Read The Accidental Movie Star Online
Authors: Emily Evans
The Accidental Movie Star
The
Accidental
Movie Star
The
Accidental
Movie Star
By Emily Evans
2012
The Accidental Movie Star
Copyright © June 2012 by Malinda Childers
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, and as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this work may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places, and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is coincidental and not intended by the author.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Emily Evans at
[email protected]
.
For upcoming books and other information, visit
www.EmilyEvansBooks.com
.
Other books by Emily Evans:
Epic Escape
[1. Fiction. 2. Romance. 3. Young Adult.]
Acknowledgements
Thanks! You’re awesome: Michelle, Teresa, Veronica, Jennifer, Stacy, Joellen, Barbie, Brennan, Joseph, Megan, Mishann, Rachel, Wayne, Darlene, Jeff, Heather, Trevor, Mom & Dad.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Dad didn’t show up.
The LAX baggage carousel kept rotating, but the tumble of arriving bags had ended about ten minutes ago. All around her, passengers hugged their loved ones and headed toward the exits. Everyone paired up and moved on except Ashley Herrington.
She should’ve known he’d forget. Mom warned her. Successful people in Hollywood put work first, and Dad was successful. Her stomach twisted and she sank onto one of the seats, keeping one foot hooked around her bag so Los
Angeles thieves wouldn’t get any ideas. She waited out the next public announcement, hoping it would be a message for her at passenger pickup.
The announcer said, “Please do not leave your baggage unattended. Unattended baggage may, and unattended belongings will, be treated as a threat to the facility.”
Tired of waiting and moments from becoming a threat to the facility herself, Ashley grabbed her cell phone and dialed her father’s number. “Where are you?”
A long pause. Then Dad said, “I sent a limo. I thought it’d be fun.”
Ashley swallowed and stopped searching the faces of the people coming through the door.
Lie
. He’d forgotten.
“I’ll call and check on the car.” Dad clicked off.
Smack
.
The sound came from the glass wall beside her ear and she turned to look outside. Pink fingernails lay curled against the glass. A second hand joined the first and teenage eyes peered in. Ashley jumped up and clutched her warm phone. Time to move on.
The peeper belonged to a member of the crowd growing outside baggage claim. Every minute Ashley had waited, at least ten more people showed up, most of them tweens accompanied by their moms. They held cameras, handmade signs, and an eagerness that foretold the arrival of some major star. Why hadn’t Dad picked her up like he said he would?
Her cell phone beeped.
Ashley checked the screen. The incoming text message read,
Black limo at passenger pickup, main exit
.
Now the challenge would begin. People around her had taken one look at the crowd and used alternative exits. Ashley didn’t have that luxury. She grabbed the black handle of her roller bag and stepped through the glass doors labeled
Private Cars
. The dry air hit her, so different from Houston, and she breathed in exhaust and the cooler temperatures that marked LA.
After two feet, Ashley couldn’t go forward, her path to the curb obstructed by four tweens wearing identical T-shirts. She moved left. They moved left. She moved right. They moved right. Each one blocked better than the Houston Texans had all last season. Giggling and lacking any sense of personal space, the fan girls moved closer to the door, forcing Ashley back a step. A handmade sign jabbed at her right arm. Ashley moved left and got a jab to the ribs. There was no way back.
She pushed toward a mango-scented foursome. The pale one in front of her stilled, but only for a second. Then she went wild with activity. Her camera flew up, and she bounced up and down in her lime-green shoes. Their bodies surged toward the building; gloss-covered lips opened in ecstatic screams, exposing multicolored braces to the world. The tweens must have spotted their prey.
Taking advantage of their shift, Ashley shoved toward the street. LA sunlight competed with flashing cameras to blind her progress. Perfume-coated oxygen sucked into her lungs. Deafened, blinded, and rapidly losing her sense of smell, Ashley raised her driver’s license and waved in the direction of the street. A male hand attached to a suit-covered arm latched onto the handle of her bag and jerked it from her grip. Ashley hoped he was the driver and not an LA scam artist.
The bag rolled toward the street, knocking the knees of a guy in skinny jeans and a girl in Capri pants. Caught up in their frenzy, the fans didn’t seem to notice the pain. They also ignored Ashley’s “Sorry. Pardon me.” She trailed the roller bag, trying not to lose sight of it in the crush. Her bag paused for a moment beside the black door of a limo. The suit-wearing driver opened it for her and moved past, carrying her bag to the trunk.
A limo. She’d gotten worse apologies from Dad. Ashley threw herself onto the backseat, landing against the soft gray leather, and stretched to shut the door behind her. The closed door muffled the yells and replaced the smell of conflicting perfumes with a pleasant, new car smell. Ashley let her backpack fall to the floor and crawled to her knees to peer out the rear window. Wide, young eyes, set in flushed faces, stared back at her through the glass.
These are my peers.
The stares shifted, focused on a guy standing outside her limo. He wore dark sunglasses, jeans, and a teal T-shirt stretched tight across his chest and biceps. No doubt he’d had the fabric tailored to show off that physique. He was flanked by two burly men in dark suits. Their bulk made his lean swimmer’s body stand out even more. Ashley turned back around and gazed through the passenger window for a better look.
The limo door opened, and feminine shouts of “I want to have your baby” and “Caspian” and “I love you” floated in.
He climbed in, and a hot-pink piece of lace flew past his head and landed on her shoulder. Ashley flicked the underwire and the bra tumbled off her shoulder, coming to rest in open hot-pink abandon against the plush carpet.
The door slammed, and late-flying bras from the slow throwers plopped against the glass before falling to the LA street.
The guy pulled his sunglasses off and dropped his head against the leather seatback. His chin-length, streaked blond hair and deep blue-green eyes were instantly recognizable.
Movie star Caspian Thaymore had just gotten into her car.
***
It looked like she was sharing her ride.
At the sight of Ashley, a female teenager, Caspian sighed and pasted on a practiced smile that didn’t show in his eyes. Leaning toward her, he said in his rich British accent, “Here you go.” He snagged a marker from his pocket, opened it with his teeth, and scribbled across her arm. The smell of the marker pierced the new limo smell, but beneath both of those she could smell his cologne: foreign, male, unique.
After a second of the soft tip gliding over her skin, Ashley slapped the marker away. “What are you doing?”
Caspian flipped on the intercom. “We have a passenger,” he said to the driver.
The car moved away from the curb and the driver said, “She’s on the list.” His voice came through the speaker until Caspian released the switch.
The smeared black ink read
Caspian Thaymore
. A hooked curve straggled underneath his signature, as if he’d been drawing a heart below his name before she knocked the marker away. Wow, that would probably set the tweens to screaming, parents too. After licking her thumb, she rubbed at the autograph. The ink smeared around, but stayed on her skin, his name and half a heart.
Dad worked at a major motion picture studio, so after age twelve, autographs had stopped being exciting, as had movie stars. Their heroic on-screen personas never matched the reality, so meeting them killed the illusion. Today her tolerance for spoiled men was about gone. Dad had used up the last of it, and before him, there’d been a three-hour flight in a middle seat. The men on each side of her had hogged the armrests and flapped their elbows out, not caring that they dug into her sides. Now this guy thought he needed a ten-seater limousine all to himself. “I think you’re the passenger in my car.” Ashley jerked a thumb toward the back window. “I bet that’s your ride.”
A few yards behind them, a white Hummer limousine rested against the curb, a spike-heeled brunette posed alongside it. Photographers, carrying enormous cameras, focused on her. The brunette feigned shock with a hand to her mouth, then hooked her hips out for a few shots before stepping into the vehicle with an unnecessarily high lift of her skirt. The lift revealed a sapphire-laden garter that matched her sapphire anklet, bracelet, necklace, and earrings.
Ashley recognized her too. The actress was named Petra something. Pelinski. Petra Pelinski. Ashley witnessed the whole scene because the limo had barely moved from the curb due to the traffic and the crowds. “I guess you can share with me,” Ashley offered with a tone of gracious generosity in her voice.
“Thanks,” Caspian said, somewhat drily, in his clipped British accent. He threw a quick glance at the monstrosity that dwarfed their sleek limo. “This car’s a Jaguar.”
“What?”
“A Jaguar.”
Ashley raised her eyebrows. Huh?
“Jaguars have British backgrounds. So I bet it’s my car.”
“Oh.” Ashley swiveled around, facing forward. They probably had sent the limo for him, and Dad threw her along for the ride. The car crawled forward, and Ashley slouched in her seat, deciding she may as well get comfortable because their car couldn’t have been going more than two miles an hour. “I’m Ashley.”
“Hi.”
“I’m interning at the studio for the summer.”
Caspian looked bored. “I’m Caspian Thaymore.”
“I guessed as much from the screams.”
“Call me Caz.”
Ashley scooted down the bench seat and looked into the minibar. “Want something?”
Caz leaned forward, elbows on the knees of his dark trousers. “Yes, please. A beer.”
Ashley tossed him a cold bottle of orange juice. California had the best OJ in the world, after all. He should be thankful. “Nice try. You’re not twenty-one. The drinking age is twenty-one in the US.” She didn’t care if he drank a beer, but gave him the OJ for payback over the autograph. She took a beer to annoy him, and used the edge of her T-shirt to twist off the silver cap.
“You’re not twenty-one either.” Caz read aloud the logo painted across her Texas high school T-shirt: “Trallwyn High Seniors Rule.” The words sounded funny in his accent.
Ashley straightened the hem of her favorite shirt, the one her best friends Marissa, Michelle, and Steve had signed, and she took a drink from the brown bottle. It tasted bitter and sour, and smelled worse. Poor choice. “Yuck.”
Removing the bottle from her hand, Caz took a swig and pressed the clear bottle of OJ into her palm. Chuckling, she took it. She preferred juice anyway. The car picked up speed. Looking at the passing palm trees and rock-laden landscapes, she guessed that they were going at least thirty miles per hour. In LA, that was practically a high-speed chase.
Goodbye, LAX. See you in three months.
Ashley
tapped his bottle with hers and the glass thumped. “Cheers.”