LITMIR.BIZ

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is gratified to see that sometimes, even in this town, Karma works. Blue dug for gold and came up with rocks. We sincerely hope this is the last time we have to mention her name within these pages. Like Townshend wrote, “Let’s forget you, better still.”

      Goodbye, sweet Harry. This town will miss you.

       CHAPTER ONE

      “COMEON, BABY BLUE. I may not have Harry’s bucks, but I’ve got a place in Malibu overlooking—”

      “You booked a massage, Carlo. I am not on the menu of services.” Indigo Blue grasped the man’s muscular forearm, removed it from around her neck and lowered it to her massage table. Soft light from the matching Tiffany lamps caressed the burnished skin and smooth muscles of Hollywood’s latest action hero, Carlo Bandera. Soothing new-age rainforest sounds flowed from the spa’s hidden speakers.

      “I get that you don’t want to commit, babe. That’s cool.”

      Pouring coconut oil into her palm, she rubbed her hands to warm it, attempting to ignore the massive boner tenting the towel draped across Carlo’s crotch. Starting at the bottom of his rib cage, she slid the heels of her hands up and across his considerable pecs. She leaned in, adding her weight to release the tension in the huge muscles.

      His arms snaked around her and pulled her onto his chest, trapping her hands underneath her. “I’ve got five hundred bucks for a BJ.”

      She pushed against him, but his arms were steel bands. He didn’t even flinch. Panic pumped into her bloodstream, impelled by her racing heart.

      “Harry Stone could’ve had any broad in town, and he chose you.” He gave her the look she’d seen him use in his last movie. The heavy-lidded, smoky one that liquefied female costars. “You must be incredible—it’d be worth five hundred.”

      “Back off, Bandera. Right now.” Adrenaline raced through her, demanding flight or fight. But the caveman Casanova’s balls were out of her knee’s reach.

      “Aw, honey, you’ll change your mind once you see the goods...”

      When he used one arm to whip off the towel, she twisted away, sliding easily thanks to his oily chest.

      “This appointment is over.” She stepped to the door, but her hands were slick. She couldn’t turn the knob.

      Bandera sat up, a slow smile spreading across his face, his member throbbing. “From what I hear, you gotta need the money, Blue.” He slid his legs off the table.

      She shot a glance around the dim room, looking for a towel to wipe her hands. They lay stacked on the other side of the table. Figures.

      He stood. “If you’re that good, I’ll refer my friends.”

      Using two hands, tendons in her forearms straining, she twisted the greasy knob. It slipped, but then finally turned. She flung the door open. It hit the wall with a hollow boom. She stalked through the crowd from a just-released rumba class, leaving the door gaping behind her.

      Her client’s indignant yell didn’t douse the burn in her gut.

       I can’t do this anymore.

      Only a week into her old job and this was the third and scariest pass so far. She’d told herself that she’d been spoiled with the cushy life—but it was more than that. Before Harry, the upscale clientele of Las Brisas had at least shown respect for her skills and service. Now she was accosted on a daily basis. She snatched an Egyptian cotton towel from a stack, wiping her hands as she walked through the gym, hyperaware of the curious eyes that followed her.

      This was not going to work. She needed a new plan.

      As with everything he touched, Harry had changed her. She was no longer the free-spirited, starstruck newbie, grateful for a dream job teaching yoga to starlets and massaging famous muscle. But without Harry’s love and unswerving loyalty, who was she now? She didn’t know.

      But she wasn’t this.

      A crushing blanket of loss had descended the morning she woke to find the lifeless body of her mentor, her love, her best friend, cooling on the mattress beside her. After that Harry had belonged to everyone: the press, his fans, his daughter. In their hands, the funeral morphed from the quiet family ceremony Harry had wanted into a nightmare of Hollywood proportions complete with limos, television cameras and paparazzi.

      Indigo pushed open the door to the women’s locker room, hollow to the marrow of her bones. She put her hands on her knees and leaned over, waiting for a wave of dizziness to pass. When had she last eaten?

      But a decent meal wouldn’t touch this emptiness. The problem was much deeper.

      The commune where she’d grown up had been a large sheltering womb that, after high school, had shrunk to the point of claustrophobia. She’d fought her way out, choosing to be born instead between the glamorous thighs of Hollywood.

      It was only later she learned her surrogate mother was a narcissistic whore.

      That was the last time she’d trusted her gut. Lost, and one bad choice from disaster, she’d met Harry.

      “Indigo Blue. It sounds like a streetwalker’s name.” A chalkboard-squeal voice drifted from the first row of teak lockers.

      “The only reason anyone invited her to parties at all was because she had Harry wrapped around her ring finger. How do you suppose she did that?”

      “See? We’re back to the streetwalker thing.”

      Blood pounded up Indigo’s neck, flooding her face with heat. She eyed the exit, but her car keys were in her locker. Tightening her stomach muscles, she walked on. Coming abreast of the lockers, she glanced to the two underwear-clad plastic surgery billboards. “Monica, you may want to stick with those voice lessons.” She covered the bitchy words in fake-sincerity syrup. “You’re still strident, dear.”

      That shut them up. She grabbed her stuff and got the hell out.

      * * *

      TWODAYSLATER, her Louis Vuitton luggage open on the bed, Indigo stood before her walk-in closet, which was bigger than her childhood bedroom. She surveyed the yards of satin, spandex and sequins, seeing her Hollywood life recede like the view in the long end of a telescope.

      That’s how it felt—as if, at twenty-seven, she’d already led three separate lifetimes: the tomboy who’d grown up wild on the Humboldt County commune, the star-struck yoga instructor and the celebrity wife of an aging Hollywood icon.

      Thanks to her mom and Harry, two of those lives had turned out well. The one in between, the one she’d been in charge of? Epic fail. She turned away from the closet. Whatever lifetime came next, she sure wouldn’t need this wardrobe.

      Mom wanted her to come home to People’s Farm, but her experience at the spa had taught her that going backward didn’t work. Thanks to the skills she’d learned there, she could put her portable massage table under her arm and start her next lifetime almost anywhere.

      And in the ass-end hours of last night, she’d decided to begin that life at the winery—the one remnant of this life that was truly hers. Maybe she’d find Harry’s spirit where they’d been happiest.

      Closing the luggage, she glanced around the bedroom, listening one last time for a whisper of Harry. All she heard was the whine of the pool pump through the open French doors. She now understood the phantom pain that amputees felt for a missing limb, because of the gaping hole in her that Harry had left. What would happen to her now, without his steady guiding hand on her shoulder?

      Everyone believed she’d married Harry Stone for his money. Still, she’d thought she’d made a few friends in the four years they’d been married. But the past two months proved that all the naïveté hadn’t yet rubbed off of Indigo Blue. She shook her head, picked up what was left of this life and walked downstairs.

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