Hollywood Princess (Hollywood Royalty 2)

“Who tied your hands and feet together?” he asks, and now I’m about to lose my shit.

“Get to the point, Detective.” My eyes leer at them.

“Miss Hudson, Mr. Surray is under arrest and will be in court tomorrow morning on charges of fraud,” he says, and she looks at him with her mouth open. “He’s been embezzling funds from all of his clients, leaving most no choice but to file for bankruptcy.”

“Oh my God,” she says, bringing her hand to her mouth.

“Mr. Surray said you went with him willingly, and it was your plan all along to marry him in the morning,” Detective Schneider says, and she shakes her head.

The tears fall now. “I was never going to marry him, and I told him that he should just shoot me now since there was no way I was going to marry him.”

“Well then,” Detective Glashow says, “I can see why you two fit so good together.” He looks at me, putting his pad away. “I’ll call you if we need anything else.” He nods, and they both walk out the room. Cori rushes in, her face white with tears streaming down her face. She rushes to Kellie’s side, taking her in her arms.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobs, “I should have followed you, but I was just talking to Trisha, and by the time I walked back to the room, you weren’t there, and I just had an uneasy feeling.”

“It’s okay.” She comforts her while rubbing her back. “You couldn’t have known it was Tommy.”

She finally leaves her arms and then walks to me. “I’m so sorry I didn’t keep her safe for you.”

She hugs me, and I whisper to her, “I trust you with her life.” She just nods. “If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t have known where she was,” I tell her. “You called the minute you found out, and it solved the whole case really.”

“How did you find me?” Kellie finally asks me, and I just look at her, finally able to smile.

“I’ll always find you no matter how far you run,” I say softly to her. She looks like she is going to say something to me but doesn’t because Hunter comes in.

“Hey.” He looks at Kellie. “I’m glad you’re okay, but …” He looks at me. “The press has tripled. I saw a CNN van, and I also saw a Fox News van. You have reporters at both penthouses and her house in LA.”

“We need to move,” I say, walking over and taking her into my arms. She wraps an arm around my shoulder and then lays her head on my shoulder. I nod at Hunter and walk out of the room. Hunter stays in front of me, and Cori is on our side. We walk out the back door, and I climb into an ambulance and place her on the stretcher. Cori gets in, followed by Hunter, who gets in and closes the door. “Go,” I say to Dante who is in the front driving. We pull out of the hospital without the sirens and without the press even finding out we left.

Once we get to the airfield, the plane is there waiting for us. Hunter opens the doors and is joined by Dante who looks at Kellie.

“I should have been closer to you,” he says, and I know he will feel the guilt. It’s in us to feel it.

“No one could have known,” she tells him when I put her down on her own two feet. She walks to him and hugs him, and I try not to yank her back to me. “You helped save me.”

“I saved you,” I tell her, and she looks over at me. I finally see her smile while Hunter and Dante chuckle. “We have to go,” I tell her, and I grab her hand, nodding at my boys. We walk up the steps and into the plane.

“Where is Cori?” she asks him when she looks over at the attendant who is closing the door.

“She is going to meet us in a couple of days,” I tell her. “She needs to make sure things are set up, and then she’ll meet us.”

“Where are we going?” she asks me, and the long speech that I had planned for tonight is gone. Instead, I go with the condensed version.

“I just bought a house in Montana.” I sit next to her and buckle her in first and then myself. “We have to talk.” She looks at me. “There are a lot of things to say.” I put an arm across the back of the couch, my hand touching her shoulder and my thumb rubbing circles on it. “But the first thing I’m going to say is that I love you.” With everything that she went through, the only thing I could think of was that I never told her I loved her. I never got a chance to say those three words, so I knew it was the first thing I would say to her. “I’ve loved you for a long time.”