Read Online Only for You by Beth Kery - Free Book Online

protection, something she’s really starting to resent now that she started shooting a film. She’s not really a candidate for the U.S. Marshall’s Witness Security Program. There isn’t any kind of tangible threat to her life. Even if she were a candidate, she’d never agree to leaving her career and starting over again in Boise, Idaho, or Amarillo, Texas.”
    “And give up all her fame and fortune?” Seth asked with grim amusement. “Not likely.”
    “Exactly. And Sterling McClarin is no godfather of organized crime or a gangbanger. More like a spider. He’s not going to whack a witness, especially when it’s someone as high profile as Gia Harris, and the world has both of them under a microscope right now. He knows as well as anyone how bad that’d make him look. Sterling McClarin and the New Temple have a lot of tentacles in the show business community, though. A disturbing amount. The DA—and the FBI on a more-removed level—is more concerned about one of McClarin’s minions ‘influencing’ our witness in some way to change her testimony than actually eliminating her altogether.”
    “Either that, or engineer some scenario to make Gia look bad in the public eye,” Seth said.
    “You’ve got it. You probably know that circumstances being what they are, there were huge challenges for jury selection. Judge Halloran has already selected a jury and alternates, although the trial probably won’t begin for three to five weeks. The jury has repeatedly been instructed by Halloran about avoiding media and any queries about the case, but with a furor this loud, we’re worried a juror would have to be a hermit not to be influenced.”
    “It seems to me McClarin and his followers were hard at work trying to defame Gia
before
jury selection,” Seth said with a sharp look, referring to a recent rumor that had been circulated in the tabloids about Gia having a drug problem. It’d died out quickly enough.
    “You caught that, huh?”
    Seth nodded. “There’s no truth to the rumors, right?” he asked. He somehow doubted that fresh, beautiful girl could ever succumb to drug addiction, but who knew? Hollywood was a cruel, ruthless place to exist. Many couldn’t survive it.
    “No. We’ve been fortunate in that. Harris has a squeaky-clean record. Even the smallest smudge on it might have been fuel for the defense team.”
    Seth took a sip of water, considering. “McClarin
is
a spider. A big, nasty, dangerous one,” Seth stated unequivocally. He noticed Charles’s upraised brows at his venom. “One of McClarin’s ‘knights’ tried to recruit Joy’s husband.”
    “Everett Hughes?” Charles asked, looking startled by the news. Seth nodded, distractedly studying his water glass.
    Joy was his niece, but she was more like his younger sister. They were much closer in age than most uncles and nieces. For years, they’d been the only family each other had. Joy had married superstar Everett Hughes almost a year ago. Seth had never made it a secret that he thought it wise to avoid actors in the romantic arena, especially ones of Everett Hughes’s caliber. He hadn’t hesitated to warn Joy of the potential pitfalls. Movie stars were a different breed from everyday humanity, in his considerable experience. Fortunately, Everett was one in a million—a megastar with his feet planted firmly on the ground and a family-and-friends structure that had insulated him from the pitfalls of narcissism and sycophantic followers. It had been an unlikely match, and one that Seth hadn’t approved of initially. He couldn’t complain at the end result though. Joy was euphorically happy with Everett, and if Joy was happy, Seth was. Still, he’d been personally offended at even the slightest chance of the shadow of the New Temple darkening Joy’s world.
    Not that it had ever been a remote possibility, Everett had reminded him repeatedly with exacerbated, pointed irony.
    Still, neither Joy nor Everett suspected the subtly