Hollywood Scandal

Dr. Calla Roberts has seen too much death, destruction and betrayal to ever believe in fairy tales or men who are as beautiful on the inside as they are on the outside.

Which is why LA Lawyer Alex Hardy irritates the crap out of her. He’s a lawyer who practices radical honesty in a city famous for make believe. When an actor who thinks he can buy or cheat his way out of anything attempts to discredit Calla, Alex (with a crooked nose for trouble) champions her desperate cause. She slowly begins to think that good guys do exist, until she discovers Alex has lied about who he is, and who he loves.

Hollywood Scandal

A Seacliffe Medical Novel

Julie Rowe

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Julie Rowe. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at
www.entangledpublishing.com
.

Edited by Rochelle French and Allison Blisard

Cover design by Liz Pelletier

Ebook ISBN 978-1-62266-575-4

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition May 2014

To all those who donate their time and skills to make the lives of others easier. You are all heroes.

Chapter One

Dr. Calla Roberts stared down at the newspaper in her hands, a frown creasing her forehead. How the heck had the papers gotten these photos? The four published on page one were post-surgical pictures that shouldn’t have gone further than the patient’s file. All of them were images she’d taken, their only use to document the reconstructive surgery she’d performed.

Anger and disgust churned her gut, making her wish she hadn’t eaten lunch. When she got her hands on the scumbag who was leaking photos from Seacliffe Cosmetic Surgery & Spa she was going to… Well, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do. Something not nice, certainly. Humiliating would be good. Publicly humiliating would be better.

She closed the newspaper and threw it on the table in the spa’s employee lounge.

So inadequate.

She picked it up, crumpled it into a ball, dropped it on the floor, jumped on it a few times, and then hurled it into the trash.

Much better.

“Um, Dr. Roberts?”

Calla glanced over her shoulder. Seacliffe’s receptionist, Selena Harris, stood in the doorway.

“Sorry to interrupt your lunch, but Alexander Hardy is here to see you.”

“Alexander Hardy?
Mr. Perfect
booked an appointment with me?”

Selena winced. “He doesn’t have an appointment.”

He thought she was a hack for what he called
pasting permanent lies onto otherwise perfect faces
. He made it clear when he called her a glorified makeup artist the day they met. “Why does he want to see me?”

“Something about taking advantage of the downtrodden of LA?” She shrugged. “I’m not really clear on what he meant. He’s sort of ranting.”

“Ranting?” Alex Hardy, the spa’s lawyer on retainer, with offices next door and a nose for trouble, was capable of many things, but ranting? When he spoke it was with perfect diction and deliberate intent.
So
not a ranter.

Calla had only met the man a couple of times, but the impression he’d made on her was one of sharp intelligence coupled with a strength of will rivaling her own. Which was probably why they’d disagreed vehemently both times they’d spoken to each other.

He also represented the owner of the spa, Helen Ridgeway, on legal matters. That meant Calla had to be polite to him, though there were times when she’d rather poke him in the eye. Or worse.

In her current mood, verbal thrust and parry would be welcome.

“I’ll deal with him, Selena.”

“Thanks, Doctor.” She gave Calla a smile. “I wasn’t sure if I should try to shove him out the door or charge a ten-dollar cover for everyone in the waiting room.”

“Why not both?”

Calla must have looked as vicious as she felt because a frown creased Selena’s face. “Is something else bothering you?”

“Another leak of photos in the paper.”

“Again? I hadn’t heard.”

“I just saw them.” Calla angled her chin at the garbage can.

“Oh, that’s what you were jumping on.”

“I prefer stomping. It makes me feel like I’ve done something productive.”

Selena shook her head. “Helen is going to have a heart attack if this keeps up.”

“Let’s hope not.” Calla headed out of the lounge and toward the reception area. “I’ll go take care of our lawyer problem.”

Selena followed at a trot. “He’s not really a
problem
. Helen likes him.”

“Helen isn’t going to tolerate her lawyer turning our waiting area into a place to practice his courtroom drama skills.”

“Oh, one more thing. Jeff MacKay left another message for you. Wants a return phone call.”

Calla snorted. “I’ve already said everything I intend on saying to him. Would you mind calling him back and giving him that message?”

“I used to think he was cute,” the receptionist said with a rueful shake of her head. “But not so much anymore.”

Jeff MacKay, voted the sexiest man in the world by the tabloids, had become persona non grata to Calla. He’d hit a woman with his car and then left the scene without waiting for police or an ambulance.

If bystanders hadn’t taken a bunch of pictures and video of him and his car with its personalized
ACTOR
plates, he might have gotten away with it. But the photos and video uploaded to the internet clearly showed what happened.

Calla had been called in to Helen’s House, a free clinic run by Helen Ridgeway, to operate on MacKay’s hit-and-run victim, Alicia Deleon, a recent immigrant to the USA from Mexico. Alicia would walk again, but not for several weeks and many hours of physiotherapy.

Jeff MacKay had contacted her shortly after Mrs. Deleon’s surgery to ask how he could help Calla’s professional interests. He claimed to love supporting charitable organizations like Helen’s House. She’d asked him what he wanted in return. He said all he wanted was her friendship.

Ha
. She told him her friendship wasn’t for sale and hung up on him.

“I’ve always thought there was something plastic about that man,” Calla said. “Fame isn’t good for everyone.”

She left her office and entered the waiting area. It was airy, decorated in soft colors and comfortable chairs, and had a small coffee bar for the comfort of their patients.

In his mid-thirties, Alex was a tall man, an inch or two over six feet, with the slim, fit build of a swimmer. He moved with the same power and liquid grace of a black panther on the hunt. It was impossible to not watch him cross a room. Her fingers itched to play with the dark hair he let grow a little too long. His face could have been classified as handsome, except for his nose.

It was a bold, slightly crooked blade turning his face into one of compelling character. He must have broken it at some point, but had never had it fixed. In a city known for its drive for perfection, his nose made an interesting statement about him.

And Calla liked that more than she’d care to admit.

At the moment, Alex was chatting animatedly with two aging, daytime soap actresses.

“You need to work on your intensity,” one of them said. “Make sure you use it judiciously. You don’t want to come off like you’re trying too hard.”

“Yes, and enunciate in the correct places. Right now you sound a little like Sylvester Stallone with a cold.”

It seemed she’d missed an interesting performance.

“A cold?” Alex said with a sneer. “I was going for pneumonia.”

“Catastrophic pneumonia?” Calla asked. “The kind that kills in about forty-eight hours?”

“Exactly, Doctor,” Alex said, turning toward her, a wide smile on his face. The expression had her heart rate rising and her feet eager to move closer to him. Something about the man drew her like a magnet to iron.

Another reason to be annoyed with him.

She didn’t want to be attracted to anyone. Attraction led to dating, love, and having your heart broken while the man you trusted with all your heart cleaned out your bank account. Just like last time.

“Thank you for your excellent suggestion,” he said.

Suggestion? “Indeed.” Calla sighed. “You wanted to see me? Or would you prefer to come back tomorrow?”

He grinned like a five-year-old who’d caught his first fish. “Today. We have important matters to discuss.” He made his bow to the two actresses. “Thank you, ladies.”

Alex preceded her to the elegant room she called her office, and she had to force herself to not stare at his taut butt. His slacks were definitely tailored to fit.

She shut the door, sealing herself in a small room with a man who made her feel things she wanted to avoid more than the plague.

He sat in the chair in front of her desk, the oddest expression of anticipation on his face. As if he were preparing to say something that might, or might not, blow up her office. “You’re willing to talk. Excellent.”

“It must be something urgent for you to create such a production,” she said.

“That was not a production. I was warming up.”

“Right.” She slid behind her desk, sat down, and stared at him. “So?”

He stared back, waiting, expectant. “You wanted to talk to me?”

“Indeed.” He leaned forward and she got a whiff of his aftershave.
Yum.
She sat back deliberately. Sniffing at the man, no matter how much she wanted to, would only get her into the kind of trouble she desperately wanted to avoid.

“I’m curious about what you’re selling.”

The question was so strange it distracted her from her daytime fantasies of wallowing in his scent while nibbling on his neck. “Selling?”

“And where you’re getting it, because I can tell you right now, the law looks harshly at doctors who are also drug dealers.”

Wait.
What?

Calla knew her jaw was hanging open. Knew it, but couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

Alex returned her gaze with a serious one of his own and very helpfully told her, “You’re going to catch flies.”

“I need all the protein I can get, because I couldn’t have heard you correctly.”

His expression didn’t change. “I think you heard me fine.”

He’d lost his mind. The butter had slid off his noodles. He’d recited one too many soliloquies and was now living in a fantasy world. “Why on earth would you think that? I write prescriptions for medications as they’re required. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m
sure
.” She got up, walked to the door, and opened it. “I think it’s time you left.”

“Not a good idea.” He didn’t even get up. “I need to understand you, Dr. Roberts. I need to know if you’re a liability to this clinic or not.”

He was serious. Whatever he was talking about, it was no joke.

She closed the door, crossed her arms over her chest, and contemplated her guest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Really?” He tilted his head to one side.

She gritted her teeth. “Not a clue.”

“Huh.”

She waited for him to tell her more. Ask questions or provide details, but he just looked at her like he was waiting for her to confess to sins she hadn’t committed. He might be cute and smell better than her mother’s pumpkin pie, but he was also nuts.

Finally, she gave in and asked the obvious. “Why do you think I’m selling drugs?”

“I saw you.” His mouth a hard line, his eyes unsmiling.

“Saw me? Saw me do what?” She moved back to her desk and sat down again. If she didn’t, she might do something she would most likely regret, like punching him in the mouth.

“You met with a teenage boy at the back of the parking lot and gave him some pills, which you showed him, then put in a small brown paper bag and handed to him. He, in turn, gave you something you pocketed. It looked like money to me. I would have confronted you about it then, but an urgent situation had come up, and by the time I had a couple of minutes free, you were gone.”

She blinked, then groaned and covered her face with her hands.

“Doctor, are you all right?” He sounded worried.

He should be, but not about her.

“No.” She pulled her hands away. “The stuff in the bag wasn’t drugs.”

“No?”

“Well, yes they were, but not the kind you think. That boy is the son of one of my patients from Helen’s House. The drug is an antibiotic for his mother, who couldn’t make the trip to see me. I didn’t charge him a cent. The antibiotics were free samples.”

Alex Hardy’s face smoothed out and he stared at her. “I see.”

“Since I last saw her, she’s developed an infection that’s made it painful to walk.”

“You operated on her?” Alex sat up and stared down his crooked nose at her like she was a particularly ugly cockroach. “What kind of plastic surgery did you do on this woman?”

Calla shook her head. “Stop with the dramatics. You sound like I’m doing backroom nose jobs on members of the mob. I performed reconstructive surgery on her right leg and hip.”

“Reconstructive surgery?” His voice went up. “Like making-it-possible-to-walk-again surgery?”

At her nod, he frowned. “I thought you were a plastic surgeon.”

“I am. But until I came to Seacliffe, I specialized in reconstructive surgery for accident victims at a public hospital in Chicago. Some of that was making-it-possible-to-walk-again stuff. Some of it was plastic surgery for people who were disfigured in fires or some other accident. I’ve done a couple of Doctors for the World trips to South America to do cleft palate surgeries and other facial deformities as well.”

Alex contemplated the top of her desk for a moment. “Can you prove it was innocent? Because if the press gets a hold of this, they’re going to roast you alive and the clinic can’t have that. There are enough pictures circulating as it is.”

She studied him with narrowed eyes. “How would the press find out about it?”

“They’re finding out about a lot of things they shouldn’t when it comes to Seacliffe.”

Was that a threat or a warning?

He gave her a nod, got to his feet, but paused as he put his hand on the doorknob. “A word to the wise, Doctor. I won’t be the only one who thinks you’re dealing drugs if you continue to dispense your antibiotic samples in brown paper bags at the back of the parking lot. It looked damned suspicious. What if someone without my scruples saw you? I suggest doing it in this facility or Helen’s House in front of witnesses.”

Scruples?
The majority of lawyers she’d encountered wouldn’t know a scruple from a screwdriver. “Should I interpret that as an order?”

He considered her question for a moment, then said, “Yes.” He left, closing the door behind himself.

“Next time, make an appointment,” she said, wondering if she could get him to come back in so she could throw some paper balls at his head.

Damn that man.

If something were to happen to her medical license, she’d be in hot water up to her neck.

Medical school, and her brother Richard’s mounting medical bills meant she had to stay out of trouble, work hard, and hopefully,
hopefully
, everything would be okay.

Having her nemesis point out her idiocy only made things worse.

She buried her face in her hands and called herself and Alex every name for stupid in the book.