“Okay, all right, I promise not to get mad, but maybe I’ll get frustrated or have my feelings hurt.”
She thought about it for a second and nodded.
I waited for her to tell me… whatever it was she was scared to say.
And then she did. “I know who you are.” The words were rushed and so fast I almost couldn’t take them apart, so I squinted at her.
“I know you do, Jackie.”
“No, Aurora, I know who you are like I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.”
I had no idea what the hell she was trying to say.
She must have sensed that because she dropped her head back, squeezed her eyes shut, and said, “I know you were Kaden Jones’s girlfriend… or wife… or whatever you were.”
My eyes went wide.
She kept going. “I didn’t want to say anything! I… I saw your messages with Clara a long time ago… so, I… I looked you up. Your hair isn’t blonde anymore, but I recognized you the first time I saw you. There was like a whole page dedicated to women he was seen with, and there were pictures of you two together, like old pictures, I saw one or two of them before they got deleted—”
“Oraaa,” Yuki called out suddenly. “Roger’s being a party pooper, and he’s on his way to pick me up.”
I was going to need to ask Yuki if there was a crystal for mental clarity I could get.
“I’m not going to tell anyone, okay? I just… I wanted you to know. Please don’t be mad.”
“I’m not,” I told her, stunned. Just as I opened my mouth to say something else, Yuki came around the corner, huffing.
“I wanted to hang out with you for longer,” she said, sounding exasperated.
Jackie hesitated. She took a single step back, braced herself and spat out in a quick stream, “I love you so much. Today has been like, the highlight of my entire life. I’ll never forget it.” Then, in the time it took me to blink, Jackie came forward, kissed her on the cheek and took off running before suddenly stopping and turning around. “I’m sorry, Aurora!” she shouted before taking off again. Yuki watched her part of the way, a faint smile on her face.
“Is she okay?” she asked.
I swallowed. “She just admitted that she knows about me and Kaden and she isn’t going to tell anyone.”
Yuki’s head basically spun. “What? How?”
“Some fan page.”
She grimaced. “Want me to pay her off?”
Of all the things that could have made me burst out laughing, that was going to be it. “No! I’ll talk to her more about it later. What were you saying? Roger is coming to get you?”
She explained about her manager pitching a fit and wanting her to get to Utah tonight, so she had chartered her a flight that was scheduled to leave in an hour from the local airport. “He said he’ll be here in fifteen.”
“That sucks,” I told her. “But I’m glad you at least came and we got to see each other for a little while.”
She nodded, but her expression slowly turned funny. “Before I forget, why didn’t you tell me about Tall, Silver, and Handsome?”
I burst out laughing. “He is handsome, huh?”
She whispered, “How old is he?”
“I think early forties.”
Yuki whistled. “What is he? Six-four? Two-forty?”
“Why are you so creepy? You’re always measuring people.”
“I have to when we’re hiring bodyguards. Bigger isn’t always better… but most of the time it is.”
It was my turn to wiggle my eyebrows at her. “I wish. I mess with him all the time, and I don’t think he likes me much unless he’s in a good mood.”
My friend frowned. “How could he not like you? If I was sexually attracted to women, I would be attracted to you.”
“You say the nicest things, Yu.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “It’s true. It’s his loss if he doesn’t, but I swear I saw him staring at you the way I look at cupcakes when I see them in catering—like I really want one but my costumes say otherwise.”
“You’re perfect, and you can have a cupcake if you want one,” I assured her.
She giggled, and the next few minutes went by in a blur. The next thing I knew, a small SUV was pulling into the driveway and parking, and a man just a little bigger than Mr. Rhodes came out. Roger, Yuki’s bodyguard, gave me a hug, said he missed seeing me, and pretty much shoved Yuki toward the front seat of the SUV. It wasn’t until then that I realized she had gone upstairs to get her purse… and how the hell had she gotten service, now that I thought about it? I needed to switch providers.