Fearless in High Heels

mine as if he’d heard the chemistry die, too. “’Night, Maddie.”

I grabbed the plate, shoved another cookie in my mouth as I mumbled, “’Night,” and made my way into bed.

Alone.

Again.

Chapter Fourteen

I was chasing her. Running through the streets of downtown L.A. It was dark, the streetlights casting only the faintest glow of light as I watched her red hair disappear around a corner. Amazingly, the street was deserted, something that never actually happened in L.A. It was just her and me. I could hear her breath coming hard, was sure I was catching up to her.

“Becca!” I called out. But she didn’t stop, didn’t slow down. Just kept running.

I continued following her, but the faster I needed to go, the slower it seemed my feet would move. It was like the sidewalk was suddenly made of molasses, every step a struggle. And I could see her getting away, pulling farther and farther ahead of me until all I could see was the faintest outline of her shape.

“Becca!” I called out to her again.

But a deep voice behind me responded, “Forget her.”

I stopped running and spun around to find myself face to face with Sebastian. His icy blue eyes were bearing down on me, his hair shining like dangerous spikes in the glow of the lamps above us.

“She’s gone,” he told me. “But I need to replace her.”

He took a step forward. “I want you to replace her.”

I opened my mouth to protest, to scream, but no sound came out. Instead, I felt myself gasping for air as Sebastian’s eyes turned wild, his lips parting, and his fangs gleaming under the streetlamps as he reached for my neck…

The sound of the William Tell Overture screamed from my nightstand, jerking me awake. I took three deep breaths, pulling myself out of my dream and back into reality as I glared at the alarm clock numbers glowing red next to me. 7:30 AM. Reluctantly I fumbled in my sleep-haze until my fingers connected with my cell, and I managed to stab the on button.

“Hello?” I croaked out.

“He didn’t come home last night,” Dana whimpered on the other end.

“Who?”

“Ricky! Maddie, he didn’t come home last night. He’s out with Ava. That’s it, I’ve lost him to a Playboy vamp-bunny!”

I blinked, rubbing sleep from my eyes. “You’re sure he’s out with Ava?”

“Where else could he be?”

“Maybe he was shooting last night?”

I heard Dana nodding on the other end. “Uh huh. He was. But the shoot was over at six, and it’s now seven- thirty, and he isn’t home.”

I did a mental eye roll. “An hour and a half? Honey that’s not a ‘he didn’t come home last night,’ that’s a ‘he’s stuck in traffic on the 101.’”

“This is what she’s doing to me,” Dana said, her voice rising into the hysterics zone. “Thanks to that full frontal twit I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, all I think about is Ricky signing another contract to let her sink her fangs into my boyfriend’s neck.”

“I’m sure Ricky’s on his way. Did you try calling him?”

“His cell is off.” Dana paused. “Oh God. His cell is off. That’s a bad sign, isn’t it? That’s a sign he doesn’t want me to know where he is. He’s sleeping with her, isn’t he? He’s sleeping with her right now with his phone off!”

“Deep breaths. In, out,” I instructed.

I heard her comply on the other end, sucking in a gulp of air. “Maddie, you have to come down to the set with me and find him.”

“Now?” I asked, glancing at my alarm clock again. 7:32. Still way too early for human contact.

“Please, Maddie. I’m going insane here. I need moral support. I need backup. If I find him naked in her trailer, there’s no telling what I might do.”

She had a good point. “Give me twenty minutes.”

“I love you. I’ll be there in ten,” Dana promised, then hung up.

I resisted the urge to fall back into my pillows again, instead dragging my tired self into the shower and through the rituals of hair, make-up, tooth brushing. I then crammed myself into a pair of yoga pants (that were only a little tight in the butt), a forgivingly empire waisted baby-doll sundress (that was long enough to cover said butt), and a pair of woven wedges. I was just shoving Baby-So-Lifelike into my bag (this time wrapped in a plastic diaper from one of the many boxes stored in our spare room) when Dana showed up, grabbed me by the arm, and dragged me out to her car.

To say the ride to Sunset Studios was tense was a gross understatement. Dana treated yellow lights like challenges, stop signs like suggestions, and her gas pedal as if it were an icky spider that needed stomped to death, the harder the better. By the time we finally parked in the lot next to the line of golf carts, my knuckles were whiter than a Moonlight cast member and were permanently embedded in her dash.

“That’s it, next time, I’m driving,” I warned her as she grabbed me by the arm and steered me to a golf cart.

Five minutes later we were pulling into the Brooklyn street where the Moonlight set was camped out again today. Dana narrowly missed hitting a wardrobe rack as she pulled up next to Ricky’s trailer and catapulted herself to his front door, banging on it with both fists.

A moment later, Ricky’s head popped out of the door. “Dude, what’s going on?” He looked down and saw Dana. “Babe? What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here? What am I doing here?! What are you doing here?!”

He blinked. “Filming?”

But she pushed past him, storming into the trailer. “Where is she? Where is that pale-faced slut?”

“What is she talking about?” Ricky asked me as I entered a step behind her.

Only I didn’t get to answer as Dana turned on him.

“You didn’t come home last night,” she said, pointing a finger in his face.

Ricky took a step back. “We ran late with filming.”

“And you didn’t call me?” Dana asked,

Ricky shrugged. “Sorry. I forgot.”

“And your phone is off.”

“Like I said, we were filming. I didn’t want it to go off in the middle of a scene.”

“You’re not filming now.”

Ricky’s eyebrows furrowed down. “Babe, what’s the big deal?”

“The big deal? The big deal is,” Dana said, puffing up her chest like a blowfish trying to scare off a shark, “that I was not able to get hold of my boyfriend who didn’t come home last night!”

Ricky blinked at her. “I never come home at night. I’ve been doing night shoots for the last three weeks.”

“But you didn’t come home at six either!”

Ricky looked from Dana to me. “Is this for real?” he asked.

Dana threw her hands up. “Ugh, men!”

Ricky opened his mouth to say more, but a PA stuck his head in the door to the trailer. “Ricky?” he asked. “You’re needed in make-up.”

“Be right there,” he promised. Then he turned to Dana. “Look, we’ll talk later, ‘k? I gotta go.” Then he wisely didn’t wait for an answer before hightailing it out of the trailer.