Breaking Hollywood (25 page)

Rage. Pure rage.

What was wrong with people? Didn’t anyone have a decent bone in their body, or were they all so bloody self-absorbed that they just did whatever the fuck they liked whether it was the
right thing to do or not?

For nineteen years she’d been married to that man, and she’d loved him for every day of that, even though he was largely absent from their lives. He spent more than half of every
year out on location, and many of the months at home locked in the editing suite. Mirren wondered now how long they would have lasted if they’d actually lived together. Judging by the man she
knew him to be now, it wouldn’t have been long. But back then, she was just desperate to have her family, desperate to make it work and desperate to have the kind of stability she’d
craved since she was that child sitting outside her home because she wasn’t wanted inside.

Leaning on the vanity unit, she stared at the woman in front of her for a few seconds before she realized it was her own reflection. Her skin looked pale. Her eyes tired. There were lines on her
face that hadn’t been there this time last year. The face belonging to that woman was the face of exhaustion. Of a broken soul. The whole world was moving on and yet she couldn’t, still
stuck in a quagmire of regret and devastation.

And she couldn’t stand to look at it for a single minute longer.

Leaving the washroom, she headed back to the table. Mark was signing the check, two large brandies already on the table.

‘Do you mind if we just head off?’ she asked. ‘I don’t think I’m in the mood for brandy after all.’

He covered the surprise well. ‘Not at all. Of course. Let’s go.’

Outside, he guided her to a black Range Rover. Predictable. After telling him her address, not another word was spoken in the ten minutes it took to reach the Colony. When security saw her, they
were waved through, and Mirren directed him to her driveway.

Only when they’d stopped did he turn to speak to her. ‘Look, are you OK? Only – and maybe I’ve got this completely wrong – you seemed fine and then you seemed
really pissed off and I’m not sure what happened.’

A sigh escaped her.

She reached over and opened the door. By the time she got to the front of the car, he’d stopped the engine and jumped out too. Wordlessly, she put her key in the door, opened it,
deactivated the alarm and took one step inside, only turning then to see him standing there, bewildered.

It took a moment for her brain to transmit her thoughts to her vocal cords.

‘Right now, I really don’t give a damn that you’re the head of the studio. I don’t care what you think of me or whether you had a good time tonight. Right now, I just
want someone to come in here, and lie with me, and make love to me, so I can forget, for just one night, how much my life hurts. If that’s you, please come in. If not, then thank you for
dinner.’

Mirren turned and walked into the house without looking to see if he followed.

‘Fire and Rain’ – James Taylor

Zander

Adrianna hadn’t even looked back. It was as if she knew what he was going to say and didn’t want to hear it. She just strutted forward, head held high, her arm
wrapped around the crook of her husband’s elbow. From the floor-to-ceiling windows, Zander watched as they crossed the rain-swept tarmac and stepped onto the gleaming Challenger 300 that was
parked directly beside the Gulfstream G200 that had brought them here.

His hands had shaped themselves into fists, and his jaw was clenched so hard it was making his teeth ache. His gut was twisting so tightly it felt like it was ripping his insides apart. This was
like the worst comedown ever. Worse than the aftereffects of a three-day coke binge. Worse than waking up to the sound of a cellmate pissing in a steel toilet.

Fuck, he really, really needed a drink.

Every day that thought crossed his mind, and every day he pushed it away, but right now he’d never felt more like locking himself in a confined space with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s
and a whole lot of self-reproach.

‘Mr Leith, we’re ready to take you through now,’ the smiley ground-control attendant told him.

His head was buzzing. When he boarded the plane, he couldn’t remember the walk from the terminal, his whole brain still consumed by the sight of her walking away, not turning back.

Again, fuck, he really needed a drink.

On board, it was the same hostess who had been there on the way over, and if she looked surprised to see him alone, she didn’t show it. Over the years Zander had had many wild times on
private jets. There was the time he flew from New York to Paris with eight girls, three bags of coke and a legendary guitarist, renowned for debauchery and excess. Only when they woke up back in
the Big Apple did they realize they’d been too messed up to remember to get off the plane in France.

On another occasion, flying from LA to Miami for a location shoot, he’d played Wild Turkey strip poker with an actress famous for playing the ditsy lead role in chick flicks. Every time
one of them lost a hand, they had to down two fingers of Turkey and remove an item of clothing. By the time they were an hour east of California, they were doing stuff that was undoubtedly illegal
in several of the states below them.

‘Can I get you anything, Mr Leith?’

Fuck, he really needed a drink.

And he could have one. Who would know? He could take a bottle right now to the bedroom and drink himself into a stupor, then sleep it off until he reached LA. Job done. Oblivion achieved.

Chloe would know. He wasn’t sure he believed in the afterlife, and he definitely didn’t believe in heaven or hell, but if they did exist, he was pretty sure she’d be above him,
calling him all the fuckers under the sun for even considering getting wasted.

He’d promised her. Just a few weeks after they’d met in rehab for the first time, he’d promised her that they could both do this, swore he’d get her through it and
they’d come out the other side sober and clean.

He did.

Chloe didn’t.

If he fell off the wagon to hell now, he’d never forgive himself, not for being weak and capitulating, but for letting her down.

‘No, I’m fine, thanks. I’m just going to go next door and sleep. Can you wake me when we’re twenty minutes out from LA, please?’

Wendy from Nebraska didn’t even try to hide her disappointment. She’d only been in this job for two months and Zander Leith was the biggest star she’d flown with. What was the
point of fame, fortune and a private jet if you were just going to sleep your way through it? Going by all the scandals and court cases over the years, she thought he’d have been a wild ride.
In all respects.

Zander closed the door behind him and stripped off his jacket and shirt, then his jeans, leaving on the cashmere boxer shorts with the Guilloti label. The irony almost made him laugh. The same
woman who had just walked away from him was still all over his ass.

A knock on the door and then it opened without waiting for a response. The stewardess had removed her neck scarf and undone the top buttons on her blouse, revealing a cleavage that a lover could
get lost in. On any another day, he’d be up for a spot of orienteering.

‘Mr Leith, are you sure there’s nothing I can do for you?’

She couldn’t have made the suggestion any more salacious if she’d written it on a thong and delivered it with her teeth. Now she was blatantly staring at him, showing absolutely no
acknowledgement or embarrassment that he was as close to naked as it got without a full frontal. Her gaze lingered on the wide, carved shoulders, the beautifully defined pecs, then paused in the
groove between every single bump of his perfectly formed abs, stopping to linger on the point on his lower torso where a deep V-shape from one side his pelvis to the other disappeared at the middle
point under the waistband of his cashmere shorts.

‘Thanks, but I’m good. I’m just going to catch some sleep.’

‘No problem,’ she replied, the tightness of her mouth suggesting that it was indeed a problem.

She backed out of the door and Zander stood for a moment, head facing upwards, eyes closed. That old feeling was making every synapse in his brain, every nerve in his body scream for something
to numb the pain.

Endless therapists and addiction experts had probed him for details of how and when this started. He’d never told them. What was he going to say? That when he was a kid, he’d sneak
booze into his bedroom and drink until he couldn’t hear his pissed-up father shouting that he was going to kill his fucker of a son? Or his mother, crying as she said another decade of the
rosary and prayed to Our Lady for a husband she adored, her tears running over the latest set of bruises he’d just delivered? Or that he drank in the good times back then too? When he and
Davie and Mirren would spend night after night sitting on a bedroom floor with a bottle of cider, Simple Minds blaring in the background, smoking cigarettes they’d pilfered from a
parent’s fag packet?

He’d hit the booze when he was terrified, when he was down, when he was up. But after the night his father was killed, he drank to forget. Because no one should have to remember what
happened in the hours before Jono Leith took his last breath, or the hours after his rancid soul had left his body.

Only six people knew the truth about his murder. Zander. Mirren. Marilyn. Davie. Davie’s mother, Ena. Sarah.

With the exception of the latter, the others had been able to live with it without seeking anything to block it out.

Zander couldn’t. Hadn’t.

But now there was no choice, because the alternative was a dark road that he would have to walk alone. His life was better than it had ever been. He’d reconnected with Mirren. His
relationship with Davie hadn’t settled yet, but it would. His career was riding high, and materially he had everything he could possibly want. He couldn’t fuck this up. Adrianna
Guilloti and her messed-up mind games were not going to take this away from him.

Fuck, he really needed a drink.

But his last thought, as he climbed into bed and fell into a welcome sleep, was that he wasn’t going to have one.

It was still dark when he woke and for a moment he was disorientated. His senses kicked in. Noise. Movement. A plane. Horizontal. A cover. Bed. A body next to his. Adrianna.

No, back.

He squinted open his eyes and was met with darkness. Groping around with his free hand, the one that wasn’t trapped under the person sleeping beside him, he located the button on the
headboard that switched on the bedside lamp, then turned to see the stirring form of the stewardess, her shoulders naked, and from what he could feel in the places where their bodies touched, she
was wearing underwear but not much more.

He pulled his arm away and sat up, the fear rising as he recognized the repetition of a thousand other mornings when he’d woken up in bed with someone he didn’t remember going to
sleep with. Hang on. No. He hadn’t had a drink. There had been no drugs. He’d gone to bed alone. Which means she must have slipped in during the night. He didn’t know whether it
was funny or a violation of his human rights.

He watched as the movement woke her and she opened her eyes, squinting against the light.

‘Ah, Mr Leith. I think we’ll be landing soon,’ she said with a bold grin. Reaching over to where he’d left his cigarettes and lighter, she took two out of the packet, lit
them at the same time and then handed one over to him. He was pretty sure they were now breaking a federal law, but he decided that was the least of his worries.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said, gesturing to her form under the bed sheet. ‘I was bored, and you looked so comfortable.’ As excuses went, it wouldn’t win
any awards, but it did make him smile.

‘Look, if you want to report me to my bosses, go ahead. I wouldn’t blame you.’

She took a puff on her cigarette and then flicked the ash into a water glass on the bedside table.

Zander put his head back and closed his eyes again for a few seconds. Why did things like this happen to him? Why? Was a normal life really too much to ask for?

‘So –’ she checked her watch ‘– it’s half an hour until landing and I can get up, bring you some breakfast and look suitably apologetic about my boldness . .
.’

It was impossible not to look at her when she spoke, and even harder not to laugh.

‘Or I can stay here and give you the in-flight safety briefing you missed at the start.’

The cheeky glint in her eye made it perfectly clear which option she would prefer. The choice wasn’t too difficult. In his head, the image of Adrianna walking away with her husband,
leaving him a free man. A free man with a gorgeous woman lying next to him in bed.

No debate. Leaning over, he slipped his hand round the side of her face, caressing her cheek with his thumb. She tossed the rest of the cigarette into the glass, took his off him and did the
same, then turned back to face him. As his lips met hers, she slipped her hands under the covers, feeling the bulge of his cock and massaging it until it was even harder.

Zander moved downwards, pulling down the cups of her strapless bra, then traced slow, exquisite lines round her nipple with his tongue, before encapsulating it in his mouth. She whispered
encouragement, her legs widening as he climbed on top of her, then raised up onto his knees, one on either side of her hips, straddling her, his cock hard and erect. Her turn to take charge. Her
eyes never left his as she began to wank him, but she smiled when he reached behind his back and slowly, teasingly, slipped his fingers inside her, rubbing her clit with his thumb as he pulled them
back out, then in, out, in.

A low, blissful murmur came from the back of her throat as he used his free hand to tease her nipple, knowing that the sensation of two erogenous zones being aroused at the same time would send
her down the road to orgasm. He upped the tempo on both movements, one hand in front of his upright torso, the other one behind, plunging into the darkness but never for a moment unsure of where to
go. She matched his rhythm, her hand stretched round his dick, her strokes long and fast into the crevice between her breasts. Faster. So fast he could feel himself starting to come, but
wasn’t going there without her.