Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

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Callie

I can’t hide my shock at what he’s saying. Maybe he means it in a general sense and I’m taking it too literally when he says ‘you’. Or maybe he’s trying to tell me something, some hidden code, about someone else in his life. He might be over Delilah but not this mystery woman.

I knew to expect something from the woman since she all but promised to try something last night when we all took that picture. And didn’t that just bite me in the ass. The media went with the love triangle and said that the two of us are fighting over Wyatt. Which made me puke a little in my mouth just to be honest.

No one else might have heard her when Wyatt was telling the photographer about how he only had eyes for me, but I did. I heard her when she whispered like a hissing viper. “We’ll see about that.” So, I was waiting for something to happen when she surprised me and knocked on the door. I didn’t really put it together on how she got past the front gate but according to Wyatt, she slept with someone to do it. While talking to me about wanting Wyatt back. How do you sleep with someone and in the same hour try to be with someone else? How does that even work? How is it alright?

And now Wyatt is acting all odd and weird.

“Remember who I was. It’s who I still am under the makeup and Hollywood hype.” He smiles at me but it doesn’t reach his ice-blue eyes. “Remember that, Peaches.”

Before I can try to figure out if that’s a threat or not, his mouth is covering mine and his tongue is demanding entry. I stupidly let him in, blaming my shock on my consent and not the fact that Wyatt is a really good kisser. It’s not because I like the feeling of his mouth on mine or the way his tongue glides against me or that the feeling causes a curl of heat to bloom inside my belly for no good reason at all.

After, I make an attempt to stay away from him for a little while, hiding out in my room for the night since we don’t have anywhere to be or any carpets to walk. But my solitude doesn’t last long and the next day I have to go through the whole process to dress to impress again. We walk the carpet, make the rounds and smile like damned fools all so we can spend three hours watching other people walk across a stage. Wyatt is one of the presenters and for the first time in days, I don’t have eyes on him or am sure where he’s at one hundred percent of the time.

If something happens to him while I can’t watch him, I’m never going to live it down with my brother, and definitely not my father. By the time we’re back home, I’m so wrung out from anxiety and nerves that I’m practically dragging. I could have kissed Wyatt when he turned down going to the afterparty I was so thankful.

It’s after one by the time I slip into the shower and wash all the pretty off me. I can’t express my enjoyment in washing all the makeup and hairspray away until it’s just me, bare and pink and plain like usual. At first, it was fun playing dress-up and letting Wyatt parade me around. Even if none of it is real, it was still fun. But it’s also a lot of hard work and it’s wearing on the body and mind, all that smiling and peopling.

I let the warm water wash over me with no fear that I’ll have to put up with Wyatt again until tomorrow afternoon. He has an interview and a press thing with some of his co-stars. A noise has me stilling and listening harder. I was put in a room on the opposite side of the house Wyatt’s room is in. That way we could give him that little amount of privacy if nothing else. No one but my brother and Geo is supposed to be on this side of the house and both of them are on duty tonight. I go back to rinsing my hair when I hear something again. This time I pull the shower door open just enough that I can look out.

It’s not impossible that my brother is looking for me or wants to go over something I might need to know about before tomorrow. The noise comes again and this time I turn the water off and grab a towel. The noise happens again, and I come around the corner…and immediately find myself in a fight.

Instinct kicks in immediately -thank God- letting my body go on autopilot and blocking the hand holding the knife that comes swinging at me. The guy doesn’t expect me to come out swinging so the knife goes flying out of his hand evening the playing field between me and him. I get a shot off, aiming a well-placed fist at his nose before he pushes me off him and into the wall. Both of us grapple with one another knocking over a table with a lamp on it and into the dresser.

I catch the corner of the dresser with my hip and fight back the bloom of pain that radiates out from me. And elbow him in the stomach. I immediately turn around to continue fighting when the guy pushes me hard enough to make me lose my balance this time. I prepare to go down fighting when arms come out to catch me. I start to fight the hold but it feels different.

“What the fuck?! You’re in a fucking towel!”

“That’s hardly the most important thing going on right now, Wyatt!”

I lurch for the man, but Wyatt isn’t letting me go. And the room is filling up with more and more people. The guy takes off and flings himself through the nearest window.

“You’re in a fucking towel, Callie!”

His words finally sink in, and I realize I am in a thin, damp cloth while more and more people flood in. Not only that, but I finally start feeling some of the effects of the fight I was in, my hip throbbing and my head hurting.

“Out! Everyone get the fuck out! She’s in nothing but a fucking towel! Get out!”

“Sir, we need to process the room. Find out if this man left anything we can use to find out his identity.” The bastard was in a ski mask and I didn’t recognize who he was, damn it. Another reason I should have just followed him to find out.

“Fine! You do what you need to… we’ll leave.”

He surprises a yelp out of me by sitting me down only long enough to put me over his shoulder, his hand on the back of my butt the only thing holding my towel down so it doesn’t go flying up and show the room my ass. I grab the top to make sure it is securely knotted, and that the girls are still covered.

Before I wasn’t concerned at all about my state of near-nakedness, but now…especially since Wyatt has his hands on me, I am hyperaware of it.

“Wh…what the hell do you think you are doing?” I settle on being angry more than anything else I am feeling concerning his touch. It seems safer.

“Keeping you safe -and covered- damn it! Something you seem to be horrible at.”

He plops me on a mattress and has me bouncing. You can’t really be badass when you’re bouncing on a fucking mattress. I catch his eyes and realize he looks just as mad as I am.

“I cannot fucking believe…” he spins away from me and starts pacing before coming back over to me, highly agitated. “Jesus Christ, you’re bleeding, sweetheart.”

His words shock me enough to make me momentarily forget that I’m sitting on his bed in nothing but a towel. I reach up where my head has been throbbing and my fingers come away covered in blood making my belly do a funky somersault that I have to breathe through in order not to let him see my concern and fear. If it was bad, I would be seeing double, having stars in front of my eyes, and much worse. So, it’s not as bad as he’s making it out to be. At least, that is what I tell myself.

He comes back with a washcloth and gingerly dabs the side of my head until he can look at the wound. By the time my brother comes in causing me to pop up off the bed, Wyatt has bandaged me up and put me in one of his shirts, which is better than a towel but not by much. “Are you okay, sis?”

I answer without nodding since I’m afraid that might make my head start throbbing again. “I am. Did we get him?”

He shakes his head no. “But you’re sure it was a man.”

“Yes. Even a larger woman would have…,” I search for the right words without sounding like an asshole, “it was a man for sure.”

“I want security raised and her moved to a different room. One closer to me.”

“What? No. I’ll…I’m fine. I’ll be alright. This might even be a good thing.”

My brother is shaking his head again but I doubt it’s to agree with me. “He’s right. Moving closer wouldn’t be a bad idea. We’ve gotten some…intel that you might be a target now too.”

“What?! Why? That doesn’t make any sense.” I look between the two men hoping for an answer. “I’m not famous.”

“We think…it was alluded to…it being because you’re the girlfriend.”

“What?” I sit back down on the bed for the first time not caring what I am sitting on.

“Whoever this sick fuck is, he wants to hurt Wyatt as much as possible. If that means attacking the lady on his arm, so be it.”

“Why the hell wasn’t I told about this? How long have you known?”

“A few days. We’ve been monitoring your incoming mail and emails with the help of Bruce and thought it might have been an idle threat but was going to bring it up at our next meeting…” He leaves off because we all know what happened before we could have that meeting…tomorrow. “That’s it. Your little ass is going in the room right next to mine. With a connecting door.”

“I don’t think…”

“It’s not a bad idea.”

“What?!” My brother’s words have my mouth falling open and the question coming out in a higher voice than I normally have. I can’t believe what I am hearing.

“If he attacks one of you, he’ll have to deal with the one he isn’t attacking. If Wyatt…”

“Hadn’t thought of this stupid girlfriend idea in the first place, none of this would have ever happened. You are so right about that, brother dear. But he did and now we’re still going to listen to his dumb ideas? Really?”

My brother tries again but I just mow over him. “And let’s not forget how he so helpfully told his ex-girlfriend that I worked as his security even though I was supposed to be undercover. As she so thoughtfully told everyone standing around…I’m ‘the help’. I mean what are we in? The fifties? But he did it anyway. Blowing my cover and…”

“I never told her you were the help.”

“You didn’t tell her I was your bodyguard?” I let all the disbelief boiling up inside lace my words.

“No.”

“Then how did she know?” My brother asks the question before I can, even though the words are echoing loudly in my head.

“I have some more people that can come in and help us guard you and my sister, but I suggest we start looking into your normal security to find out what the hell is going on and try to track down how a woman like Delilah would know you’re in a relationship with your bodyguard.”

Everyone in the room goes quiet as the ramifications of what we found out sink in. Someone close to Wyatt is the one stalking him and knows a hell of a lot more than we first thought. Our element of surprise is completely gone, and we are the ones left in the dark, one step behind this psycho. It’s a sobering thought and one that leaves us all looking around wondering just who it is. And what we should expect next.