Not Suspicious in Hollywood: Not in Hollywood Book 5
Read Not Suspicious in Hollywood: Not in Hollywood Book 5 Online
Authors: Leonie Gant
Not Suspicious in
Hollywood
Leonie Gant
Copyright ©2015 Leonie Gant
All Rights Reserved
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This novel is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the product of
the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Sometimes you have a job that all logic
tells you should really suck. I honestly thought my latest job would. Being the
personal assistant to one of the hottest rock bands on the planet, five guys
who had slept their way through a good proportion of the female population of
three continents, should qualify as one of those jobs. Having part of my job
description being to take care of the girls who made the questionable choice to
partake of the delights of this particular group of guys, was not part of any career
path that I had ever imagined myself on.
In the last month I had discovered exactly
how the backstage area of a rock band worked and it had been an eye opener. I
thought after over a year working in Hollywood that I had been exposed to
pretty much every deviant behavior that was out there. My current job proved to
me that, despite my pretensions at sophistication, I was still a babe in the
woods.
After my initial week working for this band,
for the first time in my career as a personal assistant to the most difficult
clients, I had been ready to throw it in. I found the guys rude and more
annoying than anyone that I had ever met. Considering my line of work, that was
definitely saying something.
At the end of that first week though,
something magical happened. My boyfriend turned up to drive me home after a
particularly long night watching these guys party. Detective Jake Griffin, who
had been listening to me complain about the band for a week, put on his cold
cop face to greet my newest clients. He put his hands on his hips, showing his
badge and gun and stared the guys down. He couldn’t have marked his territory
more clearly if he had peed around me.
After that moment I became the sexless den
mother figure to five overindulged and overpaid men in their twenties. All of a
sudden my job became fun, because when these guys weren’t being chauvinistic,
obnoxious jerks trying to get you into bed, they were a load of laughs.
Seriously, if I didn’t know what they were like with women, I would have set
them up with friends.
My job usually requires me to deal with
unusual situations. In this case I was hired by the recording company to keep
an eye on the guys that make up Crispy Spider while they worked on their new
album. I had previously worked with this particular recording company while
dealing with one of their teenage pop brats. The pop star hated me with an
absolute passion and had complained loudly and bitterly to his management about
how I had ruined his fun. For some reason this now qualified me as an expert
with dealing with the excesses in the music industry.
The band was currently sequestered on a
large property in Los Angeles where they were working on songwriting and
recording. Being a new band the guys had quickly fallen into the rock star
lifestyle and had become distracted from the business of making money. The
record company wanted me to assist in guiding the guys back into the business
side of their job and to try to avoid some of the scandals which had followed
these gentlemen through the aforementioned three continents. My job was to try
to manage the situations the band got themselves into and prevent them from
ending up in the tabloids, or in jail.
My job description had been laid out to me
pretty clearly by my boss, Monique Petit, who owned the agency I worked for.
She had even sent in my friend, Jorge, to work for security as back up if I
needed it. Of course, Jorge was only going to be useful to me if he would stop
laughing at the unfortunate predicament I had managed to find myself in.
“Have you finished?” I asked.
Jorge wiped the tears from his eyes.
“Wasn’t today supposed to be your day off?”
“Yes it was, and if you will help me, it
still could be. I have a police function to go to with Griffin and I need you
to help me so I can get there.”
I could see Jorge was contemplating his
next step. Admittedly, I had managed to find myself in a position which, even
with my ability to get myself into unusual situations, was a little out there.
I was used to the sometimes unique pets
that celebrities had. Mostly they stuck with dogs that could fit in handbags,
sometimes there were pigs and I had even had reptiles. The drummer of Crispy
Spider had decided his life would only be complete if he had a goat. It wasn’t
even a little baby goat with that level of cuteness that could make you forget
that it was currently destroying a thirty thousand dollar leather couch. No,
this was a full grown male goat with big horns and a bad temper. He had been in
the house for less than half an hour and had already decided that he didn’t
like me. I was assuming the reason for that was because I had walked into the
living room, seen what he had decided was for breakfast, screeched at him and
then tried to pull him off the couch. I was currently standing over him, with
each leg on either side of the goat’s back, bending over with my arms wrapped
around the goat’s chest, trying desperately to pull him away from the couch.
“What do you want me to do?” asked Jorge.
“I’m a city boy from LA. What do I know about goats? You’re the farm girl from
Australia. Aren’t you an expert in these things?”
“We have sheep at home. Sheep are gentle,
dumb souls who will go where you lead them, usually. Goats are destructive
forces of evil, only suited to wide open spaces. They should never be in a
city, let alone inside a mansion. A pen has been set up outside. I need you to
help me get this animal into the pen before it causes any more damage.”
Jorge sighed in that way he had started to
develop that told me that working with me was no longer such a special
experience.
“Tell me what to do.”
“Okay,” I said, breathing a little heavily.
“I want you to stand in front of the goat and hold his horns. Make sure you do
it gently. Don’t be too rough.”
I glanced up to find Jorge looking at me
with another expression he had adopted around me lately. “Are you out of your
mind?”
I really didn’t know why I was copping this
kind of attitude today.
“Not as far as I’m aware,” I tried to keep
a reasonable tone. “The goat needs to be moved and we need to be the ones to
move him.”
I understood that this would be considered
an unusual situation for Jorge. I was trying to be patient. I really was. But I
could feel the muscles in the goat bunching up and his movements were becoming
stronger. According to my estimation, I had a very short period of time before
I was going to be in for a world of hurt.
“Those horns look like they could do some
damage.”
“Of course they could do some damage.” I
was beginning to get annoyed. “That’s generally what horns are for.”
“I’m not really comfortable with the level
that those horns are at.”
I looked up to find Jorge had crossed his
hands over his groin area.
Jorge shook his head. “And I’m really not
happy with the idea of me standing that closely to those horns or, for that
matter, those teeth. I think it’s a workplace safety issue.”
Jorge worked security for celebrities. I
had never thought that workplace safety was a high priority for him. I would
have argued the point but at that moment those bunched up muscles that had
caused me some concern previously exploded into action. I wasn’t really sure
what happened because the next thing I knew I was flat on my back looking up at
a goat that I swear was laughing at me. Jorge had retreated behind a high back
chair, protecting what was obviously most important to him.
“You okay?” he called out, keeping a wary
eye on the animal which seemed very proud of the way that it had demonstrated
its dominance over me.
“No. I’m not okay. That hurt.”
Jorge did not make a move toward me and I
recognized the fact that he had decided I needed to take care of myself in this
situation. I rolled over on my front and raised myself onto my hands and knees.
The goat bleated at me as if challenging me to take it on again. I really
didn’t want to but everybody who had a job sometimes had to do things they
didn’t want to do.
“Got a new plan, cupcake?”
I looked warily at the goat. “We need some
rope.”
Between the two of us, and with a great
deal of colorful language that my mother would have been horrified to hear, we
finally managed to get the goat outside and into its pen.
“So the pen will hold it?” asked Jorge,
wiping the sweat from his forehead.
“Not a chance,” I replied.
Despite my limited knowledge about goats, I
had a feeling that this one was not going to stay confined unless it wanted to
be.
Jorge looked at me with surprise. “Then why
did we just wrestle this thing all the way out here?” he asked.
“We have limited choices,” I said. “Either
we put it in this pen or we leave it in the house. Putting it in the pen gives
us a chance to keep that walking disaster contained, at least temporarily.”
“Don’t really have a high opinion of goats
do you?” Jorge said.
“Why ever not?” asked a voice from behind
us.
I turned around to find Vale, the drummer
of Crispy Spider and new owner of the goat, standing behind us.
“Exactly how long have you been watching
us?” I asked suspiciously.
“Long enough to regret not having a camera
on me,” said Vale, smiling.
Out of all the guys in the band, despite
his appalling taste in pets, I had to admit that I liked Vale the most. He had
a shy air about him, or as shy as a rock star could be.
“You could have helped us,” I glared at
him.
“Where would the fun be in that?” he
smiled.
I gestured to the goat. “Well here he is. Have
you come up with a name for him yet?”
Vale nodded. “Buddy.”
“After Buddy Rich, the jazz drummer,” I
guessed.
Vale looked impressed. “You know your
drummers.”
“Actually,” I said. “I know you. Believe it
or not, I do research before I take on a job and I read an article where you
said that your hero was Buddy Rich.”
Vale leaned back against a pillar. “So,
what else did you find out about me?” he asked.
I smoothed down the creases in my pants
which were now covered in goat hair. “According to your press you are a
Casanova who breaks hearts everywhere you go. You have an anger management
problem and the destruction that goat is going to cause is nothing compared to
the destruction you have wrought in hotel rooms across the world.”
Vale arched an eyebrow at me. “And what do
you know about me?”
“That maybe the press doesn’t have all the
facts,” I said softly.
Vale straightened up. “I think we’re going
to miss you when you leave us,” he said before turning around and going back in
the house.
I looked up at Jorge to see an amused
expression on his face.
“What?” I asked.
“I think that boyfriend of yours needs to
keep a close eye on you,” he said.
“Why?” I asked quizzically.
“You seem to surprise people and they start
thinking you’re delightful. This can lead to confusion in relationships.”
I snorted. “Did you just use the term
‘delightful’?”
If you took into account his size and how
he scared people by just walking into the room, I had never expected to hear
the word ‘delightful’ coming from him.
Jorge looked at me sourly. “Go, have your
day off. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning. Maybe the goat will
decide it likes you by then.”
Considering the way that goat was looking
at me, I didn’t think that was likely.