Harper nodded. “Yes. I was in Homicide, though, not Assault.” She cleared her throat. “But back to you.”

Dani sighed. “Back to me.” No amount of small talk would get her out of it, she supposed. She just wasn’t sure how she was going to tell Harper Jeremiah, a perfect stranger, her secret.

“The note? The red wig?” Harper prompted.

Dani took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “This is very hard to…to say.”

“If you’re worried about the tabloids or gossip or something like that…you can trust me.”

Dani nodded. “Yes, I think I can.” She took another swallow from her glass—for courage, perhaps. “I was out. One night. I was, well, I just wanted to be a normal person. At a bar.”

“So you wore a red wig?”

“Yes. Not bright red, not like the doll’s wig, no.” She met Harper’s curious gaze. “I didn’t want to be recognized because I was at a…a gay bar.”

“Okay. So…doing research for a part or something?”

Dani swallowed. “No.”

Harper frowned slightly. “So…like a dance club? Going for the music?”

Dani shook her head. “No.”

Harper raised an eyebrow. “So…like…”

“Like I’m gay.”

Harper nearly dropped her glass. “What?”

“I know, I don’t look like a…a lesbian. Whatever we’re supposed to look like,” she murmured.

“No. I look like a lesbian. You look like…well, like a beautiful Hollywood actress.”

Did Harper look like a lesbian? Yes, Dani had assumed Harper was gay. Not that the photo she’d had screamed gay, but there was something that drew her. Her hair was a little longer now than it’d been in the photo. She was taller than she’d imagined—tall and lean. Early thirties, perhaps.

Harper leaned closer now. “Seriously? You’re gay?”

“Seriously.”

“And…nobody knows?”

Dani shook her head. “Well, someone knows, yes,” she said with a half-smile. “But no one in the business, no. Not even my assistant.”

“How old are you?”

“Why? Is that relevant?”

“Mid-twenties?”

“Twenty-eight, nearly twenty-nine.”

“So who knows? People from college? Your family?”

“God, no. My family…they’re conservative. Church-going. Older. I could never tell them.”

Harper scratched her forehead, her eyebrows drawn together in a frown. “Okay…so you’re a big star. News like this would be what? A bombshell?”

“Yes. Quite the bombshell.”

“So how is it that no one has spilled the beans?”

Dani wrapped both hands around her glass. “In college, I had a…a relationship. Discreet relationship,” she added.

“Discreet? Meaning both of you were in the closet?”

“Yes.”

Harper stood up, pacing slowly around the table. “Okay. None of this is really any of my business. But the stalker?” She stopped pacing and stared at her. “What do you think?”

“I think it makes more sense now,” she said. “He’s mad. I’ve disappointed him.”