April, Dani - Superstar (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (26 page)

“Fine.” Chrissie remained calm and detached, surprising herself by not only her actions but her internal reaction to them as well. “I look forward to speaking to my father. Now, Melinda, good evening. Juan, please…”

Juan had gone to the door and taken it over from Ethan. He now held it open for Melinda. “Please, Miss Melinda, this way,” he told her.

Melinda turned about abruptly on her heels and stepped out the door, holding her head high. She hurried down the drive to where her Mercedes was parked, and Juan shut the door behind her.

The brothers came to Chrissie across the marble floor of the entranceway. Ethan was the first one to her. He took her in his arms and hugged her so tight she thought she would break. Her feet came flying up off the floor. Brad leaned down to her and gave her a big kiss on top of her head.

“I’m so proud of you, Miss Murphy,” Ethan told her, and his voice was kinder than she had ever heard it before.

“I guess I’m sort of proud of myself, too,” she told them. “Although I really didn’t do anything. I just acted like an adult.”

But now that it was over she found her heart was racing inside her chest. It felt so good to be cradled in Ethan’s arms at that moment for support.

“Juan, please go outside and get my friends’ luggage from their truck. They will be spending the night here.”

“Of course, Miss Murphy.” Juan hurried out the front door to comply.

“May I get you and your guests anything, ma’am?” Margarita asked her.

“No, thank you, Margarita. You and Juan can take the day off early and go home whenever you’re done with the chores. I think everything is going to be fine now.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

She took both Ethan and Brad by their hands and gave a smile back over at Scott who still lagged behind and held Skipper on a leash. “All right, guys, come on. Now I want to show you my house.”

She took the guys through the house and showed them everything. They were suitably impressed. Adrenaline was rushing through her, and she felt like she had magically turned into a new person, and it felt great.

“Don’t get too comfortable yet, guys,” she told them when the tour was finished.

“What have you got in mind, Chrissie?” Ethan asked her.

“How would you three like to go out on the town in Hollywood and party with a real live superstar tonight?”

Ethan and Brad looked at each other. They couldn’t hide the grins on their faces. They were now in her world. They had taken care of her in their world. Now that she was back in her element, she was going to show these three the time of their life tonight.

“Get ready to have some fun tonight, boys,” she told them. “Leave everything to me. You are going to have the time of your lives.”

Chapter Fourteen

Scott lagged behind Chrissie and his brothers as she showed them around her house. Other than the grand entrance it really was not that big, but it was furnished expensively. Probably the furniture alone in this house cost more than most people owed on their mortgages.

The backyard was big, and Scott let Skipper outside to run around in the privacy of the eight-foot wall that protected Chrissie from the big bad world beyond. He looked down into the sad eyes of his dog.

“I think even you know what’s happening here, boy,” Scott told the dog, talking to himself. “She’s only been in our life a few days now, but that girl we knew up in the mountains is gone forever.”

Scott glanced back inside at the home of the superstar and sighed. “Go have fun, Skipper,” he told his dog as he let him loose from his leash in Chrissie’s back yard. “Because I don’t think I will.”

He went back through Chrissie’s awkwardly arranged home to catch up with her and his brothers. She had been busy explaining to them about the wild night she had planned for them. Scott wished there was a way he could politely decline. If only his brothers weren’t so thick headed he could clue them in on what was happening. But he was the sensitive one in the family and it would just take his brothers a little longer to realize that they had lost this wonderful girl from their lives.

Scott couldn’t find his brothers anywhere inside and then looked out the big front windows and saw them standing in the circular drive by Ethan’s truck. He was just as glad to get out of the house anyway so he hurriedly scampered out the front door and over to where his brothers waited. Chrissie was nowhere in sight at that moment.

“Have you seen her?” Ethan asked him as he came running up to the truck.

“No, I sure haven’t,” Scott answered. “After today we probably won’t be seeing much of Chrissie.”

Both of his brothers looked at him suspiciously. They didn’t understand him. They were just too caught up in the moment, and the splendors of the home, and the city surrounding them, too excited about the wild night ahead.

“What do you mean?” Brad asked.

“I don’t like Chrissie’s house.”

“Oh come on, bro!” Ethan exclaimed.

“I don’t really mean that,” Scott corrected himself and started again. “Her home is beautiful. It looks like the home of a superstar. Only I don’t feel as close to her all of a sudden. Ever since we got into Los Angeles I get this feeling like we’re losing her forever.”

“Look, man,” Brad said, “this is where she belongs.”

“She may belong here,” Scott admitted. “But I don’t, and neither do you.”

Ethan patted him on the shoulder. Scott knew that Ethan, in his own gruff way, was trying to make him feel better. “There’s nothing we can do about that, bro,” Ethan said.

Scott laughed and looked off at the palm trees. “I’ve got this crazy idea,” he told them. “I was thinking about kidnapping her for real this time and taking her back to the cabin with me. I think that’s the only place we’ll ever be happy together. We certainly can’t be happy here.”

“You know you don’t really mean that.” Brad punched him on the arm good naturedly.

“Of course I don’t really mean that I would kidnap her. I care about her too much and she obviously wants to be here. She wants to be here in her home surrounded by her servants, her budding career, and all of this luxury.”

Neither of his brothers answered him. He knew he had made them feel uncomfortable and that he was just feeling selfish. But the pain wrenching his gut was just too strong to be ignored at that moment.

“You guys just want to go out and have fun with a movie star tonight.” He realized he was letting too much emotion into his voice. “You all really don’t understand what’s happening here, do you? Maybe I’m just too sensitive. But we’ve lost Chrissie now to all of this.” He looked down and kicked at the lawn. “What the hell, it was fun while it lasted. That time up at the cabin was the best time of our lives. I guess all good things have to come to an end sooner or later, right?”

“She’s the same Chrissie we knew back at the cabin, bro,” Brad said, although his voice did not sound convincing to Scott.

Scott smiled at the mental image of Chrissie. “She is gorgeous,” he admitted. “She is just as beautiful as she always has been wearing that short little dress around with the shoulder straps.”

“I think she has more self-confidence now than what she had before,” Ethan said. “She speaks like and presents herself as an adult. That makes her ten times sexier than she was before.”

“I’m happy if the three of us had anything to do with bringing about that transformation,” Scott forced himself to reply.

“I think you’re just jealous, bro,” Brad told him.

“I’m not jealous of her money.” Scott shook his head and looked down. “But you’re right, I guess I am jealous. I’m jealous because she doesn’t belong to us anymore. She belongs to the whole world again. Ordinary guys like us can’t hope to be anything more than admirers from a distance.”

“You don’t know that for sure.” Brad raised his voice when he spoke.

Scott ignored him. “If she only hadn’t been a superstar,” he said, “we could have taken her back home and fallen in love with her. But that’s just not the way things are going to turn out, guys.”

“She told us to wait for her here,” Brad said, trying to change the subject. “I guess she wants us to drive her out to some fancy nightspot in the truck.”

“Sounds fun,” Ethan agreed. They were both trying to cheer Scott up.

Scott made no comment and only hung his head down and inspected the rolling flower beds across Chrissie’s front lawn. Somehow he didn’t think Chrissie needed them to take her anywhere now that she was home. He found himself wishing she would come out of the house wearing a pair of his old jeans and ask them to take her somewhere. He simply wished that Chrissie needed them or that there was something he could do for her. But what could you do for the girl who had everything?

“Maybe one of us ought to go inside and see what’s keeping her so long,” Brad said.

“You know chicks,” Ethan told him. “She’s probably doing her makeup or something.”

“Chrissie isn’t just a chick,” Scott told them.

Suddenly from around the side of the house there was a roar and then a red Lamborghini merged with the drive and screeched to a halt in front of their truck. The guys were left speechless. None of them had ever seen a sports car like this before up close. The windows were tinted black on all sides, and it was impossible to see inside. As it idled for a moment at their sides, even the engines had a science fiction-like sound to them, purring and humming to some kind of a fantastic cadence.

The power window on the driver’s side slid all the way down in what seemed to be a fraction of a second. Behind the wheel was Chrissie. She was positively beautiful in a sequined party dress. The new level of self-assurance about her was wonderful to see, and Scott thought at that moment she could have probably done anything she wanted. She was freshly showered, and her long hair was brushed back over her shoulders. The perfume she wore was probably very expensive and a far cry from that which she had worn yesterday while in disguise.

“You guys ready to go crazy?” She reached up and flicked down a pair of dark glasses over her eyes completing the image of the Hollywood star.

“I thought I was going to take the truck,” Ethan said, flabbergasted.

“This is my town, Ethan. I’m driving tonight,” she corrected him and cocked a sexy smile at all of them. “Now hop in.”

Ethan and Brad looked at each other and then were quick to comply with her request, Ethan taking the front seat next to Chrissie and Brad squeezing in the tiny back compartment. Scott hesitated. The Chrissie Murphy that he had known for the last few days was getting further and further away from him. Finally, he relented and crawled inside next to Brad.

Chrissie took them down Hollywood Boulevard and then turned off into what must have been a night club section. When they arrived at the nightclub of choice, there was already a huge crowd gathered outside waiting to get inside. Bright floodlights in every color of the rainbow were attracting attention to the hot nightspot. Apparently, there were other celebrities there because as one couple walked in the paparazzi were flashing camera lights in their faces.

Scott had never seen such a crowd in his life. He knew he would be out of place here. His palms started to sweat, and he had to take a big breath to calm his nerves.

“This joint is really packed,” Ethan exclaimed as he took in all the sights outside the tinted windows.

“It’s Friday night,” Chrissie told him. “This is the best night for parties.”

“You think we’ll have to wait long to get in?” This was from Brad.

“You’re with Chrissie Murphy, guys. We won’t have to wait at all.”

Chrissie didn’t even bother with parking the Lamborghini. She just left it idling with the key in the ignition in the middle of the street and climbed out. “You’ll be a doll and park this for me,” she told the valet who came up to her. The young guy nodded that he would do just as she asked.