Hollywood Girls Club
Read Hollywood Girls Club Online
Authors: Maggie Marr
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Contemporary Women
HOLLYWOOD GIRLS CLUB
Maggie Marr
Copyright © 2012
All Rights Reserved.
AGENCY INFORMATION
NLA Digital Liaison Platform LLC
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Praise for Hollywood Girls Club
“Romance, sex…[Marr] clearly knows her way around Hollywood. Saucy…bound to be compared to certain Jackie Collins titles not just because of the Hollywood subject matter but also because Marr brings a similar ferocious energy to her writing.”
—Boston Globe
“Marr’s titillating debut…Marr offers plenty of steamy romance. Each woman gets a string of lovers—some winners, some losers—in her bawdy romp.”
—Kirkus
“Hollywood power-puff Marr pulls back the curtain on the wizards of Tinseltown…The girls’ club cutthroat and callous turns out to be a lot like the boys’ club, but cattier and more fun to read about.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
“Maggie Marr’s L.A. story of friendships, scandals, and crazy egos is as fun and entertaining as any Hollywood blockbuster.”
—Social Life Magazine
“Hollywood Girls Club is about as easy to stop consuming as a bowl of Häagen-Dazs.”
—Robin Hazelwood, author of Model Student
“Smart, sassy and brilliantly observed … a funny and sharp exposé of the Hollywood machine.”
—Sue Margolis, author of Gucci Gucci Coo
Praise for Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club
“In her follow-up to The Hollywood Girls Club Marr not only takes readers behind the scenes of Tinseltown, she plummets them into the middle of hot sex scandals, blackmail and illicit affairs. These four powerful women not only manage to stay on top – both in the office and in the bedroom — they keep their friendship strong and their movies hot.”
—Romantic Times Book Review 4 Stars
“Marr’s second novel is frothy, gossipy fun for US and People magazine addicts.”
—Booklist Review
“Marr’s prose is fast and sharp and she keeps the plots flying….The ripsnorter sequel to Hollywood Girls Club revolves around sex and plastic surgery secrets…if it sounds like fun it is.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
“This is a juicy, delicious read! I just loved the insider secrets and the access to what really goes on in Hollywood—the stuff we suspect happens but is always denied by scary publicists.”
—Marian Keyes, author of The Other Side of The Story
“Move over, Jackie Collins! Secrets of The Hollywood Girls Club is a steamy page-turner bursting with insider Hollywood gossip. I loved it!”
—Sarah Mlynowski, author of Milkrun and Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn’t Have)
CONTENTS
An excerpt from The Secrets Of The Hollywood Girls Club
An excerpt from Can’t Buy Me Love
An excerpt from Courting Trouble
Chapter 1
Celeste Solange and Her Fifteen-Thousand-Dollar Shoes
Celeste Solange needed shoes, and not just any kind of shoes – she needed Manolos, Choos, and Versaces. Shoes with price tags containing a minimum of three zeros. Shoes that made salesclerks salivate and Beverly Hills trophy wives green with envy. Damien would pay. She’d make sure of it. He’d blanch at the sight of his credit-card bill. Celeste glanced into the rearview mirror of her midnight blue Porsche Boxster convertible. Although she wore oversized Gucci sunglasses, she knew that behind the shades her turquoise eyes were red-rimmed and swollen (the same gold-flecked catlike eyes for which she was famous). Her signature blond hair, usually expertly coiffed and styled, whipped in the California wind. A cross between Michelle Pfeiffer and Marilyn Monroe, Celeste was
the
sexpot screen siren of the century (or at least the last five years).
Who did Damien Bruckner think he was?
Heat seared through her taut belly as Celeste pressed her perfectly pedicured toes onto the accelerator. A rush of adrenaline thrilled through her as the pedal sank to the floorboard and she took the tight turn on Mulholland Drive. When Celeste met Damien five years before, he was, perhaps, the most prolific film producer in Hollywood, and Celeste the hottest star. But five years (in an industry where the power brokers changed every ten years) was a lifetime.
Celeste crested a hill and looked at Los Angeles lying at her feet. She could almost see the Pacific if it weren’t for the haze. The calm that usually accompanied this view was absent—destroyed by Damien’s deceit.
L.A. must have been beautiful in the forties. As a child, she’d seen pictures in her grandmother’s old movie magazines—orange groves, mountains, beaches, and waves all visible from the top of Mulholland and the Hollywood Hills. The very beauty those pictures promised had captivated a young Celeste and drawn her from a trailer court in Tennessee to the land of movie stars. Now, with the exhaust and pollution, the view was tarnished. This view was dirty and gray. Just like Damien Bruckner.
Damien believed he’d satisfy Celeste by giving her a five-carat diamond and his last name. But after what Celeste had found, neither the diamond nor the name was enough. None of it was.
The fucker.
For five years, Celeste fucked him and blew him. Even fucked a few of his friends, and why? Why? Good question. Celeste thought she’d known the answer. For the fulfillment of a promise. That once Amanda Bruckner, Damien’s first wife, was gone, she—Celeste Solange, superstar—would be Mrs. Damien Bruckner. And finally, in the perfect Malibu wedding just six months ago, Celeste had gotten her wish. Or what she thought was her wish. Fulfilling Celeste’s desire to be one half of “the” power couple in the movie business. It had been a grandiose event. Everyone was there. Tom, Kate, Will, Bruce, even the ever-reclusive Robert. The press was phenomenal. Helicopters whirling overhead, paparazzi sneaking through the bushes. (Damien and Celeste had been smart enough to get tents.) The picture of her dress, Celeste heard, had sold for more than a hundred grand.
And then, almost immediately after the wedding, the rumors began. The rumors and the questions. What about Celeste’s career? Was it over? She hadn’t worked in close to two years—was she leaving film to become a domestic diva? Perhaps a little Bruckner was soon to follow the Malibu wedding ceremony. Or perhaps, as the most popular tabloid rumors implied, Celeste was already pregnant with what was sure to be the perfect Hollywood child. None of it was true. Celeste’s sabbatical from film was at Damien’s behest, causing, he believed, the public’s hunger for her next picture to swell. Because Celeste’s first film in two years was scheduled to be the next film Damien produced, an action adventure entitled
Borderland Blue
.
Celeste gripped the steering wheel of her Porsche with an anger that couldn’t be denied—an anger that consumed her beauty, her dreams, even her picture-perfect marriage.
Damien’s ex-wife, Amanda Bruckner, would have laughed at this scenario. Thrown back her head and cackled with glee. Barely forty-five and set for life, Amanda sat in a stunning $15 million home in Nice overlooking the ocean, and Damien threw gazillions of dollars at her just to keep her quiet and to stay the fuck away from Los Angeles. Amanda kept his name and a huge chunk of his money (in addition to the $50,000 a month in alimony Damien paid). Amanda—was free. Amanda would appreciate the humor in Celeste’s current situation— how could she not? The irony was absolute.
Black lace panties.
It seemed Damien liked them on all his women. Because the black lace panties that Mathilde (Celeste and Damien’s housekeeper) had found in Damien’s suitcase this morning weren’t all that different from all the pairs of little black lace panties Celeste wore when Damien was sleeping with Celeste and still married to Amanda.
“
Senora, es to
?” Mathilde had asked, holding up the crotchless undies as she unpacked the suitcase Damien brought home from New Zealand late last night.
Emerging from the bathroom sauna, Celeste froze at the sight of Mathilde waving the panties over the couple’s king-size bed. Her heart pounded. Those are
not mine
. Even from a distance she could tell. The offensive black polyester lingerie that Mathilde held was cheap and shoddily made. It had been a decade since Celeste had felt anything but Agent Provocateur against her skin.
Celeste put on her Hollywood game face (she was a Golden Globe–winning actress, after all) and smiled at Mathilde. “
Sí. Un presente for Senor Bruckner.
To remember me by, while he was away on set.”
No need to have the help talking
. If Mathilde discovered that Damien was having an affair, everyone in town would know. All the hired help rode the same bus—how do you think everyone in Hollywood found out that Steven Brockman was gay?
Celeste flinched at the memory, swerving around her rapper neighbor’s Escalade attempting to turn onto Mulholland in front of her. It wasn’t the fucking around that pissed her off. They were a liberal sort of Hollywood couple. Celeste had been aware of Damien’s fling with this little cocktease of an actress Brianna Ellison for months. But the trip to New Zealand, to a film Damien wasn’t even producing (executive producing only; he might as well be a grip), combined with this little tramp getting the lead in
Borderland Blue
, that was enough to make Celeste burn.
Damien didn’t even have the integrity to tell Celeste that she’d been bumped from the lead role (and the sneaky bastard hadn’t left the trades lying around this morning—he’d taken
Variety
and
Hollywood Reporter
). But Damien wasn’t clever enough. Much like finding crotchless panties in the hands of their housekeeper, Celeste learned of her public disgrace via another employee—this time her publicist, Kiki Dee. There in the fax machine, just like every morning, lay copies of all the articles (
Us
,
People
,
Star
,
the Enquirer
,
Variety
…) that mentioned Celeste. But this morning there’d been a hissing cobra on the second page of Kiki’s twenty-page fax. BRUCKNER BLUE FOR BRIANNA screamed the headline in
Variety
.