Crazy Love(93)

Chapter Twenty-Seven





Chase walked off the stage after his second encore. He could still hear the sold-out crowd in the music hall chanting his name. Tonight’s show had been good. Not great. All day, he’d been distracted.

The Hits article had come out today, a week ahead of schedule. Tully had said that the magazine must have heard about the Oprah offer and wanted to beat her to the inside story. He wouldn’t have cared if he’d been able to let Krista know what he’d said in it. He kept meaning to, but he’d wanted to do it in person, which had been impossible since he hadn’t seen her.

They talked every day and were still together, but Chase felt like, since the morning in her bedroom, when he’d totally botched what should have been the biggest moment of their lives, things had been off. After the bogus dating story and the pathetic proposal, it’d felt like she’d put up a wall. These canceled visits, even though they had been totally out of both of their control, were not helping the situation. He just needed to see her. He knew if he could just look in her eyes, hold her, kiss her, make love to her, then they could get past all this noise and just be them again.

He’d been trying to call her all day. Her cell went straight to voicemail. The hospital had said that she’d left early because she wasn’t feeling well. When he’d called the house, Jessie had just said that she wasn’t there, and in true-to-Jessie form, she’d given him no other information. So as a last-ditch effort, he’d tried her mom and dad’s, where Mrs. Sloan had told him not to worry and that time would work everything out.

He’d appreciated her positive outlook but really just needed her to tell him where Krista was. Or at least if she was okay. Instead, she’d said that and then rushed off the phone, claiming she’d had errands to run. If even her parents were avoiding him, he knew it was bad.

As he walked through the crowded backstage area towards his waiting bus, crew members and fans all shouted out various greetings.

“Amazing show!”

“The crowd was loving you!”

“Loved the show!”

Chase smiled and waved at each person as he walked between Ace and Brock, two men from Seth Sloan’s company Elite Protection. They were ex-military and really good at their jobs. Chase had been so impressed with them at the benefit in Harper’s Crossing that he’d hired them for his entire tour.

As they came to the back door that led to where the bus was parked, Brock turned and paused, holding up his right hand. “After I open the door, we are taking you straight to the bus. No stopping.”

“Okay.” Chase nodded, fighting the urge to salute him and say, “Yes, sir.” Not out of any disrespect at all, just because when these guys gave orders that response was like a knee-jerk reaction. He wasn’t even sure why Brock had given him the heads-up. Maybe it was just because these guys were really thorough at their jobs.

As Brock pushed open the door, Ace went through first, followed by Chase. Brock was right behind. Stepping onto the back staircase that led down to the parking lot, he understood why he’d gotten the FYI a moment ago. There were probably a hundred people gathered between him and the bus.

They moved quickly and were down the stairs and through the crowd in record time. It still amazed Chase that every single time he walked through a crowd of people with the Elite Protection guys, no one touched him. He wasn’t even jostled around from the movement of the crowd. Chase had had dozens of different security details on him before and people had always got to him. Hands would come out of nowhere and grab at his shirt or his hair. He would get knocked into and have to start and stop while they tried to clear the area. Not these guys. With them, it was like walking in the middle an invisible force field.

Stepping onto the bus, he nodded, patting Chip on the shoulder. “Hey, Chip. How ya livin’?”

“Livin’ good, son. Livin’ real good,” Chip answered with a wink beneath his fedora as an unlit cigar dangled from his lip.

Turning down the narrow hall, he saw the look on Tully’s face and realized that he hadn’t been escorted back to the bus because of the large crowd. Something was wrong.

“What’s wrong?” Chase asked, trying to skip the ‘we have a problem’ portion of this conversation.

“You need to see something,” Tully said in a flat tone that made Chase’s gut tighten. Turning, Tully took a few steps back towards his bedroom door and nodded to it.

Shit.

What could possibly be waiting for him behind door number one? Had Serena finally made good on her threats and tracked him down? He’d changed his phone number, but she’d been relaying messages through her manager to Tully. Normally, he knew that Tully would take care of situations like these, but with Serena’s status as an A-lister, he understood his newly promoted manager’s resistance to take matters into his own hands.