Coming Undone Read Free Page A

of the first adults who’d ever treated her as if she had as much worth as anyone else on God’s green earth. But the smile that tickled the corners of her lips at the memory of the tall, dark man slid into a scowl as she stared up into the face of another long and lanky man. “You’re a private investigator, too?”
    He nodded. “Yeah. We do that and personal security.”
    “Huh. I thought for sure you’d be the CEO of some whoop-de-do-dah corporation by now.”
    He snorted.
    “Guess not. Well, how nice for you. Now go away.”
    “Not gonna happen, Peej.”
    She had to tip her head way back to meet his gaze and frustration sizzled along her nerve endings. He was big and steely and she had zero chance of physically ejecting him from her room.
    But if there was one thing she knew, it was how to bluff. So she looked him in the eye and said calmly, “Fine. Then I guess I’ll just have to call the police and let them remove you.”
    He shrugged and sat in the room’s only chair. Sliding down on his tailbone, he stretched his long legs out what appeared to be halfway across the room and crossed his arms over his chest. “Go ahead.”
    Crap. Like she could afford to add another indignity to the scandal that was already dogging her footsteps. But she crossed to the telephone and picked up the receiver. When Jared simply slouched deeper into his seat and watched her with cool eyes, she punched out a number she had only this week memorized.
    The phone on the other end of the line picked up. “Benjamin McGrath Management Company,” said a professionally dulcet female voice.
    “This is Priscilla Jayne Morgan.”
    “One moment please—I’ll connect you with Mr. McGrath,” the woman said without further ado and the line went silent as P.J. was placed on hold.
    Almost as quickly, her call went through to her new manager. “P.J.,” Ben McGrath said in his brisk New England-accented voice. “What can I do for you?”
    “I have a situation here. There’s a man named Jared Hamilton who refuses to leave my room. He says he’s here from—”
    “Semper Fi Investigations.”
    Her stomach sank but she prayed that when she glanced at Jared her face didn’t show the sudden distress jittering her nerves. He was watching her with a slight frown pulling his eyebrows together.
    “Do you mind?” she said coldly. “I’d like a moment of privacy.”
    He climbed to his feet and walked out the door, closing it quietly behind him.
    P.J. turned back to the phone. “You know? What the hell is going on, Ben?”
    “You haven’t seen any of the tabloids lately, I take it.”
    “No, only Country Now magazine. That was bad enough, so I was afraid to see what twist the rags might have given the story.”
    “Smart girl. Wild Wind is nervous about all the publicity your mother is generating. She’s got them convinced you have a history of running away when the going gets rough. She went public with your time in Denver when you were a kid.”
    “ What? Why would she do that? I didn’t run away back then—she threw me out!” But indignation couldn’t hold a candle to the sickness churning in her stomach. Oh God, everyone knew. Her own mother had seen to it that everyone knew she’d lived on the streets at one time.
    “I know. But Wild Wind is afraid you’re going to renege on your obligations and—”
    “I’ve never reneged on a contract in my life!”
    “You’re preaching to the choir, Priscilla. But you keep tying my hands by refusing to let me go on record with all the garbage your mother’s pulled. So when Wild Wind insisted on hiring a babysitter to assure you get to your concerts, all I could do was suggest who they hire. Let me go public with what really happened with your mom and—”
    “No. I told you before, I’m not going to talk about that.” It was bad enough the world knew she’d been homeless for a while. The last thing she could bear was for everyone to discover that her mother had never loved