Not Talented in Hollywood: Not in Hollywood Book 3 (13 page)

Sitting in the limo Dominic grimaced as he looked at the cat
collar.

“I can’t believe she did this, do you have any idea what
this necklace was worth?”

“To you maybe, Catarina obviously had a whole different set
of priorities.”

“You’re judging me for being with her aren’t you?” Dominic
put the cat collar in his pocket.

“Like you would not believe” I said. “Don’t get me wrong, I
understand why Catarina was popular with men, she was gorgeous and vivacious. I
met her, I know that every eye in the room went to her. What I don’t understand
is you men were with her for far longer than a moment. Didn’t you even bother
to look at what was below the surface? I mean seriously, everything about this
woman, except for the way she treated her cat, was selfish and narcissistic.”

“I wasn’t looking for anything deeper.” Dominic defended
himself. “Frankly I didn’t spend much time talking to her.”

“Then you got out of the situation what you put in. You
should be just as mad at yourself that she stole the necklace, because you let
it happen.”

Dominic nodded. I don’t think what I said made any
difference so I just shrugged. Once we got to my apartment block I got out of
the car.

“I would say it was nice meeting you, but it really wasn’t.
The best I can do is hope that I never see you again” I said as I slammed the
door. I heard him laugh but by that point I was so annoyed I just headed up the
stairs. Crystal and Edwin were outside the door of Crystal’s apartment and they
looked at me and took in the scratch on my neck and the blood that had dripped
down onto my shirt.

I put my hand up. “Not a word, Peter is being charged with
Catarina’s murder. I’m okay and I just want to be left alone for twenty four
hours. No more emergency entries using my keys.”

The two of them nodded, looking a little stunned and I went
into my apartment. Standing under a hot shower I felt all the worries and fear washing
away from me.

When Griffin knocked I had finally calmed down. Opening the
door I felt a little hesitant and hugged my arms around myself. Griffin looked
concerned as he went past me into the living room and sat down on the couch.

“Do you want a drink or something?” I asked.

He shook his head and held a hand out to me. “Just let me
hold you for a minute” he said, “I just need to know you’re safe.”

I felt tears in my eyes as I sat next to him and let him
pull me into his arms.

“Gotta say sweetheart, seeing you with a knife against your
throat does not count as one of my better days” he muttered.

“Not one of mine either” I agreed. “So what happened with
Peter?”

“Despite the fact I felt the need to toss him out of a
moving car, he’s been booked on Catarina’s murder.”

“How did you know?” I asked.

“We had a fingerprint off the knife he killed her with.
Nothing special, just that and a healthy lot of suspicion. It wasn’t until he
grabbed you that we knew for sure that he had done it. Speaking of which, why
were you at the will reading?”

I grimaced. “Would you believe that the reason Dominic
Caldwell was after Catarina was because she stole a necklace from him while
they were sleeping together? It belonged to his mother so he was not going to
let it go. Unfortunately when we were talking today I remembered seeing the
necklace, or what was left of it. Catarina pulled it apart and used the gems on
a cat collar.”

“You are kidding me aren’t you?” said Griffin.

“I wish I was.”

“Caldwell got the necklace back?”

“Parts of it, hopefully the lawyer can find the rest.”

Griffin grunted as he stroked his fingers down my arm. We
sat there quietly for a few minutes.

“So my dad said you were looking at condoms.” I could tell
he was smiling.

“There’s a sentence I never wanted to hear.” I could feel
myself blushing again.

“Did you buy some?”

I nodded.

“I need you to say it sweetheart” he said gently before he
lowered his lips to mine. I reveled in the feeling

He raised his head and I looked into his eyes and I found
some courage.

“Yes” I whispered.

###

Thank you for reading Not Talented in Hollywood. If you
enjoyed it, please take a moment to leave a review at your favorite retailer.

Regards,

Leonie Gant

Leonie Gant started her writing career at the age of ten
when she stuffed notes in her pencil case full of ideas for mysteries that
Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys should really have been solving. After years of
watching mysteries play out in her head, in full, sometimes gory color, she
decided that writing them down was the best way to deal with them.

In her life away from writing, she is a voracious reader
with not nearly enough time to make her way through all the books that she
wants to read. She enjoys bushwalking, sewing and chocolate, possibly not in
that order. She also believes in the value of trying new things, walking in the
rain and enjoying every moment.

To
find out more about Leonie Gant and to be notified regarding upcoming books and
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www.leoniegant.com

Discover other titles by Leonie Gant

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Not Happily Married in Hollywood

Not Wanted in Hollywood

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I felt the bed dip as I was in that pleasant dreamlike state
and felt lips brush against my forehead. I smiled and heard an answering groan.

“I’ve got to go Trudie.”

I opened my eyes and looked into my idea of heaven.
Detective Jake Griffin and I had been together for four blissful months, seeing
each other whenever our busy careers allowed us.

“I’ll see you tonight,” he said hopefully.

I shook my head regretfully. “I’ve got a late one tonight.
Alistair is still shooting and he wants me there.”

Griffin looked annoyed. He didn’t like my latest client. I
work for an agency which specializes in placing staff with difficult employers.
You know, the kind of employers who rant at their staff because their latte is
not quite the right temperature. These people do not keep staff for very long,
because most people have a level at which they won’t handle that kind of abuse.
My specialty is keeping my clients from self-destructing in front of the world.

My latest client was Alistair Hopkins, a pretentious documentary
filmmaker who was considered impossible to work with. A former employee had
actually created a website which documented the number of staff he went through
and the reasons they had quit. Reasons for quitting had included the cameraman
who had got himself lost in the African desert for three days. When he was
finally found after an exhaustive search, barely clinging to life, Alistair
screamed at him for not taking any footage of his fight for survival. Then
there was the personal assistant who had fainted during one shoot from
exhaustion after working for forty hours straight with very little food. She
had taken out a restraining order against him. I had been called in by his
manager, as a temporary measure when disgruntled former employees started
targeting him both online and in real life. So far I’d worked for him for a
month and managed not to get damaged in any way. Alistair said that I was the
most efficient employee he had ever had. Of course the fact he hadn’t almost
killed me helped me to stay on his good side.

“Be careful, and don’t let him talk you into doing anything
too crazy.”

“I won’t,” I smiled as I came up on my knees on the side of
the bed. I, of course, was neglecting to tell him that Alistair’s latest
documentary had been taking me into the seedy side of strip clubs for the last
two weeks, which is where I would be spending this evening instead of with him.

He leaned down and kissed me gently. I put my hands on his
upper arms and pulled him towards me as I took the kiss deeper. Griffin pulled
away with a groan.

“Do you know how unfair it is that you do that to me just
before I go to work?”

“Just want you to remember what’s waiting for you,” I
grinned.

“Believe me I know and I think about it far too much at work
already, call me if you get home early and I’ll come around.”

“I will,” I settled back in the bed. “Take care, I’ll see you
later.”

A look of hurt flashed through Griffin’s green eyes but was
covered up so fast I couldn’t swear I’d seen it.

“Bye,” he clipped out and headed for the door.

I let out the breath I’d been holding when I heard the front
door close.

There was the one dark spot in our relationship. A couple of
months ago, in a moment of high emotion I had told Griffin that I loved him.
What can I say? I did love him. He was everything that I had ever wanted and I
had fallen hard. I’m not one to hide my feelings and in my defense he had just
made me very happy, twice. Unfortunately he didn’t exactly reply in a way that
showed he reciprocated those feelings. I understood. Despite my thinking he was
pretty much perfect, emotionally the man was a little stunted. His mother had
abandoned him and his dad when Griffin was just a baby. His father, Lee, had
brought him up. Their relationship was interesting. When I was alone with him,
Griffin could talk about anything. I would spend time with his father, Lee, and
you could not shut the guy up. I put both of them in the same room and you
could hear the crickets chirping. They weren’t exactly an emotionally available
family. Understanding that and realizing the cat was out of the bag, I
continued for a while in the same vein. I didn’t say it all the time, but I
didn’t choke it back either, especially when he was going to work. He was in
the LAPD, and that was a dangerous job. My parents had brought me up to live
life well and always tell the people you love that you love them, because you
never know what the future could bring. After about a month of this though, I
realized that I was throwing it out there and he hadn’t once sent it back. My
pride started taking a battering and I started wondering if maybe I was in this
alone. I stopped saying it, not because I wanted to hurt him, just because I
got tired of showing my heart and having it ignored. Whenever I felt it now I
choked it off and that had created a little distance in the relationship. I
didn’t know how to deal with it. I’d kind of made a mess of things and I didn’t
know how to fix it. Every now and again I’d see a little hurt expression flash
over Griffin’s face and I felt terrible, but I was stuck. Despite wanting to be
with him I was taking back to back jobs with long hours, trying to avoid the
emotional quagmire I seemed to have got myself into the middle of. I sighed as
I got ready for the day.

That morning I had promised Griffin’s father that I would
take him to pick up his car from the mechanic. When I got to his house, the
front door was unlocked. Here was another difference between Griffin and I. He
would knock on the door and wait for his father to open it. Lee had told me
that if he wanted to keep me out he would lock the door. As far as I was
concerned, that was a perfectly acceptable way for family to be around each
other, so I just walked right on in. Some days I thought I had a better
relationship with Lee than his own son did.

“I hope you’re up old man. I’ve got to go to work,” I yelled
out as I walked down the hallway. Seeing Lee in the kitchen I was surprised at
the strained look on his face. I was more surprised that he wasn’t alone. This
was probably one of the reasons why Griffin didn’t just walk into his dad’s
house.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “I probably should have knocked.”

“That’s fine sweetheart,” Lee said gently.

The woman sitting at Lee’s kitchen table turned around and
looked up at me. My breath caught sharply. I knew those eyes. An hour ago those
eyes had woken me up.

“This is Jake’s mother,” Lee said softly. “Angela, this is
Trudie, Jake’s girlfriend.”

So this was the heartless woman who walked out on her baby
boy and left him unable to tell me he loved me. See, I’m not judgmental at all.

“So you’re seeing my son.” Angela raked her eyes up to the minimal
effort pony tail and down to my flat heeled sensible shoes, taking in the high
necked shirt and shapeless pants I was wearing. I could see I hadn’t made a
favorable first impression. Hey, I was with her. Even I normally didn’t dress
like this, but tonight I was working with a filmmaker in a strip club. I needed
to be looking as little like the ladies on stage as I could. If that meant I
looked like an escapee from an Amish farm, then that was the way I was going.
Angela on the other hand had the kind of perfect beauty that only came from
great genetics and expensive upkeep.

“Angela is here because she wants to see Jake,” Lee said
shortly.

Oh, that was not going to work out well. Griffin did not
deal well with mothers. He never spoke about the fact that he had a mother. My
petite mom who lived on the other side of the world, scared him to death and we
are talking about a big burly cop. He refused to answer my phone just in case
it was my mother calling. He accidentally answered it once and Mom went into
her mama bear mode. I think it may have scarred him for life. She isn’t all
that fond of him because she thinks he puts me in dangerous situations and that
he blackmailed me with deportation back to Australia once. That second part is
true which makes it worse. Unfortunately I get myself into dangerous
situations. I could see Lee was unhappy with the situation as well.

I plastered on one of my plastic smiles that I use for work,
when some overindulged celebrity is screaming at me for not reading their mind.
“That’s nice.”

Lee’s features tightened and Angela just stared as if there
was something wrong with me.

“I’ll come back when we can talk,” Angela said shortly and
got up and left.

When the front door slammed, both Lee and I winced.

“Griffin’s not going to take this well,” I warned Lee. “Why
does she want to see him now?”

“I have no idea.” Lee shook his head and started clearing
the table of mugs. I put a hand on his arm.

“Are you holding up okay?” I asked gently.

Lee slumped in a chair. “She walked out on me thirty years
ago, walked out on us. When I saw her at the door I had trouble breathing. I
don’t understand. I thought I was over it ages ago.”

“You loved her once and she betrayed and deserted you.”

“Don’t hold back,” Lee said wryly.

 “You have to remember that because if you don’t, your
memory will start forgetting the bad things she did and you’ll only remember
the good times.”

Lee looked at me with surprise etched on his face. “You are
the last person in this world that I would think would be against love.”

“I’m not against love,” I said. “I’m against having your
heart ripped out and stomped on while somebody whistles a merry tune.”

“You really have an interesting way of looking at the
world.” Lee smiled fondly at me.

“You ready to go?” I asked.

“You going to tell me why you look like you’re heading for a
convent?”

“Not today.”

I was fully aware that if I told Lee about the strip club
assignment, Griffin would know in less than thirty seconds. If I could help it,
that was not going to happen.

Several hours later I was reminded why I hadn’t told Griffin
about my working at this particular bar. When I had started working with
Alastair at ‘Hammy’s Gentleman’s Club’ I had made the mistake of wearing my
normal personal assistant attire. Unfortunately, some of the more regular
clientele had assumed that I was one of the new girls going for a sexy
librarian look, and that I would start the stripping at any moment if they
waved enough cash in my general direction. Since then, every day my dress had
become more and more conservative, until today’s fine effort, which I
personally thought should make me seem completely sexless to the men that
frequented this club. Unfortunately, as usual, it seemed that I had severely
underestimated a horny man’s capacity to spot a pair of breasts, no matter how
well hidden they were. Waiting at the bar I had been cornered by one of the
customers and as usual my boss was nowhere to be seen. This shoot was seen as
more of an undercover documentary. The crew consisted of Alistair, myself and a
cameraman who seemed to end up in the stripper’s dressing room on a regular
basis. Most of the cameras were stationary and hidden around the club. Alistair
was famous for what he termed his covert style filmmaking. To my way of
thinking, this was fine when you were dealing with crooked corporations and
corrupt politicians. I was having trouble with the reasoning for using it in a
strip club. I would have thought that the people who frequented places like
this would have an expectation of privacy. But no, Alastair was always trying
to push the envelope with his work. He was seen as a radical filmmaker, willing
to tackle subject matter that the rest of the industry found slightly
distasteful. The critics called him brilliant. I had my own words to describe
the man.

“So sweetheart, how much for a lap dance?” my charming
companion slurred.

Before I could answer a voice came from behind me.

“Way more than you’re willing to pay buddy.”

I didn’t even need to turn around to know who was talking.
On the fifth day that we had been filming here, I had noticed Travis Cooper,
investigator to the stars, hunched over in the back of the bar. He had been
following the husband of one of his clients, to get the goods for a very messy
upcoming divorce. The look of surprise on Travis’s face when he saw me joking
with some of the waitresses as if we were old friends, was a sight that I will
always cherish.

My companion took one look at Travis towering over the both
of us and obviously decided that my well hidden charms were not enough to risk
life and limb. He shuffled off, muttering into his beer. I didn’t feel sorry
for him. I’d seen him in the bar before. When he got drunk, he got generous. I
could already see one of the girls had accurately determined his level of
inebriation and was heading in his direction.

“You still coming in here?” I asked turning around. “I
thought your case was finished.”

“It is sweetheart,” Travis said raising a glass to his
mouth. “Just thought I’d come in here on my time off, take in a show.”

“Really?” I raised an eyebrow. “You’re telling me that,
considering the number of strip clubs that you invariably visit while chasing
after cheating men.”

“And women,” Travis interrupted.

“And women,” I agreed. “You’re telling me that you enjoy
spending time in these places even when you are not working.”

“Not exactly,” admitted Travis.

“Then why are you here?” I asked.

“I’m waiting for the moment when you finally succumb to the
lure of the bright lights and take to the stage,” Travis said, looking up to
where the current dancer was doing an energetic turn on the pole.

“Keep hoping there cowboy,” I said wryly.

“I always do,” Travis said. “So why are you out here,
instead of backstage with your boss, doing whatever it is that you do?”