The Song in My Heart Read Free

hers, she could sing any style of music she wanted. Well, except maybe opera, but Dess wouldn’t even put that past her. She had a face and a body that cameras and audiences would instantly worship. She was the full package, the real deal, as far as Dess could see. Good enough that she should have been discovered by now. But fame and success were fickle. Dess had known countless talented people who went undiscovered or quickly faded away when they were on the brink of greatness. There were others too who, based on their musical talent alone, had no right to the success they enjoyed. None of it was fair.
    She wondered how badly Erika wanted this. What her motives were. What lengths she would go to and how hard she was willing to work. And how she would handle it all if she got there.
    Dess once thought she knew exactly what she wanted, and she couldn’t wait to get there. Of course, in the beginning, she’d only fantasized about the highlights—the adulation, the mammoth and joyous crowds she would sing to, the money, the other artists clamoring to work with her. But there’d been so much more she’d never considered. Things that, had she not been strong and singularly determined, would have broken her. There were the obvious things, but there were more insidious things too, like questioning the genuineness of people and what lay behind their motivations, whether they liked you for yourself. The kind of nagging questions that ate away at the fringes of your life until you began to question everything, to doubt everything, until you withdrew, trusting no one.
    If her life-threatening illness hadn’t halted all the craziness her life had become, Dess had no doubt she would have self-destructed by now. No one could sustain that level of fame and success without a spectacular fall, and Dess knew, in that regard, that she was no different than anyone else. No, she thought with conviction. She would not watch, let alone help, this young woman drown in the soul-sucking, parasite-infested, exploitative, drug-, alcohol- and promiscuity-infused business that had destroyed so many others.
    If Erika Alvarez was even half as good as she appeared to be in her videos, she was a shooting star who was destined for exactly that charming fate. And Dess had no intention of being there to see it happen.

Chapter Two
    Erika Alvarez’s most excruciating piano recitals—the ones that had had her a half note away from throwing up all over the ivories—were nothing compared to this. Waiting for Dess Hampton—her secret idol as a teenager, her first hot pubescent fantasy—to open the door was pure torture. Erika wanted to melt into the walls of the cavernous hallway on the top floor of the spectacular Gold Coast condo building. She wanted that big oak door never to open, and yet she was breathless and weak-kneed with the anticipation of it.
    Sloane, grinning beside her, gave her a friendly nudge that seemed to say, “It will be okay, you’re going to love Dess, she’s just a regular person.” Meeting Dess Hampton was beyond cool, but the truth was, Erika had absolutely no desire to beg for her, or anyone else’s, help. Drool over, flirt with, definitely, but that was it. Dess had been out of the business so long now—six or seven years—that she’d all but been forgotten by her worldwide legion of fans, the media, her record company, concert promoters, the Broadway stages, the corporate world, radio and television and even social media. The disappearance of one of the world’s most bankable singers had been astoundingly quick, shockingly final and seemingly irrevocable. Dess Hampton had simply slipped away like day yielding to night. Throat cancer had stolen her career, the news stories said.
    Though, had she wanted to, Dess certainly could have profited from her illness, Erika supposed. Plenty of famous people had turned illness or some other personal trauma into a success story. Not Dess Hampton. She had chosen to ride into the