Chapter 4

ELODIE

I woke up freezing. Wrapping myself up in blankets as I shivered, I looked around, confused about where I was.

Then I remembered. I'd come to San Francisco to visit Todd. The nights—and early mornings—were always too cold for my delicate LA sensibilities. Todd liked to tease me when I went out all bundled up when it was all of fifty-five degrees out.

Speaking of Todd—I reached out to his side of the bed, but it was cold. So I grabbed my phone to check the time and sat up. It was only a little after seven. How long had he been awake? He'd mentioned he didn't have to go into the office until closer to ten today, and Todd had always liked to sleep in.

The bedroom door creaked open. Todd came in with a mug of what smelled like green tea. He was shirtless and smiling as he sat down on the bed. "You awake yet?" He sipped his tea, raising an eyebrow.

My eyes fell to his toned chest. My boyfriend was a handsome guy—blond, lightly tanned, and muscles in all the right places. He took good care of himself, going to the gym regularly and making all kinds of green smoothies when he felt like he needed a detox.

"I'm awake," I stretched and replied groggily. I started to push the blankets aside, but it was so cold in the damn bedroom that I couldn't commit and pulled them up to my neck instead.

Todd laughed at me. "It's not that cold, baby."

"Is the heat even on?" I muttered.

"I'm not turning the heat on in the summer." He patted the back of my hand. "How about I make you some hot tea to warm you up instead?" He kissed my forehead, not waiting for a response before getting up and heading to the kitchen. I grumbled, a little annoyed, mostly because Todd knew I wasn't a tea drinker. At least he should have known that by now. I liked my morning beverage to be coffee—preferably an extra-large Americano with an extra shot of espresso. No cream, no milk, no fluff.

I braved the morning tundra to grab my bag from the closet and rifled around to find long pants and a jacket. The cold hardwood floor under my bare feet felt like ice, and I rushed to dress so fast that I nearly fell on my face. God, how fucking freezing was it in here?

When Todd returned with my tea, I drank it without complaint. At least it was steaming hot.

He picked up a balled-up piece of clothing that had fallen from my duffel bag and shook it out. The sexy lingerie I'd worn to The Scarlet Rope. I blushed, and then blushed harder when Todd chuckled at my expression.

"Now, why didn't you wear this last night?" he asked.

"I forgot it was in my bag." Which was true, to an extent, anyway.

"That's a damn shame. I would've appreciated seeing you in this."

After my adventure at the sex club, I'd gone home in a daze, but not before changing out of that bra and panties. I'd rolled them up and stuffed them into my overnight bag without a second thought.

Well, I hadn't thought of the outfit again, but I had thought about the evening, mostly about a certain gorgeous man and the way he looked at me. How could I not remember the heat that blazed in Mac's eyes while I wore those fabric scraps? I'd had a number of dreams about the hockey star, many of which had been so sexual that I'd awoken throbbing and desperate for a release.

Worse, I'd gotten myself off, imagining what Mac would do to me in bed. I'd told myself that everyone had fantasies, even people in long-term relationships. Fantasies were harmless. You literally can't stop your imagination, only your actions.

Yet my guilt must've shown on my face because Todd's expression changed to frustration.

"Did you hear a word that I just said?" He tossed the lingerie back into my bag. "I feel like you've been distracted since you got here last night."

That was an understatement. I hadn't told Todd about going to The Scarlet Rope. Or about Mac, beyond mentioning that I'd been assigned to write a story about him. Normally, I'd be inclined to tell Todd all the juicy details about a celebrity encounter, even though Todd was rarely interested in it. But this? This had felt like a dirty little secret from when Mac first approached me. The mere mention of his name would surely send my guilt into overdrive. Todd would be able to tell by the look on my face that this entire thing wasn't exactly innocent.

I grimaced. "Sorry, sorry. Work has just been crazy, and I haven't been sleeping well."

"Have you been going to that yoga place I got you passes for?"

When I shook my head, Todd sighed. "I don't get you, Elodie. I try to help you, but you never let me. You can't sleep, so I offer solutions to your problems, but you refuse to do anything. And then the cycle continues—"

My phone buzzed from the nightstand. Todd and I stared at each other as if waiting for the other person to break first. But I knew that ringtone. It was Roy, and I'd been dodging his calls the past few days.

I wasn't about to answer it when I was already accused of being distracted, so my phone kept buzzing and buzzing. It finally stopped, only to start all over again thirty seconds later. Roy wasn't going to leave me a voicemail. He would haunt me until I picked up.

I finally caved and answered. I mouthed, " Sorry, " to Todd before heading outside to talk alone on the balcony,

"Andrews!" Roy's voice boomed in my ear. "Where the hell have you been?"

"Sorry—"

"Whatever, don't care. Do you have an update on Mac, or am I wasting my fucking time again?"

I hesitated. A seagull cawed and swooped toward a nearby roof, causing a flock of crows to burst into flight. The skyline was foggy and dreary, as usual at this time of day. When it was clear, you could see the Golden Gate Bridge on the horizon.

"You're not wasting your time," I hedged, my mind racing. "I followed Mac again, but I didn't get anything interesting. Sorry."

Wow. I'd been going back and forth on if I should tell Roy about Mac or not. Apparently, I'd made my decision. This discovery was going to be my little secret. With Roy on the phone, I didn't have time to contemplate my true intentions.

My boss growled. "I thought you said you weren't wastin' my time, Andrews."

"I'm not." I stood straight, refusing to let Roy's bluster make me feel guilty. "I tried to get into the building Mac went into, but it was locked up tight. It was an office building, so I'd guess Mac was there for a business meeting."

"A business meeting? Great scoop." Roy's tone was, of course, sarcastic. He sighed. "So are you saying there's still something worth chasing, or should I reassign you?"

No! Panic burst inside my chest. "There's definitely something going on. The fact that Mac was there late at night, and people coming and going from the building at that time of day . . ." I paused, not wanting to reveal too much but also not wanting to be reassigned. Meanwhile, the seagull on the roof across from me was joined by three other seagulls, who all started screaming at each other. One held what looked like half a loaf of bread in its beak. Bits of bread began to fall into the street like snow as the gulls fought over their bounty. I stared lost in thought.

"Fine, keep digging," Roy finally said. "But you need something good for me next time. Otherwise, we're just wasting our fucking time. I'm gonna have to take you off the big assignments if you're not producing anything, Elodie."

"Yeah. Okay. Got it."

After I hung up, I wasn't ready to go back inside just yet. I didn't know why I was lying to my boss. I'd never felt protective about the celebs I'd been assigned to write stories about before. Sure, sometimes I felt a little guilty if the story was extra scandalous. But famous people understood the symbiotic relationship they had with the press. They hated us, but they also needed us. It was the same thing for journalists.

So why had I not wanted to tell Roy about The Scarlet Rope? Maybe I was just embarrassed that I'd let myself get swept up into the strangeness of it all. Or maybe I was embarrassed that I'd liked what I'd seen—

I shook myself. I had a job to do. It didn't matter that my brain seemed obsessed with Mac and liked to dream about him in the dark of the night. It didn't matter that he was oddly sweet and protective toward me and that I'd fantasized how that might translate into other situations.

"Babe?" Todd's voice broke through my thoughts, making me jump a little in surprise. "Did you hear me?"

I had definitely not heard him, and I was sure the guilt was written on my face. I could see Todd's frustration return immediately in his expression.

"Look, I need to go into the office. Something came up." His voice was flat, his gaze not even meeting mine now.

"I thought you had the morning off, and we were going to hang out?" I asked.

"So did I." The remark was pointed. I thought you wanted to spend time with me, it seemed to say.

Todd dressed and was out the door before I could convince him to stay. What was worse was that I didn't try to make him stay. He was in a bad mood, and I didn't have the energy to break him out of it.He was often in a bad mood lately. I knew he was frustrated with my not wanting to move to San Francisco, but the constant bickering about it was tiresome, too. And it sure as hell didn't make me want to spend time with him.

After Todd left, I poured the rest of the mug of tea he'd made me down the sink and ventured across the street for some actual caffeine. Once at the café, I decided I might as well get some work done. It was better than moping around Todd's tiny apartment all day alone while waiting for him to come home. Finding a corner where nobody would look over my shoulder, I started searching for answers about the mysterious Cole Mackenzie.

What made him tick? What had driven him to seek out a place like The Scarlet Rope? Sure, lots of famous people in Hollywood had eclectic tastes. That didn't surprise me in and of itself. But Mac had always come off as squeaky clean."Which is probably why he wants to keep this secret," I muttered.

I started looking at Mac's various social media channels, but I already knew they wouldn't give me anything new. I laughed at his latest video on TikTok, though, where he danced to a viral song with a charm and irresistible lack of reserve. The comments were filled with heart-eye emoji—at least the PG comments were. Some of the more R-rated comments made me blush a little in my chair. Couldn't say I disagreed with them.

When I googled Mac's family, I only found a few bits of information floating around the Internet. Apparently, Mac had been raised in Northern Idaho. His Wikipedia article listed Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, as his birthplace, but no articles came up about his time living there. I found a number of articles about Mac's time at the University of Minnesota, where he played college hockey, but very little about his childhood and adolescence in where I presumed was Idaho.

I frowned, tapping my chin. There was no way that his high school, for instance, wouldn't be proudly claiming Mac as an alumnus. Yet there was no mention of Mac being a graduate of any of the high schools in Coeur d'Alene.

After looking at Google Maps, I began looking up smaller towns near Coeur d'Alene. I barely noticed that my Americano had gone cold as I searched and searched online.My stomach rumbled as I realized I hadn't eaten either.

I finally found a hit in the tiny town of White Rock, some fifty miles from Coeur d'Alene. And that was when I discovered there was a prominent pastor by the name of Robert Mackenzie. When I found his photo on the church's website, I nearly fell over in my chair because he looked just like Mac. His father .

Well, I guessed Mac was a preacher's kid. I couldn't help but smile. Everybody knew preachers' kids always ended up the wildest. I remembered one girl in my high school who got pregnant at sixteen, and her dad had been a leader in their local church. It had been quite the scandal in Los Angeles, even back then.

Robert "Bob" Mackenzie was a mega-church leader that boasted tens of thousands of members despite being located in a tiny community. I watched a few YouTube videos of their services, blinking in surprise when they even had people zip-lining down to the stage, like some Vegas act.

Bob Mackenzie had a booming voice and an intimidating presence. As he spoke of thunder and brimstone, I shivered, feeling a bit like I needed to go to church and repent right away.

I discovered that Mac had two sisters and a brother. His mom, Judy Mackenzie, was a homemaker. She was on stage with her husband a lot, her hair blond and perfectly coifed, looking not a day over forty despite being in her midsixties.

I eventually found a copy of a yearbook from Mac's high school and smiled as I flipped through the digital files. Mac was just as handsome then as he is now but in a sweet, boyish way. His hair was long in a lot of the photos, which I had to imagine his dad probably hadn't liked.

He was pictured more than once with one girl, including at prom. Dawn Morrison, the caption said.

My curiosity led me down another path, and it didn't take long to find out where this Dawn Morrison had ended up. She'd moved away from Idaho soon after high school and now lived in Malibu. She owned a pottery studio and was married to a woman now. Interesting .

I noted the pottery studio website, wondering if Dawn would talk to me about Mac.

The morning inched into afternoon, and I forced myself to take a break to eat lunch. But I was quickly back in sleuthing mode, going through old newspaper articles from Mac's high school days.

I discovered that both of his parents were in photos at his hockey games, but by the time Mac had reached his senior year, his parents had disappeared. Then looking at his college photos and his current photos at various Blades games, his parents were nowhere to be found.

That's strange , I thought. Sure, Idaho was far from LA, but I had a hard time imagining that his parents just stopped attending his games entirely, never lending their support to his amazing career.

But when I read through Bob's biography on the church's website, there was no mention of Mac's accomplishments. Just that Bob and Judy had three children—

I stilled. Mac had three siblings. So they had four children, right?

I wondered if it was just a typo, but something tingled deep inside my brain. The fact that his parents had seemingly stopped attending his games, acting like their eldest son no longer existed . . .

You don't know that for sure . The idea was solely based on conjecture. For all I knew, his parents had tried to attend as many of his games as they could, but it was probably expensive to travel that much. And the church website bio could just be a typo. Sometimes my imagination went a little wild.

I returned to Todd's apartment, feeling strangely energized. I didn't know if what I'd dug up was enough information to keep Roy happy, but it was something at least. And if Dawn would talk to me, well, that'd be amazing.

I started dinner, mostly because I felt guilty that I'd been ignoring Todd earlier that morning. And because I needed to stop thinking about Mac and his mysterious history.

Todd arrived home with a bouquet and a smile on his face. And I felt happy to see him. He kissed me, turning the kiss into something long and slow, and I let myself enjoy it.

"Sorry about earlier," I said when we parted, taking the flowers from Todd to put them in a vase. "Did you handle whatever you needed to get done today?"

Todd shrugged. "Mostly. One of my coworkers is on maternity leave—Julie, remember?—and it's been a clusterfuck since she went offline. I get that she's on leave, but she can still answer critical emails, right? She's the only one with the data we need—" Todd kept talking, only needing me to nod and cluck when appropriate. By the time we sat down to eat, it seemed he had purged himself of work and looked more relaxed than he had since I arrived.

When he asked what I'd spent today doing, I explained, "Just researching Cole Mackenzie. You know, the hockey player?" I swallowed the lump in my throat.

"Never heard of him," Todd said.

I gaped at him. "Seriously? He's one of the biggest players in the league right now."

Todd laughed. "Since when do you care about hockey?"

I grumbled, but he had a point. I didn't care about hockey last week—and neither did Todd. So instead of trying to explain away why anyone would care about a wholesome forward with a hidden dark side, we talked about other things.

Todd kissed me when we went to bed, whispering in my ear, "How about you put on that lingerie I found earlier?"

A panic came over me. Normally, I'd be happy to wear something sexy to bed, especially if Todd wanted me to. But the thought of wearing that lingerie, the same bra and panties Mac had seen me in, devoured with heat in his eyes—I swallowed. "I need to wash them. Besides, they're all wrinkled up now."

"Then I'll just get you naked," was Todd's reply. "Even better."

I let him caress me and kiss me even as I struggled to stay focused on the moment. But when Todd reached for the waistband of my pants, I pushed his hands away.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Um. I forgot. I started my period today," I lied.

Todd was quiet for a long moment, but then he just sighed and rolled away from me. He grabbed his iPad and started reading without another word.

I felt guilty. But not guilty enough to have sex with Todd.My mind was too far away.

I apologized and turned onto my side, my back to Todd, but my thoughts kept finding their way to Mac again. I decided right then and there that I'd accept Mac's invitation to attend The Scarlet Rope a second time.

It's for research, I reassured myself. No other reason.