Free The Rock Star's Daughter by Caitlyn Duffy Page B

violin-playing bookworm with an
authority problem (I was realizing) and just happened to have a
famous dad.
    Jake's eyes were so, so brown, the shade of
black coffee, and his teeth were really straight and white. Allison
would have even thought he was a total babe, and she had pretty
high standards. I resisted the urge to take a picture of him with
my mobile phone.
    "What about you? You go to school?" he
asked.
    "I go to the prestigious Treadwell
Preparatory Academy," I informed him in a mock stodgy voice. "It's
a boarding school in Massachusetts."
    "Fancy," he said. But he said it in a way
that made me feel kind of bad, like perhaps he assumed I was a
spoiled rich kid.
    "It's not like that," I explained. "My life
with my mom, before, was nothing like this. At all. We… you know,
we didn't have much. My dad paid for me to go to school, but that
was it."
    I wanted to tell him more, about how
sometimes in the summer I would ask my mom for bus fare to go to
The Grove with Allison and she wouldn't have it because she would
have spent her entire royalty check on liquor for a party. And
about how in ninth grade I had wanted to go with my Treadwell class
on a school trip to London and my mom asked my dad to pay for it,
but then she spent the money on having her breasts surgically
lifted and told me I was too young for international travel,
anyway. I had to suffer through looking at everyone else's
souvenirs from Kensington Palace and Portobello Road in a jealous
rage.
    Instead I told him about our house in West
Hollywood, and how beautiful it was in late spring when all the
flowers were in bloom, and how my mom loved to grill shrimp kebobs
all summer long. I told him about how I had always wanted to have a
brother or sister but my mother never seemed to want to keep any of
her boyfriends around for more than six months. I had no idea how
long we walked around swapping anecdotes about our mothers. I was
starting to feel like I had known Jake for a really long time and
we had our entire childhoods in common.
    Unexpectedly, a flashbulb went off in my
face.
    And then another.
    "Are you having a good time on the road with
your dad?" a reporter asked me.
    A photographer took another picture.
    "Excuse me? Who are you?" I asked.
    "Russ Whitcomb, Expose Magazine . Are
you adjusting to your new life with Chase Atwood?"
    Jake grabbed my hand and pulled me in the
other direction. "You don't have to talk to them, Taylor," he told
me.
    "I just want a quote," Russ said, pushing
Jake out of his way. "Anything you can tell us about your new
life?"
    Jake pushed Russ back on the shoulders and
said, "Back off, man!"
    Just then, one of my dad's bodyguards, a big
guy who the band called Moose, appeared and grabbed me by the
wrist.
    "You need to get backstage," he told me
sternly, leading me away. He gave Jake a dirty look. "Jill's
worried sick about you. You can't just wander off during a
show."
    "But," I began, not even sure what I was
going to say. I turned to wave goodbye to Jake, but he was walking
away, and didn't look back at me. "I'm not a prisoner. I can go
wherever I want."
    "Not anymore you can't," Moose told me.
"There are a lot of crazy people in this world, and you aren't safe
just walking around in the open in a place like this."
    I argued and complained until Moose got me
backstage, where Jill was waiting, completely pissed off, with her
arms folded over her chest.
    "Where on earth were you?" she roared.
    I was mortified. I had never been yelled at
like that before in my life. "I was just… walking around."
    "Well you can't just walk around!" Jill
screamed. "You see all these people? These people work here. They
work for your father. It is not their job to go looking for you
because you feel like exploring. Who do you think you are?"
    The band was still playing, so it was already
ear-splittingly loud, but Jill was yelling louder than the music.
All of the roadies were looking away, not wanting to get involved.
Keith was watching nearby