Not Famous in Hollywood (Not in Hollywood Book 1)
Read Not Famous in Hollywood (Not in Hollywood Book 1) Online
Authors: Leonie Gant
Tags: #romance, #hollywood, #mystery, #police
Copyright 2015 Leonie Gant
All Rights Reserved
Distributed by Smashwords
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This novel is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are
either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a
fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Chapter
One
In an ideal
world there are mornings when the sun is warm, the coffee is hot
and all the annoying people are tucked up in their own beds. I love
those mornings. I live for those mornings. Unfortunately this is
not one of those mornings. Instead, the air
was cool, I hadn’t had coffee, and thanks to one of those
annoying people, I was stuck in a doggie door. Wedged in tight,
thanks to hips that haven’t seen size zero since before
puberty.
Knowing that
I was stuck, I stopped wriggling and wondered if I started banging
my head against the tiled floor in the kitchen, whether anyone
would notice. I really should have had a coffee before starting my
day. With the cheap plastic frame of the door biting into my hips I
really wished that a crippling case of stage fright had not stood
between me and my childhood dream of certain stardom in Hollywood.
That and a complete lack of talent, oh, and not having the right
figure, or the right look. Other than that I could have been a
star.
I did make it to Hollywood. Unfortunately,
thanks to Fate having a cruel sense of humor, I was not in
Hollywood walking the red carpet for the premiere of my latest
film, with a gorgeous, adoring leading man by my side.
Instead I
came to Hollywood with the job title of personal assistant. Of
course, like so many other things in Hollywood, that title isn’t a
true reflection of what I do.
In reality I am a specialist in risk management, especially
when it comes to people who are so self-absorbed that they don’t
see the upcoming cliff of disaster. I am hired, usually by the
people who make money out of these stars, as an on the scene public
relations disaster prevention specialist. That is a much more
exciting job title, but unfortunately not one that I am allowed to
put on my business card. I am also unable to use babysitter to the
spoiled and indulged, another job title that while accurate, could
be interpreted as slightly unprofessional.
My job is to ensure that the star I’ve been assigned
to
, doesn’t go off the rails
in a way which affects their brand or money earning potential,
because that is what is important in this town. This usually
entails me sticking by their sides from the moment they wake up
until the moment they go to sleep. As a result I generally only do
these jobs short term. Unfortunately my current job had been a
little more involved than I had originally been
expecting.
It had taken weeks of maneuvering to get my first day off
in months. I
’d had great
plans for today. I hadn’t quite worked out what those plans were
yet, but number one was that they didn't comply with someone else's
demands. Eleanor Channing’s demands to be precise.
Everyone knows Eleanor Channing. Everyone loves Eleanor
Channing. Not everyone has to live with Eleanor Channing and keep
her real personality from reaching her adoring fans. That would be
bad. That is where I come in. I work for an agency which deals with
difficult clients. You see there are always employers who have
trouble keeping staff. This is where my boss saw an opportunity.
Monique Petit worked in the Hollywood system for twenty years and
learned that the good money is with those people who
treat their staff like
garbage.
Seeing an opportunity
, Monique set up her own temporary staff recruitment agency
and she prides herself on hiring only those people who are smart,
diplomatic and have the patience of a saint. Or at the very least
can bite their tongue no matter how much they are provoked.
Monique's people do not have screaming meltdowns on YouTube about
their bosses. They don't tell all their friends on Facebook about
the latest STD their client has, regardless of the provocation, and
believe me when I say, the people I deal with specialize in
provocation.
I
am one of Monique’
s personal
assistants. I’d been hired by Eleanor Channing’s management to make
sure that one of the world’s biggest box office draws doesn’t do
something stupid, like show the world what she's really like, you
know self-absorbed, self-important and insecure. Her management
needed help after her own sister, who was her previous assistant,
did that meltdown on YouTube that I mentioned earlier. I’ve seen it
and it was brutal. It was also hilarious. No one but family could
do that much damage to the woman that had actually won awards for
being Hollywood’s most likable star. I downloaded it and I bring it
out every now and then when she really pushes my buttons. Not for
anyone else’s enjoyment. I am one of Monique’s people so that would
be unprofessional. No this is my secret guilty pleasure, kind of
like those special romance books you have hidden in your bedside
drawer. Nobody needs to know about it.
This brings me to how I ended up stuck in a doggie door, in
a very nice house, in an exclusive part of LA, at the crack of dawn
on my only day off in months. Faced with not having me to run her
life for a lousy twenty four hours, Eleanor Channing decided to
have a one night stand with her former boyfriend
, Ryan Hendricks. Ryan Hendricks is a Hollywood
bad boy who has made his name sleeping with just about every famous
and not so famous actress in Hollywood. With his effortless good
looks and everyman persona Ryan Hendricks was seen as pretty much
impossible to resist. Upon waking up, rather than performing the
usual walk of shame, which in her case would be contacting the limo
service, she called me, desperate to extricate her from the
situation.
The main issue
was
that this particular Hollywood bad boy has supposedly reformed, and
is now set on marrying the sweet innocent daughter of one of the
studio heads. I saw the beautiful and touching story in the
tabloids. Really, it was so beautiful, the story of how she tamed
his wild ways. I would have been touched if I hadn’t caught him
that night at a party in a toilet with two women while I was
looking for Eleanor, in an effort to stop her from doing precisely
what she did last night on my first day off. Look at that, I’m
still angry.
Finding my way to t
he
house was easy. Regrettably this was not the first time I’d had to
do this particular duty. My job requires me to perform a balancing
act. My first goal is to head off any disasters before they happen.
Unfortunately, these are adults we are talking about, even if they
don’t act like it, so sometimes the disaster is going to happen no
matter what. If we have gone past the point of prevention, then I
have to minimize the fallout. You would think that considering the
entourages these people have, that there would be one person who
would say stop, and perhaps suggest that maybe some thought might
need to be put into the stupid move that was about to occur. In
reality that doesn’t happen. Entourages are made up of people whose
livelihood depends on them agreeing with everything the star says.
Not one person is willing to ask the star if they are freaking
nuts. That would be my job.
So back to
the reason
for me being in this mess. I couldn’t really blame Eleanor for
running back to Ryan when he crooked his finger. The man is hot, he
could get anyone to sleep with him. Not me of course. Considering
his steady diet of actresses and models there is no way I would
allow this guy to look at my body in anything less than a nun’s
outfit. I don’t think my ego would be able to handle the look of
dismay. It’s not that I am that objectionable to look at, but I am
normal. It is one of my strengths as a Hollywood assistant. In a
world full of beautiful people I am breathtakingly average. Average
height, average brown hair, average gray eyes, average looks. These
actresses can hire me and know that their husbands or boyfriends
will not look at me as anything but a piece of furniture. When I
walk into a room with them, I am as likely to be noticed as the
plant in the corner. I am the ultimate bridesmaid, never out
shining the bride.
I
had been surprised when I arrived at the house to find the front
gates open. I didn
’t even
need to be buzzed in. That was unusual. I knew this wasn’t Ryan’s
main house. That was a mansion in one of the more popular areas of
Los Angeles. This was the house for extracurricular activities. It
was a nice house behind a large fence but it wasn’t anything
special. I think Ryan chose it because it was so
nondescript.
Even though it wasn’t his main house I would normally
expect to be almost indecently frisked by some freakishly huge
bodyguard
, who had a gigantic
view of their own importance in the grand scheme of things. As you
can see I don’t have a great attitude to bodyguards either. I have
been literally walked over by bodyguards when I have been in the
way. Today however, the lack of staff was unusual. Most actors have
an entourage and Ryan Hendricks had a big one. This man was not
able to do anything for himself. That being said. His future father
in law was one of the most important people in Hollywood and last
night Ryan had cheated on his daughter. Again. Maybe Ryan was
smarter than I gave him credit for and realized his stupidity did
not need an audience.
After I’d parked my car in front of the house I dragged
myself up the steps. I knocked on the front door. Actually to be
perfectly honest I pounded on the front door. Listening intently I
couldn’t hear any movement in the house, even when I kicked the
door for good measure. I tried the doorknob in the vain hope the
door had been left open for me but that would have made my day
easy
, and I knew from the
moment my phone started ringing this morning, that easy was not
going to be how this day went down.
Walking around the house I tested doors and windows, all
with no luck. I tried calling Eleanor on her
phone
, but of course she
didn’t answer. I really did not want to know why she wasn’t
answering.
While trying the kitchen door I spotted the doggie door.
Now this was the point when bad decisions started to be made. The
thing is
, I looked at that
doggie door and thought I’d be able to fit, no problem. It’s all a
matter of perception and my perception was that I could fit in that
door if I went through on my side. Sometimes I forget that the
difference between perception and reality can be vast. My
perception is that I have a body that while not as slim as the
clients I have in the acting industry, it is still small enough to
slide through a doggie door for a decent sized dog. I mean it isn’t
like the door was built for one of those little dogs that fit in a
handbag. This doggie door was big enough for a medium to large dog
and I was trying desperately to remember if Ryan Hendricks actually
owned a dog. With all the noise I’d been making I would have
thought if there was a dog on the property it would have already
come out to attack me. My getting through that door. That was my
perception.
