(Yup, I did it. Another chapter whipped out! (There's some ramblings of mine at the bottom...and an announcement (sort of) as well) But for now, Enjoy!)
Chapter 28
The media frenzy had been exactly what she had expected it to be. Due to her disappearance and now the arrest of her manager, things had been turned on their ear. It didn't take long for the paparazzi to figure out which hospital she was in. Within six hours of Randall's arrest, the news vans began to arrive and set up camp outside of the hospital.
The city police had been called in to station off duty police officers at every entrance and exit of the hospital to keep all unauthorized personnel that didn't either work at the hospital or have someone they were visiting, out. Within twenty-four hours, the parking lot was overflowing with news media and fans holding up get-well signs while working to get their fifteen minutes of fame by being at the right place at the right time.
People kept trying to sneak into the hospital to see her but thankfully she was listed under her real name and not her stage name. Everyone that came into the hospital had to give the name of the person they were there to see and if the person was not on the roster or the person trying to get in was not on the list of expected visitors for that patient, they were escorted off site. This often caused a ruckus in the front lobby until police could escort the individual off site with a verbal warning that the next time they entered the facility under false pretences, they would be arrested for trespassing. No one seemed willing to try it twice but there were at least twenty people that tried it daily.
Flowers began arriving by the dozen and finally it was all Clara could do not to scream from the interruptions as orderlies brought them into her room. When there were no places left to set anything on, they had begun to put them on the floor. Her room began to have a cast of a sickening sweet scent and she was beginning to develop a headache from it all.
Matt finally made it back to the hospital two days after he'd been there last, only to peek into her room to find her propped up in bed with a drained, pale look to her face. A folder of papers on the adjustable table across her bed in front of her sat ignored as she rubbed absently at her forehead. Her left arm had been secured across the front of her chest to keep it as immobile as possible, minimizing her movement of that side of her body.
He knocked on the door and as she looked up a little, he felt his cheeks flush at the look of utter relief on her face at seeing him. If he could do anything for her to relieve the stress lines on her face, he would. Walking over to her bed, he looked at the folder on the table. "Looks like some heavy reading. You sure you're up for it?" he asked as he realized it was the paperwork from Lisa on the lawsuit against Randall and her parents.
She groaned a little. "My eyes hurt. My nose hurts…," she complained softly as she shut the folder and pushed it slightly away from her.
Looking at her curiously, he leaned down to kiss her forehead, "Why do your eyes and nose hurt?" he asked cautiously.
"Because of these damned flowers…," she growled. "They just keep coming and there's no room for them. I don't know what to do. I don't want them…well, I don't want most of them except the ones from people I really know, like my band members and the few others I can call friends from my 'old' life," she said as she used her right hand to rub at her forehead again as if to ease a headache.
"Are you allergic to flowers?" he asked cautiously.
"I have no idea. I've never been around this many before in my life. But I think anyone stuck in a room 24/7 with this many could become so," she grumped softly. "I could open a flower shop with the stock I have in here at this moment…and this is probably just the beginning."
Matt raised his eyebrow. "Well then, let's see what we can do about it then. Can't have you buried under an avalanche of flower petals now can we? I'd have to be called in to rescue you," he said with a wicked little grin as he moved over towards the closest basket of arranged flowers.
She gave a slight huff, "Oh no, can't have that…not at all," she snarked back. "What would I ever do? I'd be indebted to you for rescuing my sorry ass twice."
He turned to look at her for a moment with a charming smile on his face, "That wouldn't be all that bad now would it?"
An hour later, the room looked a lot less cluttered and didn't smell so sickly sweet. Running the bathroom fan helped clear some of the air. Matt had gone through each bouquet and flower arrangement, reading the cards aloud to her. If it was from someone she knew and cared about, he put them to the side. If they were from someone she didn't like or didn't know he had put them close to the door though he kept the card and wrote on the back what had come with the card in case she needed to reference it later.
As he was about to finish with the last few vases of flowers, one of the nurses came in to check Clara's readings and take her temperature and blood pressure. The nurse looked around with a raised eyebrow.
"Excuse me?" asked Clara as she waited for the nurse to take care of her duties. "Do you have any patients in the hospital that don't have any relatives or are elderly with no one to bring them anything to cheer them up?" she asked quietly.
Susan, from what her name badge read, looked up at her. "Yes, we have several here who fit that description. Why?"
Clara gestured towards the flowers. "I'm getting overwhelmed here and in the end, when I finally leave, I can't take these with me. I'd rather they go to someone who it might brighten their day or make them smile." She felt the blood pressure cuff tighten down around her arm as the nurse listened to her heart beat.
When she was finished, Nurse Susan took off the cuff. "I think that could be arranged," she said with a smile. "Should I tell them who they came from?"
Shaking her head slightly, Clara smiled back, "No, just tell them they are from someone who thought they needed something to brighten their day."
Susan smiled, "All right. I'll send an orderly to collect these and distribute them. There's also a nursing home next door to us. I can make sure that some get taken there too." She paused for a moment thinking, "What about any others that might get delivered?"
Clara tried to smile at the nurse, "Bring me the card first. I'll let you know if I want them. But most of the people I really would want anything from have already sent something and we've kept those here," she said, indicating the couple of vases of roses and few baskets of flower arrangements.
The nurse nodded, "I think we can manage that. Do you want me to bring you anything for the pain?" she asked then, knowing that Clara was beginning to suffer from the strained look on her face.
"Not right now. I'll send Commander Hawkes out to find someone when I'm ready for something," she said as she tried to convey that she wasn't quite ready to go to sleep just yet.
With that, Susan nodded again and headed out to find the orderly to remove the large amount of flowers. Matt remained quiet, putting the flowers she wanted to keep up on the tables and window sill as an orderly came back with a cart a few minutes later and began to load it. It took the man several trips but finally the room was much emptier and Clara felt a bit more relaxed.
"Oh thank god…," she said as the last of the unwanted flowers were removed. "I didn't realize how claustrophobic I was beginning to feel."
Matt made his way over to the door and shut it most of the way, coming back over and moving the table away from her bed. He sat down in the chair next to her. "I would have come earlier today but the higher elevations finally got a heavy snow and we've been busy with the people that just had to be the first ones out into the first new snow of the season…and got stuck or stranded."
Taking a slow, even breath until she felt the twinge of pain in her lung, she exhaled slowly. "Think there's snow up at my place?" she asked, aching to be up there, alone or with Matt, having something hearty to eat other than the soup broth and jell-o they kept trying to feed her. She wanted to be next to a warm fire and not sitting here, in pain and feeling chilled half of the time.
"Dad radioed down this morning that they got three feet up there. So if he got snow, so did you. They were going to go over tomorrow and clean your cabin now that the forensics teams are done with anything they might need up there and Sheriff McBride has released the scene for any cleaning that needed to be done." Matt watched her face carefully. He recognized the look of home-sickness almost immediately and wished he hadn't said anything.
"They don't have to do that. I'll take care of it when I'm up there next time," she said, though she had no idea when that would be. Lisa had just been in there that morning and after a bit of a heated argument, had finally convinced her to go back to LA until she was needed to be at the trail to testify. Lisa had had a valid argument and Clara had only been thinking with her heart and not her mind in the matter of wanting to stay here in Tahoe. Now she had to find a way to tell Matt what had been decided.
Matt reached out and took her hand, "Clara, dad doesn't mind. It'll give them a chance to go over and check things out for you. Cody said it'll give them a chance to burn some of that nice wood you worked so hard to cut up this year since he didn't think you'd be able to be up there by yourself for at least a few months. He said it would be a shame for all that hard work to go to waste." He smiled, hoping the teasing from his little brother would lighten her spirits.
Clara bit her lip and looked away some. "I need to talk to you about that Matt," she said quietly.
Matt felt his heart drop into his stomach at those words and he looked at her with growing concern. "Talk to me about what?" he asked, trying to get her to spit it out.
She was quiet for a few moments as if trying to collect her thoughts and finally she turned her head and looked at him, her eyes almost desperately sad. "Lisa was here today to talk to me about the upcoming trials and about going back to LA until the murder trial started."
This last bit caught Matt a bit off guard as he had thought that after Clara left the hospital, she would perhaps rent a place in town or maybe he could convince his dad to let her to stay with them for the time being until she was healed up enough to be on her own again. "Going back to LA?" he asked as if to confirm he'd heard her right.
She grimaced slightly, "Yeah. I wanted to stay here but Lisa convinced me to go back to LA until I'm needed to appear at the trial. She doesn't want to chance me getting snowed in but…," she paused and looked over at him, "Her main concern is about the Rangers and you. You don't know the press and paparazzi like we do. You're taking a chance already by being here, being seen in a room with me and for no real reason. All it will take is one person willing to make a few dollars to go to some rag reporter or news agency that will pay them for the exclusive on my 'love' interest and you and your team will be hounded by those vultures. They will get in your way, hound you for information, go through your garbage for anything interesting they can get on you and will dig into your background looking for dirt. They will even go so far as to make things up about you just to sell papers and magazines. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. You'll spend years suing them for damages but in the meantime it will take your focus away from your work, put a strain on your relationship with everyone around you, maybe even between us. In the end, it's better if I go back to LA and 'pretend' that there's nothing going on between us and put some distance between Tahoe and I, as if I could care less. They will follow me back to LA and only wander out this way for the trial dates."
Matt was quiet as he listened to her, trying to envision what she was explaining to her. "These people would seriously go through our garbage?" His mind seemed stuck on that one in particular.
"They do mine and many, many other famous Hollywood and music stars. That's why many of them have to hire special garbage services that will come in and collect their garbage and destroy it, shredding or incinerating it as soon as it gets back to the processing plant. They sign agreements that nothing in what is collected will be taken to the public otherwise they could be liable for millions of dollars in damages." She grew quiet and Matt got the feeling there was more so he remained still, trying in a silent way to encourage her to go on.
"I might not be able to call or write very often either, if at all. These people have ways of bugging phones, paying your staff to go through your mail or monitor your phone calls. Unless you can catch people at it, you can't prove anything. I've even heard of postal workers being paid off to let someone see a celebrity's incoming or outgoing mail. It's sad really. We have no privacy though the outside world thinks we have it made. The public has no idea the freedom we lose by putting ourselves into the public eye like we do and all for the purpose of their entertainment." He could see that she was trying not to clench her teeth in frustration at the memories her words were bringing back.
"Matt, it's a strange and bizarre world that I've lived in all these years. That's why moving up here to Jake's was so…exhilarating. I didn't have these worries, these fears of someone trying to make stuff up about me, trying to make money off of something I said that was taken out of context or trying to make me look bad to the public just so they could make money off of selling their magazines and rag newspapers at the supermarket checkout lines." She looked away and then up at the ceiling.
He rubbed his eyes before running his hand up over his forehead then through his tousled blonde hair. Finally he sighed as he ground his teeth in frustration. "Would you be coming back? I mean, I don't want to lose you and I know this sounds selfish, but I'm not willing leave Tahoe or the Sierra's to follow after you."
There was a sad tiny smile on her lips, "I would never ask you to leave here. You 'fit' here. Not there. Hell, I don't think I 'fit' there anymore either. I got too used to the pace of life here in the last six months. I don't think I want to go back to a faster pace for too long. I promise I'll come back but I don't know how long it'll be. It could be six months, it could be a year. It'll all depend on how long it takes for Randall's attempted murder trial and then for the lawsuit against Randall and my parents. My record company may not let me out of my contract and that alone required I stay with them until I'm twenty-five. I won't know until things settle down a little and play out." She squeezed his hand, her blue eyes looking steadily into his. "But I promise that I'll come back to you as soon as I can."
Matt nodded, trying to hide his frustration and show her his understanding. His mind was whirling around with the knowledge that he might lose contact with Clara for some time and he wasn't sure if he could handle seeing her at the trial and act like there was nothing between them. Intellectually he knew she was right and that she had to do it this way, not only to protect him but to be able to finish what had been started. However, his heart was aching already from wanting to hold her and knowing he couldn't, not just from her injuries but from the chance someone might see them. It was frustrating, infuriating and all he could do was nod in agreement and go along with it.
He kissed the back of her fingers again, "I promise I'll wait," was all he could say in response.
TBC -
Only a few more chapters (around 3 or 4) to go before the end of this 'book' but not the end of this series. Yes, if you've fallen in love with this story, I've decided to write a second 'book'.
I had been thinking about putting a bunch more action/adventure/drama into this 'book'. But then I though that in reality, since I'm going to write a second 'book', this first one should be mainly about introducing everyone to Clara, kicking off the budding love story between Matt and Clara, where the storyline is, where our characters are and how they think/what they are doing, so on and so forth.
Since I've decided not to include/acknowledge the Jesse Hawkes TV show storyline in this series and tell the story as if it never happened, this first 'book' is a good opportunity to get a good foundation set down so the next 'book' will allow me to jump right in and run without having to 'set the scene' say up at Clara's cabin or go into detail about who's all working at the Ranger Station, etc. It's already done and ready to Rock n Roll!
So, since 'book' 2 is only in the outline stage right now, feel free to drop me a line with ideas or anything you'd like/love to see happen in the next 'book' (after you've read the whole story so you can see how I end things). You never know, maybe one of your wishes will come true ;) (And of course you'd get full credit for it too ;) )
Thanks again to everyone who has been so supportive with reviews and with encouragement. Again, I'd like to thank my Beta Reader since she's gotten me over the tough spots and mainly helped make me look more 'professional' and taught me a few things along the way. Thanks Charli911.
