Not Famous in Hollywood (Not in Hollywood Book 1) (2 page)

Unfortunatel
y the
reality was that last night I had chocolate cake with ice cream and
I didn’t exactly have a sliver of a slice. The word diet has never
been one that I have found to be particularly well used in my
vocabulary. That meant that although I barely managed to get the
top half of my body through the door I was now well and truly
wedged at the hip level.

I
had two options here. I could try to wriggle out again and give up,
turn around and head home
. I
could pretend I’d been talking in my sleep when I answered the
phone and had no memory of the conversation. My other alternative
was to grab hold of something and wrench myself through the door. I
seriously considered the talking in my sleep option for five full
minutes but I knew that the woman would just keep calling until I
got here. Of course then I heard the growling of a dog coming from
outside the door. It seems that when I was walking around the dog
that belonged to this door had seen me as too much of a threat. Now
I was simply a butt and legs hanging out the door, the dog thought
he could take me. I no longer had a choice.

With a healthy dose of panic
, I wriggled around until my hips were lined up with the
widest part of the opening. I placed my hands on the floor as if I
was doing a forty five degree push up, used my feet to push and my
hands to pull myself through the door. As I felt my hips scraping
against the hard edges of the plastic I heard a crashing noise as I
hit the floor with the doggie door frame still wedged around my
hips, splintered wood around what was now an uneven hole in the
door. With a yelp the dog took off, obviously deciding that I had
reached threat level again.

Grabbing hold of the brittle piece of plastic around my
hips I wiggled and bent until it hit the floor. Looking
a
t the now mangled and broken
remains of the doggie door I knew that there was no way that it was
ever going back in that door. Not much I could do about it now and
seriously somebody should have answered the door to me, so it
really wasn’t my fault.

“
Hell
o, Miss
Channing” I called. “It’s me, Trudie.”

No answer. Not that I was hugely surprised. I
headed upstairs towards the bedrooms. I’d been here before. Often.
I knew where to go. Knocking on the bedroom door I prayed they
weren’t having sex. In fact as the door opened I could see that
Eleanor was the only one sitting on the bed. Her shoulder length
blonde hair was wet and strands were clinging to her face. Those
blue eyes that more than one over enthusiastic critic had claimed
you could drown in, were swimming with tears.

My gut clenched as I raced over to her. This
was not what I was expecting to see.

“Are you okay?” I looked her over.

Regardless of how she treated me, if Ryan
Hendricks had hurt her I was going to destroy him.

“
I think I killed him
,” I heard her whisper.

“Where is Ryan?” I asked hoping that I had
misheard.

Elea
nor looked over
my shoulder at the bathroom where I could hear the shower was
running.

Ma
king my way towards
the bathroom I had a very bad feeling. Pushing open the door I saw
Ryan Hendricks’s body slumped in the shower. Reaching in I turned
off the water. I couldn’t see any blood or any reason for him to be
like that. My first instinct was to check he was dead. He certainly
looked dead, but if it was me lying there I would want someone to
make damn sure there wasn't a spark of life left in me. I knelt
beside the former hottest man alive and tentatively placed my
fingers against his neck. No pulse there. The chest didn’t seem to
be moving but I put my ear against it to see if I could hear
anything at all. Nothing. I strode out of the bathroom.

“
Are you hurt?”
I asked Eleanor looking her over as I pulled my cell out of
my pocket. It had miraculously survived the doggie door
incident.

I
couldn’
t see any sign that
she was actually hurt. She turned to me with her eyes glazed. I was
hoping it was from shock and not some artificial stimulant. I
grabbed her shoulders and shook her lightly. My first choice would
have been slapping her, but considering I still had some residual
anger at her for getting herself, and by extension me, into this
situation, I couldn’t be sure I could moderate that
slap.

“Eleanor Channing” I said loudly and clearly.
“I need you to tell me if you are hurt at all.”

“
No” she said softly in an almost
childlike voice, “but Ryan won’t wake
up.”

T
hat didn’t sound
like she was functioning on all cylinders. I knew about shock and
drugs, I worked in the entertainment industry after all. I quickly
dialed 911, informing the operator that I had a man who wasn’t
breathing. Once I got off the phone I turned my attention back to
Eleanor who still had that glassy look in her eyes.

“It’ll be alright” I said soothingly, lying
through my teeth.

Nothing about this situation was going to
be alright. Ryan Hendricks hadn’t
been a particularly pleasant human being, but for millions of women
out there he represented the ultimate man of their dreams. He was
going to be missed. Mostly by people who didn’t actually know him,
but he had family and friends. He had a fiancée who was going to be
devastated. At this stage I looked at my phone and started dialing
Monique’s phone number. I quickly explained the situation to her
and hung up. I know, I’m not too proud of the fact I was supposed
to do that. We all read those stories of these kind of situations
and judge the person who contacts a lawyer, a manager or the media
in that moment. The fact of the matter was that I was in a volatile
situation. This mess could go any number of different ways and
dealing with it was way above my pay grade.

I heard a crash downstairs as the front door
was kicked open and rebounded against the wall.

“
We’re up here
”
I yelled as I grabbed Eleanor’s shoulders and gently tried to pull
her away from the bed. Feet pounded up the stairs and two uniformed
police officers came through the bedroom door, guns first. In that
moment terror gripped me. I grew up in Australia and though I’d
been living in Los Angeles for six months, the fact that guns were
so prevalent still terrified me. I didn’t know where to look when a
gun was pointed at me. I lacked the necessary etiquette for these
situations.

“Freeze, don’t move” the cops yelled out.

I
was only too happy to comply. Finally someone was telling me what
to do. I froze
, but at that
moment the Eleanor Channing that I knew and couldn’t stand came
screaming to the fore.

“How dare you” she screeched. “Do you know
who I am?” she said walking unsteadily towards the police.

I
was thinking that if she got to
o close to them she would be on the morning news as the
late, not so great, actress Eleanor Channing. I would have lost my
first client in one of the worst ways possible. Now that I think
about it, there were worse ways for her to go out, but why did she
have to do it on my watch.

“Ma’am, step back now or we will have to
shoot” one of the police shouted.

She didn’t. I didn’
t
really expect her to. When you’ve been in the rarefied air where
everyone is willing to give you anything you want, you start to
think that the world really does revolve around you. The idea of
being denied doesn’t even come into your head. I expected Eleanor
to keep haranguing the two poor cops about who she was. What I
didn’t expect was for one of them to grab his stun gun and shoot
America’s sweetheart. The look of surprise on her face as those two
prongs hit her was priceless. I hoped they didn’t leave a mark on
her skin because then she would be really upset. She went down with
a thud. My jaw dropped and though it was totally inappropriate I
fought the beginnings of a smile. The cop looked at me as if he
couldn’t quite believe what had just happened and I just shrugged
my shoulders. Really, she brought it on herself.

It is amazing
how quickly a situation escalates when celebrities are involved.
Paramedics arrived soon after the police. Once it was determined
that there wasn’t anything they could do for Ryan, they turned
their attentions to Eleanor. I’d hoped that being stunned might at
least induce, if not respect, maybe a little bit of fear of the
law. As usual I was wrong. The second that woman was able to speak
again she did so loudly and without taking a breath.

Having seen
the power
of the stun gun I was not willing to say a word, so I just stayed
in the background trying desperately to be unnoticed. The couple of
times when I did try to calm her down and suggest she wasn’t doing
herself any favors, I was swiftly told in no uncertain terms that
my opinion was not wanted and that unless I could get her out of
here, then I was completely useless.

At that point I figured that I had done the best I could. I
smiled apologetically to all the emergency workers in the room. All
I could do now was to try and work out how we were going to deal
with the fallout when footage of this little tirade ended up on
some media show. Because it would. One thing I have learned is that
people have an amazing capacity to hold a grudge. I have often been
told that I am too nice, that I let people walk all over me.
Despite that I have to admit seeing Eleanor stunned gave me a nice
feeling, as if it was payback for all the insults and abuse that
she had dealt to me over the last few months. I was sure that
regardless of the professionalism of the people in this building,
one of them had a recorder working on their cell phone and it was
taking down every vile thing that Eleanor was saying. At some point
that recording was goin
g to
find its way to the media.

So let
’s count down
how bad this was going to be for Eleanor. First, she slept with a
man that she knew was engaged. Next, her booty call died while she
was in the building. She, and I know this is how it is going to be
written up in the police report, attacked two police officers
responding to the scene and they were forced to subdue her by using
a stun gun. Finally, she was abusing police, paramedics and the
coroner, all hard working, salaried employees of the city. When all
this hit the news circuit, every commentator was going to have a
field day. I winced as I looked through the window and saw the
media trucks pulling up outside of Ryan’s house. This was so not
good.

There were people everywhere
bustling around us. The poor young officer who had been
first on the scene was standing near me looking sick. He looked
young, like he was playing dress up.

“Are you okay?” I asked, feeling a bit sorry
for him.

He gulped in some air. “I just stunned
Eleanor Channing.” He had obviously only now started realizing the
enormity of what he had done. There was no denying it. He had, and
she went down like a sack of potatoes.

“I’m going to lose my job.”

“Maybe not” I said sympathetically. “I think
everyone here is going to say she deserved it.”

The poor guy nodded gratefully but I could already see him
mentally working out what c
areer he might be better suited for.

“
It could have been worse” I tried to say helpfully.
“You
could have shot
her.” The poor man didn’t look convinced. I smiled at him. “If you
want to focus on the positive side, you’ve given me a memory that I
will treasure for the rest of my life.”

He didn’t look as if that helped him at
all.

I
watched as the paramedics loaded Eleanor into the ambulance. As she
continued to berate them I could only marvel at the level of
self-control it must have taken not
to tip over the stretcher and dump their complaining charge on the
ground. As the ambulance pulled out there was a mad scramble
amongst the media as they tried desperately to get photos of the
inside of the vehicle. As it pulled through the throng some of the
media vans chased after it while others tried to make the call as
to where the bigger story was.

I’d tuned out most of the voices around me. I seemed to
have been forgotten and I was severely regretting not having a
coffee this morning. Not to mention I hadn’t eaten yet. I have a
tendency to become a little cranky when I go without food. It’s one
of the reasons I don’t diet. I’m not willing to inflict that part
of my personality on my fellow man. That’s my reasoning and I’m
sticking to it. I was imagining how good the pecan pie that I had
at home would taste right about now
, when I realized someone was standing in front of me
waiting for an answer. I blinked and discovered I hadn’t seen these
officers enter the premises. I had been so intent on ignoring
everything that was happening around me that I had missed these
cops. I should have noticed.

This is the reason why ordinary women in LA have it so
hard. When the cops look like this. The male cop was hot but not
in
the pretty boy way that I
was used to seeing in my industry. He was masculine and looked like
he could chew nails and spit out bullets. Tall with dark short hair
and green eyes, he looked hard and strong. His partner on the other
hand was gorgeous. With her tanned skin and black hair she would
have looked perfect on a fashion magazine, but no, this is LA where
even the cops look like this. I didn't have a chance. No wonder my
social life was so lackluster, well that and I worked for a tyrant
who sucked the joy out of my life. Every. Single. Day. Maybe I
should find another job. I was becoming remarkably bitter working
for Eleanor.