Screen Idol

by Elle Rush

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  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

  SCREEN IDOL

  A Hollywood to Olympus Romance

  By

  Elle Rush

  Copyright © 2014

  Copyright by Deidre Gould

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Published by Deidre Gould.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations used in articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-0-9939904-8-9

  Cover by Lyn Taylor

  Blurb

  Chris Peck, worshipped by millions as Zeus on Olympus, desperately wants to prove to the producers of a soon-to-be-cast romantic comedy that he doesn’t need fight scenes or special effects to make the jump to the big screen. Acting as the slave-for-a-day in the hit show’s fan appreciation contest would cement his everyman credibility, but the winner wants nothing to do with him.

  Sydney Richardson should have locked the door when a Greek god appeared on her front step at sunrise on Valentine’s Day. After months of work, she needs every second to work on the fundraiser she’s running for burn victims like herself and she can't afford to waste time with a TV hunk, no matter how good he looks in a toga.

  Chris is captivated by Sydney and he promises to put her fundraising efforts over the top if she spends the day with him. However, just when he convinces Sydney they could have a real chance together, the movie’s producers offer him an audition that would mean breaking his promises and leaving Sydney in the lurch.

  The king of the gods has until sunset to prove to his new off-screen love interest that Hollywood magic and true-life romance can co-exist.

  Dedication

  To Barb, who was the first to read Chris and Sydney’s story, and then helped make it better.

  Chapter 1

  There shouldn’t be a six in the morning on a Saturday unless you stayed up for it after an exhausting, exhilarating Friday night. It was a rule somewhere. If a person were demented enough to get up before daybreak on a weekend, there were only three acceptable reasons: a newborn, a paycheck, or a fire alarm. Answering the door didn’t make the list. Nobody should ever knock on someone else’s door at such a perverse hour. It was uncivilized, but since the moron in question seemed to be unaware of this polite societal convention, it was up to Sydney Richardson to educate him. Possibly with a brick to the cranium.

  She had planned this Saturday down to the minute, and she needed every second of it. Her precise schedule was supposed to start with her alarm going off at six fifty-two, allowing her a single eight-minute snooze cycle before she rolled out of bed at seven on the dot to hit the shower. This was the first weekend in a month that she hadn’t pulled an extra shift or two, and neither Saturday’s nor Sunday’s to-do list had “answer the door before sunrise” on it.

  This was the weekend. Months of blood and sweat and tears and migraines had gone into today’s events. She’d started her charity with the hope of raising enough money to help one or two people afford the same medical procedures that got her out of the hospital and back to her life. The snowball effect had caught her unaware. The more she raised, the more people got involved and the bigger things got, until the small fundraiser had become a multi-part, day-long fundraiser with dozens of volunteers who all looked up to her. She wasn’t going to let anyone down today—not her donors, not her volunteers, and absolutely not the people she was supposed to be helping.

  But it wasn’t supposed to start yet.

  Sure, now she was awake a whole hour early, but she’d stayed up half an hour later than she intended to the night before and watched an old M*A*S*H re-run after she’d come home from a girlfriend’s birthday party at Yellow Fin Sushi. Sydney had told her body it could sleep until seven, and now it got back at her for lying by walking her into the open closet door. Dammit. After grabbing her robe and feeling her way out of the bedroom, she ricocheted off the wall between the framed Beverly Hills Cop and Raiders of the Lost Ark posters on the way down the hall. At this rate she might not make it to the door.

  Her cupcake nightshirt didn’t matter, she thought as she limped through the house. Her red hair pulled into a Pebbles Flintstone-style ponytail on the top of her head didn’t matter. The plastic framed glasses she had to jam on to find her way down the main hall since she wasn’t stopping to put in her contacts didn’t matter. What mattered was making the pounding on her door go away so she only had to deal with the Japanese drumming group inside her skull. Sake was evil.

  She peeked through the peephole and spied a man in a black tuxedo. A suit she would have ignored, but the shock of a tuxedo woke her up a little. She squinted and took a second look: tall, dark hair, light eyes. He was very handsome in a movie star kind of way. At least, Sydney assumed he was handsome. The fish-eyed view and lack of caffeine might have been coloring her perception. “Who are you?”

  “Your slave for the day.”

  It was much too early for this. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m Chris Peck.”

  “You look like him. Kinda. Why are you at my house?”

  “I really am Chris Peck. I play Zeus on Olympus. You entered the show’s sweepstakes on the network’s website and won first prize of a Greek slave for the day, namely yours truly. You got a confirmation call to expect your slave from sunrise to sunset today.”

  Her synapses started to fire. Slowly. Olympus was a hit primetime cable drama about a group of Greek gods on Mount Olympus during the decline of Greece’s golden age. It was part Spartacus, part Game of Thrones, and part Hercules. She had submitted a ton of entries to the sweepstakes. They were offering a $1000 DVD library of historically-based television shows and documentaries as second prize. The first place prize never even registered because she wasn’t a diehard fan of the show.

  She watched it semi-regularly. She liked a lot of the actors but despised one in particular, so it came out a wash. To be honest, the only ones she made sure not to miss were the episodes where her favorite drama actor was guest starring as Dionysus. Seeing the defunct FBI show’s once team leader playing the god of sex, drugs, and rock and roll in a toga was a beautiful thing to behold. Sydney enjoyed splashing around in the shallow end of the pool on occasion, and she wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

  She hadn’t paid much attention to the show’s lead actor. In hindsight, that might have been a mistake, because the king of the gods was standing on the other side of her front door, and—from what she could tell—he was heavenly.

  Sydney flipped the deadbolt off and cracked open the door, leaving the security chain on. She rubbed her bleary eyes and repositioned her glasses. It was definitely him. Chris Peck. Zeus. The peeph
ole didn’t do this guy any favors. He was much cuter in person than he looked on television. Taller too. And not in a toga. Whoever had said that a well-tailored suit was to a woman what lingerie was to a man hadn’t been kidding. His tuxedo was giving her some naughty ideas about going back to bed that had nothing to do with an extra hour of shut-eye. It had been a very long while, but she was pretty sure when a clean-cut, brown-haired, hazel-eyed Greek god magically appeared on a woman’s doorstep, sleep was not the first thought that should come to mind. It wasn’t. Unfortunately, tingles or no tingles, she had too much on her to-do list to waste any time on a toga party fantasy, let alone on an actual god at the door. Sydney tilted her head and stared at him. “Wow. You really are Chris Peck.”

  She was rewarded with a blinding smile. “And you are Sydney Richardson. At least I hope you are, because if you aren’t this is really embarrassing.”

  “What do you mean I got a call? Nobody called me,” she insisted. If she’d won a prize, they should have at least contacted her to make sure she’d be home for delivery. This was a hell of a delivery.

  “Yes, they did. My assistant says she did. She left a message confirming the date and time. And she sent flowers.”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  Tuxedo Boy was going to argue with her before she’d had any coffee? “I’m pretty sure I would have remembered somebody telling me I was going to have a slave show up at the butt crack of dawn on a Saturday,” she snapped. There was no way in hell she would have agreed to this Saturday. Next weekend, or the one after that, would have been much more convenient. Today was absolutely not an option.

  The suicidal actor opened his mouth to defend himself again when Sydney waved him off. “Wait a minute.” It was difficult to push through the fog without any caffeine, but there was something there. “Is your assistant’s name Kristin?”

  “Yes.”

  “There was a message on my machine, on Wednesday, I think. Some girl named Kristin said she was cancelling my regular nine o’clock appointment on Saturday. She didn’t leave a number. Since I don’t know a Kristin, and I didn’t have any regular appointments scheduled, I didn’t worry about it. I think the message is still on my voicemail.” Sydney smiled in victory. She had a memory like a steel trap. It was rusted shut on occasion, but it was working fine this morning.

  “Oh, crap.”

  “What?”

  “It sounds like my fight trainer got a dozen roses and a note saying I was looking forward to my day of servitude.”

  She wasn’t pleased to be awake, and this whole waste of time was a pain in the ass, but that was pretty funny. “Maybe she likes roses.”

  “His name is Russ, and he’s former navy. I’m thinking not. So how can I serve you this morning?”

  Sydney stood corrected. This was hilarious. It was always good to begin the day with a laugh. It set the tone for what followed. Now that she was up she had the chance to get a jump start on her list. With some juggling, she could shift her first appointment of the day forward, which would gain her about half an hour. Her schedule had been tight to the point where a couple minutes could have cost a bus connection and thrown off her entire afternoon. This could work in her favor. All she had to do now was send Zeus on his way.

  Sydney stifled a yawn. “You could leave. I’m sorry about the missed message confusion, but today isn’t going to work for me. Maybe you could have your assistant contact me again and we could reschedule. Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  She shut the door in his face. If this was a regular hangover hallucination, she’d have to drink sake more often.

  *

  This was what his life coach would call a learning experience, Chris Peck thought. Not that he needed a life coach, but his agent had hired one to try to curb Chris’ impulsive tendencies when it came to, well, everything. His coach’s most recent attempt was to get Chris to take a “you get what you give” karmic approach to life. So far this morning, Chris was beginning to understand that despite his publicist’s repeated affirmations, there was a girl on the planet who would give him the cold shoulder and treat him like the mere mortal he was, and not the god he pretended to be.

  Perhaps he shouldn’t have expected her to fall at his feet at six in the morning just because he was Chris Peck.

  Although it had always worked in the past. He never had trouble with women. His publicist called him irresistible, and she was right. Chris was known for his looks—his face and his abs were his best features. All the magazines said so. He’d even made the “top ten sexiest men on television” issue this year.

  Maybe Miss Richardson was wearing the wrong glasses.

  No, that wasn’t a karmic thought. Chris had done something to earn this. Having the door shut in his face could be payback to teach him humility for the hubris his life coach kept warning him about. Maybe it was arrogance that led him to bet his fellow gods and goddesses that he ruled at both Olympus and karaoke. Perhaps if he’d kept karma in mind before he took the microphone, he wouldn’t have humiliated himself and been voted unanimously as the worst singer in the cast, and he would have ended up as one of the hosts for the show’s charity golf tournament instead of being the sweepstakes prize. Because this was truly humiliating. He was a leading man begging for some stranger’s attention as if he were back at his first audition.

  That must be it.

  He couldn’t blow the woman off either, not after all the effort and campaigning he and his agent had done for him to even be considered by High Note Productions for their new romantic comedy. The tabloids were already predicting the leading role going to one of two big name actors, despite the fact neither had shown any public interest in the part. Chris wasn’t even under serious consideration as far as the press was concerned. He knew he had the range as an actor to be seen as more than a competent episodic action player. What he needed was a very public showcase for his rom-com talents. He needed the producers to see him sweeping a complete stranger off her feet in real life to prove he could do it on film. Playing “slave” was his shot. But he couldn’t prove anything to anyone if Miss Richardson wouldn’t play along.

  No, he corrected himself. She wasn’t responsible for his problem. She held the solution in her hands, but he had to earn it by finding the karmic way.

  He ran his finger under the collar of the tuxedo shirt. He’d put a tux back on at five in the morning in the past while making a getaway after a one-night stand, but he’d never purposely dressed in one at this hour. He brushed off a couple stray brown hairs from his haircut the night before. He had to be “pretty” for today, his publicist had told him. Pretty. He really hated that word.

  Chris shot a quick look to the photographer/social network intern standing off to the side. The sweepstakes winner hadn’t even noticed the short Hispanic teenager with the shaved head and camera bag on the sidewalk when she answered the door. “Let’s try a second take.”

  The studio trainee, Benny Duarte, shrugged at him and raised his camera. “Works for me. She shut you down so fast I missed it.”

  Punk. Chris knocked again.

  The response was quicker this time. “Yes?” she said through the crack.

  “We can’t reschedule.”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to forfeit the prize. Sorry you wasted the trip.”

  She was closing the door again. “Wait!” What was wrong with this woman? If she’d been paying attention, or had been more awake, she wouldn’t have missed the desperation in his voice. Couldn’t she cut him some slack? It wasn’t his fault his assistant had messed up. He had to convince her to cooperate. “There are a lot of Olympus fans who would die for this opportunity.” Didn’t everyone hope that celebrity rubbed off? This was La-La Land; Chris thought a desire for fame was a mandatory for residents.

  “Great. Call one of them and ask if they are willing to be a last minute replacement.”

  Guess not. “I would but we already put your name in the press releases. Loo
k, the PR department even sent a photographer to document the mortal getting the Greek god as a slave for a day.” Chris pulled the teenager into her line of vision. “Benny Duarte, this is our sweepstakes winner, Miss Sydney Richardson.”

  “Hi,” the intern sputtered.

  “Hi. Still not interested.”

  Then she yawned at him. Again. Sure, she covered her mouth and excused herself but really?

  “You’re going to be in magazines as a woman who bossed around Zeus. Maybe even be on television,” Chris bribed.

  “I don’t have time to be on television. I’m busy.”

  “Sydney—may I call you Sydney? I know the arrangements got messed up, but we can’t cancel the publicity arrangements. It wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Not fair to whom? Life’s not fair. Shit happens,” Sydney countered.

  “Wear a hat,” Chris finished.

  “Exactly.” She looked rather impressed that he knew the expression. Then she opened the door a little wider.

  He’d take that as a good sign. “You said you don’t have time for this today. I’m literally here to offer you a hand. Two of them.” He held out both hands. “Maybe we can help each other out. Seriously, as long as it’s not illegal, I’ll do it if you let Benny take some photos. A couple of jobs and I’ll be out of your hair, I promise.” Technically, he was supposed to hang around until sunset, but a couple of hours should be enough to convince the High Note people. Chris couldn’t believe he was pleading for the chance to do scut work. The things he did for a role. Please, miss, let me take out your trash or wash your car…

  “I have a bus pass. I don’t have time to go buy enough tickets to shuttle you around the city all day.”

  “I have a car.”

  That stopped her in mid-excuse. Her eyes opened wider at his vehicular pronouncement. He started to think he had her. Then a look so mercenary crossed her face that he took a step back. Maybe he didn’t want her after all. She was scarier than Layla Andrews, his television wife, when she was having a bad hair day, and there was little scarier than that pint-sized Filipino actress on a bad hair day. Sydney wasn’t having a great hair day herself by the looks of it, but her tousled bed head look was definitely doing it for him.