April, Dani - Superstar (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour)

DANI APRIL

Copyright © 2012

Chapter One

Chrissie Murphy was in the luxury of her bath in her suite of rooms at her posh hotel in Aspen. The bubble bath she was soaking in made her skin feel soft and smooth, and the fragrance was heavenly to breathe. The water was warm and felt so nice.

She didn’t ever want to leave. This bathroom was similar to the master bath in her home in Hollywood, only smaller. Here in Aspen she didn’t have to worry about running off to her next shoot, recording session, or party, and she could just lie back in the bubbles and feel good for a few minutes.

From the next room, she could hear one of her songs, “Cute Love,” sounding over her phone. That was her dad calling her from his suite on the opposite wing of the hotel. She sunk her head under the bubbles for a few seconds, trying to shut out the sound.

When she came back up from under the bubbles, squinting her eyes against the stinging soap, the song on her phone had stopped and she knew her dad was probably leaving her a voice message. He was no doubt telling her to hurry because that’s what he was always telling her to do. Even now he was probably sending Melinda across to her suite to roust her out of the rooms.

She sighed and decided not to climb out of the bath just yet. Her dad was great, and she loved him, but she was twenty-one years old now and knew that she was going to soon have to have a talk with him. There were things she wanted for her life and her career, a direction she wanted to take, and she was old enough to make her own decisions even if her dad maybe didn’t quite agree with all of them.

What she needed more than anything else was a vacation. Just this downtime in the bath felt so good. What would a week or two weeks of downtime feel like? She felt like her life was on a roller coaster and she wanted, temporarily anyway, to get off.

Her dad had asked her to come out here to Aspen to do this benefit dinner. Also, she suspected her dad wanted her to get some face time with some studio executives who were going to be in attendance at the dinner. She took a deep breath and decided she had to get out of this wonderful bath and face the whirlwind that awaited her outside.

She dried herself in one of the hotel’s big, white, fluffy towels. It took her ten minutes to choose what she was going to wear. Tonight it would be something cute but also sexy.

At least her boyfriend, Zach, the one and only love of her life, had come along on this jaunt and was staying at another wing of the hotel. She liked to dress sexy and cute for her fans, but most of all she liked to dress sexy and cute for Zach. She decided on a short black dress falling midway down her thighs.

She brushed her long, full-bodied, blonde hair back over her shoulders and put on a hint of a thousand-dollar-a-bottle perfume. She didn’t wear a bra and stepped into a black, silk thong. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she was confused by what she saw.

Anymore she was always confused by what she saw when she watched herself in the mirror, on TV, in a video, or on the big screen of one of her movies at the theater. She was cute and had a girl-next-door face, but she also had the body of a centerfold, which her PR people played up whenever they got the chance. Inside, she felt like she had never really been allowed to grow up, but her body had gotten ahead of her and matured into that of a woman’s.

She was also constantly battling her weight. At the moment she was under orders from her trainer back home to lose fifteen pounds in the next month. The unsympathetic trainer had recommended a starvation diet.

“Here, Peaches and Cream,” she called back into her big suite of rooms. Two little poodles came running out of the next room. They both yipped a greeting at her.

“Here are Mommy’s little, sweet babies.” She got down on her hands and knees and petted them both.

The front door of the suite opened, and Melinda, the PR girl traveling with her and her father on this trip, walked inside. “Chrissie, your dad’s been trying to call you.”

“I was taking a bath.” Chrissie was still kneeling on the floor, playing with her babies.

Melinda looked down at her. “You’re not really going to wear that dress tonight, are you?”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“No.” Melinda shook her head, scolding Chrissie. “That doesn’t fit the tone of the evening.”

“I’m wearing it because I thought Zach would like it.”

“He’ll like you in something else. Go change.”

Chrissie gave the babies a final pat and climbed off the floor. She felt like she was about ten years old when Melinda bossed her around like this, and Melinda wasn’t even that much older than she was. Just then her phone started playing “Cute Love” again, signaling another call from her dad and an escape route for Chrissie.

“That’s my dad again,” she told Melinda. “I’ve got to go, or he’s going to be like really super mad at me.”

“He’s probably wondering why he bought you that Rolex if you can’t even use it to keep track of the time.” Melinda was still scolding her.

“Sorry, Melinda,” Chrissie told her and picked up Peaches and Cream’s leashes. “I’ll change my dress later after I see Zach and Daddy.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, I promise.”

“All right, well, hurry then. I think your father has something important for you.”

Chrissie tried giving the other woman a smile. Melinda rewarded her efforts with a frown. Chrissie hurried out of the room and closed the door behind her.

Chrissie made her way across the super-big luxury hotel and ski resort, the little legs of Peaches and Cream hopping along to keep up at her side. The lobby was crowded, but this was a hangout for the rich and famous, and even a celebrity of her status didn’t attract undo attention here.

“Hey there, little girl!” Her daddy came up to her and gave her a hug in the middle of the lobby.

“Daddy!” She gave him a peck on the cheek.

“Hurry! Hurry! Hurry!” He took her by the arm and began to lead her back in the opposite direction.

“What’s up, Daddy?”

“Marvin Hammer is here for the dinner tonight, and he wanted to meet you. He’s in the Evergreen Room with some of the ad people from the agency, and they’re all waiting on you.”

Marvin Hammer was a big studio president. This was important to her daddy, but to Chrissie it was boring. She looked outside the thirty-foot floor-to-ceiling windows of the lobby and saw it was snowing outside, and she wished she could go out there and play in it, preferably with Zach.

“Daddy, remember you and I have been meaning to have a talk?” Chrissie reminded her father.

He silenced her. “Not now, little girl, this is more important. By the way, I don’t like that dress. Melinda should have made you change it.”

“Sorry, Daddy, Melinda told me, but I thought Zach would…”

“Not now, honey.” Her dad silenced her again and raced her away from any paparazzi that might be lurking about the hotel.

The Evergreen Room was filled with stuffy-looking men and women, half of whom looked bored, the other half looking angry. All eyes turned to Chrissie and her father when they entered, and the chatter of conversation quieted. Chrissie gave her patented “Chrissie Murphy” smile to everyone.

Her daddy announced their entrance. “Here she is!” Immediately, a group of older men and women were gathering around Chrissie to meet her, shake hands with her, and tell her that their children liked to listen to her music or had watched one of her movies.

“Happy you and your dad could make it to this benefit tonight, Chrissie,” Marvin Hammer, the studio president, was telling her. “Your agents were just talking with some of my people, and we’ve got a project opening up just for you. Best of all, it starts shooting next month.”

Chrissie just smiled and nodded her head like she was happy and thrilled with everything the older gentleman had to tell her. In truth, she couldn’t stand the thought of starting another shoot next month so soon after finishing her last concert tour. All it would do is take her away from Zach, and recently she had become worried they were growing apart.

The studio president didn’t really want to talk with her. After he introduced himself and shook hands, he spent the remaining minutes speaking with her dad about contract specifics. Chrissie was well trained enough to just keep smiling, and no one in the room would have even suspected that inside she felt lost.

* * * *

After the Evergreen Room, Chrissie got maybe three minutes of alone time with her daddy. Well, it wasn’t really alone time since they were walking down one of the tubular halls that connected wings of the hotel heading back to her daddy’s suite, but it was as close as she would get. Daddy was on his phone talking with one of his people as they walked along.

“Remember we promised we would have a long talk after I finished my last tour?” Chrissie told him as soon as he flipped the phone closed. His hurried phone conversation had actually taken a minute of her time with Daddy away from her.

“I’m sorry, baby,” he told her and patted her shoulder. “Things are crazy right now. But that’s just the way I planned them. It’s the way things ought to be at this point in your career.”

“I want to take some time off. I want to have time for me and Zach to get to know each other again.” Chrissie found her voice had taken a pleading tone.

“That’s fine, baby. You know I like Zach.”

At her side, Peaches and Cream were hustling along after her on their leashes. “I don’t think I want to do this movie.” She looked up at her dad.

“You can still do the project, baby. It doesn’t start shooting for a few weeks. Take Zach back to Paris and get your fill of him. Then come on back for the movie. I got to tell you, little girl, this one is going to be the big one.”

“I’m not sure I really care about that anymore.” She had to smile as a couple of dancers from her concert tour who were also going to be at the dinner tonight passed them in the hall.

“Don’t worry, baby.” He gave her another reassuring pat. “I care enough about it for both of us. You don’t really have to worry about anything. Just be yourself, be Chrissie Murphy, and you’ll do great.”

They had arrived at the door to his suite. She had so much more to say, but there wasn’t time. It was obvious to her that he didn’t understand the situation she was in and how she had been feeling.

“Head on back to your room and change that dress,” he told her. “Let Melinda pick out the outfit for tonight, and let her put it on you. You hear me, little girl?”

She heard him, but she suspected he hadn’t really heard a thing she had just said. Her rooms were just on the next hall over, and she slowly walked back to them, slumped enough in her posture to make her coach back in Hollywood cringe. Her head was spinning, and she knew her life was not her own.

A brilliant idea occurred to her as she looked down at the hands on her Rolex. She had just enough time to make it over to Zach’s room and surprise him before the dinner tonight. Straightening her posture back to celebrity standards, she went running down the hall in the direction of Zach’s room, Peaches and Cream struggling to match her pace.

Chrissie hadn’t even seen Zach’s room at the hotel yet since they had checked in. This was a stuffy charity dinner, so her agent had told her and her daddy had agreed that for appearance’s sake she and Zach needed separate rooms. That really seemed crazy to Chrissie since she and Zach had been lovers for the last six months, but of course her agents, her PR people, and, most of all, her daddy ruled her life.

She was glad she hadn’t put on heels yet as she ran across the thick carpet of the hotel corridor, a playful smile on her face at the thought of surprising Zach alone in his room. What would she do to him after she got him naked? They still had two hours before dinner.