by Morgan
Cover
Title Page
Exposure
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Morgan & Jennifer Locklear
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Omnific Publishing
Los Angeles
Copyright Information
Exposure, Copyright © 2014 by Morgan & Jennifer Locklear
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.
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Omnific Publishing
1901 Avenue of the Stars, 2nd Floor
Los Angeles, California 90067
www.omnificpublishing.com
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First Omnific eBook edition, June 2014
First Omnific trade paperback edition, June 2014
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
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Locklear, Morgan and Locklear, Jennifer.
Exposure / Morgan & Jennifer Locklear – 1st ed
ISBN: 978-1-623421-22-9
1. Hollywood—Romance. 2. Celebrities—Romance. 3. Contemporary Romance—Fiction. 4. Divorce—Fiction. I. Title
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Cover Design by Micha Stone and Amy Brokaw
Interior Book Design by Coreen Montagna
Dedication
For Becca, Elli and Sue.
Chapter One
A SLENDER RAY OF LIGHT from the floor-to-ceiling windows was slowly making its way toward the bed. The only sound in the room came from the clock on the wall. It was a noise that occasionally made it difficult for Michelle to fall back asleep if she woke in the night, but for now, she felt all too happy in the arms of her husband. She was naked, dozing comfortably, but still aware of her surroundings, and completely sated from their unexpected afternoon rendezvous.
There had been few moments like this during the past several months. Knowing her time with Kyle was rapidly drawing to a close, Michelle resisted the temptation to surrender to sleep. Soon she would have to let him go. He was catching a flight to New York City, and she would be leaving their Malibu home only sixteen hours later, boarding a plane for Houston.
Michelle was due to begin rehearsals for her next film the day after her arrival in Texas. The couple wouldn’t see one another again for nearly a week. Eventually, when Kyle did join her on-set, she knew he would be all business and no pleasure.
Her mouth twitched downward at the thought, although her eyes remained firmly shut to the impending reality. Her head rested on Kyle’s chest, her arm draped across his slick stomach. The room was still warm with passion, and she pulled him even tighter to her thankful body.
Kyle slept soundly, snoring lightly and offering no more than a mere grumble at the contraction of Michelle’s embrace. She smiled in triumph. Usually, he rolled away from her when she pulled this move on him. He’d never been much of a cuddler.
In fact, she was surprised that Kyle initiated sex at all. She’d been sitting on the mattress at the foot of their colossal bed when he emerged from his closet, carrying a suitcase in each hand. She’d been feeling sorry for herself and sad to once again be left alone.
Even though a cool distance existed between them, Michelle still found his presence at home soothing. Kyle was one of the few people that she had known before celebrity found her, so despite the fact that their relationship was in an awkward phase, she held out hope that their foundation was secure enough to weather the storm.
As Kyle had approached, Michelle immediately recognized an expression that had long been absent from his face during their eight-year marriage.
He wanted her.
And she needed him, desperately.
She’d watched in perplexed fascination as Kyle set down his baggage and began unbuttoning his shirt. His lean body had never looked better, and his dusty blond Robert Redford hair shaded his hungry blue eyes. When he stepped toward her, she hastily began removing her own clothes, fearful he would change his mind before he could reach her.
He hadn’t. Instead, he’d made love to her with wonder and passion. Kyle was even tender at times, running his fingertips along her toned, tanned belly as he moved his mouth along the parts of her body she’d kept groomed in hope of his return. Afterward, as she continued to linger in his embrace, she replayed those blissful moments in her mind. Making love with Kyle hadn’t been this good in years.
Unfortunately, Michelle’s reflections were interrupted a few minutes later when Kyle’s soft snoring stopped. She knew her time was up.
“Just something for you to remember me by.” He smirked as he sat up, forcing her off of him like he would a cat in his lap.
Michelle grimaced slightly as she resettled on their bed, but otherwise did not respond. She was already preoccupied by other familiar and intruding considerations. She’d been warring with herself for nearly a year about whether or not to end their marriage. In the space of an hour, she’d gone from sad to blissful to angry. Michelle realized her emotions were out of control, swinging from one extreme to another and quickly back again. She no longer trusted herself to make the right decision, let alone act on it.
Kyle’s eyes drifted to Michelle’s healthy breasts as he pulled his clothes back on. He’d repeatedly urged her to get implants and had even gone so far as to call her a saggy cow during an alcohol-induced argument the year before.
He only dropped the issue when she took a role as the lesbian lover of a sultry, twenty-year-old in a steamy movie. The two women shared several erotic moments onscreen, including what became an iconic scene of the girls shaving each other. When asked on the red carpet, Kyle was forced to agree that Michelle looked every bit as fine as her much-younger co-star.
To say otherwise would make him look like an ungrateful jerk. Which he was, of course, but at least he stopped suggesting ways for his wife to improve her body.
She stayed in bed, but did not cover up. He hated that.
Kyle easily traded the view of her for the one of himself in the bathroom mirror. He smirked as he carefully checked his hair. He was about to spend a week promoting a film he already knew would be a hit, and once the promotional tour was finished, he would skip down south to begin filming with one of the industry’s up-and-coming directors.
Nathan McPherson had cast him in the sci-fi thriller after only one interview and no screen test, just the way Kyle liked it. Nathan was a smart young man, but Kyle would have to make sure the director quickly understood who was really in charge on-set.
Kyle left the bathroom without turning off the light. He looked down briefly at Michelle. She’d fallen back into the sheets and was resting peacefully amidst soft, champagne-colored bedding. Her long auburn hair was fanned out over the pillows.
He frowned as he retrieved his suitcases, a parting notion just then occurring to him.
“Don’t make a scene if our trailers aren’t right next to each other,” he warned. It was the last thing he said to his wife before sauntering out of the room.
Kyle failed to notice Michelle hadn’t spoken a single word.
He drove to the airport in his Bugatti Veyron Gabilier, feeling smug because he was one of only a handful of people in all of Southern California who owned the four-door sedan model. Most people didn’t even know Bugatti made a big luxury car, and Kyle had strategically purchased it several months earlier at the frenzied height of the couple’s latest paparazzi-dubbed “Baby Watch.” The media was always speculating on when the duo
would begin their family, and the latest round of predictions preceded a wedding anniversary jaunt to Cabo San Lucas. Despite the positive spin a baby would no doubt put on his career, Kyle had no interest in becoming a father, and Michelle returned from their vacation having enjoyed the margaritas almost as much as the fajitas.
He told himself that he was not the type of man who needed to drive a souped-up sports car or a gigantic Hummer to prove his worth. Even so, his Bugatti was a high gloss black with milk blue headlights. Kyle believed the severity of the lights and the blunt grill gave the vehicle a mean appearance, like a scowling ghost. He spent every second of the commute with the driver’s side window fully down, knowing his appealing profile would only be enhanced in any photos the paps would inevitably snap of him. They always did. Kyle made sure of it. It was a tip he’d picked up from Kathy Griffin.
He parked his prized car in the short term lot and left it for his publicist to retrieve. It was not part of her job description to do such things, but Kyle Petersen made a habit of treating her worse than he did his wife.
Chapter Two
SHAUNNA NOBLE WAS BORN into a Hollywood dynasty. She was the only daughter of a grindhouse producer who struck gold with enough films in the late seventies to build a comfortable empire. After his wife’s unexpected death, Gus Noble shifted his focus to television in order to stay close to his daughter. Although Shaunna was on the verge of turning thirty, everyone still recognized her as the little girl in the Noble Productions logo at the end of his shows and the beginning of his movies.
She was easily beautiful enough to be an actress, but had always been painfully shy. As a child, she hid under the polished grand piano during her father’s lavish parties while Robin Williams and Gene Wilder looked all over the house to give her back her nose or, worse yet, to ask her questions about herself. With dark brown hair and honey-colored eyes, Shaunna often thought of herself as an autumn tree. She remembered playing in the woods near her home and wondering if she could just fade into the forest.
In school, she learned that with a pen in her hand, she was powerful. Later, she discovered that with a keyboard underneath her quick fingers, she was influential. Shaunna was a savvy observer of her environment, and after watching how her father closed one deal after another, she decided at the age of fifteen to serve the industry from the inside. She would help control the very public she feared so much.
With so many actors available and clamoring for any kind of attention, clients were easy to come by, yet they were mostly B-listers. Usually, they were actors in their fifties who were celebrating the arrivals of their first grandchildren and who were not difficult to manage, from a publicist’s standpoint. But she never took the job for granted and was always coming up with new ways to give her clients the kind of exposure their comeback careers desperately needed.
The keen application of Shaunna’s first-hand knowledge of the industry quickly transformed her. She broke free from the image of a young girl trapped within the pull of her father’s success and developed into a woman who was capable of placing herself and her clients in favorable positions. She was proud to stand in the light of her own achievements, and so was Gus, a busy but thoughtful father who often included her in his projects.
Kyle Petersen was not one of her most famous clients when she took him on. But when he landed the lead role in the book-to-film adaptations of a supernatural private eye, the actor turned into a superstar overnight. After the first installment of Kyle’s blockbuster film series hit theaters, he single-handedly put her in a new income bracket. Shaunna assumed she would be forever grateful to him for keeping her in his employ and sharing his success. Thanks to the popularity of his films, she amassed a strong portfolio by the age of twenty-five.
However, Kyle’s celebrity was accompanied by a creeping narcissism which turned him into an uncontrollable, ill-mannered beast by the time he was shooting the third film in the series. His character was a bit of a prick, and he began assuming those characteristics away from the set. Kyle even seemed to revel in his despicable behavior and perfected it, much to Shaunna’s growing unease.
Shaunna dutifully picked up Kyle’s car at the airport by taking a cab and using the key ordered solely for her. They’d run this routine before. She would catch a flight of her own later that evening and would assist him constantly in New York. However, they never flew together. Kyle made it a personal policy never to fly with the help, especially when his money afforded Shaunna her own first class ticket.
Kyle always flew in the studio’s private jet. His attention-seeking ways had their limits, after all, and he refused to trudge through the terminals of LAX.
When Shaunna arrived back at Kyle’s home, she pulled the car in past the security gate and into the Malibu driveway. After parking the sleek Bugatti, she removed the two big suitcases from the back seat. Kyle usually left his bags in the house for her to collect, but he must have put them in his car by accident. They were heavy, and she realized it would be a huge inconvenience at the airport once she added her own luggage into the equation.
Shaunna climbed back into her forest green Jaguar and departed. She drove to her own modest house in Yorba Linda and gathered her things for the trip to New York City. Her father grumbled about her choice of residence every time he drove out to visit, but it had no effect on her. Shaunna lived alone and didn’t feel the need to live in a large home like the one Gus had raised her in.
Her personal life was simple, and she enjoyed the physical distance between her home and her demanding career. The quiet neighborhood offered exactly that.
There were six hours left until she needed to leave for the airport. It was a late departure and she would have to sleep on the plane, but Kyle wanted her there that night because she had his luggage and he would be appearing on several morning shows the next day.
Shaunna had a few hours to kill, so she did her favorite thing in the whole world: she went to Disneyland. Her home’s proximity to the amusement park was no accident.
A twenty minute drive and a quick flash of her season pass later, and she was in the mid-week, late-afternoon line for Pirates of the Caribbean. Her favorite part of the ride was that first moment when the boat settled into the water. She closed her eyes and listened to the distant murmurs and clinking glasses from the Blue Bayou restaurant which overlooked the swamp as she and her few companions floated past. She then watched the electronic fireflies hovering in the trees while the recorded sounds of bayou life accompanied her. She always liked, but easily forgot, the smell of the water she floated on. It didn’t have the odor of chlorine or bleach, but its aroma was nonetheless clean—pleasing, even. After two steep drops, Shaunna was on her way through a massive underground cave filled with the most amazing animatronics and pyrotechnics the 1960s could produce.
It was perfect.
She spent the eighteen minutes beneath the park looking for things she hadn’t noticed before. This particular time, she found two robotic rats that were new to her, along with a pair of eyes peeking out from one of the ships forever engaged in battle.
She’d always been old school, but accepted the addition of Johnny Depp to the classic attraction, mostly because he was so very cool as an actor and a person.
Next she went to the Haunted Mansion, excited about how it had been completely redesigned for the holiday season as the Nightmare Before Christmas. She went through twice.
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in Frontierland also got a double dip, and then she walked over to the Tiki Room and watched the show while drinking a pineapple smoothie.
Shaunna loved being in Disneyland. She was even a welcomed guest at Club 33, though she liked being out in the park too much and only visited the New Orleans Square establishment when the park became too crowded. It was a privilege she would always exercise and more than worth the yearly dues. Whenever she dropped by the club, there was always a hot cocoa waiting for her in the Trophy Room within a few minutes.
Disneyland was lik
e a second home to her, but Shaunna knew it was never going to be a complete experience until she had a family. She was not lonely, but she was alone, and she knew the line between the two had a funny way of fading away.
She thought about heading over to Toontown, but decided she wanted a thrill and considered going on the one ride she’d never experienced, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in the California Adventure Park. She actually started walking in that direction, but chickened out before she even left the main gate.
Instead, she rode the Disneyland Express train all the way around the park and got off in Tomorrowland. Space Mountain was going to be her biggest thrill this evening.
Shaunna went home after a quick dash over to the Matterhorn, which was closed, and the final necessary trip through Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye.
Dinner was a tuna fish sandwich and a glass of milk, and then she was back in her car and off to LAX with Iron and Wine’s “The Devil Never Sleeps” playing on repeat.
Chapter Three
DAVID QUINN WAS FROM CHICAGO. He grew up in South Chicago, to be precise, and the tough part of South Chicago to be more precise. He fell into acting when he accompanied a friend to an open casting call for extras in a zombie movie. He’d just turned twenty-one at the time and was a little drunk when he agreed to tag along.
The makeup artist didn’t want to mess up David’s beautiful face, and neither did the director, so David was cast as the wise-cracking member of the group of survivors and his character was kept alive as long as the director could reasonably get away with. He had most of the best lines in the film, as well as a gruesome death scene, followed by a few memorable moments as a zombie. He was a standout in an otherwise forgettable movie. The picture was called Dead Heads and had opened more doors for him than any other acting work he’d been able to land since.
