Not Happily Married in Hollywood: Not in Hollywood Book 2
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Authors: Leonie Gant
Not Happily
Married in Hollywood
Leonie Gant
Copyright ©2015 Leonie Gant
All Rights Reserved
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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.
“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.