Chapter One
HIDINGfrom her problems wasn’t a great plan.
Not a long-term one, anyway. In the short term, Liana Hansen had a pitcher of fruit tea and a shady tree under which she could read. Or at the very least, hold a book and stare into the distance without worrying that someone might notice and ask her what was wrong. For the first time in two days, there was no hovering best friend doing her darnedest not to ask why Liana had shown up in Pine Harbour.
She was finally alone.
Still numb, still confused. Solitude wasn’t an easy fix, either.
Deep down, a voice whispered that she could try talking about it. But she wasn’t ready to confide to anyone that for the first time in her adult life, she’d given her career the proverbial middle finger.
Not even to Hope, who would understand completely.
She didn’t want to voice any of it out loud, because she didn’t feel good about what she’d done. But she couldn’t let that gross worry in the pit of her stomach take over. When your career was all you had, and the livelihood of others rode on your reckless, spur-of-the-moment decision to run away, she imagined nausea and regret were pretty par-for-the-course side effects.
And bigger than those feelings was the intense, unexpected relief at having escaped.
It couldn’t last.
She knew that.
But it felt weirdly, dizzyingly right at the moment, even if it created a host of messy complications.
She’d arrived at Hope’s house mid-morning two days earlier, dropped off by an airport limo driver who’d appreciated that she’d doubled his fee. And she’d in turn appreciated that he treated her as a totally anonymous customer.
Didn’t mean that she wouldn’t get outed at some point. There was no such thing as guaranteed privacy, not when the tabloids would pay top dollar for any embarrassing anecdote or photo or, better yet, both. Not that coming up to Pine Harbour wasn’t a dirty secret—as long as nobody knew why.
Nothing wrong with a celebrity gallivanting off to cottage country, right? It kind of worked for her image most of the time. People loved it when she shared pictures with her bestie. She hadn’t done that yet this trip, though, and wouldn’t until it became necessary. Until she knew what her next step was and she needed to set that stage.
And since Hope and her family were out shopping right now, she didn’t need to think about that for at least another hour or two. Tomorrow was a national holiday in Canada, so they’d all gone shopping since the stores would be closed the next day. Pine Harbour and the Bruce Peninsula were a lot like Nashville in that a celebrity—even a movie star like Hope Creswell—could hit the supermarket to stock up for a long weekend grill out and nobody looked twice.
She’d bowed out of going with them, as she always did. She wasn’t in a hurry to be found out just yet, and had no desire to tempt fate. As far as her fans knew, she was on tour. Nobody knew that she’d had an anxiety attack in Savannah, and instead of heading home to Nashville for a few days before their next gig, she’d taken the last flight to Toronto.
She’d come to her safe space. Hope’s house, in the middle of Canadian nowhere-ville, surrounded by pine trees and a glittering blue lake.
She glanced at her cell phone.
Thirty unread messages glared back at her.
Her tour manager and her agent hadn’t accepted her weak-ass story. She winced. She owed them more details, but right now, she didn’t have anything reassuring to tell them.
What she needed was a sign from the universe. Something that would bolster her up, renew her ability to be The Liana Hansen when deep inside she felt like she’d been stripped back to little Leigh Anne Hansen, eighteen years old and willing to do anything to get heard by the right person.
What had the last eleven years done for her?
So much. Everything, really.
So why wasn’t she more grateful for what she had?
Why did she want to cry when she thought of stepping on to that stage in Washington?
From the front of the house, tires crunched on gravel, a sharp, unexpected popping sound that made her heart race. It hadn’t been that long since Hope and her family had left, and they’d planned to drive down the peninsula to the larger city at the base of the bay.
She swung her legs down from the lounge chair, but before she could stand up and slide into the house like a ghost, a tall man in a dark blue uniform, big and broad and serious looking, strolled around the corner of the house.
For a second, panic seized her chest. Why was a cop here?
He stopped at the bottom of the steps leading up to the deck and gave her a nod as he looked at her, then past her, clearly checking out the property. He rolled his shoulders, which only dragged her attention to his solid, heavy arms, which matched the rest of him. Definitely tall. Definitely big. And definitely serious. “Good afternoon.”
