The Bodyguard's Betrayal

Chapter One

Evangeline

__________

The second my Birkin buzzes, I know it's my stalker.

I pull out the phone, lying it flat on the bar's tabletop, and slide it toward my best friend. "You read it," I tell Kat, twirling a manicured finger around my martini glass. "I'm scared." 

Funny, because with a movie star for a dad and a model for a mom, you'd think I'd be used to the harassment by now, but this time is different. It's not just some troll commenting under one of my pictures or an overzealous fan on the street; this is my phone number.

Kat, who doubles as my longtime personal assistant, grabs my phone and leans back, smoothing her green dress. She always looks stunning, but tonight, with her long blonde hair pulled away from her face, framing her angular jaw, she looks like a model. She would be if it hadn't been for her producer parents keeping her out of the spotlight growing up. Unfortunately, my parents cared less about keeping me from it and more about thrusting me into it.

"I'm praying to the stalker gods that this one is a little more creative," Kat says, clicking the message. "I don't think I can handle reading about what a spoiled, no-job-having bitch you are for the tenth time."

I laugh, but deep down, I'm nervous. These messages have haunted me for weeks, and not even changing my number has stopped them. I used to brush them off, knowing it was the price of admission for life in the public eye, even if it was never my choice. But after the third number change, I'm beginning to feel anxious.

As Kat gets to work, I run a hand through my dark hair, trying to soothe my nerves. I should tell the police or my bodyguard, Stu. That would be the smart thing to do. But they'd only up my security—a change my mother, for some reason, has been advocating for months—and that scares me more than any stalker. In fact, it fucking terrifies me.

My therapist thinks it's unresolved childhood trauma. That my desire for freedom stems from growing up caged, not by bars, but by ever-present bodyguards and paparazzi. And maybe she's right, because when I think back to how life was during my father's heartthrob years, I can't breathe.

Luckily for me, by the time I returned to LA after college, my estranged father's fame had dwindled considerably. Now, I keep just one bodyguard, I'm able to step in and out of the spotlight when I please, and I have what, in this world, constitutes a semi-normal life. Until this stalker proves to be a serious threat, there's no way I'm giving that up.

With Kat still engrossed in my phone, I lean on the bar and try to catch the bartender's attention. As expected on a Friday night, the SkyBar at the Mondrian Hotel on Sunset is packed, full of Z-list celebrities and sleazy, rich men with too much money to spend. But it's the place to be for someone like me who still needs to make an effort to be seen now and then. Come tomorrow morning, my picture will be all over social media as the Daily Mail talks about my leggy, bronzed pins and how brave I am for leaving the house after my breakup.

Sighing, I rest my arms on the marble counter, deliberately ignoring the leering guy three seats over as I shift my attention to the stranger across the bar. He's a model, obviously, which isn't exactly unusual in LA. Tall, too—around six-five—with dark hair and a sleeve of tattoos snaking up both forearms, threading between tendons before vanishing beneath a crisp white shirt. The kind of Hollywood Bad Boy Kat would instantly fall for, consequences be damned, and the kind I've spent my twenty-three years determined to avoid.

Except, apparently, tonight.

He glances up, and a wave of heat curls through me when our eyes meet, settling in my lower stomach. His thumb glides over his shot glass, dark eyes moving from my hair to my lips, then lower. Not, I soon realize, to my cleavage, but my Panthère De Cartier Necklace.