Blurred Lines (Behind Closed Doors Book 2) by Erin Cawood Page A

directly into her eyes. “What are you? Like a hundred pounds. That’s nothing.”
    Actually, I’m one-ten, but I don’t have opportunity to correct her. Wayne interrupts. “You know, ladies, there’s a whole table of other people who came to celebrate Julia’s birthday.”
    I’m happy for an excuse to avoid this conversation with Ashleigh. Sure, she works out every day, but her hard slog has nothing to do with maintaining a svelte figure and everything to do with doing something she loves. But instead of letting the topic slide and letting me return my attention to my guests, Ashleigh scowls at Wayne. “Excuse us a minute?” She stands up. “We have to freshen up.”
    She grabs my hand and practically yanks my arm from its socket as she drags me away from the table full of Wayne’s family. My parents, Sean and Anna haven’t flown over because Sean’s in a spot of bother over a story he’s recently been investigating and was arrested earlier in the week.
    Instead of going into the restroom, Ashleigh takes a sharp detour out the fire escape. I find myself in a dark alley with very little street lighting. A lot of dumpsters and God knows what, or who, is hiding back here and that makes me nervous. “Ash, we should go back inside.”
    In the last year or so there have been three bodies found in the alleyways behind nightclubs in downtown LA. The only thing Wayne will tell me is that they're all girls and they think it's the same perpetrator. He’s really nervous about this guy. He keeps sending messages to check in with me and they’ve gone through the roof since the last girl was found.
    He complains when I leave for work on my own. He has a massive problem with the fact that I work for Krystal Valentina. If her celebrity status wasn’t enough, Ashleigh's onscreen character is rapidly becoming the most hated woman in Soap Land because the current storyline involves Ashleigh scheming to take down the soap's hottest male character, who just happens to be acted by Dex Leighton.
    It's been over a year since Dex was caught sleeping with another woman behind Ashleigh's back, but the whole thing has been dragged back up since their characters began an onscreen rivalry. And the fans with a short grasp on reality believe Ashleigh's out for revenge. It began with general naming calling and progressed to verbal abuse, but four weeks ago Ashleigh ended up dislocating a fan’s shoulder after they attacked her from behind.
    It caused all kinds of excitement in the media about how she’d ‘over reacted.’ If there wasn’t CCTV footage proving Ashleigh reacted in self-defense I’m sure she would have been charged for assault. Instead, Ashleigh’s father and lawyer insisted no charges should be brought on the fan, made Ashleigh apologize, and furthermore, compensated the fan for their loss of earnings, medical expenses and the stress caused by the injury. She’s furious the whole thing has been spun around so that somehow she was to blame when they attacked her!
    I was with her when it happened and the press attention on me as a witness was a little unbearable until the whole thing blew over. But now Wayne doesn’t think I’m safe with her, or anywhere near her, even though her dad has employed a team of bodyguards to stop the whole thing from happening again. I’ve been singled out by the media as Krystal’s stylist and close friend, which brought a number of contacts and job offers my way. I didn’t accept any of them because Wayne quite rightly said they’re just using me to get dirt on Krystal, otherwise, if they were interested in my talents as a stylist, they’d have been in touch before. But he likes Ashleigh even less now than he did before and it's the first time they’ve been in the same place since it happened. To say their interaction tonight has been icy would be a massive understatement.
    “Julia.” Ashleigh draws my attention back to the dark and dingy alleyway. My eyes dart around our