And then, Drake Sullivan.
A little sigh escaped her, just from quietly saying his name in her head.
He’d been right—walking on the side of the road hadn’t been smart. But she’d had to do something. Had to at least try to save herself, instead of giving in at the first sign of adversity. Especially when the truth was that she’d already given in for far too long...
Drake had been her knight in shining armor, modern-day style. And amazingly, even through her haze of frustration and panic, she’d been unable to ignore her reaction to him. He was simply that sexy, even by Hollywood standards, his muscles defined by the wet clothes that stuck to him. Yet again, she worked to shake him out of her head. She had so many far more important things to worry about than some hot guy.
Yesterday, she’d headed straight for the warm shower as soon as she’d checked into the motel under a false name, paid in cash, then dead-bolted the door behind her. She’d stood beneath the spray until the water had started to go cold. The new clothes she’d just bought had been too wet to put on after falling out of her bag, so she’d simply wrapped a towel around herself, wrung her clothes out and hung them up to dry in the bathroom, then heated up one of the TV dinners in the microwave. Even in the midst of this mess, she was starved, which was clearly why her body would never be anything but curvy. After wolfing down her food, she’d planned to blow-dry her clothes, but she was so tired that she crawled into bed instead.
Every single second she’d been in the room, she’d had to work like crazy to ignore the TV set on the scratched dresser across from the bed. It was crazy, wasn’t it, that even when she knew no good could come of turning it on and seeing what the various entertainment shows were saying about her, it had only been the sheer magnitude of her exhaustion that had actually kept her from doing it? She was tempted to ask the guy at the front desk to take it out of her room so that she didn’t give in to temptation. But since she couldn’t risk drawing unnecessary attention to herself, she would just have to control her self-destructive impulses.
Now, as she came fully awake, she reached for her phone on the nightstand to see what time it was. But she didn’t have her phone anymore. It felt so weird to be without what had essentially become her security blanket over the past five years. But there was something freeing about not having it too. For once, she couldn’t go online to see what people were saying about her and end up with her stomach twisting at the horrible things they so often said. This morning she didn’t have to document her every move—what she was eating, putting on, looking at.
For a few precious moments, she could just be.
Surprisingly, she’d had a better night’s sleep in this dingy motel room than she’d had in any five-star penthouse suite. Feeling halfway normal again, she grabbed an apple and took a bite out of it as she went to the window and pulled back the curtain a couple of inches. It was still drizzling, but she could tell that it was early morning, rather than late evening.
Had she really slept for more than twelve hours?
Finishing her apple, she tossed the core into the wastebasket, then got back in the shower. God, that felt good. She’d never take feeling warm for granted again. Her clothes were almost dry, but instead of putting her too-tight jeans back on, she fluffed her new Montauk-themed sweatpants and sweatshirt with the blow-dryer and slipped them on over a new pair of cotton undies and her bra. Her clothes from the general store were a little big, but it was actually nice to wear something that didn’t cling to her skin like plastic wrap.
She heated up another microwave dinner, made a cup of coffee in the coffee maker, and sat on the bed to have breakfast and come up with a plan. All the while, however, she couldn’t forget about the darned television.
What would it really hurt to turn it on just for a few minutes? After all, if she was going to make a plan, it would probably help to have more data as to just how bad things were, right?
No, a voice inside her head warned her, don’t do it!
Normally, when the press said nasty things about her, she was able to tell herself that they were simply talking about a character she’d been playing for the cameras. Rosalind Bouchard, who liked glittering parties and front-row seats at international fashion shows, not the real Rosa, who was happiest in a quiet room with a needle and thread.