by Alexa Aston
Hollywood Heartbreaker
Hollywood Name Game Book 1
Alexa Aston
Copyright © 2020 Alexa Aston
All rights reserved
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 9781234567890
ISBN-10: 1477123456
Edited by: Scott Moreland
Cover design by: Wicked Smart Designs
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
EPILOGUE
About The Author
Hollywood Name Game
Books By This Author
CHAPTER 1
Cassie Carroll rolled over and burrowed her cheek back into her pillow. She sighed. Nothing felt better than waking up on a Saturday morning, knowing she could catch a few more—
“No!”
Her eyes flew open. It wasn’t Saturday. It was Friday. She had to be at work in . . . when did she have to be at work? The clock beside her beside blinked 4:47 in large numbers. The electricity had gone out. Again. She knew she’d paid the last bill, late maybe, but it got paid. At least she thought it was last month’s. And that she’d paid it. Or had it been Jolene’s turn and her roommate had forgotten again?
It didn’t matter. The power had come back on, else the clock wouldn’t be flashing now. It had to be later than 4:47 with the strong light streaming into her bedroom.
She threw back the covers and heard a muffled sound, something between a yawn and a growl. Cassie stood and yanked the comforter away, unearthing TJ. The orange tabby looked at her with disdain and closed his eyes before resting his face atop his front paws.
“You always wake me up for breakfast at six-fifteen, TJ. Always. Except this morning, of all mornings.” She wasn’t going to work this morning. She had a job interview. “Why did you decide to catnap this one time?” she accused the cat.
Grabbing her cell from the battered nightstand, she saw it was 8:15. Normally, she’d set her phone alarm but the battery had been draining fast lately and she didn’t have the extra money to buy a new one, much less invest in a new phone. Which was why she’d depended upon the clock alarm—or TJ—to wake her in time. She needed to move. Fast. Scurrying from the bedroom, she stripped off her man’s XL army green T-shirt. As she reached the apartment’s only bathroom, a man with a scraggly beard walked out, scratching his head with one hand and his crotch with the other. He gaped at her.
“Out of my way!” she commanded, pushing the stranger aside and slamming the door. She started the shower, squeezed artificial tears into each eye to wake up, and grabbed her toothbrush. Cassie muttered under her breath about Jolene bringing another strange guy home as she jumped into the still-cold shower and shouted an expletive when the freezing water hit her in the face.
Squirting shampoo into her hair, she tried to lather it up with her right hand as she brushed her teeth with her left. Pulling back the curtain, she tossed her toothbrush into the sink and rinsed the shampoo from her hair. No time for conditioner today. Or shaving. She ran a hand along her leg and knew she could get by without the two minutes it would take to zip a razor along it. She decided to throw on a pair of textured tights. Not that anyone in Southern California ever wore them, but it was the first week in December and she was one of those redheads that pale didn’t even begin to describe. Cassie refused to have marble-white legs sticking out from her suit skirt. She had good legs, long with terrifically shaped calves from years of running. She would show them off in the best way she knew how, with navy blue tights. If tights were good enough for the Duchess of Cambridge to parade around Merry Olde England in, then Cassie Carroll could wear them to her job interview.
She shut off the water that had never totally warmed up and toweled off quickly. The light was better in her bedroom so she wrapped the towel around her and returned there to do her makeup. Thank goodness she didn’t suffer another close encounter with Mr. Scratcher.
She swiped on deodorant and spritzed herself with perfume. No time for sunscreen on her face. She’d have to chance a few freckles popping out. Cassie completed her makeup in under five minutes and wrestled into a white silk blouse and her tried and true, classic navy suit. The one that she hoped would make her look chic and sophisticated and help her land the job she desperately needed.
As she was about to slide her feet into her slightly worn pumps, she remembered she hadn’t slipped on the tights. With the clock ticking, she decided the fashionable tights would have to bite the dust. Cassie threw them into her purse anyway. She might have time to put them on in the car if she caught a really long light.
Her hair, still damp, was easy to slick back. She wound it into a smooth chignon and admired it for two seconds in the mirror. Earrings. She needed something in her ears for that pulled-together look. She found one faux pearl and slid it into place before TJ began yowling for his breakfast.
“All right, all right,” Cassie complained, slipping the other earring into her pocket. She would put it on in the car. She grabbed her purse and hurried down the hall to their tiny kitchenette, smelling coffee the entire way.
“Caffeine. Please.”
Jolene handed her a full mug. Cassie took a few quick sips of her roommate’s heavy-duty Brazilian blend to rev up her insides before grabbing her travel mug and transferring the coffee to it.
“Would you feed TJ?” she asked Jolene. “And who’s the guy I danced around in the hall with this morning? Naked, by the way. Both of us.”
Jolene thought a moment. “Howard Something? He laughed the loudest at my jokes last night. I had to bring him home.”
“When are you going to stop dragging strangers back to our apartment, Jolene? One of them could turn out to be a serial killer. We could be murdered in our beds. Or robbed, at the very least.”
Her roommate snorted. “We’d have to have something worth stealing.” She eyed Cassie. “You look good, Cass. What’s up?”
Cassie rooted inside her purse, looking for a tube of lipstick from Nordstrom’s that she’d been saving for a special occasion. The color would make her mouth pop and give her the final bit of polish she needed.
“Manny thinks I’ve got a dental appointment this morning but I’m going to interview for a job at Merriman Smith.”
“Hmm. Sounds like a law firm.”
“They’re a new entertainment agency. Several agents from top agencies defected and started it about two months ago. Tell
me you’ve heard of them. It was all over the trades.”
“If you land a job with them, you can sign me as a client,” Jolene suggested. “I’m sure they rep comics. I’ve got to get another agent, Cass. Manny isn’t doing it for me anymore. Not that he ever did.”
“It’s an interview to be an assistant, Jolene, not an agent.”
“You were a casting agent before.”
“That went nowhere. Like every job I’ve worked since I hit California as a starry-eyed, eighteen-year-old. Even being Manny’s administrative assistant has done nothing for my career. He pays me squat, he has no good clients left—present company excluded—and I know he’s snorting again. Caught him at it twice this week alone.”
Jolene took a sip from the mug she’d poured herself. “Shit. I knew he was high when we talked yesterday.” She removed a can of cat food from the refrigerator and took off the plastic lid, dumping the fish stew onto a plate.
As Jolene started to set it on the floor, Cassie warned her. “TJ likes it microwaved. He refuses to eat cold from the fridge food unless it’s interesting people leftovers, like orange chicken or pepperoni pizza.”
“Spoiled beast.”
Cassie finally retrieved the lipstick and glanced at the microwave clock. “Yes, he is. Gotta run. Later.”
She raced to the parking lot of their apartment complex. Her aging Honda Civic sat innocently, waiting to give her trouble. Cassie begged it to start as she got in, pushing aside fast food wrappers and empty water bottles.
“Today would be a good day to start on the first try,” she announced to the fickle car. “Today is the beginning of the rest of my life. Today, I finally arrive in Hollywood.”
After three false starts, the Civic kicked in. Cassie backed out, praying the car would get her to her appointment without dying. She pulled out into the heavy traffic, something she’d never gotten used to in her nine years in LA. As she drove like a maniac, she thought about how everyone back in Waco, Texas thought she was living the good life with a Hollywood address. They had no idea how dilapidated most of Hollywood really was. Sure, urban renewal had kicked in a few years ago and parts of the area were spruced up so the tourists would have something to take pictures of, but for the most part, Hollywood was a sad, tired section in the City of Angels.
She glanced at her gas gauge as she tossed a piece of sugarless gum into her mouth to kill the coffee aftertaste. At least she had three-quarters of a tank. Plenty to get her to Merriman Smith. She began humming to herself. The radio gave up the ghost months ago and the CD player hadn’t worked in years. Maybe if she landed this new job, she could afford a decent car for the first time in her life. She shook the thought from her brain. If the Civic got wind of that kind of thinking, it would break down just to spite her.
Forty minutes later, she closed in on her destination. Spitting the gum into its wrapper, she tossed it over her shoulder onto the floorboard and applied the expensive lipstick while sitting at a light. It was going to be her day. She knew it. Her gut told her so.
Cassie spotted a dog. It ran in front of her, a leash dragging behind it. In slow motion, she heard a high-pitched voice wail for the mutt to come back. She whipped the wheel, trying to avoid hitting the dog.
And hit the man instead.
CHAPTER 2
Rhett Corrigan punched the elevator button for the ninth floor. Merriman Smith occupied three levels and his longtime agent, who’d help found the new agency, was on the top floor.
It had not been Rhett’s day. Leo, his personal trainer, had called right at five and canceled their session because he was driving his wife to the hospital in what looked like a case of appendicitis.
Rhett worked out alone for half an hour on free weights and then hit the treadmill for another thirty minutes. His mind must have wandered and he’d somehow lost his footing, falling and smacking his forehead hard against the treadmill’s ramp. The knot already rivaled any knocks he’d taken during his USC football days.
Then Suellen called when he got out of the shower. He loved his older sister dearly and would walk through fire for her but she’d announced she was marrying the idiot she’d been dating for all of two months. Rhett knew better than to plead with her or order her not to do it. In a family of notorious hardheads, Suellen’s head could cut diamonds.
Finally, he sat down for breakfast, only to taste the milk in his cereal had gone bad. He grabbed the carton and saw it had expired three days earlier. No one was there to yell at because Consuelo, his housekeeper, had left two weeks ago to return to Mexico for the third time in two years. Rhett poured the bowl’s contents down the disposal, angry that he’d been left high and dry again but knowing she and her family would return and slip back into their former jobs without a word from him.
To top it off, on the way to see Irv Stromberg, he’d run out of gas. Rhett hadn’t done that since the first time he’d taken his mom’s car out with a brand-new driver’s license fresh in his back pocket. Rhett knew Nadine Corrigan had left the tank on empty as a test. Humiliated, he’d called home and then waited for his oldest sister, Carreen, to bring him the gas can from their garage. He’d been forty minutes late for his first date with a girl he’d had a crush on since third grade. Her dad chewed him out royally for being a rude jerk. It wasn’t as if Rhett had a cell phone and could text why he’d be late. Money was tight in the Corrigan house. A cell phone was a luxury—not a necessity—in his mom’s eyes.
He’d finally arrived at the new entertainment agency, late, but in one piece. He ran a hand through his dark hair and then peered at his image in the elevator’s mirror, frowning at the knot above his eye. At least he’d already attended his latest movie’s premiere, which wouldn’t open until Christmas Day. If it had been a week from now, the bump would be the size of Mount Olympus and green fading into that ugly yellow color. Rhett knew even Tanya, his skilled makeup artist, couldn’t have disguised it.
As it was, he’d have to lie low so the paparazzi wouldn’t snap him in all his hideous glory. Far be it that Rhett Corrigan appear in public and not make women salivate as they dropped to their knees in worship of Hollywood’s reigning action star.
The chime brought Rhett back to reality as the door opened. Greeting him was a reception area, chrome and smoked glass, with plush gray carpeting and modern chairs and lamps. The art on the walls cost as much as his last picture had made.
Rhett walked up to a honey-blonde seated at the receptionist’s desk, who tried to maintain her cool with a breathy, “May I help you?” as her eyes undressed him.
“Rhett Corrigan to see Irving Stromberg. I’m running a bit late,” he apologized and saw her eyes widen at the comment. Big stars never said they were sorry. About anything.
“One moment, Mr. Corrigan.” She dialed an extension. “Mr. Corrigan’s here, Mr. Stromberg.”
The receptionist paused and Rhett could imagine Irv’s profanity-laced reply. His agent hated when anyone was late. The woman frowned slightly.
“Yes, sir. Of course.” She smiled brightly at Rhett. “Mr. Stromberg will see you now. It’s the third door on the left. Go right in.”
She moistened her lips and gave him her best don’t you want my cell number look. Rhett was immune to it after eight years in Tinseltown.
“Thanks.” He strolled down the hall, ignoring the tittering file clerks sizing him up. He waved at Julie, Irv’s assistant who had followed her boss to the new agency, and walked in without knocking.
Irv jawed away, his ever-present Bluetooth in place. Rhett suspected the agent would be buried wearing it.
“No, tell him we won’t go for less than eight points. Ten would be better. Also, production in Italy’s no good. He wants Greece. Yes, it is. Because I said so. Tell him. Call me back before the end of the day.”
Irv yanked off the headset and tossed it on the desk, stretching his arms wide in a greeting.
“Rhett, my boy. How are you?”
Rhett allowed the old man to wrap him in a t
ight bear hug. Irv had seven daughters and Rhett was the closest he came to having a son.
“Pretty good, Irv. Except for this,” and he pointed to the swelling above his eye.
“Bar fight?” his agent teased.
“Yeah, right. The Internet would be screaming with stories by now if that were the case.”
“Without an assistant and your good-for-nothing publicist, I hear nothing. When are you going to hire someone, Rhett? It’s getting ridiculous.”
He shrugged. Carreen handled his schedule, making appointments for him, but she was in treatment for Stage 3 breast cancer. He didn’t want to replace her but things were starting to get tough since she hadn’t worked in over two months.
“I might get someone temporarily. At least while Carreen’s still down.” He smiled at Irv. “It’s not as if I don’t get any publicity. I’m in the media all the time, whether I like it or not. Even though I pay Becky Bloss to keep me out of the news.”
Irv clucked like an old Jewish grandmother. “You need someone all the same. I know it’s hard to make that kind of decision with Carreen indisposed but we need somebody on board, Rhett. With your movie coming out soon and no new ones on the horizon, we need to keep your name in the trades, in People, even on TMZ. Remember, there’s no such thing as bad publicity and you need lots of it. We need this baby to stay hot until mid-February at least. March would be better.”
Rhett took a seat in the chair in front of the desk. “What’s next, Irv? I finished Fireball this summer and haven’t done anything all fall. I’m getting restless.”
Irv shook his head. “Nothing’s come through, Rhett. At least nothing you’d want to read. It’s all trash these days. Besides, we’ve got your image to protect.”
He laughed. “Come on, Irv. What image? I do action movies. I blow things up, chase bad guys, and shoot drug dealers. You can’t tell me not one decent action adventure’s on the horizon.”
