Not Famous in Hollywood (Not in Hollywood Book 1) Read online

Not Famous in Hollywood

  Leonie Gant

  Copyright 2015 Leonie Gant

  All Rights Reserved

  License Statement

  Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please return to your favourite ebook retailer to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

  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.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  About The Author

  Upcoming Book

  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 the 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 outshining 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.

  Unfortunately, the reality was that last night I had chocolate cake with ice cream and I didn’t exactly have a sliver of a slice. The word diet has never been one that I have found to be particularly well used in my vocabulary. That meant that although I barely managed to get the top half of my body through the door, I was now well and truly wedged at the hip level.

  I had two options here. I could try to wriggle out again and give up, turn around and head home. I could pretend I’d been talking in my sleep when I answered the phone and had no memory of the conversation. My other alternative was to grab hold of something and wrench myself through the door. I seriously considered the talking in my sleep option for five full minutes but I knew that the woman would just keep calling until I got here. Of course then I heard the growling of a dog coming from outside the door. It seems that when I was walking around the dog that belonged to this door had seen me as too much of a threat. Now I was simply a butt and legs hanging out the door, the dog thought he could take me. I no longer had a choice.

  With a healthy dose of panic, I wriggled around until my hips were lined up with the widest part of the opening. I placed my hands on the floor as if I was doing a forty-five degree push up, used my feet to push and my hands to pull myself through the door. As I felt my hips scraping against the hard edges of the plastic I heard a crashing noise as I hit the floor with the doggie door frame still wedged around my hips, splintered wood around what was now an uneven hole in the door. With a yelp the dog took off, obviously deciding that I had reached threat level again.

  Grabbing hold of the brittle piece of plastic around my hips, I wiggled and bent until it hit the floor. Looking at the now mangled and broken remains of the doggie door, I knew that there was no way that it was ever going back in that door. Not much I could do about it now, and seriously, somebody should have answered the door to me, so it really wasn’t my fault.

  “Hello, Miss Channing,” I called. “It’s me, Trudie.”

  No answer. Not that I was hugely surprised. I headed upstairs towards the bedrooms. I’d been here before. Often. I knew where to go. Knocking on the bedroom door I prayed they weren’t having sex. In fact as the door opened I could see that Eleanor was the only one sitting on the bed. Her shoulder length blonde hair was wet and strands were clinging to her face. Those blue eyes that more than one overenthusiastic critic had claimed you could drown in, were swimming with tears.

  My gut clenched as I raced over to her. This was not what I was expecting to see.

  “Are you okay?” I looked her over.

  Regardless of how she treated me, if Ryan Hendricks had hurt her I was going to destroy him.

  “I think I killed him,” I heard her whisper.

  “Where is Ryan?” I asked, hoping that I had misheard.

  Eleanor looked over my shoulder at the bathroom where I could hear the shower was running.

  Making my way towards the bathroom, I had a very bad feeling. Pushing open the door, I saw Ryan Hendricks’s body slumped in the shower. Reaching in, I turned off the water. I couldn’t see any blood or any reason for him to be like that. My first instinct was to check he was dead. He certainly looked dead, but if it was me lying there, I would want someone to make damn sure there wasn’t a spark of life left in me. I knelt beside the former hottest man alive and tentatively placed my fingers against his neck. No pulse there. The chest didn’t seem to be moving but I put my ear against it to see if I could hear anything at all. Nothing. I strode out of the bathroom.

  “Are you hurt?” I asked Eleanor, looking her over as I pulled my cell out of my pocket. It had miraculously survived the doggie door incident.

  I couldn’t see any sign that she was actually hurt. She turned to me with her eyes glazed. I was hoping it was from shock and not some artificial stimulant. I grabbed her shoulders and shook her lightly. My first choice would have been slapping her, but considering I still had some residual anger at her for getting herself, and by extension me, into this situation, I couldn’t be sure I could moderate that slap.

  “Eleanor Channing,” I said loudly and clearly. “I need you to tell me if you are hurt at all.”

  “No,” she said
softly, in an almost childlike voice, “but Ryan won’t wake up.”

  That didn’t sound like she was functioning on all cylinders. I knew about shock and drugs, I worked in the entertainment industry after all. I quickly dialed 911, informing the operator that I had a man who wasn’t breathing. Once I got off the phone I turned my attention back to Eleanor who still had that glassy look in her eyes.

  “It’ll be alright,” I said soothingly, lying through my teeth.

  Nothing about this situation was going to be alright. Ryan Hendricks hadn’t been a particularly pleasant human being, but for millions of women out there he represented the ultimate man of their dreams. He was going to be missed. Mostly by people who didn’t actually know him, but he had family and friends. He had a fiancée who was going to be devastated. At this stage I looked at my phone and started dialing Monique’s phone number. I quickly explained the situation to her and hung up. I know, I’m not too proud of the fact I was supposed to do that. We all read those stories of these kind of situations and judge the person who contacts a lawyer, a manager or the media in that moment. The fact of the matter was that I was in a volatile situation. This mess could go any number of different ways and dealing with it was way above my pay grade.

  I heard a crash downstairs as the front door was kicked open and rebounded against the wall.

  “We’re up here,” I yelled, as I grabbed Eleanor’s shoulders and gently tried to pull her away from the bed.

  Feet pounded up the stairs and two uniformed police officers came through the bedroom door, guns first. In that moment terror gripped me. I grew up in Australia, and though I’d been living in Los Angeles for six months, the fact that guns were so prevalent still terrified me. I didn’t know where to look when a gun was pointed at me. I lacked the necessary etiquette for these situations.

  “Freeze, don’t move,” the cops yelled out.

  I was only too happy to comply. Finally someone was telling me what to do. I froze, but at that moment the Eleanor Channing that I knew and couldn’t stand came screaming to the fore.

  “How dare you!” she screeched. “Do you know who I am?” she said, walking unsteadily towards the police.

  I was thinking that if she got too close to them she would be on the morning news as the late, not so great, actress Eleanor Channing. I would have lost my first client in one of the worst ways possible. Now that I think about it, there were worse ways for her to go out, but why did she have to do it on my watch.

  “Ma’am, step back now or we will have to shoot,” one of the police shouted.

  She didn’t. I didn’t really expect her to. When you’ve been in the rarefied air where everyone is willing to give you anything you want, you start to think that the world really does revolve around you. The idea of being denied doesn’t even come into your head. I expected Eleanor to keep haranguing the two poor cops about who she was. What I didn’t expect was for one of them to grab his stun gun and shoot America’s sweetheart. The look of surprise on her face as those two prongs hit her was priceless. I hoped they didn’t leave a mark on her skin because then she would be really upset. She went down with a thud. My jaw dropped and though it was totally inappropriate, I fought the beginnings of a smile. The cop looked at me as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened and I just shrugged my shoulders. Really, she brought it on herself.