The Bodyguard Read online

  Table of Contents

  EPILOGUE

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  © Copyright 2017 by Martha James - All rights reserved.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

  The Bodyguard

  Martha James

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  EPILOGUE

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  1

  Desiree stood backstage, her heart pounding furiously in her ears. The percussive beat of it nearly drowned out the sound of the audience cheering in anticipation- it didn't, of course. It would have taken a lot more than that to drown out the sound of thousands of fans, screaming their heads off with excitement, all for her sake and her sake alone.

  God, it was still so hard to believe...

  She'd performed in front of large crowds before, of course. She'd been on an American tour the previous summer, and the audience sizes at every show had been respectable at the very least. It was amazing what a tremendous difference a few short months could make, however.

  Since that last tour, Desiree had released a new album (appropriately titled “Starrstruck,” a reference to her last name and sudden rise to fame,) and had had three hit singles with “Not the Girl You Think I Am,” “Hearts Beating as One,” and “Wild Side,” all of them skyrocketing up the charts quite rapidly upon release.

  Fittingly, she'd then embarked upon a world tour in promotion of the album, the tickets to most U.S. shows selling out in a matter of days after being put on sale. Never before had she performed for audiences in such numbers- all of her scheduled shows for the present tour had sold tens of thousands of tickets, with a few of the largest venues seating in excess of a hundred thousand fans.

  This thought was mind-boggling to her- to think that a girl who'd gotten her start playing popular song covers in her bedroom and putting them online could have risen to such astronomical heights, in such a short period of time. It was dizzying, to say the least, and more than a little bit intimidating.

  Of course, she knew, she couldn't really take total credit for all that she'd accomplished. She'd obviously worked very hard to get to where she was, sweated and strived and busted her butt trying to become as good as she could be at what she did. The simple fact of the matter was, though, that she really couldn't have gotten here simply of her own volition, without the abundance of help she'd been given along the way. There were plenty of talented young women whose passion and songwriting ability rivaled her own, playing their hearts out and doing everything they could to promote themselves online to no real end, other than that of disappointment and shattered dreams.

  How many people, she wondered, would be forced to face reality in time, and be made to give up their dreams due to nothing more than their personal lack of privilege in life?

  She sometimes felt a little bit guilty about this, and tended to question her own sense of self-worth as a result.

  It had been sort of like she'd cut in line in front of the rest of them, hadn't it? In a manner of speaking, anyway...

  It was true she was hard-working and talented, but she knew that her wealthy and well-connected father was likely as responsible for this almost inconceivable level of success as she was- quite possibly, a whole lot more so.

  When she'd first started making videos, it hadn't been anything a whole lot more substantive than her screwing around in her bedroom with her acoustic guitar, playing middling versions of some of her favorite songs- a mix of material ranging from classic rock to modern pop songs, and even a few obscure tracks from other countries that she was really quite fond of.

  By the time her father had taken note of her rising, though modest, success, her YouTube channel had gotten to the point of a few thousand subscribers- more than she might have anticipated, considering how low her expectations for the whole endeavor had been.

  “People seem to like you,” he'd said, speaking less with parental enthusiasm than the tone of a businessman, contemplating a potential investment.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” she'd said, smirking a little bit, trying to remain modest.

  “How would you like to go further in putting yourself out there?” he'd asked her, seeming to have considered and planned this for some time before asking her.

  She hadn't known what he meant, exactly, until he offered to pay her for studio recording time and a manager to help her boost her popularity.

  It had all been downhill from there, so to speak...

  She was, of course, grateful for all that her father had done for her. Though her family was wealthy, she'd always been a modest and level-headed young woman, never imagining herself of such esteem. She wondered whether she truly deserved it, though she told herself she was simply being modest.

  Still, though, she sympathized with all the dreamers out there from less rosy circumstances than her own, who would never really be propelled to such stellar heights in life despite their best efforts.

  She wished she could do more for people like them, who at the very least deserved an opportunity to shine, to expose themselves to a wide audience and let them decide for themselves whether they were deserving of success.

  Of course, the music industry didn't really work like that- it was a lot more about who you knew, and how well equipped you were at promoting yourself, than it was about how good or knowledgeable or passionate you were.

  She'd tried, during her previous tour, to get a few smaller artists to perform on tour with her, opening acts to wet the audience's pallet before she took the stage.

  “You know, to give some lesser known singers and bands a chance,” she'd pleaded optimistically, thinking that giving such performers a chance to play at large venues was a great way to give back to the musical community, as well as, in her mind, to compensate for the aforementioned “cutting in line” that she'd been guilty of in her rise to stardom.

  The concert organizers had explained patiently, but condescendingly, that she was far too big for something like that. The people hadn't come to see some two-bit nobodies that no one had ever heard of, they had come to see her, and to foist such mediocrity on her eager fans really wasn't a fair thing to do- especially considering the exorbitant prices they'd all paid for tickets.

  She'd gotten what they were saying, but it really didn't make sense to her.

  She was too big to promote other artists?

  The fact that she'd gotten so big was the whole reason she wanted to promote other artists!

  In the end, though, she'd known it was a losing battle. Despite being their main attraction, she somehow didn't feel as though she had a lot of leverage with which to impose her will, and as such it was probably better just to keep silent about the matter and learn to pick her battles.

  She would simply have to figure out some other way to give back to such aspiring acts in time...

  “Desiree, you're on in five,” came a voice over the intercom in her green room, suddenly yanking her out of her reverie.

  She blinked, refocused her attention momentarily on the boom of the audience, then snapped back to the guitar in
her arms. She strummed a few bars of “Now That You're Gone,” the final track on Starrstruck, and muttered aloud a few of its lyrics. She misspoke one of them absentmindedly, but the error suddenly gave her an idea for a new song- or at least, a part of a song.

  She rushed over to her bag in the corner of the room, and yanked out her notepad, where she regularly jotted down such musings and ideas for later.

  “Don't know where it all went wrong...

  Or were the signs there all along?”

  It was an okay start, but then she got into a groove, scribbling out line after line, riding the wave of inspiration with renewed enthusiasm.

  She loved it when things like this happened...

  Ideas would strike her like a bolt from the blue, sometimes fully formed or else damn near close to it, and she would work frantically to capture said lightning in a bottle, getting the whole thing down on paper before it flitted like a butterfly clean out of her mind.

  The inspiration for “Wild Side” had come to her in just such a fashion, and she'd wound up writing and recording the whole damn thing in three days' time, only for the song to then go on to mind-boggling success.

  “One minute, Ms. Starr,” came the voice over the intercom again. “You might want to come out now and get ready to go on stage.”

  This startled her. Four minutes seemed to have gone by in about thirty seconds' time, thanks to the sudden and alarming stroke of inspiration. She was feeling so energized, she seriously wanted to get this thing hammered out while it was still fresh in her mind. It felt like another potential hit on her hands, and if not that, then simply a damn good track to be included on her next album. It was somehow, at once, personal, romantic, philosophical, and catchy, with all parts occurring in just the right measure to create the ideal kind of alchemy she tried to strive for when crafting her songs.

  Holding her breath, as though diving into the song, she hurried to cram several more lines onto the page of her notebook, eventually getting to the point where the words were no longer full sentences, just little fragments to serve as points, which she hoped she would have the sense to recollect and piece together again later on.

  She could already hear the melody in her head...

  But no, no, she stopped herself. She needed to get her mind out of this fertile, inviting place, and focus on the task at hand. Thousands of loyal fans were out there, gripped on the edge of their seats for her to walk out onstage, and it would be selfish of her to let them down.

  She turned out a last couple of words then forced herself away from the notebook- then came running back over to it, as an especially clever and effective phrase suddenly flashed inside her mind. Then, at last, she made her way to the door, grabbed her guitar, and stepped outside.

  “Okay... Let's do this...”

  It didn't take her long at all to become distracted again.

  Less than a second, in fact...

  She gasped at the sight of a man standing outside her dressing room door, a man she'd never seen before, but who immediately took her breath away.

  “I'm sorry, did I startle you? They told me I should be back here...”

  Her mouth opened and closed, and she struggled to form words.

  “Oh, um... No... I just...”

  She was about to ask him who he was, but it was quickly apparent from his black jacket- wrapped around a broad, hulking, and not at all unattractive body- that he was security.

  “I'm Julian,” he said with a sympathetic smile, clearly feeling bad about having spooked her. “Julian Hansen. They assigned me as your personal protection, after those fans snuck backstage and tried to get into your dressing room on the last tour.”

  She blinked- this was news to her.

  “What- they never told me about-”

  “Oops,” he said, with a slight laugh. “Maybe I wasn't supposed to either...”

  She laughed, then rolled her eyes.

  “God... It's going to be a while before I start getting used to all of this...”

  “That's the limelight for you I guess,” he said with a shrug.

  She smiled, and found that she didn't really want to walk away from him. She knew she had to be on stage, and she really didn't have anything else to say- but there was something magnetic about him, something that made her want to linger there in his presence for- well, for a while longer, at least.

  “I'm Desiree, by the way. But... I guess you probably knew that...”

  He laughed. “Hmm, I never could have guessed,” he teased, as now chants of “DESIREE, DESIREE, DESIREE,” were ringing out among the audience beyond the stage.

  She giggled.

  “So, have you had a lot of experience- um- keeping people from swarming backstage? I mean, should I expect it to happen a lot?”

  “Actually, this is my first time working concert security,” he said, “So I can't exactly say from past experience. I worked at malls before, and at a few other private venues.”

  “Oh,” she said. She privately wondered whether a mall cop was adequate security for guarding a world famous pop star from her thousands of ravenous fans. But, she supposed, the concert organizers surely knew what they were doing in that regard. And in any case, it wasn't like he was her only line of defense- there were dozens of other hulking men standing guard around the arena. He just happened to be the only one standing outside her door, and she decided that he was far from the worst protection a girl could hope to ask for...

  “Although,” he added, “I have managed to survive working several Black Friday sales. If I can get through something that grisly, then guarding you should pretty much be a piece of cake, I imagine...”

  She laughed aloud at this.

  “Well then, it sounds like I'm in good hands...”

  He gave her a smoldering grin, and she found herself blushing in spite of herself.

  Oh God, was she actually flirting with this man? She hadn't really been intending too, but... Well, it was like that magnetism thing again. He was just so charming, and inviting... With his short blonde hair, his rich tan skin, and those hypnotic blue eyes of his, which seemed almost like marbles, peering deep into her soul. He was unshaven, with a crop of dark stubble along his chin, which made him look more rugged than unkempt. His body, though concealed beneath its black jacket, was obviously a sturdy and muscular one, his chest broad, his arms thick and powerful, every inch of him looking like sheer masculine perfection.

  She suddenly felt her legs becoming rather week beneath her...

  Being from a wealthy environment as she was, it was fairly expected of her to only breed with those of her own kind- and that was doubly the case now that she was independently successful, and not just riding the coat tails of her father and his wealth. The men she should be interested in were all high society types, men who owned businesses and traded on the stock market, or at the very least were successful artists or some such thing as that.

  She shouldn't be swooning over some working class stiff in his thirties, who, as far as she could tell, had accomplished nothing more in his life by this point than a career as a security guard.

  But she was swooning over him, very much in spite of herself, and in spite of all the training and programming she'd had drilled into her mind for as long as she could remember.

  “I... I, um...” she tried to say, but then realized she didn't genuinely have anything to follow it up with.

  Thankfully- mercifully, at that moment the dressing room down the hall opened, and Julian turned his beautiful face away from her to watch her bandmates stepping out. Desiree did the same, watching Jason, her keyboardist, make his way toward the stage without a glance in her direction. Shade, her drummer, meanwhile, gave her a mischievous glance over his shoulder, and shouted out:

  “better get a move on, your majesty! Your public is waiting!”

  She laughed, and Julian did the same.

  “That's Shade,” she told him, and he nodded- he quite obviously must have known this, she thought, thoug
h thankfully he was gracious enough not to point out the fact.

  “Well, I better go,” she said, “Apparently my public is waiting...”

  “It sounds like it,” he nodded. “Break a leg! Not really, though, because that's the sort of thing I'm supposed to keep from happening. It'll be my ass if you do it for real.”

  She laughed, and gave him a twinkling wave with her fingers.

  “Bye,” she said, gripping her guitar, and making her way toward the stage.

  He watched her as she went, feeling ever so slightly lighter than air, his heart beating in his chest to nearly the extent her own had been.

  She had no way of knowing that his own feelings during that whole experience had run parallel to his own...