Page 17 of The Bodyguard
4
SABRINA
Five Years Later—LA Studio
“You can’t be serious,” my agent, Darleen, said.
“Deadly,” I said with only a hint of irony.
“Sabrina.” Sam, the executive producer of the show, tried to cajole me. “The emails are scary. No one is suggesting otherwise. But you’re in the third year of a hit reality TV show. You can’t just walk away fromCowboy Princess.”
“I’m the star, right?”
“Yes! You are the star. You are the reason the show has so many fans. It’s a goldmine. You’ve built a brand. You have a presence on every social media out there.”
Not anymore, I didn’t. I was shutting all my accounts down.
“If it’s my show, and we’re here today negotiating a new contract, then I get what I want. What I want is out. I’ve already run this by my family attorney, and Madison agrees that I have no legal obligation to renew.”
Darleen leaned into me so that only I could hear her. “Excellent move. They have to up your salary per episode now.”
I turned to her, furious. I was so tired of this. So tired of no one listening to me. What sucked about that was that I had done this to myself. I had become thisthing. This character. This Cowboy Princess. And no one thought I had a brain anymore.
“This isn’t a trick, or a move, or a strategy. I’m tired of having cameras in my life twenty-four seven while I go about doing absolutely nothing. The stalker, whoever he is, just solidified my position. I’m tired of LA. I’m tired of this life. I don’t want to be a target anymore.”
“So, what?” Sam asked. “You go back to shopping and partying in Dallas full time instead of part time? Is that really any different?”
I knew I wanted to go home. Even though I wasn’t sure why.
Hank was dead. Ronnie and Clayton I guess were getting back together. Which meant she was spending more time at Clayton’s place back in Dallas. Bea was doing whatever Bea did, but she hadn’t stayed long at The King’s Land.
But something about the idea of home right now just felt right. Like I needed to touch base before I could figure out what came next.
I suppose the worst had already happened. Hank was dead, his daughters disinherited. Although I assumed with Ronnie agreeing to marry Clayton that meant he would at least help out Bea. That was, of course, assuming Dylan didn’t come home to claim the estate.
He hadn’t shown up yet and it had been weeks since Hank died. Ronnie was the only one who had his email address and she was saying he hadn’t even responded. No one thought he wanted the inheritance, but that kind of money wasn’t something you could just walk away from.
And if he didn’t come back? If he did turn his back on all of his sisters? Well, then, I supposed it wouldn’t be much different than what he’d done for the last ten years.
It was like everything was suddenly shaken loose in my life, and it made me think, maybe for the first time since I left Dusty Creek.
Was this it? Was this my life?
Because it seemed so empty.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get home,” I said. I had some savings that would see me through for a while. Maybe now was the worst time to be walking away from the show, with everything so up in the air regarding the inheritance. But these last weeks had been nothing short of horrifying…
And then there was Felix.
“I know I’ll feel safe for the first time in weeks and that’s worth a lot to me,” I finished.
“How many times have I told you?” Sam railed. “These cyber stalkers never do anything serious. Emails, tweets, Facebook messages. It’s all behind a computer where they are safe.”
“And the dead cat left outside my home?”
That had been the last straw. Felix wasn’t mine. He’d been a feral cat that hung out in the woods behind my house in the Hollywood Hills. I kept a food dish in the backyard for him, for when he’d failed in his hunt. That was all. Not really a pet, not mine.
His neck had been broken, his body laid on my doorstep.
