Chapter 1

Hollywood, California

“Why hast thou forsaken me?” she raged to the heavens. “Why? Oh God…why?!” She shook as she turned away from Alejandro’s bulging biceps. She ignored the heated stare she felt searing her back with its intensity. “I cannot bear this temptation another minute, Lord. I cannot!”

Alejandro’s nostrils flared as he turned her in his embrace. “You will make love with me, Sister Alexis.” He shook her as she cried out for mercy. “You are mine.”

“Noooooo!”

“Leave the church, my beloved.” His voice was low and insistent, his breathing heavy. “Let us consummate our love.”

“No,” she gasped, backing away from him.

Sister Alexis tightly clutched the rosary beads she held, wielding them like a talisman. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. Her eyes were drawn to his washboard stomach. The beads fell to the ground, forgotten.

“No!” she raged, even as she threw herself in Alejandro’s awaiting arms. He wildly kissed her as he ripped at her nunnery clothes. “Nooooooo!”

Thirty-year-old Madalyn Simon frowned up at the movie screen. Sweet Lord above, what had she been drinking when she agreed to play the role of a cloistered nun who fell in love with a matador? There were low points in an actress’ life and then there were low points. This farce was a bottomless pit of the latter variety.

“I have fought the horns of many deadly bulls,” Alejandro purred, “but never have I been caught by them until you, Sister Alexis.”

Madalyn winced. She idly wondered how bad it would look if she walked out on the premiere showing of her own movie. Her agent would maim her. Her manager would kill what was left of her after the maiming.

“I have prayed for many souls,” Sister Alexis gasped as she rubbed Alejandro’s hard belly, “yet I never really understood what having a soul meant until I locked eyes with you.”

But then her agent and manager didn’t have to see themselves dressed like a nun in the arms of a shirtless Spanish matador muttering some of the dumbest lines ever put to pen.

She sighed. She really had to quit making movie deals over nachos and pina coladas.

“Take me, Alejandro! Show me what it means to be a woman!”

That’s it! Madalyn mentally grumbled. She no longer cared what anyone thought. She wasn’t going to watch herself look foolish on screen for another second. There were still thirty torturously long minutes left to endure until The Taming of the Shrewd was over. The rest of the crew could endure those minutes without her.

Delicately clearing her throat, she patted the back of the French twist her golden-red hair had been fashioned into as she stood up. If there was ever a perfect moment to suck down a pina colada, this was it.

“Where are you going?” her manager whispered through a tight-lipped smile from beside her. He tugged at her arm.

“I need some air.”

“You can’t walk out now,” he whined.

“I can and I am.”

His dark eyes looked desperate. “The studio won’t take kindly to this.”

“Bruno—”

“Sit!” he barked under his breath.

“You sit!” Madalyn hissed back.

She couldn’t bear to watch the movie for another moment. Worse, she realized that if she didn’t book now it would be even more difficult to skip the after-premiere party, and there was no way in heaven or hell she was showing up for that.

Oh yes, the “glorious” after-premiere party! Jealous actresses lying through their teeth about how fabulous The Taming of the Shrewd was while secretly gloating that America’s beloved Madalyn Simon was going downhill. Wannabe actresses doing the same thing, but for the purpose of getting in her good graces instead of disparaging her. Bruno looking scared that he’d have to settle for ten million instead of twenty million for Madalyn’s next movie. The studio executives whispering to each other about what to do for damage control…

No thanks.

Where had it all gone wrong? Madalyn wondered not for the first time. In the beginning, she had picked roles with the panache and wizened eye of a high-stakes gambler in Monte Carlo. These days she picked them like a has-been at the bingo hall back in her hometown of Athens, Alabama.

Because you no longer care.

Madalyn briefly closed her cat-like green eyes and sighed. It was true. She really didn’t care anymore.

Hollywood had turned out to be the very epitome of glitzy superficiality it was touted as. It was a world where nobody could be taken at face value, everyone wanted something from you, divorces could be ordered up quicker than a stiff drink, and lies were as commonplace as Los Angeles smog.

During the past decade she had seen so many actors and actresses give in to the dark side of the force, countless numbers of them becoming as jaded and artificial as legend bespoke. Madalyn, on the contrary, never had.

At heart, Madalyn Mae Simon was an Alabama girl in a Barbie world. Given to being something of a drama queen, she wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but she was decent and kind inside. She wanted things to stay that way.

Her heartbeat picking up in tempo, Madalyn snatched her porcelain, cream-colored arm out of Bruno’s meaty, tanning bed bronzed hand. “I’m leaving,” she said definitively. She felt like the exorcist, battling Bruno for the possession of her soul. Yeah, she was a drama queen. Oh well. “Unless you want a scene, respect that.”

Shocked gazes followed her as she made her way to the back of the theater. Picking up the hem of her dress, Madalyn notched her chin up, waved to her limo driver, and regally left the building. The perfect exit. At least she could still do those with gusto.

Her shoulders slumped as soon as the limo doors were safely shut behind her. Sweet Lord above, she needed a pina colada.

* * * * *

“Yes, I really am doing it, Drake. I’m leaving Hollywood behind for good and moving some place where nobody knows me. Quit laughing!”

“I’m trying,” Drake chuckled. “Really.”

“Uh huh. So I hear.”

“Oh come on, Maddie Mae, do you know how many times you’ve said this very same thing to me?”

Madalyn sniffed at her sister’s words. “I don’t remember—”

“I do. Twenty.”

“—and don’t call me Maddie Mae.” Her lips pinched together. “It makes me sound like I live in a trailer with ten kids and a potbellied husband named Earl.”

“Hmmmm…”

 “Listen,” Madalyn said, haphazardly throwing clothes into suitcases. The cordless phone was perched between her ear and shoulder. “I’m serious this time, Drake. I’m packing as we speak.”

The chortling on the other end of the phone connection induced Madalyn’s lips to turn down at the corners.

“And do you remember how many times you’ve packed your suitcases only to unpack them an hour later?” Drake asked.

“Not really,” she ground out.

“I do. Twenty.”

“You’re starting to irritate me. Why do I even bother to call you for support?”

“Because I’m your sister and I love you. And by the way, guess how many times you’ve said that to me?”

“Twenty?”

“Nope. Thirty-five.”

Madalyn’s shoulders slumped. She couldn’t deny what her little sister was accusing her of. She had, in fact, done all those things. Perhaps even more often than Drake was crediting her with. And yet…

Deep down inside, Madalyn realized that this time was different. This time she meant it. She wasn’t exactly certain what made tonight’s state of mind different from past ones, but there it was.

Perhaps turning thirty last week had indelibly changed something, she considered for the first time. Indeed, recognizing that she was a thirty-year-old woman with piles of money, no family save Drake, and no real friends had been a jarring realization.

It had changed everything.

The desire to bolt from Hollywood was as all-consuming now as it had been several hours back when she’d left Bruno and the movie showing behind. Usually she calmed down an hour or so later, just as Drake had insisted she would. What her little sister didn’t yet comprehend, though, was that Madalyn wasn’t calming down this time.

She’d stuck around on countless similar occasions in the past, telling herself things would get better when they never did. She didn’t aspire to money and a career—she had those things already. What kept her going all these years were dreams of making real friends, finding a loyal, trustworthy mate, and—

Her nostrils flared. It didn’t matter. They were all illusions. In this superficial world they would always be illusions.

“If you’re serious this time,” Drake said after a long pause, “you know you’re always welcome to live with me.”

Madalyn tried not to snort at the mental image such a situation conjured up. “Yeah, I can already see the headlines that would result from a move like that one: Madalyn Simon gives up on life after the humiliating flop The Taming of the Shrewd and flees to Utah to live with alarmist, anti-government, sister.” She sighed. “I appreciate the offer, but the point is I want to go where I can’t be found. As soon as I leave Hollywood the first place the reporters will flock to is your head-for-the-hills barricade outside Salt Lake City.”

“Don’t knock it. The facility we’ve set up here is primo. Once chemical warfare commences, we’ll be the only human survivors. And, oh yes, war will happen soon. Did you read in the paper about…”

Madalyn plopped down on her Arabian princess harem-esque bed, tucked a stray curl behind one ear, and smiled into the phone. She and Drake couldn’t be more different if they tried, but she loved her little sister fiercely. More than once she’d chewed out a reporter for making fun of Drake’s beliefs and lifestyle in the paper. She didn’t share in her sister’s political convictions any more than those reporters had, but damn it, nobody but nobody said anything negative about Drake Simon and got away with it. Not if Madalyn had something to say about it.

Drake: in most ways her antithesis, but still her sister…and her only friend.

No two blood sisters could be less alike. The only things they shared in common were green eyes and five-foot-eight inch frames. There the similarities ended. Madalyn favored their mother with her ivory skin and long, curly, golden-red hair. Drake took after their father with long, straight, inky black hair and skin given to tanning. After both of their parents died, Madalyn made a permanent move to California. Drake, on the other hand, took off with the rest of her the-sky-is-falling-and-the-government-cannot-be-trusted friends and headed for an underground barricade in Utah.

Madalyn laid back on her bed and patiently waited for her sister’s political rant to come to an end. When Drake was through pontificating on how CACW—Citizens Against Chemical Warfare—were certain that the United States government was experimenting on alien corpses, Madalyn interjected.

“I’m serious this time,” she murmured. “I really am leaving, Drake.”

Silence.

“Where will you go? I doubt there’s still a place left on earth where people won’t recognize you.”

Unfortunately, Drake was right. “I don’t know, sis,” Madalyn sighed, “but I’m going to find it.”