So I Married a Rockstar

Chapter Thirty-Three

Ch.33: Save It For When You Get Home

As soon as I emerged into the main room, I spotted Meagan, sitting in a booth at the back with China, eagerly waving at me – no, not waving. Beckoning.

I hesitated. She sat with five other people – China I knew by face, and I recognised one woman from the party but couldn't recall her name – and with my nerves so raw, I wasn't sure I wanted to squish into a booth with a bunch of people I didn't know.

The alternative was going back to my little table at the front, all by myself. A fresh drink sat there, waiting for me, and I shuddered. I'd thought I was being paranoid before, but after what had just happened, I wasn't touching any drink if I didn't know exactly where it had come from.

Meagan beckoned me again, and I scurried over to her table.

On stage, Jude hadn't even noticed I'd gone. His eyes were closed, his hands clasped around the microphone, his hips moving slightly in a way that normally would have mesmerised me. Now I couldn't look at him for more than a second or two. My eyes flitted nervously around the room.

One of the men in this room had stood silently outside my cubicle, and I didn't have a clue which one or why he'd done it.

Meagan nudged me and I realised she'd just introduced me to everyone while I hadn't been paying attention.

"Sorry," I mumbled.

Meagan winked. "No problem. I can see why you're distracted." Her eyes slid to Jude.

I didn't correct her.

Three men were in this booth – for all I knew, one of them could have been the man in the bathroom. I couldn't see their shoes under the table.

"Champagne?" Meagan asked, lifting a bottle from the ice bucket in the middle of the table.

My immediate response was to refuse, but a little ray of common sense cut through the lingering haze of fear. Everyone at the table was drinking from the same bottle, so even if the man from the bathroom was here, he couldn't do anything to my drink.

"Thanks," I said.

Meagan filled a glass and handed it to me.

I only meant to sip it, but the minute the bubbles touched my tongue, I needed the liquid courage to bolster my nerves. I downed the glass and refilled it, then downed that too.

It wasn't until my hands stopped trembling that I acknowledged the word that I hadn't wanted to think about.

Stalker.

The stalker had trashed my underwear and left that message on Jude's mirror.

The stalker had stolen my pink panties and hung them inside that cubicle.

The stalker had been the one standing outside that door in those black biker boots.

So much for Elle insisting it was more likely to be a woman.

Darrell?

Jude had said it couldn't be, but did he really know for sure? He'd trusted Darrell once, but that was years ago, before Darrell's descent into blackmail and addiction. He wasn't the man he'd been, and I wasn't sure that Jude had fully accepted that.

That meant he couldn't be fully impartial where Darrell was concerned.

What shoes had Darrell worn the night of the party?

I couldn't remember.

I swallowed another glass of champagne without even tasting it.

If Darrell was behind this, then surely someone would have seen him tonight. His beef with Jude was well known – there was no way he could have come here without someone spotting him and gossiping about it.