She had, the quiet one. I’d seen it in her eyes. Her eyes had been a darker shade of blue than Carly’s, but they’d had that same tough look to them. It hadn’t been her idea to come up and talk to me, I’d realized. She’d just decided to come with the blonde.

I’d looked back at the blonde then. “A couple of the bigger guys, the cons who’d been in there a while, they figured I’d make a nice little bitch for them.”

She flinched.

“Does that really sound like some sort of bad boy fantasy?”

“Okay.” Her friend had hugged her tighter. “She gets the point.”

We’d stared at each other for a few more seconds. Then I’d nodded. “Good.”

As they’d walked off, I’d grabbed the gym bag I’d dropped and looked up. That had been when I’d seen the vultures hovering. Son of a bitch. The media and all the paparazzi were something I still couldn’t get used to. Some days they didn’t pay any attention to me at all, but other days...

Sadly, that had been one of those days where my own personal flock of nuisance photographers had decided to zero in on me.

After dealing with the hassle on a personal level for a couple of months now, I’d developed a new appreciation for Carly’s patience with them. Now, as I sat with the rest of the main security detail, trying to pin down a schedule of sorts for the tour, I found myself with a deeper appreciation of the trouble Ryan went through planning everything.

While everyone else was listing places they wanted to go in various cities, I was trying to see what new shit the media had cooked. I skimmed a caption, and then moved on before it hit me. When it did, I went back to it. I read the caption again and then stared at the thumbnail of Carly and me.

Hollywood’s Most Romantic Couples!

“They’ve got to be kidding me.”

We’d been together for nearly four months and the media hadn’t gotten tired of us yet. The VMAs had long since come and gone, as had Christmas. The best Christmas I’d had since my mother had died.

Now, Carly and I were looking at our first Valentine’s Day together as a couple and it seemed we were being subjected to several of these inane lists. If I had my way about it, I’d never look at another of these things again, but while they annoyed the hell out of me, I also couldn’t seem to stop reading them.

Hollywood’s version of a train wreck, I supposed.

Besides, it was easier to brood over this than my media mis-steps. Or the letter I’d had waiting for me this morning.

Don’t say you weren’t warned, Cantrell. Now see how she suffers.

After nearly two months without anything, why in the hell had it come now? Right before we left on her book tour? It was the fifth letter I’d received. She’d just received a fourth. It seemed to echo the sentiment in the one I’d gotten.

You were warned, Ms. Prince. Sometimes the innocent must suffer the consequences of the guilty.

Neither Ryan nor the cops’d had any more luck in tracking down the source. I suspected Ryan was now trying to talk them into getting the FBI involved.

A headache pulsed at the base of my skull and I fought the urge to drag Carly out of the room and up to our bedroom. I’d moved in with her a few weeks back. I still worked my shifts, and nobody seemed to think anything of my relationship with Carly. Well, except Ridley.

But Ridley was an asshole.

Correction. Ridley was actually a lot worse than an asshole.

After Carly publicly sent him away, he’d gotten a lot more subtle with his jabs, and he kept most of them to when the two of us weren’t likely to be overheard, but I knew he was getting into more and more trouble with Ryan and he was being sent out with Carly less and less. Cameo had mentioned a few days earlier that she’d overheard Ryan giving Ridley a warning. Ridley was down to his last chance and that’s all there was to it.

I didn’t know what he’d done to piss Ryan off, but I found myself wishing he’d do it again. Preferably before we left at the end of the week so he didn’t go with us on tour. I knew that would complicate Ryan’s job a lot, but Ridley pissed me off that much.

Having Ridley breathing his rage down my neck was only adding to how on edge I was lately. I could hold it together, and being with Carly made it easier in some ways, but in others, it made it harder. Knowing the letter-writer was still out there, knowing that, no matter what I did, I might not be able to protect the most important person in my life...It was a different kind of stress than I’d known before.

Even Ace had said I’d been a bit on the scary side during training sessions.

“I was wondering when you’d see that,” Carly said, interrupting my thoughts as she leaned over to study the Top Ten countdown on my screen. “We only made number seven.”

“Why the hell are we on it at all?” Even as I said it, I wanted to punch myself in the head. Hard.

Cameo narrowed her eyes at me as I floundered for a way to pull my foot out of my mouth. “Look...um...I just…” I shot Ryan a desperate look.

“You’re on your own, kid,” he said, shaking his head.

Carly ignored him. “What’s wrong with us?”

“It’s not us that I can’t figure out.” I should have kept my damn mouth shut. Now I had to fix it. “It’s me. Why does anybody want me on a list?”

“Oh, baby,” Carly said, her voice falling to a soft, husky croon.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Ridley muttered.

Cameo gave him a dirty look, and grabbed the remote, turning up the sound on the TV as Carly leaned in to kiss me.

“You’re on all of my lists,” she said against my mouth. “The best kisser, the best boyfriend, the best...”

“The best dumbass?” I suggested, trying to lighten the mood. I didn’t mind a little PDA, but sometimes when Carly kissed me, I had a tendency to forget things...like the fact that we had four other people in the room.

She laughed.

“...visitations for rock music icon Cindel will be limited to friends and family only...”

Carly looked up and, immediately, I wrapped an arm around her.

Ryan had told me last night that Carly was attending a funeral visitation tomorrow. Cindel – just the one name – had been an opening act for Carly’s dad back in the day, and the lady had been one of the few who’d continued to come around and visit Carly after her dad died. She’d probably been the closest thing to a real mom Carly had for a long time. They’d grown apart over the last couple years, but Cindel had been there for Carly when a lot of others hadn’t.

As an image of the woman from her hey-day splashed across the screen, I pressed a kiss to Carly’s temple. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, her voice sad. “I just wish I’d known she was sick. We hadn’t talked in years, though. I guess there was no way I could have known, but I wish I would have kept in touch better.”

She kissed my cheek and then pushed up, pacing the wide, open room. Stillness never sat well with Carly. Instead of following her, I stayed where I was.

The TV continued to play on, the volume too loud, but when Cameo went to change it, Carly said, “Leave it. I need the distraction.”

“...scandal involving drag racing down a suburban street in Anchorage, Alaska. Keown is on location in Anchorage while filming his upcoming action thriller. It is unknown if he’ll face charges.”

Carly snorted. “He won’t face charges. Again. He’ll end up dead or killing somebody and then everybody will be oh, how did this happen?”

The news continued to play, with Carly offering biting commentary from time to time. Dave suggested a BBQ joint for the stop in Memphis. As almost all of us were fairly fond of BBQ, that was a definite yes. Cameo was the only exception, being a vegetarian, and she shrugged.

“As long as I can get a salad, I’ll tolerate you all imbibing dead pig.”

“I’m eating cow,” I volunteered.