Her Secret Life Read online

  She wasn’t going to live her life afraid of her shadow. Or whatever else might be lurking in corners. She’d seen danger coming and she’d walked right into it.

  Because she hadn’t been able to discern. The dangers that she needed to fear were the ones right in front of her. The ones she could see, but not identify.

  She’d had a long talk with Sara Havens on Saturday and had an appointment to meet with Bloom Freelander on Monday night. The psychiatrist was going to make the trip to Beverly Hills to meet with her. Said it gave her an excuse to drag her new husband to the city to eat in style.

  Kacey recognized the excuse for what it was. An attempt to make her feel less guilty for Dr. Freelander’s drive on her behalf.

  It didn’t work. She still felt guilty.

  But she couldn’t go back to Santa Raquel. Not yet, anyway.

  Michael told her about Willie. His one beer. And the fact that the teenager had been walking around like a worried pup ever since, going out of his way to please his brother.

  “Have you let him know it’s okay?” she asked, relaxing as he shared his life’s ups and downs with her.

  “No.”

  “But...Michael...”

  “I can’t, Kace.” Michael sounded tired. She thought of the other night on her sister’s couch when she was snuggling up to him. Hard to believe on the very night she’d been attacked she’d been able to find a measure of peace anywhere, let alone in a man’s embrace.

  “I thought about it. Lord knows I want to,” he was saying. “Hell, I drank my share of beer when I was his age. Probably even in front of him. But with Willie’s history, I can’t let anything go. At this point, he has to be accountable. Not so much for the beer, but for doing it in my home, behind my back. I have to know I can trust him. And he has to know that he has to be trustworthy.”

  He was right. And she told him so.

  “Have you seen Bo?” he asked.

  She frowned. Bo had been over that afternoon, as soon as she’d told him she was home.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “When I called to cancel our date last night, I’d just said I wasn’t feeling well. I’d decided to wait until I was home, to tell him about the attack in person. And I’m glad I did. It was good that he could see that I was fine.” He’d been upset, but relieved, too, that the worst of her injuries were bruises that could be covered up and would soon fade.

  He knew her looks mattered to her.

  “He was actually great about it,” she told Michael. But she didn’t add how much better she felt hearing Bo say, about fifteen times, that looking at her, he couldn’t tell.

  She wasn’t proud of herself for caring.

  And yet...

  “Will he be there with you tonight?” It wasn’t a Michael question.

  “No.” Being glad she could tell him that wasn’t a Kacey reaction.

  Shaking her head, she didn’t try to figure it all out. For now, as everyone kept telling her, she just had to get through one minute at a time. Tomorrow, when she talked to Dr. Freelander, she could try to sort out the rest of her mess.

  She and Michael talked until they were both falling asleep. And then, with her phone in her hand, she went in to bed.

  * * *

  ON MONDAY MORNING, Michael found another photo of Kacey. He’d been dreading the possibility, though he hadn’t told her, of course. If by chance the incident on the beach was related to the earlier photos, it stood to reason there’d be another one.

  To his relief, the picture had not been taken in Santa Raquel. Or on a beach. It was on a street, in Beverly Hills, he discovered with very little research. Not far from her apartment.

  The mention of a photo during her attack on the beach and the close proximity of this one to her home were enough for him to talk to one of his police contacts. Or rather, three of them. The beach incident was in Santa Raquel’s jurisdiction. The coffee shop in Beverly Hills. And the internet was the FBI. By the time he texted Kacey to call him as soon as she could, he’d made all three calls.

  He expected to have to wait for her to have a break, but received her call back almost immediately. He’d just started his car, was still in his driveway before heading to the office, and took her call over his car system. He’d been out already that day, to drop Willie at school, and had come home to make the calls to law enforcement on her behalf.

  “I thought you’d be on set,” he told her.

  “Just off,” she told him. “But I’m due back in ten. What’s up?” She sounded matter-of-fact, and maybe a little bit out of breath, causing him to wonder if she’d been off camera but still on set when she’d received his text and gone somewhere private to talk.

  For a brief second, it felt good to be that important to her. And then he came to his senses. He was a grown man and plenty important to a lot of people. Including Kacey Hamilton.

  “Have you heard from your agent?”

  “I had a call. I haven’t taken it yet. If the police report hit the news, I just don’t want to know. Not until I’m done working for the day. And then I’ll call you. First thing.”

  “It’s not the police report, Kace.” She could stand up to his news. He knew she could. It was important that she did. “There’s been another photo. Taken less than a block from your condo. You’re standing but look like you’re unsteady. The caption’s more of the same.”

  “What am I wearing?”

  “Black leggings. Black long-sleeved Lycra top.” Skin showing between the two.

  “And the headline?”

  “In Kacey Hamilton’s World the Party is All Day Long.”

  “Is Bo in it, too? Do I need to call him?”

  “He is. A step or two behind you. Looks like he’s ready to catch you if you fall.”

  “It was a couple of Sundays ago,” she told him. “We’d gone for breakfast. I had a headache and we were heading back to my place so I could lie down. I don’t remember him ever walking behind me. If he did, it was only for a second.”

  Gone for breakfast as in they’d gotten up together and needed to eat? Or had it been a breakfast date?

  Either scenario was viable. Either was fine.

  And absolutely none of his damned business.

  “It looks like you’d just crossed the street.” He knew she didn’t have much time. “I just wanted you to know. I’ve put this in the hands of the authorities, Kace. We can talk about details later, but in case you get a message, you needed to know what it was about.” He didn’t want to scare her. But she had to be aware. That photographer knew where she lived.

  And the attacker on the beach had mentioned a photo...

  “I’m not safe here, either, am I?”

  He wanted to tell her yes. Opened his mouth to do so.

  “I think you are,” he said. “Just be careful. Don’t be quite as trusting for a few days, okay?” He couldn’t believe he was saying that to her. Helping to put out her light. “There’s no reason to believe anyone is going to come after you. I just don’t want you going anywhere alone in the dark.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said with an un-Kacey-like bitterness to her chuckle. “There’s no danger of that.”

  Good. Then his job was done here.

  “Michael?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I needed to hear your voice this morning. Even if the news wasn’t great, I’m glad you called.”

  He’d needed to hear hers, too.

  Not sure where that left him, he hung up and went to work.

  * * *

  THE WEEK PASSED in a near blur for Kacey. Without the inducement of alcohol. She hadn’t touched so much as a glass of wine or a sleeping pill. She needed her mind clear. Aware. Mistrusting everyone around her was not her nature.

&
nbsp; It wasn’t that she normally thought everyone had her back. That wasn’t the case at all. But she took most people for good and figured they were all on the crazy ride of life together. Just sitting in different cars.

  Work saved her, as she’d known it would.

  And talking to her family and Michael every night.

  She’d met with a Beverly Hills detective. He’d assured her that there was nothing they could see that should make her afraid to live her normal life. They didn’t yet have a connection between the attack on the beach and whoever was posting pictures of her, but they were working with the FBI and Santa Raquel police to get more extensive warrants for Michael and to ensure a thorough exchange of information between departments would continue—at least until her attackers were caught.

  Their canvass of the high school didn’t yield results. No one recognized the kids from her descriptions. She wasn’t even sure when she got to town Thursday night and saw a poster that she recognized them. It had been dark on the beach. She’d been frantic at the time and clearly distraught when she talked to the police at the hospital.

  There’d been no semen. They’d taken a swab from her breast where the one kid had had his mouth, but, again, there’d been no match.

  No beach parking lot surveillance cameras showed anything.

  The teens had mysteriously appeared on the beach, and just as inexplicably disappeared.

  Though she’d been told she could take as much time off from the Lemonade Stand as she needed, by Thursday, when Steve called “Cut” for the last time that week, she knew that she was going back to Santa Raquel. She’d already packed the Mustang with the things she needed for the weekend.

  Her meeting with Bloom Freelander had opened that door. When she’d heard about Bloom’s own fight to not give up on the peace and love that Santa Raquel offered, just because a jerk (or in Kacey’s case, three) lived there, she’d known that her vow not to return was not healthy.

  They touched you, Kacey. They saw your breasts. They held you down and took intimacies. But they didn’t take you. Unless you let them. Are you going to give them your joy? Your love for the beach? Do you want their violation to color the memories you’ve made with your nephew in the sand? To steal any future family times in your sister’s home?

  There’d been more. And would be more.

  She was meeting with Dr. Freelander again on Saturday morning while Lacey and Jem took Levi to T-ball practice.

  But first, the real test. She had to get in her car, drive it to the freeway and take the road to Santa Raquel. To take herself back and not let everything she saw, felt, did, remembered be colored by a few horrible, violent moments on the beach.

  Calling Lacey to let her sister know she was on her way, she pulled out of the parking lot. They chatted for a while, mostly about a job Jem was working on and the alphabet writing exercise Levi had brought home from school. Lacey had talked to their mom earlier in the day and told Kacey that their folks had wanted to come up again, but that she’d convinced her mom that the houseboat party they’d been invited to was a once-in-a-lifetime thing and they should go.

  She described their father’s attempt to fix the back railing on their porch—and how their mother had arranged to have someone come in and take care of it while they were away. By the time Kacey was on the highway to Santa Raquel, she’d actually smiled twice. For real.

  And understood that her sister was going to talk her home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  MIKE WAS HOME with Willie when Kacey texted.

  He almost didn’t recognize his brother with his hair cut short and back to its natural blond. He’d just brought pizza home to celebrate Willie’s second successful week of probationary school and straight A’s.

  He glanced at his phone.

  I’m in town. Can I see you tonight?

  He had to go. Knew he should tell her no but couldn’t.

  “Hey, bud, that was...a situation. I have to go out for a bit. You going to be okay here?”

  Willie stared in the direction of Michael’s hands, which were resting on the table. “You mean, can you trust me not to do something stupid?”

  The boy’s tone was remorseful. Something else the week had brought. In five days’ time, over video games and casual meals, Willie had pretty much owned every single thing he’d ever done wrong in life. Owned as in taking accountability for it, not blaming circumstance or even the beliefs of others for his own mistakes.

  He’d even called a meeting with his family—their parents, sisters and Dennis—on speakerphone to tell them that he understood that he’d given them little evidence to have faith in him but to ask for one more chance to show them that he had potential.

  Reactions had been varied but with one constant—pure shock. Willie asking for another chance was brand-new, but every single member of the family pledged to give it a go.

  “You asked for this chance, Will,” Mike said now, hoping he wasn’t making a huge mistake, putting too much on the kid before he was ready.

  His brother nodded. “Yeah.”

  “You think you can stay alone and be cool?”

  “Hell, yeah. I know I can.”

  “Then I trust you to be cool.”

  The boy looked up then, almost to Mike’s nose. There were tears in his eyes. But he didn’t say a word. He just nodded.

  * * *

  “I MIGHT BE out late.” Mike stuck his head into the family room as he pulled a dark blue sweater over his head and down to cover the waistband of his jeans. “Don’t wait up for me.”

  “Whatever.” Willie was moving around like he was on the screen, not just controlling it, ducking and then swerving the top half of his body into the seat next to him. He barely glanced Mike’s way. “I’ll be cool,” he added.

  He thought about calling Diane but didn’t. The only way Willie was going to learn to be trustworthy was to be trusted.

  His sisters were right about one thing. It was time for Mike to loosen the apron strings where their baby brother was concerned.

  “I’ll have my phone if you need me,” he called from the door leading to the garage.

  “Whatever!” Willie called back.

  * * *

  “ARE YOU SURE this is what you want to do?” Lacey stood with Kacey at the front door to her cottage. “Maybe you should wait until you talk to Dr. Freelander on Saturday. Or talk to Sara tomorrow after your class at the Stand.”

  Smoothing the lines from her sister’s forehead—a force of habit because lines would age them prematurely and be bad for business—Kacey shook her head. Dropped her hand. And smiled. She didn’t feel the smile. But she made it appear.

  “I need to do this, Lace. I’m not going to let them steal the beach from me. It was night then. They were guys that I trusted to be friendly and move on. It’s night again. And Michael is a friend I trust. I can’t be in this town and not feel the pull of the beach and the ocean. It saved me last summer when I was coming face-to-face with what I’d become. I have to trust it to save me again.”

  “It kind of did save you,” Lacey said now, worry still shining from her gaze. “If Gerald Forsythe hadn’t been walking his dog there...” They knew the man’s name now. He was a local business owner—a small insurance firm—with a wife and three young daughters.

  Kacey had been telling herself the same thing. Problem was, it didn’t feel like she was believing herself yet.

  Which was where Michael came in.

  He’d agreed to come get her. To take her down to the beach after dark.

  She was dressed in dark pants that buttoned and clipped at the waist, with a button-down shirt that was tucked into her underwear. A dark sweatshirt hung past her thighs and her hair was stuffed up in an oversize baseball hat.

  She hoped having him with her wo
uld take care of the rest.

  Besides, she had something to tell him.

  “So...I’ve been waiting for you to tell me, but you haven’t,” Lacey said, probably reading her mind as usual.

  “Tell you what?” She’d already told her sister the news she had for Michael.

  “About you and Mike Valentine.”

  Shaking her head, Kacey glanced out the window beside the front door, looking for headlights. “We’re friends.”

  “Kace, I heard you asking for him last weekend. I saw how you reacted when you heard his voice. And I found you curled up on his lap when I came to check on you.”

  Turning back, Kacey felt a surge of...not anger, really, but something close to it. “We are friends, Lace. Please don’t ruin it by implying...other things.” She swallowed. Those hours on the couch with Michael—they were sacred. “He held me without doing anything. He didn’t even try. He wiped my tears. He just...”

  “He’s in love with you.”

  Her heart leaped. In fear, mostly. “He is not in love with me!” But he loved her. “We’re like brother and sister. And I need him right now, Lace. Please, I’m begging you, don’t mess this up.”

  She’d been standing up to Lacey’s probing stare her entire life. She did so now and was surprised to see her sister frown. Like she was disappointed in her.

  “Listen, Kace.” Lacey’s tone gave her a sick feeling in her stomach. “I know you’re having a hard time, and I will do everything possible to help any way I can. I love you more than life, you know that.”

  She nodded, warmed by the reminder. As long as they had each other, they could get through anything. She’d always known that.

  And they always had. Even through their rough patch, they’d still talked. They’d still connected in the midst of their disconnect.

  “And I know you.”

  Kacey nodded.

  “I’m afraid that you’re using Mike. He’s clearly got a thing for you. I get that you don’t see that, so I want you to at least think about trusting what I see...”