by Leonie Gant
Not Happily Married 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
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
About The Author
Upcoming Book
Chapter One
“Must say, I’m enjoying the view.” The voice came from behind me as I was reaching over the desk to grab some paperwork. I wanted to smack my head against the desk. I’d let my guard down. Stupid rookie mistake. I straightened and turned around to find the husband of my latest client standing right behind me, showing a complete lack of awareness about personal space.
“Mr Wesson” I said through gritted teeth. “Could you please step back.”
“Do you really want me to do that?” he asked silkily as he stroked a finger down the side of my face.
“Damn right I do” I said, the irritation evident in my voice.
His eyes flashed as if he wasn’t used to being thwarted. He wasn’t. I knew this. Especially by his wife’s personal assistant. Unfortunately for him I’m not just any PA. I work for Monique Petit. She has a stable of staff who work for the most difficult of clients and I have a reputation for working the worst of jobs.
My last job involved me taking a bullet to save my client’s life. A move I questioned every day during the six weeks it took to heal from that particular assignment. During the media frenzy that followed, my client tearfully praised me as the best personal assistant she’d ever had, and a friend for life. She then quietly fired me and rehired her sister who had held the job before me. I had taken a bullet for her. Her sister had done a video on YouTube outlining her many, many flaws, yet she was the one who had the job. Of course Monique ensured that I got a healthy severance bonus out it. If I was perfectly honest about it I wasn’t really all that sorry to see the end of that particular assignment.
I was hoping to settle into something a little more sedate. Instead I ended up with Adele Wesson, one of my favorite authors. I was so excited to get this job. Then I started and I discovered why she needed one of Monique’s people. Her new husband Eric Wesson, was younger than his glamorous wife and had, to put it mildly, a wandering eye. The man was completely amoral and was willing to put the moves on his wife’s PA while his wife was in the room. Eric was quite simply sex personified. It went without saying he was good looking. His body was perfectly proportioned. Broad shoulders, slim hips, the body of a swimmer and I’d seen him in a pool. He was close to perfection. His golden hair always sat perfectly and his bright blues eyes honed in on a woman and made her feel that she was the center of the universe. I don’t know if he exuded some kind of pheromone, but the second he walked into any room, women just started to fall at his feet, and he was definitely not a man to waste the opportunity.
Every single PA Adele had employed had fallen into his bed within a week. I’d started working for Adele two weeks ago and so far had managed to resist. I’d been given forewarning regarding what I would be facing. It helped that the criteria Monique had given me for the job included the terms prudish, uptight and less likely to give it up than a nun cloistered in a convent. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or insulted by the fact she felt I met that criteria. Monique was very much aware that I was still furious at a certain homicide detective who was too chicken to face my mother. That probably helped her decide that I was perfect for the job. After I got shot protecting my last client, I woke up in the hospital to the face of Detective Jake Griffin, or Detective Hottie as my friends called him. We ended up sharing a toe curling kiss, celebrating my alive status, when my mother walked in on us and scared the big bad LAPD detective away.
Admittedly she had just flown almost twenty four hours from the other side of the world after being informed that her daughter had been shot. She had also, unfortunately, just been told the story about how Griffin had used an accidental assault charge to blackmail me into helping him investigate a murder, by threatening my Australian backside with deportation. The friend who had picked her up was my lawyer and Monique’s husband. He may have also waxed lyrical about how the reason her baby was unconscious in a hospital bed with a bullet wound was Detective Griffin’s fault. So when my jet lagged, ticked off, panicking with worry, Mama Bear of a mother walked into my hospital room and found said Detective with his tongue down my throat, she didn’t react well. Needless to say Griffin made himself scarce, and in the two months since, I hadn’t heard a peep out of him. I’ve got to say, I’m not really happy, and at this stage I don’t care to see him ever again. As far as I’m concerned, all men are jerks and had better stay out of my way. According to Monique that attitude put me in the perfect frame of mind for this job.
My mother stayed to help me, and probably herself, heal from the trauma of being shot. Two weeks ago I decided I couldn’t take much more of her special brand of maternal love and begged Monique for a job. This was the one she threw my way, thinking it would prove if I was serious about coming back to work. In the end I decided it was a job and I would get to work with Adele Wesson. Definitely worth it. Nineteen sexual harassment incidents later I was beginning to question exactly how much I wanted this job. It wasn’t as if the guy was dangerous or even creepy. He was simply persistent and could not understand how I was resisting him. I could understand though. Men sucked.
“Mr Wesson” I said.
“Please call me Eric” he said leaning in again, smiling in that melting way he had.
Using the book I was carrying I pressed it into his admittedly rock hard chest and gave a slight shove.
“Mr Wesson, I am not now, nor will I ever be interested” I stated as firmly as I could, deciding that at that moment channeling my Grandma Rita might be the way to go. “What you are doing is disrespectful to not only your wife, but also to me. Please accept the fact that I am saying no for now and I am saying no forever.”
His face crumpled and he looked like he was about to cry. No way was I falling for that again. The man was not above using every weapon in his arsenal, even tears to get his way. I learned that the second day, and had needed to employ a well-placed stomp of my heel on his foot to extricate myself that time.
Fortunately for me, showing her usual exquisite sense of
timing, his wife walked in. Adele Wesson was a gifted author whose books had been translated into award winning movies. Of course with that much talent she had also been the scriptwriter. In her late forties, she had lost her adored first husband only a couple of years ago. Her marrying Eric Wesson had surprised many, but as I had found out she was a vibrant woman, and Eric was Eric. Adele swept into the room. With her ash blonde hair and perfect pixie face, she looked like she could grace a magazine cover. Her bohemian look meant she always wore loose tops and skirts with scarves tying back her hair. She stopped her entrance and looked tiredly at Eric as he had me pressed up against the desk.
“Eric, please tell me you’re not bothering Trudie again.”
Rather than looking ashamed and stepping back as any normal person would, Eric tugged on a piece of my hair that had come loose from my ponytail.
“We were just being friendly” he said, looking his wife in the eye.
Pulling my hair out of his fingers and tucking it behind my ear I clenched my jaw.
“If that is all Mrs Wesson I’ll leave you for today.”
“Thank you Trudie” she said as I walked past her. “I am truly sorry.”
I knew she was. I did not understand her in the slightest. She didn’t seem to mind what her husband did as long as it didn’t interfere with her work. I couldn’t do it, but my mum always said I had problems sharing. As I closed the door I heard the arguing start. It always happened like that. Ten minutes later though they’d be having sex. In the two weeks I’d been working in this house I had learned that relationships are weird and maybe it was better that I wasn’t in one anymore. After having my heart ripped apart by my ex-fiancé a couple of years ago I’d only been tempted once and he got scared off by my mother.
Opening the door to my apartment I kicked off my shoes. Finding Mom’s leftovers in the fridge I threw it into the microwave to heat it up. Mom was in bed so I ended up writing my report for the day including the three additional incidents with Eric Wesson. I contemplated admitting that this assignment was too much for me.
I moved around, my side still sometimes twinging from where I was shot. Thanks to Monique’s quick thinking and decidedly skewed sense of priorities, a plastic surgeon had been called immediately after I got shot to fix the mess the bullet wound had made to my side. Luckily for my internal organs the bullet had been deflected by my rib. It had been cracked and the bullet had come out again about a couple of inches from the entry site. This had made a mess and Monique, assuming I would be wanting to be bikini ready for summer, had organized a friend of hers who was a top ranking plastic surgeon to fix it up. All this was done while I was unconscious or I would have informed Monique that no matter how good the surgeon was, I was not going to be bikini ready for summer.
I usually work with celebrities, actors, actresses, musicians or, as in Adele’s case, authors. One of my strength’s as a PA is that I blend into the background. I am completely average. I tie my slightly longer than shoulder length brown hair back into a pony tail and wear sensible shoes, pants and a simple top. My gray eyes are even unremarkable and they seem to change color depending on the clothes I’m wearing, making me a bit of a chameleon. I enjoy my food too much to have the perfect figure, so I’ll go swimming but I’m a bit too self-conscious to wear that bikini, especially in LA.
Usually the men around my clients are far more interested in the bounty they have around them to even look twice at me. It doesn’t bother me, it is simply a reality. As this assignment with Adele Wesson was proving, sometimes attention can be a bad thing. I wasn’t fooling myself believing Eric Wesson was actually interested in me. The man was playing some kind of sick game with his wife and I was caught in the middle. That being said I had noticed that he had upped the campaign in the last couple of days. My holding out must be becoming frustrating for him. Maybe I would need to speak to Monique about it.
Chapter Two
The next morning I let myself into Adele’s house. Usually I would find Adele outside with her muse as she would call it. Adele credited the nature around her as the inspiration for her work. She had been hit by a stream of inspiration in her latest project. Almost every morning for the last two weeks I had found her outside. Looking through the house I could not find any sign of her or Eric. The cars were in the garage so I knew they had to be home. Heading towards Adele’s bedroom I knocked quietly on the door.
“Ms Wesson” I called out as I tried the doorknob. I slowly opened the door calling out again in case she didn’t hear me. The room was empty, but the bed looked as if it hadn’t been slept in which was very unusual. Dropping my head I contemplated my next move. The only room I hadn’t checked was Eric Wesson’s bedroom. The couple slept in separate bedrooms, something I found incomprehensible, but hey, it wasn’t my marriage. I tried calling her cell only to hear it ringing on the bedside table. Adele never went anywhere without her cell. Reluctantly walking to Eric’s room I knocked quietly on the door.
“Ms Wesson, are you in there?”
When there was no answer I knocked again, a little louder. I put my ear up against the door, trying desperately to hear something to indicate that I did not need to open it. There was complete silence.
“Ms Wesson,” I called out loudly. “I am coming in now, I am concerned for you.” I cringed. That didn’t sound strange at all, but I really did not want to enter this room.
When the door was opened I saw the bed and strangled back the scream that rose in my throat. There, lying on the white sheets was Eric Wesson, blood covering the pillow underneath his head. Next to him lay Adele Wesson. I couldn’t see any blood around her. If it wasn’t for the blood, the two of them would look like they were just sleeping peacefully together. I crept towards the bed. I could see Adele’s chest rising and I put my hand on her shoulder.
“Adele, wake up.” I shook her gently but she didn’t open her eyes. Raising my voice I yelled louder and shook harder. “Adele, wake up.” No response.
I grabbed my cell out of my pocket and called emergency. When it answered I rushed ahead giving the address.
“Please, I need someone here right now. I just got to work and my boss and her husband are in bed. There is blood everywhere. I think she may be alive but I don’t know about him. There is so much blood.”
“Are you in any danger?” the dispatcher asked.
“I have no idea” I said, belatedly looking around realizing that I could have walked in on anything.
“Can you find a place that’s safe?” she said.
“I don’t want to leave her” I said softly. “I think she’s still alive.”
“I’ve got police and paramedics coming. Everything is going to be okay.” The dispatcher’s calm voice grated over my jangled nerves.
I heard a crashing noise from the front door.
“I think they’re here” I said.
“That’s good” she said. “Now whatever you do, follow the police officer’s directions. If they don’t have to worry about you, then they can concentrate on your friend.”
“Okay” I said and gulped as a cop stepped in the room and pointed a gun at me.
“Hands up” he yelled.
“I’m the one who called” I said as I put my hands above my head, holding up the cell phone. “I’ve got emergency on the line.”
The cop took my phone and spoke to the dispatcher. Paramedics raced into the room and started working on Adele and Eric. The cop led me out of the house and sat me down on the front porch.
“What happened?” the cop asked.
“I don’t know. I work here for Adele Wesson. I got to work about half an hour ago, same time as I always do and I found them like that. I left about seven last night and they were fine.”
The cop nodded and started taking notes. A paramedic came over and put a blanket around my shoulders.
“Thank you” I said.
“Not a problem, not a pretty sight in there. I figured you’re probably feeling a little shocky.”
He grinned and I noticed he had a nice smile, kind and gentle with a small dimple in his chin.
“No, not really. It’s before you actually go into shock, when you’ve seen something that you keep replaying in your mind.”
I shivered. “Yes, well I think that qualifies. I don’t think I’ll be forgetting that scene in a hurry.”
He put his hand into a pocket and pulled out a small chocolate bar. “Here have this, you’ll feel better with a bit of sugar in you.”
I looked at him carefully. “My mom’s advice about strangers and candy is going through my head right about now.”
He smiled again and his brown eyes lit up. He put out his hand. “Then we shouldn’t be strangers anymore, my name is Ben.”
I looked at him for a second and then grasped his hand. “I’m Trudie and now that you’re no longer a stranger I’ll take that candy bar.”
Ben handed it over and I unwrapped it and popped it in my mouth.
“Feeling any better?” he asked.
“Yeah I guess so.”
I turned to the cop behind me.
“Any chance I can go to the hospital with Adele so she’s not alone?”
“Afraid not. Homicide are going to need to speak to you.”
“Eric didn’t make it?” I asked softly.
“No he didn’t” the cop said distractedly.
I bent my head fighting back the tears. I didn’t know why I was upset. I hadn’t particularly liked the man. He had made my two weeks working for Adele difficult, but yesterday he had been alive and vital, and today he was dead. I felt an arm go around my shoulders and looked up at Ben’s sympathetic face. I leaned my head against his chest and just let someone else be strong for a while. After a few minutes of leaning against Ben’s warm chest and feeling his hand stroke my arm in sympathy I heard a throat being cleared. I pulled away from Ben and looked up, right into the face of the one man I had hoped I would not see.
