American Diva Read Free Page A

laughing. But Cooper let out a low whistle. “Damn,” he said. “ Damn .”
    Jack’s sentiments exactly.

Two

    The LaRue party was housed in a three-bedroom beach cottage with doors that opened onto a private patio overlooking the ocean. Audrey could be the Queen of England, and still, she would never get used to this sort of wealth. It was gorgeous here, absolutely gorgeous.
    Gorgeous notwithstanding, she was still contemplating killing her longtime boyfriend and manager, Lucas, and her publicist, Mitzi—they’d talked her into this deal. She didn’t want to do it, but they had promised her it would be fun. They had used words like vacation and relax , and she’d really begun to feel the vibe.
    But then she’d met Marty Weiss and his pals, and discovered that, once again, her instincts were dead on. She had survived twenty-four hours with men who ogled her like a good salami sandwich, then drank and ogled her like a hooker. Her concert—for which Marty Weiss had paid an unbelievable fortune to stage (would she ever have the kind of money he had? Did she want that kind of money?)—had gone well, she supposed, in spite of the two guys who kept trying to climb up on stage with her. Marty stood below, three sheets to the wind, tears streaming down his face.
    The man was older than her dad, for Chrissakes, and furthermore, it wasn’t like she was singing opera or something that should really move him—she was singing a song about kicking a guy to the curb, and dancing around on stage as she sang.
    It was Lucas who convinced her that the money—a half a million to bring her and the band here—was worth it. It would help bankroll her first national tour, timed to coincide with the release of her third album, the first with a major label. The label wanted her to tour, and they were even kicking in some seed money—but the majority of the tour’s costs would be borne by Audrey. After set design, staff costs, transportation, and lodging, that was not a cheap proposition. She’d be lucky if she broke even.
    Lucas had convinced her, and it would have been okay, except that Marty would not leave her be. She had asked him, threatened him, pleaded with him to stop. And to his credit, Marty had vowed to try, but he had not succeeded. He followed her all day, knocked on the door of her beachfront cabin at odd hours, and seemed to be waiting for her when she stepped out of the communal kitchen. He’d obviously forgotten he had a wife—who, by the look of it, was getting cozy with one of Marty’s closest two hundred friends.
    Audrey complained to Lucas, but Lucas rolled his eyes and sighed. “It is one weekend, Audrey. One . Surely you can handle an intense fan in the middle of a tropical paradise for one weekend. Can’t you understand what this does for us?”
    She hated the way he said it, like she was being a diva or something. “You didn’t say I had to handle it when that creep broke into my house,” Audrey reminded him.
    “That’s right, because then you should have been alarmed. But Marty Weiss doesn’t want to hurt you. He wants to put you on an alabaster throne and suck your toes. There is a difference in the two types of stalkers.”
    “Maybe to you,” Audrey snapped.
    Lucas grinned, put his arm around her, and kissed her cheek. “Just grin and bear it. It’s almost over.”
    Audrey did not grin. But that night, after her concert was over and Marty was practically prone on the sand, weeping with joy—or more likely, too much rum—she slipped out the back way, grabbed one of the ATVs provided for the pleasure of the LaRue party, and headed for the other side of the island. The peaceful side of the island. The side that drunken Marty and his drunker pals could not reach without serious assistance.
     
     
    After a day of hooking up sides of beef to the zip line, Jack Price was pretty sick of the island, Chicago natives, and party gigs in general. To make matters worse, Marnie and Leah were determined