Taking Hollywood

by Shari King

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me too, Mum. I’d like that.’

  ‘Then I’ll come,’ she said, completely matter of fact, as if it was the kind of thing they did on a regular basis. That was his mum. No fuss. No drama. Just a good, stoic heart and total loyalty. Yes, she’d moan about the size of the house, the amount of time the kids spent at work and the food that was in the industrial-size fridge, but if her son wanted her there, then that’s where she’d be.

  ‘How did you get on with that lassie? The one from the Daily Scot?’

  ‘Yeah, fine. She’s actually here now. I saw her the other day and I’ll be talking to her again this week.’

  Another pause. ‘You know, son, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Since you were a wee boy I’ve been telling you to slow down, look around you, but you were too busy going places. Your dad was the same.’

  That surprised him. It was the first time he could ever remember her mentioning him. Ever. He’d always just been that mythical figure out there somewhere, the guy who’d left before he was born, who never got mentioned because it made his mum flinch with pain.

  ‘My dad?’

  ‘Look, son, I have to go.’ She was flustered now. Obviously trying to recover from her slip of the tongue.

  ‘Hang on, Mum. My dad. Tell me something else about him.’

  The pause was so long he thought she’d hung up.

  ‘He didn’t know what was important, son. Treated everyone around him like they didn’t matter. No one around him told him what he needed to hear. Nothing real. Sometimes I worry you’re making the same mistakes.’

  This time she really was gone, leaving him holding the phone, staring into space.

  What the hell was all that about? She wasn’t stupid. She watched TV; she read the papers. She even had a computer now and had been indoctrinated into the world of Google. It was a fair bet that she’d heard what was going on with him, and yet she’d never mention it directly. In her world, it just wasn’t done that way. He was a grown man now. Had to make his own way, and she wouldn’t dent his west of Scotland male pride by interfering.

  He lay down on one of the sunloungers in the middle of the deck. His mum was right. No one around him. Nothing real. Hell, how long had it been that way? And why had he never stopped to question it?

  Closing his eyes, he had a mental image. Him, Mirren, Zander – squeezed into the hut, knocking back a bottle of cider while Mirren played some crap music. But they were laughing. Really laughing. Like when your guts ache and you don’t think there will ever be anything as funny as this again.

  For him, there never was.

  Another image. Sarah McKenzie, sitting on his terrace. There was a connection there. Something real. Wasn’t there? Or maybe he was just losing the plot. Perhaps so. But right now, the thought of going home depressed him. The thought of staying on this boat all night alone depressed him even more. There was nowhere to go. No one to see.

  It was her or Shia LaBeouf. He chose her.

  49.

  ‘Sky Blue and Black’ – Jackson Browne

  The beep was steady, still, repetitive, yet instead of being irritating, it felt like it was the only thing keeping the seconds ticking by, the only thing keeping the world turning.

  If it stopped, it was over. Done.

  Cedars-Sinai was a well-oiled machine when it came to saving lives, but it couldn’t work miracles. River Phoenix was pronounced dead here. Frank Sinatra too. And there was no way her daughter’s name was being added to the list.

  No way.

  Chloe. Stupid, stupid Chloe.

  They’d brought her in, pumped her stomach, then – ironically – doped her up in the hope that putting her into a medically induced coma would help her body recover. The doctors were cautiously optimistic, but apparently the next twenty-four hours were crucial. The scans showed normal brain activity, the heart was working fine, but nothing was certain after such a major seizure.

  Every cliché had already gone through Mirren’s mind.

  She’d take her daughter’s place in a heartbeat. She’d give up everything just to make her girl well. There was no deal with the devil she wouldn’t make. But clichés weren’t going to help. Prayers might, but it was a long time since Mirren had believed in any kind of God.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  Logan was on his way back from Brazil. Vancouver. Toronto. Mirren had lost track. But he had a three-day hiatus and had hired a jet to get him home to his sister. His life was truly extraordinary – a seventeen-year-old with the finances to summon a jet, yet one who cared enough about his family to rush to his sister when she was ill. It gave her hope. That kind of goodness was in Chloe too; it had just been suffocated by too many years of chaos and crack.

  Mirren’s head fell onto the white blanket, just inches away from the hand that clung on to Chloe’s as if by just touching her she could pass on the will to live, the strength to fight. She’d sent Jack home and, quite frankly, didn’t care if it was the right thing to do or not. They’d spent the first ten hours facing each other, saying little, their communication halted by guilt and self-accusations. If only she hadn’t gone out. If only she’d stayed by Chloe’s side. If only her daughter didn’t hate her fucking guts.

  But she did. And there was nowhere to hide from that. Beep. Beep. Beep.

  She moved her head onto the top of her arms and tried to clear her mind, but it wasn’t working. A flashback from the past was replaying in her head in full technicolor. She desperately wanted to switch it off, make it go, but it wasn’t budging. She was in another room, another time. She was standing in front of Jordan Lang and she was holding a gun. And she was making the mistake that would end with her little girl lying in this bed now, a year later.

  The noise of the heart monitor subsided, replaced by the scene in her head and the sound of her own voice . . .

  ‘You have no fucking idea what I would do. You have no fucking idea what I am. And if you knew what I’d done before, trust me, you’d be sitting there in a river of your own piss.

  ‘You got my daughter high, you filmed her having sex, and now you’re blackmailing her. Trust me, right now there is nothing I won’t do to protect her from you. Nothing. But please, please test me. Because I’ll say you attacked me, I’ll say it was self-defence, and I’ll have forgotten all about it before they’ve finished picking your brains out of the carpet.’

  There was no blood left in his face now that the mental image had caused all functions to shut down except the one that was creating a real risk he would shit himself.

  He knew how it worked. His father was one of the biggest producers in the industry. He knew how palms got greased, stories got changed and laws were bent to accommodate the powerful.

  ‘Now give me the phone.’

  ‘It’s there,’ he said, gesturing to the bedside cabinet to the right. ‘Are you gonna shoot me if I reach for it?’

  ‘Maybe. But I’ll definitely shoot you if you don’t.’

  Tentatively, all pretence of having the upper hand now long gone, he reached over, picked up a gold BlackBerry from behind a pile of Xbox games.

  ‘Find the text you sent Chloe and put it on the screen so I can see it. Don’t press play.’

  A few clicks of the thumb, then he chucked it to the end of the bed so that it was within her reaching distance. Her stomach lurched when she saw the screen. It was almost enough to make her index finger involuntarily jerk on the trigger.

  ‘Are there any other copies? Did you send it to anyone else?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If I find out you’re lying, you know I’ll be back. And it won’t end well for you.’

  ‘I swear, no one else. Swear to God.’

  This was why she had no belief in religion.

  Picking up the phone with her gun-free hand, she slid it into the Chanel.

  ‘Not to sound clichéd, but you’re going to leave LA.’

  ‘No fucking way.’

&nb
sp; Mirren carried on as if he hadn’t even spoken. ‘You’re going to take the cash and you’re going to leave. And you’re not coming back. I’ve got a meeting with your father tomorrow and I’m going to show him this.’

  ‘No, no, no. You can’t.’ Suddenly the twenty-one-year-old who had been so full of attitude and defiance just ten minutes ago was a little boy again, begging her not to go to Daddy.

  Mirren ignored it.

  ‘Oh, I can. And I’m going to tell him the consequences of you coming near my daughter again. I’ve known your dad a long time now. He’ll do the right thing. If I don’t kill you, he’ll turn you in himself.’

  His face told her she was right. Kent Lang might be one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, but he had a reputation as being a decent guy, someone who was passionate about justice, who made it his mission to expose atrocities in Darfur, to remind the world about the horrors of World War II, to highlight the plight of Haitian refugees. She was fairly sure he’d quickly come around to defending the rights of a seventeen-year-old girl who was being blackmailed over a sex tape by his scum of a spawn. There was no way he’d let his son drag all of their lives into the gutter.

  ‘I’ll call here later and I’ll expect to hear that you’re gone. Don’t call, don’t write. Understood?’

  ‘Understood.’ His voice was a little shaky.

  She slipped the gun in her purse and backed out of the door. The lift down was shared with six Japanese tourists who talked incessantly all the way. She didn’t crumble.

  Crossing the lobby, a woman pushed a buggy towards her, a little girl in a pink hat giggling at the world. Still she didn’t crumble.

  Down the stairs to the underground car park. Into her car. Past the guard at the barrier. All the way to Lou’s house on Beverly Drive. Still she held it together.

  Lou opened the door. ‘Oh, honey . . .’ she said, with love and concern.

  Mirren crumbled. Sobbed on the doorstep where she fell. Cried until Lou eventually stopped holding her, managed to get her back onto her feet and supported her through to the lounge, where she talked and cried until it was dark, until she was strong enough to put a smile on her face, go home and take care of her daughter.

  She’d visited Kent Lang the following day at his Holmby Hills estate and told him what happened. Everything. He’d fully supported her, thanked her for not going to the police and making it public, assured her that he’d see to it that his son caused her family no further problems. And she’d felt relief. It was over.

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  The memory left her and she was back in Cedars-Sinai, holding her daughter’s hand, crippled by the knowledge that the relief she’d felt all those months ago had been misplaced. Looking back, Kent Lang had been almost right. Almost.

  She hadn’t counted on the three scumballs in the room knowing who she was, and one of them being lucid enough to tell Chloe that her mother had visited her boyfriend right before he disappeared.

  There had been rage, tears, accusations, all of which had finally settled down and merged into good old-fashioned hatred.

  Mirren never told her about the tape or the demand for money. She wasn’t going to allow that shadow over Chloe’s life, didn’t want to burden her with anxiety that there could be another copy and that her humiliation could become entertainment for the sick masses. Mirren would shoulder that one.

  But now, she wondered if she’d done the right thing. Chloe hadn’t been able to draw a line under it and move on. Instead, the longing for Jordan and the determination to punish her mother had made her habit spiral out of control, no matter what Mirren did for her, no matter how many gutters she dragged her out of.

  Maybe it was time to tell her the truth. Let her take accountability. Let her heart break so that she could then heal. And maybe, just maybe they’d find a way back from this.

  The twitch of the hand that lay under hers made her head snap up. It was very slight. If she hadn’t been so still, she’d never have noticed it, but now it was enough to make her heart soar. This was Chloe telling her something. It wasn’t too late to fix this. They’d get through it. She’d explain. Chloe would get it and they’d figure out how to move forward.

  She sat bolt upright, looked at her daughter’s beautiful face, leaned over, put a hand out to stroke her hair.

  But . . . Chloe’s head moved the other way, fell to the side. Mirren didn’t understand. Couldn’t work out what was happening.

  Until the sound of the monitor changed.

  Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

  50.

  ‘Secret Garden’ – Bruce Springsteen

  Thirty-six hours with Adrianna Guilloti and Zander realized that no drug had ever made him this high. No booze had ever blown his mind the way she did.

  They hadn’t left the suite since they’d burst through the door a day and a half ago. They’d been having sex for at least half of that, and Zander was somewhere close to love by the time he finally responded to Hollie’s fifty-eighth text, informing him that a jet would be waiting at Teterboro at 10 p.m. to get him back to LA. Persistence was definitely one of her sterling qualities. He called down to reception and asked them to set up transport to the airport. Minimal travel time. He didn’t want to waste a minute that he could be here, even though they’d now reached the anticlimax, the crushing comedown after the exquisite, adrenalin-rushing high.

  The New York sky outside was already fading to black as Adrianna dressed by the light of only the bedside lamp and prepared to leave. Now Zander lay in bed, cigarette in one hand, the other arm behind his head as he watched her retrieve her underwear from the Louis XV chair in the corner.

  ‘You’re pretty incredible.’

  Adrianna threw back her head, laughing, like a model on a Cover Girl advert. ‘Ah, you tell me so many things I already know.’

  Couldn’t beat confidence.

  ‘So how are we going to make this work, then?’ Zander exhaled, his naked torso resting into its perfect, beautiful form of toned muscle and sinew.

  Her expression told him immediately that she knew what he meant, and that her answer wasn’t going to match up to his hopes.

  ‘Oh, Zander, my darling,’ she purred, walking towards him, wearing only a black lace thong, a matching half-cup balconette bra, suspenders attached to 5-denier silk stockings, her feet already in black Manolo Blahnik stilettos. ‘This has been an encounter that I will truly never forget. But that’s what it was. An encounter. My husband will indulge my little indiscretions as long as they’re frivolous and brief, but he is far too jealous to let it go any further.’

  Stop. Rewind. Husband? It might have been an idea to have researched that before flying 3,000 miles to do the whole Romeo thing. He never, ever touched anyone else’s wife. Never. That wasn’t who he was. Damn. He didn’t have many morals, but that was one of the few. What a tit, he chided himself. Yet he was an idiot with a dick that was red and swollen from the best sex he’d ever known. Sometimes morals definitely had their drawbacks.

  ‘Oh, you didn’t know about my husband?’ Adrianna asked, registering his surprise.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then perhaps that is something you should investigate before you have dreams of another encounter. I am in LA next week. I can spend an hour, maybe two with you, perhaps play around a little.’

  ‘Play around?’ he said, with a smile, as she crawled onto the bed, straddled his legs and worked her way upwards until his erect dick was once again waiting for her. Clearly, his cock didn’t do morals.

  She bent down, took it between her tits, holding them together as she pushed down, pulled back, her tongue darting out to lick the tip on the downward motions. There was an explosive groan as he came, shooting into mid-air, Adrianna having already pulled back so that she avoided spoiling the recently applied make-up on her beautiful face.

  The news of the husband had been a blow, but if he was going to be rejected, then this was definitely some way to go.

  Once fully dressed, sh
e returned to the bed and kissed him on the lips. ‘I’m glad our deal came with this unexpected bonus,’ she said, their noses touching, her voice tinged with amusement, her movements belying a definite hesitation to bring the weekend to a close.

  Eventually, she pulled away, and then she was gone, and he was still lying there, naked, exhausted and just a little bit sad. A husband. Hadn’t seen that one coming at all.

  The buzz of his phone interrupted his mental slump. A text.

  ‘On way to airport yet? Don’t make me hunt you down.’

  Shaking his head, he pushed off the bed. Man, he felt like he’d just done a full-contact stunt fight scene. Everything ached. The thought that a couple of shots of JD and a gram of coke would take the edge off it crossed his mind and he swatted it away. He wasn’t going there. Couldn’t. There would be drug tests this week, and anyway, didn’t the million-dollar endorsement, with the sexiest, horniest woman he’d ever known, come with a condition that he stayed straight?

  Lifting the phone again, he let reception know he’d be checking out in half an hour. Twenty-eight minutes later, showered, dressed and black D&G aviators covering the shadows under his eyes, he registered a flash as he climbed into the limo. A pap, across the street. Zander just hoped he was on a general recon and not there because he’d heard a rumour about a movie star and a married fashion mogul.

  No point worrying about it. It was what it was, and challenging the guy would only make it seem like he was covering up something huge. Far better to ignore it and hope that – like most pictures that got taken – it came to nothing.

  By the time he stepped out of the car and headed for the West 30th Street helipad, he’d completely forgotten about it.

  Nine minutes later, he touched down at Teterboro Airport and headed to the waiting jet.

  The muscles in his ass hurt as he climbed the stairs. At the top, young Richard Gere was waiting for him with a hot towel.