Catch a Falling Star by Lynette Sowell Read Free Book Online Page B

her own problems were so easily solved.
    “I’ll figure it out, so don’t look so distressed. People have friends of friends around here. It’s a small world, so they say.”
    Azalea dropped Justine at her house, and Justine trudged up the sidewalk. The scrapbook made her arm ache, but in the end she made it inside the cool house and placed the book on her long dining room table.
    Justine turned the pages of the scrapbook again. The family’s smiling faces looked back at her once more. They didn’t look like people who would skip out on a bill.
    She paged back to the wedding photo on the second page. She wanted that, one day down the road. Her thoughts drifted to Tyler Drake then to the eighty-thousand-dollar noose around her neck. A steep amount of money, but she should have been able to find it somewhere. Her last film had netted her just a hair over three million.
    Justine punched a speed dial number. Answer, Ty .
    Sweet Justine, how are ya?”
    Tyler, finally!” Her voice echoed off the dining room walls. “Why haven’t you called me?”
    The sounds of traffic drowned out his voice. “—busy on the set here.”
    “Where’s here?”
    “New Zealand. Thought I told you. We’re actually headed out for dinner and a few drinks.”
    She dared not ask who we were. “I’m in a jam. My lawyer called me today. The back taxes on my Hollywood hills home are way overdue, plus for some reason the mortgage payments weren’t being made for almost six months now.”
    “I thought Neil was taking care of all that for you.”
    “He is. Or is supposed to be. But I don’t have the eighty thousand in cash at the moment.”
    “Ah, I see.” Squeals and laughter and a pulsing beat came across the phone line. “I’d get Neil to handle it. Have you talked to him yet?”
    “No. . . . I was going to. . .but I wanted to hear a friendly voice.”
    “Yeah, well, I’m glad you called. Let me know what Neil says. Chin up. You’ll be okay.” The phone went silent.
    Justine stared at the phone. Here she was, stuck in Texas of her own choosing, with Ty off living his dream and Neil doing who knew what with her money. What was left of it.
    Azalea didn’t think she was a hopeless cause. But the way things were looking, she was losing altitude fast and would crash and burn. “God, if You’re really there and interested in the mess I’m in, feel free to lend a hand anytime.”
    The house answered her with silence.
     
    #             
     
    “C’mon, Billy.” Maddie ran ahead of him onto the flea market grounds. Starlight Market Days drew dozens of vendors and hundreds of buys over the last weekend of every summer month. Billy should be home, working on the cottage. But he’d promised to take Maddie to Market Days.
    The milling crowds and clusters of vehicles made his pulse pound. He flinched, ever so slightly, at chatters and squeals. Worst of all, a child fired a cap gun a few yards away. Instinct almost sent him diving for cover behind a vendor’s booth.
    Billy could smell the explosives even now. No one had ever told him memories had smells. Screams and curses in the air, his ears ringing as the Humvee ripped apart with them inside it. Crawling to a roadside ditch before a hidden shooter could finish off what was left of him. The sensation made him feel like a coward now as he entered the market grounds. He should have grabbed his weapon and fired, even if he missed.
    He forced himself to stop in spite of the sun that beat down from above. Maddie had already found a pair of her friends, and they sauntered off to one of the concession stands.
    Of course a fifteen-year-old didn’t care about old junk and treasures. She wanted to see her friends. And here he stood, almost incapacitated by a cap gun.
    Billy looked down at his arms, dark from working in the sun, his fists clenched. This was a bad idea. He could handle attending church, finally, so long as the crowd wasn’t too active and he found a seat in the