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Oh, the sex is meshing. The sleep time is also wonderful. I think the best part of my day is climbing into bed with Vaughn and having him scoop me up next to him so my face is nestled on his chest. Definitely the best part of my day.

But good God, looking forward to bed, that can’t be
all
my life is about.

I really need a job.

I stick my cup under the one-cup instabrewer that Vaughn sets up for me before he leaves for work, and wait for the coffee to drip as I look around for things to clean. I really did most of it yesterday.

The only places I didn’t clean are the garage and the pool shed. So I guess that’s on the agenda for today.

And then that little devil on my shoulder whispers in my ear.
Vegas, Grace. You could go to Vegas and see if you can jog your memory.

Yeah, Asher would love that. After my jaunt to Colorado, I’m pretty sure the next time I do that shit, the spanking will be more punishment than pleasure.

I chuckle a little at that. I do love me a spanking. But not when he’s really mad. I don’t want to piss him off. I want to make him happy.

So no. No memory-lane Vegas trips for me. I sigh and grab my coffee. It’s all about cleaning the garage and pool shed for me today.

I head out back first. Might as well take advantage of the morning shade. Once the day gets older, the sun will beat down on that shed and it will be very hot inside.

And that’s where I spend the next couple hours. I inflate all the rafts just so they are available for us if we want to float. I sweep out the cobwebs and the put all the various pool toys in a large mesh bag. I even wash the two windows.

The garage is even quicker. Vaughn’s garage is spotless. Not even a drop of oil on the gray painted floor. Everything is either organized in some elaborate wall shelving system complete with giant plastic tubs, or hanging on a hook over his well-equipped tool bench.

So I sweep it out and call it good. I consider washing the car he says is mine now. But it’s clean. I’m not sure who cleans it, but I’ve never seen one of his cars get dirty. That must be someone’s job.

So I go back in the house and catch the tail end of a message playing on the house phone in his office.

Damn, two days in a row there’s a call on that phone that has not gotten a call in almost three months. What the hell is going on?

I walk into Vaughn’s office, but the message is over.

Should I listen?

I mean, it’s my house too now. He says so, at least. I’m not restricted from looking at anything. Maybe Felicity’s room, because most of her stuff is still here. I would never go in there anyway, but no one ever said it was off limits.

My feet are already walking towards the machine before I can make a decision and so it’s a simple press of a button to make it play.

“V,” the man’s voice on the machine says. “Got that Black Bash ticket you wanted. It wasn’t easy, asshole, and there’s no plus one. So you owe me big. I’m gonna email it now, just sent it to your phone. All the invites have a barcode on them, so they’ll scan the email when you enter. I told you I think this is a bad idea, but whatever, dude. You’re in. And don’t forget the theme this year is classic movie stars. Later.”

The Black Bash. That’s what the girl was talking about yesterday too. I check the machine for yesterday’s message, but it’s already been erased.

Hmmm.

Vaughn never mentioned a party to me. Is he hiding something? I mean, it’s pretty clear he wanted a ticket to this party and that message also made it crystal clear I’m not going with him. No plus one.

I sit down at his desk and turn on his computer. We have computers all over the place in this house. Laptops just appear. There’s always one or two in the kitchen. Vaughn said that he and Felicity used to work online while they ate dinner on the couch. There’s a desktop in our bedroom—that’s the one I took over. And there’s even a tablet that migrates around as well. It’s got everyone’s email on it. Even mine is on there now. He and Felicity, for all their sophisticated hacking skillz, do not seem to give a fuck about the security of whatever accounts are on these machines.

They must have private ones too. Because that’s the only thing that makes sense.

I look over at Vaughn’s desktop computer.

I could look on that one. Just check to see if the emails are the same. You know, to familiarize myself with our blended household.

My hand jiggles the mouse, just to check and see if it’s shut down or sleeping, when it comes to life.

No password required, all his files are right there on the home screen, so I guess that should make me feel special. He trusts me implicitly. No information is off limits.

Or
, that little angel on my shoulder pipes in,
he trusts you not to snoop through his stuff
.

I navigate down to the mail icon on the bottom of the screen and click.

Up comes Gmail. And nope, this is not the email he uses in the living room.

There are five messages. That’s it. Nothing in his send folder. Nothing in his spam folder. Nothing in his draft folder. Five messages and all of them say unread.

Until I click on them. I start with the oldest, which is from just a few hours ago. Right after he left for work. It’s some kind of production schedule from Larry, his agent. And once I check, they are all from Larry, only from different accounts. The newest one—subject line:
Invitation that you will regret, so don’t blame me
—is from another Larry account.

I don’t get it. Why is this Black Bash thing so strange? It’s setting off alarm bells for me. I just can’t put the pieces together to understand why.

I open it, of course, and I’m staring at something that looks like an online plane ticket. The kind where you just flash your phone at the scanner to board, and it reads the code.

This party that seems to be a huge deal, but for all the wrong reasons, has a barcode embedded into the invitation.

Why?

The phone rings again, and I jump up so fast I knock the phone over and it answers.

“Hello?” the woman’s voice says on the other end of the line. “V?”

I do not move. I do not say a word.

“Well, that’s weird,” she says under her breath. “If this is the message, V, I’m telling you this as a friend, stay away from the Black Bash. OK? Just stay away. Later.”

What the hell is going on?

I wait a few seconds to make absolutely sure she’s hung up the line, and then I pick up the phone, mark all his emails as unread, and then turn the monitor off.

I’m just about to walk out and mind my own damn business when I have an idea.

It’s not an idea I’m proud of, but I have one and once it’s in my mind, I can’t not do it.

I go back to the computer and access that email with the ticket. I forward it to my own email account and erase the message. Then I erase the phone messages too.

It’s wrong, I know it. But I have a bad feeling about this party. And if people are coming out of the woodwork to warn him off, it’s my duty as his wife to help keep him away.

If he asks for it, I still have it. I’ll give it to him after we discuss.

But only if he asks.

I leave his office and go back out to the living room and have a seat. Put my feet up. Turn on the TV. Change channels for like five minutes. Turn the TV off.

I check the clock. It’s only three. I have five hours until Vaughn comes home.

I get up and check the fridge. Close it up after staring for two minutes. Sit back down at the bar. Flip through old mail—hey, there’s a letter from my bank in Denver. Open it and understand like two words on that statement aside from the bank balance, which has to be wrong, because it says ninety thousand dollars. Tuck that statement back into the envelope and put a sticky note on it with the letters WTF. Vaughn can deal with that. I have no clue.

Check the clock again. Three fifteen.

Scream.

Not really. It’s a sigh. But I feel like screaming, that’s for sure. What the hell am I supposed to be doing all day?

I list my possibilities. I have a car. I can go shopping. But seriously, I’m not a shopper. I don’t need anything. And I don’t like to drive in LA. It scares me. The people are crazy. The freeways are crazy. And they have so many roads. Like, in Colorado, you got two choices for freeways. The one going east and west and the one going north and south. Sure, there’s a few smaller ones, but basically, you’ve got two choices.

LA, you’ve got five ways to get somewhere, and all five ways are clogged with cars going the same way. I’m just not comfortable driving alone yet.

I could call someone. But everyone I know has a job.

I ponder things for a few moments, my eyes sweeping the room. I get up and feed the fish. Now that the tank is clean, I realize there’s a turtle in there. He’s soaking up some UV rays under the sun lamp. That makes me smile for ten seconds.

It’s hot out today, so the wall of windows is closed and I have the air-conditioning on. I could go swimming. But that’s about all I’ve done for the past few months.

I plop back down on the couch and grab the tablet from the coffee table. I could go on Twitter. Jesus, I haven’t been on Twitter since the kidnapping. I haven’t even thought about Twitter. My account was deleted, but the police made them put it back up so they could monitor it. I just never bothered to delete it again.

I navigate to the web and type in my profile link and then log in.

I have so many messages, it says 99+ in the message tab. Same thing for the notifications. I check the messages first, because those are probably all from the Filthy Blue Birds. I scroll all the way down my list and start reading chronologically. Mostly it’s a bunch of messages asking if I’m OK. Those are all timestamped the morning they found out I was missing. Then they get weird. Like some of them thought I was dead and were saying their goodbyes.

Creepy.

I click out of messages and go to notifications, and glance at the first one on top. A blue link appears above that notification, indicating that I have five new ones. What the hell? People are talking to me right now?

The first one makes little sense to me. It’s part of a conversation tagged with my @FilthyBlueBird handle. All it says is—
You’re so right
. It’s from someone I have never heard of.

I click the conversation link to see what they are talking about.

Editor @Realreporter00 - 15 min

@GrapevineHW You’re wrong. Asher is about done with his @FilthyBlueBird.

I hate reading Twitter conversations because you get the last message first, so you never know what the fuck is going on until you hunt down the original message. Which doesn’t seem to be included in this set of tweets.

I close out of that one and go down further, to tweets more than fifteen minutes old. I swear. I must look through a hundred messages before I find the one that sparked this convo. It was five hours ago and it came from @Buzz1Hollywood. That right there should tell me to leave it alone, but I’m human. If people are talking about me, I need to see it.

Editor @Realreporter00 - 5 hrs

Who wants to see @FilthyBlueBird doing the dirty solo for her man? We got the goods. Twitter pics are not private, Blue Bird.

Holy fuck. I want to stop myself, but I can’t. I have to know for sure. I scroll through every single notification looking for the “goods” but after hours of searching—like seriously, it’s after eight and the only reason I stop is because I hear the garage door open—I don’t find anything.

I do find several dozen references in the
Buzz Hollywood
feed to the Black Bash, which is happening this Friday.

Were they lying? Do they have these pictures or not? I’d forgotten all about that night we were phone- and Twitter-sexing back in Denver. It feels like years ago. How could I have known back then what my life would become in a few short months?

“Grace!” Vaughn calls out as he enters from the garage. I slap the cover closed on the tablet and stick it behind a cushion. He rounds the corner just as I cross my legs and look guilty. “What’re ya doing, Princess?”

“Waiting for you to get home.”

He grins widely at me and then joins me on the couch. “I missed you so much today,” he says, drawing me into his arms and nuzzling my neck.

Aww.

And before I can even tell him I missed him more, he’s got his hand up my shirt.

I should tell him about the pictures, but hell, I just want to soak up his attention. I’m so ready for company.

“Wanna go out to eat tonight? I got us reservations at Mastro’s.” He kisses me, his tongue doing a twisty little dance inside my mouth.

“Please, get me out of this house.”

He scoops me up and carries me to the garage door, then bends down. “Grab those flip flops.”

“I can’t go like this!”

“Hell, yes, you can. I’m starving for steak. And you, sweets. I need nourishment and girly conversation right now, or I might die. Grab them and let’s go.”