The Bodyguard (Red's Tavern 7)

“And you’re loud for this early in the morning,” I said. “I was at a bar. Tavern. Lot of hot guys. The Red Tavern? Something like that.”

“Afternoon, by the way. Not morning. It’s two in the afternoon in Kansas,” she said.

“Jesus Christ, really?”

“Yep. Noon here in LA,” Madeline said.

“Well, I’m up,” I said with a groan. “I think what this new house really needs is blackout curtains. And I need earplugs. The construction is a nightmare every morning.”

“Well, you wanted it to be your dream house,” Madeline said.

The first two weeks I’d been here in Amberfield, Kansas, I’d been in a hotel room. I’d barely gone outside. I had stayed at a little inn called the Golden Goose, used a fake name, and hid out like I was a damn fugitive. Before I arrived here, I’d purchased the nicest, biggest house I could find here in Amberfield, but it still needed tons of work, updates, and fresh paint. So while I hid out, I paid top dollar for home renovations. Nothing moves you up a waiting list like paying your contractors quadruple their asking price. I’d finally been able to move out of the inn and into my own bedroom two weeks ago, but the construction noises still clattered on, all day, every day.

Nobody had caught on to me being in Kansas at first. But then I started getting braver. I went to the grocery store without a hat or a hoodie on. I went to a couple of bars in town, trying to find one that I liked.

And slowly, by now, word had gotten out.

Theo Castille was in Kansas.

It had even been on the front page of CNN’s website last week, for God’s sake.

Theo Castille Leaves His Swanky Paris Digs for Small-Town Kansas After Stalker Follows Him to France.

Apparently I was the only world-famous actor who’d ever had the silly idea to go hide out in this middle-of-nowhere town.

“Well, it will be my dream house, once the construction is done,” I told Madeline, finally sitting up in bed, tossing the covers off of my naked body. “Maybe I’ll even sell my LA house and my Paris house. I’ll probably keep the Hawaii house for vacations.”

Madeline laughed. “Like hell you’ll ever sell any of those.”

I already missed her. When I lived in LA, I got to see Madeline in person every day. I was lucky that my assistant was also my friend. But after the stalker situation got out of hand there, I fled to Paris, thinking it would all be better. But then, just a few months into living in Paris, he made his signature, terrifying move. I’d found an envelope with my name on it outside of my flat, with a kiss print on it and a bullet taped to the back.

As soon as I reported it, despite pleading for it to be kept out of the media, the headlines had surged.

Maybe my stalker was just harmless and out of his mind. But he sure knew how to scare the living shit out of me.

“Have you been to any of your grandpa’s places yet?” Madeline asked.

“Not yet,” I said, running my fingers through my curls. I reached over to my nightstand, grabbing the old brown leather journal I’d kept at my side for months, now.

BERNARD CASTILLE. My grandpa had written his name in his haphazard scrawl right across the leather on the front. Inside were tidbits, clippings, and photographs from his teen years and early twenties, a chronicle of his youth right here in Kansas.

I’d been away in Paris when he died. I hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye. I missed my grandfather more than I knew how to express, and in the last year as my stalker situation had gotten worse, all I wished for was his advice. My own parents had been career-obsessed and had always cared more about their wealth than about me, but Grandpa had always given a shit. He’d always been real with me, even when no one else was. Even after I’d become world-famous, he’d always treated me the same.

“I mean, that’s the whole reason you picked Kansas, right?” Madeline said. I could picture her in her top-floor office in LA, looking down through the glass windows at the palm trees below. “To hide out where your grandpa lived.”

“So far all I’ve been doing is drinking,” I admitted.

Madeline had been my assistant for over ten years, since I was twenty years old and new to Hollywood, back when I had no clue what I was doing with my fame. I didn’t keep anything secret from her. She knew the best of me and the worst of me.

“I was going to say,” she told me, her voice gentle, “maybe it’s a good idea to cut back on the drunk social media posts?”

“Oh, fuck,” I said, reaching for my phone and unlocking it. “What did I post?”