The Fan
The Fan
Velvet Vaughn
Copyright 2015 Velvet Vaughn
Smashwords Edition
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Visit Velvet's website at: www.velvetvaughn.com.
Dedication
For my editor, proofreader, sounding board, biggest fan, best friend—my mom.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Epilogue
About the Author
Chapter One
“Congratulations, Mr. Bradley, it’s a girl.”
The well-dressed man thrust a small child at Logan Bradley, sarcasm dripping from his thin lips.
Logan stared with horror at the little girl with huge eyes and black ringlets dancing around her face. The man shoved her forward impatiently. Logan accepted her awkwardly, holding her at arm’s length. The little girl made no sound, not so much as a whimper. She just hung from his hands like a rag doll and stared at him with resignation in the biggest, saddest blue eyes he'd ever seen, eyes that were too old for such a young face.
A wave of tenderness swept over the former SEAL and he cradled the girl to his chest. His heart bumped against his rib cage when she trustingly draped her arms around him and sighed against his neck.
On a cold, snowy day in February, Logan Bradley fell irrevocably in love.
“This will explain everything.” The man slapped an envelope into Logan's hand. He scooted a Barbie suitcase and a box filled with books and toys inside the door with his foot. Pulling a package from the pile, he said, “This is yours to do with as you see fit.” He dumped the box on a side table, straightened his lapels with a snap and spun on his heel.
“Wait!” Logan called out, his desperation evident. “There has to be some kind of mistake. I don’t know anything about—”
“The letter will explain everything,” the man repeated in clipped tones without breaking stride. “Good day.”
Logan didn’t bother hiding a satisfied smirk when the man’s expensive alligator-skin shoe skidded on a patch of ice. The man quickly caught himself, adjusted his jacket and paced briskly to the silver Jaguar parked at the curb. Stopping mid-slide behind the wheel, he huffed, fumbled in the back and emerged with a child safety seat. He deposited it on the curb as if it had infectious germs, jumped inside the Jag and drove away.
Logan stared after the car, watching the red taillights until they were no larger than pin pricks. The Smith's golden retriever chased the car down the street from his domain behind a chain-link fence, growling with frustration when he ran out of room to continue his pursuit. Snowflakes drifted down in a lazy, meandering pattern, as if they had all the time in the world to reach the ground below.
Logan hadn’t even realized he was standing in the cold wintry air until the bundle in his arms shivered.
The newspaper he'd been reading before a knock at the door rocked his world went sailing off the couch with one flick of his wrist. He carefully deposited the girl on the cushion. She sat exactly as he'd placed her, hands clasped in her lap, tiny booted feet crossing at the toes. Her wide eyes followed him, prepared to accept anything he would say or do to her.
He vowed then and there to never let anyone hurt this child again, no matter whose she was or what her story.
Grabbing a flannel blanket from the back of the couch, he draped it over her still body and tucked it against her legs. He needed to solve the mystery of the little girl and return her to her rightful parents. Had the man specifically asked for Logan? He searched his memory but couldn’t remember. He’d been pretty much in shock from the moment he opened the door.
Could she be his brother Dan’s child?
He studied her. She studied him back and he fought a smile. She may be world-wary and sad but she was no pushover. He had a feeling she wouldn’t back down from much—just like him.
Logan jerked in alarm. Not just like him. Just like her father. Whoever that man was. And Logan had to find him. Fast.
Okay, so her hair was jet black like his. Big deal. A third of all babies probably had the same color, right? And so he sorta saw his aunt’s delicate nose on her, it meant nothing. And maybe she possessed the same stubborn set to her mouth he did sometimes. It was all happenstance. One big, ol’ he’d-laugh-about-this-later coincidence.
He needed to figure out where she belonged and soon, but first, he needed to grab the child seat from the curb before the snow buried it. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to find it again until spring. Her parents would probably need it to transport her home when they arrived.
“I’ll be right back, okay?”
The girl made no movement, no sound but her eyes dropped to her lap. Maybe she couldn’t talk yet. How old was she? Two, three? He couldn’t tell. Small children hadn’t been a part of his experience since Dan, and that had been many years ago.
He crouched down until he was face level and tilted her chin so she'd be forced to meet his gaze. Her expression was achingly grim. He ran the back of a finger down her soft cheek.
“Do you have a name, little darlin’?”
A slight nod. A good sign. She understood English.
“Can you tell me what it is?”
Another nod. But no name. Smiling, he tucked a strand of her waist-length, corkscrew curly hair behind her ear. “And that name would be…” he prompted.
Her eyes slid from his again and she whispered something he couldn’t quite understand. It sounded like ‘Jezebel’. If someone had named this precious child that, he would hunt them down and hurt them.
“Can you repeat that a bit louder?” He tapped his ear. “Us old folks don’t hear too we
ll sometimes.”
That elicited the first small smile he'd seen from her tiny pink bow lips. “Isabella,” she repeated, louder this time.
Logan reeled back, his spine crashing into the coffee table.
Isabella was his aunt’s name. Although everyone called her Trudy, a shortening of her middle name Gertrude, Isabella was her given name—one he'd always loved.
Logan narrowed his eyes and refocused on the girl. Only one person in the world knew how he felt about the moniker. His butt hit the hardwood floor with a solid thud.
The girl’s blue eyes were the exact shade of his ex-fiancée, Celeste Wright, who ran off and left him for a man promising to make her a star.
He hadn’t heard from her in almost four years.
“H-how…” Logan stopped to clear the lump from his throat. “How old are you, Isabella?”
Three chubby fingers.
Three. Celeste might have been pregnant with his child when she took off and didn’t tell him. Could it be possible that this diminutive black-haired beauty was his daughter?
A wave of nausea hit him low in the gut.
He was a military man, a former SEAL, a warrior. He'd been through war and combat and had seen the look of death on a man’s face—had even put that look there himself many times. He knew the underbelly of human nature and how to survive among the lowest of the low. He'd been to hell and back, got the T-shirt.
Life was tough, he was tougher.
What on earth did he know about raising a three-year-old girl?
Chapter Two
I count the days when we can be together, my darling Juliet, when breath will leave our bodies and our souls become one, joined together in spiritual fulfillment, in cosmic destiny, in endless, eternal love.
Jade LaRossa, aka Hollywood starlet Juliet LaRue, reread the message, goose bumps erupting along her arms. Who would write something so strange, so…twisted?
Knock, knock.
“Ms. LaRue, you’re on.”
Jade quickly folded the macabre note and jammed it into her handbag. She hefted the vase of long-stemmed red roses that accompanied the memo and tilted it upside down, dumping the fragrant blooms into the trash on her way out. She ignored the quizzical look from the man propping the door open with his hip, a headset wrapped from ear to ear, a small microphone poised in front of his mouth. He tapped something on his iPad as she breezed into the hallway and spoke in low tones through the mouthpiece.
“Ladies and gentlemen, my next guest has appeared in a dozen major motion pictures, been nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress, you know her as one half of America’s Favorite Couple.” The cheering reached deafening levels. “Juliet LaRue!”
The thunderous applause rocked the small studio like a stampede of runaway bulls. Tossing back her shoulders, she pasted on a smile and forced herself to walk onto the set. She didn’t want to be here. She loathed Frank Talcott. He was a pompous horse’s ass, his show, “Frankly Speaking,” barely a step above trash television. He used shady methods to uncover fodder for his program and had a reputation as a take-no-prisoners barracuda.
Jade fought her agent, Sid, about appearing on the show but he insisted. The studio honchos producing her latest release would be happy, he told her. When studio honchos are happy, everyone was happy. That the studio happened to own the station Frankly Speaking appeared on was beside the point.
Horse’s ass or not, Frank Talcott garnered huge ratings.
Jade smoothed her hands down the dress that showed more cleavage than she cared to flaunt but the fans expected it from her. She worked hard to maintain her figure. She ate healthy, exercised religiously and avoided the sun’s harsh rays. Everything on her was one hundred percent natural. God had been kind, gifting her with a generous C cup, but she'd always felt that some things were better left to the imagination. She insisted on a strict no-nudity clause in all of her contracts, much to Sid’s chagrin, and had been offered a million dollars to appear in GlamGirls, which she promptly turned down. Sid nearly had a coronary.
“Come on, Juliet, it would be a great boost for your career,” he’d coaxed. “Think of all the men that would flock to your movies in droves. They’re just boobs, for goodness sake. Everyone has them.”
They’re just her boobs and she wanted to keep them concealed, thank you very much.
Although the only Juliet the public had ever witnessed was the blonde, blue-eyed sweetheart, the real Jade was a green-eyed, natural born redhead with the fiery temper to match. When she arrived in Hollywood, she struggled long and hard to tamp down her impulsiveness and succeeded to the point of near doormat status. But when Sid ignored her wishes, as he usually did, and called the GlamGirls staff to schedule a shoot, Juliet LaRue, the gentle, non-confrontational pleaser, put her foot down.
The fact that she wore three-inch stilettos and her foot crashed down on Sid’s Birkenstock-clad one only made it all the more satisfying.
It marked the first time she'd openly defied her agent. The power of taking charge of her life felt good. Too many people tried to control her, mold her into someone she wasn’t comfortable with, especially Sid.
Forcing her feet to move, she glided forward. All she wanted to do was go away on a long vacation where celebrity status meant nothing, where her every move wasn’t followed by someone with a camera or an agenda. She longed to get away from people who only wanted to be with her because of who she was or who she knew or what she could do for them. She wanted to wear T-shirts and sweats and no make-up.
She wanted to laugh again.
She yearned for somewhere she could rest, relax, rejuvenate, focus on something other than a demanding career, a failed marriage and a possible stalker.
Jade and Kyle Ashton had been out of step, out of sync for the entire duration of their tumultuous six-year union. She'd been a young, struggling actress when she met Kyle. He was an A-list Hollywood mega-star suffering through the repercussions of a sordid sex scandal involving prostitutes and wild parties, his reputation severely damaged. Needless to say, she'd been shocked when he showed interest. She didn’t approve of his partying, but he'd entered rehab and vowed to change his wicked ways. As their relationship blossomed, so did her career.
Their association proved to be a boon for both of them. It served to reestablish Kyle’s status as a superstar. People liked that the wild child had finally settled down. For her, she was the sweet, all-American girl who tamed said wild child. Her career skyrocketed. Suddenly she was in constant demand, studios were throwing money her way and audiences were buying tickets to her movies by the truckload.
“America’s Favorite Couple,” was born.
Seeing the benefit of cementing their union, Kyle proposed. Her head told her not to marry him. He'd cheated on her numerous times while they were dating. Once a cheater, always a cheater. Her heart, well, her heart had always been a romantic and she dreamed of a loving family of her own, two or three kids, dinner around the table sharing stories and laughter.
With major prodding by Sid, and promises from Kyle to honor his wedding vows, she accepted. At first, he kept his word. But nothing lasted forever, and for Kyle, forever apparently meant two weeks.
Whenever she confronted her husband about his continual partying or clandestine affairs, he vehemently denied the allegations and would be more attentive than ever. She kept falling into the safe, easy pattern and focused on her blossoming career.
After her first Oscar nomination, she'd become an even hotter commodity, though she'd yet to be cast as the lead in a major motion picture. For the last three years, she'd worked practically non-stop, as had Kyle. To say they rarely saw each other was an understatement. She couldn’t even remember the last time they had sex, not that sex with Kyle had ever been memorable, even in the beginning. He was a selfish lover.
As she rounded the corner and stepped into view, something told her a vacation wouldn’t be happening for a long time.
Frank Talcott reached out a
meaty paw, his hand as cold and clammy as his gaze. He assisted her to her seat and proceeded to discuss her latest film, asking knowledgeable questions and providing astute commentary. When the director called for a commercial, she was shocked to realize she'd completely relaxed. Frank treated her with respect, a rare honor he bestowed on his female guests. He chatted amenably during the break and had the interns refill her water glass.
As soon as the red light flicked on and the cameras resumed rolling, Frank’s entire demeanor changed. He went from interested, caring interviewer to blood-thirsty predator in the blink of an eye.
“So, Juliet, we all know about your husband’s past reputation: drugs, hookers, orgies. How are you handling the latest scandal?”
Despite the heat from the high-powered overhead lighting, a chill raced down Jade’s spine at Frank’s cocky grin. Her eyes darted around the studio before landing on the host again and she laughed nervously. “Excuse me?”
Frank nodded knowingly to his audience, as if they were all in on his little secret. “I said, what do you think about this?”
A huge screen dropped dramatically from above and the studio went black. A slideshow clicked on featuring her significant other and the newest starlight on the horizon, Shauna Stewart, in flagrante delicto, each shot more and more revealing. The only things keeping Shauna decent were Jade’s husband’s hands on her gargantuan breasts.
Well, look at that. In this shot, it was his mouth.
Jade felt as if she were in a bubble. She could barely hear Frank’s obnoxious cackle and the click of the projector over the thunderous heartbeat in her ears. The slides continued to pop up one after the other, her lids blinking in tune to each new shot. Though she desperately wanted to, she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Kyle and Shauna were both naked now save for the small black box the producers so thoughtfully angled over the middle of Kyle’s ass. He and Shauna were plastered against a wall. Click. Shauna’s nails were jammed in his back. Click. Kyle held her up with his grip on her butt. Click. Both their heads were thrown back in release.