Runaway Actress Read Online Free PDF Page B

time.’
    His eyes narrowed. ‘American, are you? You sound English to me.’
    ‘It’s complicated,’ she said, pulling her cap a little lower over her face. She shouldn’t have said anything about LA; it was too much information. If he knew who she was, he’d most likely drag her off into the hills and demand a ransom for her.
    ‘It’s all so – so – big!’
    ‘Aye.’
    ‘Isn’t it amazing?’ she said, thinking how different it was from the manicured lawns and borders of hothouse flowers in Bel Air.
    ‘Well, it is that,’ he said.
    Connie took a last look around before returning to the taxi. The light was almost violet now and the colours of the landscape were beginning to drain into the night and, for the first time in years, Connie felt a real sense of peace.
    It was dark by the time they reached Lochnabrae and Connie peered out of the window. ‘Is this it?’
    ‘Aye,’ the taxi driver said. ‘That’s the B&B,’ he said, nodding towards a white house with a board swinging outside. Loch View. Connie gazed across the road. She couldn’t see any loch. ‘That is where you’re staying, isn’t it?’
    Connie nodded. She’d managed to ring ahead before leaving LA and had booked a room for a week to begin with. ‘What do I owe you?’
    The taxi driver told her the total and Connie dug through her designer wallet until she found enough to pay him. She wasn’t sure how much it came to in dollars – Connie hadn’t had time even to try and understand the conversion rate as she’d grabbed her cash from the LAX bureau de change and run to catch her flight. But, if it meant not having to worry about driving on the wrong side of the road and navigating her way along dark single-track lanes after a long-haul flight, it was definitely a bargain.
    ‘I’ll get your bags,’ he said, taking the wad of cash and stuffing it into his jeans pocket.
    Connie got out of the car and breathed in deeply. It was good to have finally arrived. She promised herself no more planes or taxis for at least a week. She’d walk – walk everywhere, that’s what she’d do. Nobody ever walked in LA – it was too big – but she’d walk here: by lochs, by streams, through valleys and up hills.
    The front door of Loch View suddenly opened, breaking into Connie’s thoughts.
    ‘Ms Gordon, is it?’ the elderly lady greeted her. ‘I’m Isla Stuart.’ She had a sweet face completely caked in white face powder and her cheeks were two perfect circles of scarlet. ‘I’ve been waiting up for you.’
    ‘Oh, I’m not too late, am I?’
    ‘Och, no! But I do tend to nod off in the evenings if there isn’t someone to take care of. Now, I expect you’ll be ready for a cup of hot chocolate and a wee slice of Dundee cake?’
    ‘Thank you,’ Connie smiled, wondering what Danny would say to that and wondering what on earth Dundee cake was anyway.
    ‘And your driver too?’
    ‘Not for me, thanks all the same,’ he said, struggling with the cases. ‘I’ve to get back and it’s a fair drive.’
    A few minutes later, Connie’s cases were all lined up neatly in her room on the first floor at the front of the B&B.
    Once back downstairs in the hallway, Connie gave her driver a big tip to thank him for all his patience.
    ‘You know,’ he said as she walked to the front door with him, ‘there’s something familiar about you.’
    ‘Really?’ Connie said, still wearing her baseball cap and exaggerating her English accent once again.
    ‘You’re not on the telly, are you?’ he asked.
    Connie laughed nervously. ‘You know, I’m always being asked that. I guess I’ve just got one of those faces,’ she said.
    He continued to stare thoughtfully at her a moment longer. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘best get back to the city. You have a nice time, lass.’
    Connie watched as he left and then closed the door.
    ‘Now then,’ Isla said, ‘how about that hot chocolate and cake?’
    She led Connie through to a room at the back of