Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 57423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 287(@200wpm)___ 230(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57423 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 287(@200wpm)___ 230(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Ally kept walking because if she didn’t involve her stepdad, she would have to have this talk twice, and she didn’t want to. “I’ll get a dog. I’ll get a big mean dog who loves me and no one else, and if this guy shows up again, puppy will eat him and I’ll bury the bones in the garden.”
She made it to her kitchen, which rarely was used to do more than heat up the meals she had delivered once a week.
“A dog is not going to solve the problem.” There was her stepdad. Gavin Jacks had been a journeyman actor for forty years. At sixty, he could still play leading men with actresses in their twenties. Ally’s contemporaries.
It was gross, and she was happy when he’d told his agent he wouldn’t act in any production where his character’s romantic partner was younger than forty.
“I put in the security system. I’m careful about coming and going. I have a gun, and I know how to use it.” She kind of wished her stalker had still been in the house when she’d come home. Then the problem might be over.
“You need round-the-clock security,” her stepdad said gravely. He was more casual than normal, but that was probably because he’d been pulled out of bed at one in the morning when the cops called him.
He had friends in the LAPD because he’d played law enforcement characters so often. Those friends did not care about her privacy. She could have handled the situation, but no, her parents had come flying in to save the day.
Could she handle the situation? Damn, but she was tired.
When she’d seen what he’d done to her living room, she’d stood there for a moment, and it hadn’t been fear that had risen up inside her. It hadn’t been anger at her safe place being violated.
It had been genuine confusion. She’d stood there and looked at the dead birds he’d lain out on her living room floor like some offering and wondered what she’d done to deserve this. All she’d ever wanted was to do what she loved and make a living. She’d wanted to entertain people.
She’d wondered where he’d gotten the birds from and if they’d suffered and why he’d needed to use them to spell out the word WHORE on her coffee table. She’d wondered why he couldn’t have sent her a note instead.
All those poor birds dead because one man hated her.
A man who didn’t even know her.
Then she’d heard a car screeching down the street and realized it was probably him, and that was when the anger hit.
“He got around the security system,” her stepdad pointed out. “I don’t know how, but I’m going to find out. I’m hiring a security team to go over everything. Until then, your mother and I think you should spend the week with us in Santa Monica, and you should think about pulling out of the project you start next Monday.”
Oh, that was not happening. “Absolutely not. Do you have any idea how hard I had to fight for this chance? I’ve starred in every rom com that’s come my way because I’ve tried to build some kind of a box office record that erases my reality star past.”
“That show is the reason you have this house.” Her mother always got defensive about the show. Probably because it had been her idea. She was a momager of the highest order and had been since Ally’s sister starred in her first commercial as a kid.
Her sister, Brynn, was out of the business, but this was Ally’s dream. “I know. I wouldn’t take it back, Mom. It opened a lot of doors for me, but it’s closed some, too. This is a great part. It’s a dramatic part, and with a director who has three Oscars under his belt. I’m not walking away because some asshole left dead birds all over the place. Besides, it takes me out of LA for three whole months.”
“I think he followed you to New York,” her stepdad reminded her.
“That was a press tour. I’ll be on set most of the time.” She’d been dreading the three months on set in Dallas where she knew no one and would likely be an outsider in the cast, but now it seemed like a haven.
And she would show all those snobs that she had talent, too.
“And when you’re not?” her mother asked. “When you’re in a hotel room alone at night?”
“I won’t be alone. I’ll call Greg.” Greg had been her driver for the last couple of years. She’d met him in small-town Louisiana where he’d started his own golf cart limo business he called Guber. She was his only client, and her being driven around LA in a tricked-out golf cart had been one of the fans’ favorite things about the show.