Free All Who Are Lost (Ashmore's Folly Book 1) by Lindsey Forrest Page B

felt sick.
    “Hello?” Sharper, slightly irritated. Her chest and throat tightened. “This is Richard Ashmore.”
    She hit End in a panic.
    At that moment, the little elves that had knocked around playfully behind her eyes all day attacked with a vengeance, with the most appalling headache she had experienced yet. She stumbled, her phone falling to the floor, afraid that she might throw up, and managed to make it over to her bed before she collapsed. She had just enough strength left to crawl under the duvet.
    She was shivering in reaction, overheated and chilled at the same time. I am desolate and sick of an old passion…. Well, she had proved one thing, at least. For all her brave words to Cam – I’m going home – she was not ready to face Richard.
    She lay there for a long time, until her heart rate slowed and the shivering stopped. Inside the cocoon of the duvet, warmth and peace seeped into her through the December dusk. The house was silent except for the faint strains of hip-hop coming from Meg’s room. Gradually, she relaxed into the mattress, and the elves muted their hammering in response to the echo, This is Richard Ashmore, this is Richard Ashmore … .
    Eventually, she fell asleep, a deep, dreamless sleep.
    When she awoke, she felt more rested than she had in months.
    ~•~
    Cat Courtney gave the show her all for six months, but told the producers regretfully at the four-month mark that she did not want to renew her contract. Almost everyone – her manager, Meg, Roger – argued with Laura. The show was a success; she was a success. She had proved the doubters wrong. Why turn her back on that now?
    “Big mistake,” said Roger. “Do not leave me to the mercy of that understudy of yours, I beg you! The woman cannot carry a tune. Who do you think she’s shagging?”
    “Are you sure?” Dell, her manager, said. “We don’t have anything scheduled until fall. What are you going to do with yourself?”
    “Don’t I have another album on my contract?”
    “Yes, but there’s no time limit. I thought you weren’t writing.”
    “I’m working on something.”
    “Mind telling me about it?”
    “Not yet. I’m not ready. And – by the way – please don’t tell Mark about all this just yet.”
    A long silence across the Atlantic. “Laura, I don’t have a choice. I work for Cat Courtney, Inc. He’s my boss.”
    She could not tell anyone that Laura St. Bride, the woman they knew, was spending long hours alone groping her way back to Laura Abbott, wrenching lyrics so painful from a heart so rent that she put them away until she could gain some distance from them. The first song she wrote burned with images of smoking candles, the second with mountains crumbling to dust, the third with the longing of a woman lying on a shore. In the fourth, a woman called an old lover just to hear his voice.
    Her performance took on a new depth. One critic, coming back to see if she had sustained her initial performances, wrote that she brought a new prism to one of literature’s great heroines.
    In the mornings, after Meg went off to school, she wrote, gradually regaining confidence in her creative abilities. In the early afternoons before she had to report to the theater, she took a leaf from Cam’s book and brainstormed strategy, thinking hard about what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. First priority was to get Mark off her back. Then – where to live? Where to raise Meg? Where to take Cat Courtney next? Hard to look to the future yet, she acknowledged, while the past still wrapped its tendrils around her. Somehow, somewhere, she had to find the strength to move beyond Virginia.
    Beyond Dominic. Beyond Francie. Beyond… him .
    Finally, one afternoon, she took a deep breath, sat down at her laptop, and typed Richard Patrick Ashmore into the search engine. She pressed Enter and knit her fingers tightly together as the search criteria went out across the world.
    Thank heavens for the global desire to