Page 15 of The Sun & Her Burn

No matter how much my head cautioned it, or my gut screamed its concerns, my heart never seemed to listen to either of them.

I was still mulling overThe Dream & The Dreamerand how surreal it was to have seen three ghosts from my past in the same twenty-four-hour period when I pulled up in front of a small yellow bungalow in Westwood. Winter flowers bloomed in tidy beds beneath the front windows, and a robust lemon tree gleamed with bright fruit in the early morning sunlight. It was as charming and unpretentious as Linnea herself and suited her to a T.

I parked and walked the slightly cracked asphalt path to the front door to knock because my mama had taught me never to honk for a lady.

A moment later, a little curtain over the square window in the door twitched aside to reveal Linnea, wide-eyed and obviously startled.

It was a long moment before she opened the door.

“Sebastian,” she said, slightly breathless, the masses of wavy blond hair mussed into a wild halo around her head. “I thought I said I would meet you at the beach.”

“You also said you unexpectedly had to take your car into the shop. I was not going to make you catch a rideshare. Besides, Irented a Lambo. I like any excuse to drive it,” I allowed with a grin.

Her features softened, but she still stood in a narrow crack between the door and the frame as if she didn’t want me to peer inside.

“That’s sweet of you,” she admitted, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “Okay, if you don’t mind waiting just here, I’ll grab my things.”

“I can help—” I started to say, only for the door to be quietly shut in my face.

Okay.

So she was private about her home. I chose to believe something was charming about that and waited with my shoulder pressed into the stucco wall for her to re-emerge.

But a moment later, a rousing scream sounded from within, followed by a loud crash of something unmistakably breaking.

Without thinking, I wrenched the front door open and barrelled inside.

There was a small entryway that led to a narrow hallway down the middle and two rooms on either side. The sound of struggle emitted from the left, so I ran into the living room and paused at the sight that awaited me.

Linnea was on her knees on the ground with water dripping down her face and neck, flower petals caught in her hair. She had her hands shackled around an older woman’s wrists, struggling to contain her as she writhed in her worn, blue velvet chair.

“You bitch,” the woman shouted, nails curling into Linnea’s hands so deeply, blood welled beneath the tips. “You bitch, I told you that part was mine!”

“I know,” Linnea spoke so softly, it was almost hard to hear her after the screech of the other woman’s pitch. “I know, which is why I’m going to go speak to the director right now and tell him you’re the one who is right for the role, okay? But I needyou to relax, or I can’t fix things. You want the part, don’t you, Miranda?”

My breath stuck in my lungs, caught in the web of surprise.

Miranda?

As in Linnea’s mother, Miranda Hildebrand?

The once stunning actress who had earned her fame from soap operas and a series of spectacularly failed marriages.

Now that I knew who she was, I could see the fine features under her lank white hair and the vivid blue of her eyes, once her most famous qualities. Otherwise, she was almost unrecognizable, frail in a way I would expect the elderly to be, not a woman who had to still be in her late forties or early fifties. She wore clean loungewear in pale pink, but her face was makeup-free, and her hair was unstyled. The woman who used to associate with Savannah Meyers would have never lounged about the house in less than a silk negligee and glamorously done hair and nails.

What happened to her?

Linnea noticed me then because her mother did.

“About time you got here,” Miranda told me with an imperial sniff. “You’re lucky you’re so handsome, Clark, or I wouldn’t agree to go out with a man who was twenty minutes late for our date.”

My gaze darted to Linnea, who stared at me with her mouth pressed so tightly it almost disappeared.

“I apologize, Miranda,” I said, stepping forward to collect one of her hands from Linnea’s loosened grip so I could bring it to my mouth for a kiss. “I know better than to keep a beautiful woman waiting.”

“Yes, you do,” she agreed, shooting me an unimpressed look even though her cheeks pinked with pleasure. “You could have at least brought me flowers.”

I did not mention the shattered crystal vase at the base of the wall behind Linnea or the blooms scattered across the carpet.