live-in boyfriend.

In the end, she’d been one of their few failures at the Stand. She’d quit her counseling sessions, gone back to her boyfriend and drinking and, last they’d heard, had left the state with a fresh hospital record.

That failure—the first Kacey had witnessed—had hit her hard. She and Michael had been talking about it one day last fall and she’d recognized that part of the reason she was having such a hard time understanding the woman’s choices was because they hit too close to home. Not the violence part, but the allure of the blur, as she’d called it. When you weren’t happy, even when it seemed like you had everything you ever wanted, you drank or partied to blur out the sadness. To cover up what you couldn’t figure out...

Somehow from that conversation had come his offer to be her secret support system. He didn’t think she needed one at first. She wasn’t an alcoholic. Had no addiction problems. But she feared the allure of the blur would call her back.

Or maybe it had been the allure of the spotlight—of being someone that everyone wanted on their invitation lists...

“I can’t stay,” she told Michael now. “I just wanted to say hi. And see if you have anything new to tell me.”

She didn’t like how that sounded. Like he was working for her. Like she’d stopped by because he was doing a job for her. “Mostly just to say hi.”

She’d wanted to see him.

He was her friend.

“I’ve got nothing new,” he told her. “The only thing that showed up this morning was a photo from last night. And you look completely sober.”

He turned his computer screen around so she could see.

It wasn’t bad. She was smiling at Bo’s parents. His mother seemed delighted. She’d liked the woman. Quite a lot. She’d liked Bo’s brother, too. He was shy but smart. He wanted to go into politics and knew more about the state of the country than she’d ever hope to know. He was older than she’d thought from Bo’s description of him. Still in school meant college—finishing his senior year with a poli-sci major.

But Bo’s dad...

She looked away from the picture and sat down in the wooden chair in front of the scarred table that served as Michael’s desk at the Stand. She knew his company’s address and had driven by the building a few times. She’d bet the desk here wouldn’t be found in the basement of that place.

“You got a second?” she asked him.

“Of course.”

“I... Last night...Bo’s father gave me the creeps.” She told him about the man’s glances, the way she’d caught him looking at her breasts. Every time he spoke to her his words had been completely innocuous, but there was an undercurrent that made her uneasy.

“Did you talk to Bo about it?” Michael’s frown eased the tension she’d been feeling. He was taking her seriously.

As she’d known he would.

“I started to in the car on the way home,” she said. “But he interrupted and told me not to take offense at his father. Said he’s always been a big flirt but that it meant nothing. He said his dad flirts with old ladies and little girls equally. It’s just his way.”

“Where are they from?”

“Indiana.”

“And they’re leaving today?”

She loved that he remembered that she’d told him they were only in town the one night.

“Yes.”

“Then I guess you don’t have much to worry about,” he said.

He was right. Bo wasn’t his father. And it wasn’t like Indiana was just around the corner.

Nodding, she stood. When she noticed a tiredness about him, in his eyes, she sat back down. If she didn’t get her hair done, the evening would go on.

People would be bound to notice—those in her circle always did, since looks were an important part of television work—but...the party would still happen.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’d tell you if I found something.”

“I’m not talking about me. Something’s bothering you.” She might barrel through life in such a way that she didn’t always notice the little things, but Michael was...Michael. She was different around him.

In a good way.

The way she was with Lacey.

Yeah. The thought slid into place. Michael was like Lacey. He saw the real her. Treated her like the person she was inside.

And he could calm the whirlwind that was her life.

His shrug hurt her feelings.

“Michael.” She set her bag down on the floor and crossed her arms.

Her stance didn’t seem to affect him, so she waited, watching him.

Nothing.

Fine. She pulled her phone out of her purse. Pushed the speed dial for the salon and canceled her appointment.

She’d missed the cancellation window and would have to pay for the appointment but didn’t give a whit.

“You said you have time.”

His chin bent slowly and came back up. An acknowledgment if not really a nod of agreement.