Heroes (Hollywood Heartthrobs #1) (21 page)

Please enjoy this sneak
peek at the next Hollywood Heartthrobs story,
Villains
.
Villains
will be available only on Amazon later this year.

Chapter
1

“The
midseason finale?
O! M! G!
” exclaimed Ashleigh. Her blonde ponytail
bounced as she enunciated each letter.

“I
know, right!? When Jared handed over the amulet and Cora kissed Benedict! I
can’t even!” Chastity agreed emphatically, throwing up her hands and knocking a
skein of yarn to the floor.

“Fangirl
much?” Sarah asked with a grin. She was impressed that the girls had shown up
for the library’s monthly teen knitters group. Three was a small turnout, but
in the frigid January weather she had wondered if any of the girls would make
it. Sarah had taken over the ladies’ knitting group when she started at the
library almost three years ago, but the teen knitters’ group was new in the
past few months. It had been a surprising, though modest, success. At
twenty-seven, Sarah was the youngest in one group by about twenty-five years,
and the oldest in the other by ten. But, both groups brought in a steady stream
of visitors to the Fort Henry Public Library, and Sarah could think of a lot
worse ways to spend an hour than to sit around knitting and be paid for it. She
smiled indulgently at the girls’ conversation.

“I
can’t believe they’re not airing any new
Once Bitten
until April. That’s
like, cruel and unusual,” Ashlyn interjected.

“Well,
they’re giving the timeslot to the spin-off until then,” Ashleigh said
knowledgably. “It starts next week. Marco the Italian werewolf on the mean
streets of New York City.”

“Yeah,
but who’s going to watch a spin-off about werewolves? I mean, werewolves,
really? Marco’s super hot and all, but vampires are where it’s at,” Chastity
replied. “Oh man, look! I got so upset I dropped a stitch! I blame Benedict!”
She threw up her hands theatrically.

“Don’t
you blame my man! He’s too beautiful to be at fault!” Ashlyn interjected.

Sarah
leaned over to assess the damage. “Don’t worry, this is totally fixable. Either
we can take out those six rows,” she began. Chastity made a face. “Or, we can
just tie down that loop to keep it in place, add a stitch to the row you’re
working on now, and no one will be the wiser.”

“Um,
definitely add a stitch now,” Chastity said.

“Okay,
here, let me show you how to stop that loop from coming undone,” Sarah said,
taking up Chastity’s half-finished scarf. Ashleigh and Ashlyn continued to
twitter on like cheerful birds. Sarah smiled indulgently. Not many people got
to show up every day to a job they love, and it was a blessing she didn’t take
for granted.

Sarah
was scheduled to close the library that night, along with Amy, her colleague
and good friend. The last hour had been quiet as the temperature plummeted, and
neither of them were looking forward to the walk to their cars.

“You
would have enjoyed the knitting group tonight, the girls were going on and on
about the
Once Bitten
finale,” Sarah said, stacking a few final books on
the recently returned shelf, cheekily labeled
This Just In!  
 

Amy
gave a large, fake gasp. “
Once Bitten
gossip? And I missed it?!”

“So
sad,” Sarah said. “I tried to steer the topic to something worth discussing,
like the
Doctor Who
Christmas episode, but they were all about the
vampires. Kids today, what can you do?”

Amy
rolled her eyes. “Okay then, grandma.”

“Forgive
me for having a classical scifi/fantasy education.”

“I’m
telling you, don’t knock it ‘til you try it. I could watch those two Adonises
duke it out for all eternity. Oh, speaking of watching, can you do the
preschool story time on Monday morning? I need someone to cover so I can go to
the City Hall meeting. Jeff asked if I could come with him.”  

“Sure
thing,” Sarah said with a smile. “Just make sure they approve the new outreach
project.”

“Now,
what kind of wife would I be if I didn’t shamelessly use my husband’s position
on the city council to secure special favors?” She grinned at Sarah. “What else
is marriage good for?”

“Beats
me,” Sarah said, but Amy didn’t miss the slight flicker in her eyes. She patted
Sarah affectionately on her shoulder.

“Don’t
worry. I’m sure the Tardis is on its way any minute for you darling.”

“Oh
don’t you start, you sound like my mother!”

Amy
put her hands up defensively. “Sorry, sorry. But you know what I mean. New
year, fresh start.” Sarah gave her a look, but Amy could see right through it.
“I’m just saying, at some point you have to stop punishing yourself. You didn’t
do anything wrong, you’re not the bad guy, and you are not responsible for
fixing everything.”

Sarah
smiled at Amy’s genuine expression of care. “Thanks Amy. But, really, I’m fine.
I’ve got this place, I’ve got you, I’ve even got George. You don’t need to
worry about me.”

Amy
grinned. “I never worry about you Sarah. I know you too well. You can take care
of yourself. When you stop trying to take care of everyone else around you for
five seconds.”

Both
women darted out into the cold.

***

Shiloh
looked out the car window at what he now chose to think of as the frozen
hellscape of rural Wisconsin. He wasn’t sure what was worse: the fact that he
was almost certainly about to die, or that he was about to die in the middle of
nowhere farmville. The indignity of it.

He
had left Chicago a little more than four hours ago in his rented luxury sedan,
trusting the GPS to get him to Green Bay, Wisconsin. That had proven to be a
rather bad plan. Should have taken a left at Albuquerque, he thought bitterly.
How the hell had he let his agent talk him into this? Here he was, about to
film
on location
,
in Wisconsin, in January.
Sure, it was a movie
about Wisconsin settlers in the eighteen hundreds, but did it have to be so
damn, well,
real
? Did all of Hollywood run out of fake snow on
soundstages? But of course, the original director for the project had backed
out, now he was stuck with some over-enthusiastic newbie fresh out of film
school bound and determined to film in what he had described as “realistic winter
conditions.”

If
I make it back to L.A. alive I am so going to kill my agent, Shiloh thought. If
not for her, he might have backed out of the role after the change in
directors, but Chloe wouldn’t have it. He could still hear her clipped voice
telling him what an opportunity this would be to “repair his image.” A
wholesome kid’s movie about settling the Upper Midwest would be the perfect
opportunity to bury his recent “incident” under a wave of family-friendly
press. Granted, spin control and image manipulation were part of what he paid
Chloe for, but this was taking it too far. He almost wondered if Chloe hadn’t
talked him into keeping this role as a way of punishing him, or at least
tucking him away somewhere he couldn’t get into trouble. He had certainly
pissed her off this time, that was for sure. She had spent weeks promoting his
and Catherine’s very public (and very fictional) relationship to ensure maximum
exposure. It was great for the show, especially now with the long mid-season
break to help promote the spin-off. Of course, it had been understood all along
that they were together just for show. He knew it, Catherine knew it, so who
the hell cared what they each did when the cameras weren’t rolling? Answer:
everyone, apparently. Shiloh banged one runway model and suddenly everyone was
up in arms.

He
rubbed his gloved hands together for warmth. To be fair though, he thought
diplomatically, he did understand he had really screwed the PR pooch on this
one. The model, Inarina Romanov (not her real name of course, but who cared
what her real name was?) was smarter than she looked. She had pictures of them
together, a lot of pictures. Most of them she didn’t even take herself. She had
to have had a photographer ready from the moment Shiloh hit on her. Even for
him, she had been an easy conquest. A couple of drinks in the nightclub, a
little dancing, and up to her hotel room. Easy. Too easy, actually. In
retrospect, she probably would have settled for anybody famous that night;
someone famous and supposedly taken was total gravy. Pictures had made the
rounds of the tabloids and gossip sites, painting Shiloh as a cheating
womanizer. That part hadn’t been so bad, in fact it fit sort of nicely with the
bad boy image he’d cultivated playing a villain for so long. Where it went
south was the portrayal of Catherine as the cheated-on victim. She’d attracted
quite a following among the fans of their show, making many of them now-former
fans of his.

In
any case, Chloe had been adamant that he take this part, play the good boy for
a bit. Resistance was futile. So here he was, freezing his ass off in Wisconsin
and he hadn’t even arrived on set yet. And now he probably never would, he
thought.

The
trip had started fine, north from Chicago up through Milwaukee. It was cold
out, sure, and there were banks of plowed snow lining the roads, but the skies
and streets had both been clear. Somewhere a little north of Milwaukee the GPS
had directed him off the interstate onto a two-lane country road for some
unfathomable reason. The snow had started shortly thereafter. It was no
blizzard, just enough to make the road slick and visibility poor, but Shiloh
hadn’t seen a snowplow yet. Even an inch or two on an unplowed roadway made it
impossible to see the painted lines marking off the lanes of traffic. He hadn’t
realized the road curved until his right front tire was off the asphalt. By
then it was too late, and the car skidded off into a snowbank.

Luckily,
he hadn’t been going fast, and both he and the car seemed undamaged. On the
other hand, he might as well have totaled it for all the good it did him now.
Hopelessly mired in the deep, powdery snow, there was no way Shiloh could
possibly push the car back onto the road. He couldn’t even call for help,
having worn down the batteries on his iPhone and then forgotten his car charger
today. A late night game of Candy Crush and forgetting to plug his phone in
before he fell asleep might now cost him his life. Awesome.

Shiloh
sat in the car, heater blasting, and wondered how long it would last. It was
only 6pm, but it might as well have been midnight for the darkness outside. The
temperature outside read negative 3 degrees, and he had no idea what that meant
in terms of wind chill factor. It means gonna-freeze-your-ass-to-death-really-damn-quickly,
he thought, trying not to panic. The most recent civilization he’d seen was a
gas station some miles back, but he doubted he could make it there on foot in
this weather. With no phone and no ability to keep moving, his only hope was
that someone would pass by and stop to help. So yeah, he was almost certainly
going to die here, he thought cynically.

***

Sarah
made the familiar drive back from Lakeview to Fort Henry while Mary Chapin
Carpenter sung “Passionate Kisses” over the radio. She didn’t usually mind the
drive, but with the swirling snow a drive that should have taken forty minutes
was already inching past the hour mark, and she still had a ways to go. It was
only 8pm, but with the pitch-black sky it felt much later. Slow and steady, she
thought, reaching for the radio without taking her eyes off the road. She’d had
enough of the oldies hour. Josh Turner’s deep, sexy voice crooned about a lucky
lady on the other country station.

With
visibility so low, Sarah was nearly on top of the other car before she saw it.
A white Lexus was rammed into a snowbank. Lights were on inside; someone was
trapped in that car. She had to stop. Weather like this even sheltered in a car
a person might not last until morning. With a quick prayer that she wouldn’t
live to regret it, she pulled over as close to the Lexus as she could.

Shiloh’s
heart leapt when he saw headlights. Please stop please stop please stop he
thought fervently. That’s what people did out in the country, right? He’d
driven past dozens of accidents in L.A. and never stopped, but that was the
city. Things were different out here, right? All brotherly buddy-buddy
love-thy-neighbor? A silver hatchback sedan pulled close to his. All he could
see of the driver was a hat-covered head and a thick red scarf. Shiloh decided
to go for broke and jumped up out of the Lexus.

The
freezing wind hit him like a hammer, and he was instantly certain he’d never
been this cold. Every step felt like an effort against the snow and the
 wind. Snowflakes collected in his hair. His overcoat felt like it might
as well have been made of paper, and he could already feel melting snow oozing
through his shoes into his socks. As he approached the car, the driver’s door
opened, and the hat-wearing driver, now with red scarf wrapped all the way over
his face, popped up next to the car. Shiloh was expecting some gruff, gravelly
mountain man voice, not the high, sweet sound he heard. It hadn’t even occurred
to him it could be a woman under all that bulk. The woman shouted just two
words, clearly not eager to spend more time than absolutely necessary on the
conversation.