Hollywood Heartbreak

  ALSO BY C.J. DUGGAN

  Summer series

  The Boys of Summer

  Stan

  An Endless Summer

  Max

  That One Summer

  Ringer

  Forever Summer

  Paradise series

  Paradise City

  Paradise Road

  Heart of the City series

  Paris Lights

  New York Nights

  London Bound

  When in Rome

  Contents

  Title Page

  Also by C.J. Duggan

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Sneak peek of When in Rome

  Copyright

  For all those who live without filters on their photos

  Chapter One

  I lay motionless; the machine’s long, pained beep sliced through the room. The infamous tone was drowned out only by a heart-wrenching scream as a body collapsed over mine, gripping and yanking at my limp corpse, causing my nasal cannula to be pulled out.

  ‘No, dear God, no!’

  ‘I am so sorry – we did everything we could.’

  My hand was crushed by a vice-like grip as another voice entered the fray, a deep, sexy whisper.

  ‘Goodbye, my sweet Cassie.’ A kiss warmed the back of my hand. ‘I will never forget you.’ A hand cupped my cheek, as the very same lips pressed gently against my mouth. ‘Always and forever.’

  He spoke the promise upon my lips, lingering for a long moment before the darkened shadow lifted and his warmth was gone, leaving me with the over-perfumed woman sobbing at my shoulder – Stephanie Vanderbelt.

  ‘Damon, wait – where are you going?’ she cried.

  ‘To find Kane,’ he gritted.

  ‘To tell him?’

  ‘No … to kill him.’

  I heard the hospital doors swing open so violently that a breeze brushed against my cheeks, leaving behind the long, haunting beep of the machine and the wailing sobs of Stephanie at my side.

  ‘Oh no, Damon, nooooooo!’ She screamed loudly again, her voice bouncing off the walls. Her tears dripped on my cheek while her arm draped dramatically across my chest.

  One thing echoed through my mind: Get. Off. Can’t. Breathe.

  ‘Annnnd cut! Thanks, everyone, that’s a wrap!’

  I waited until the applause sounded, then I opened one eye, then the other, seeing the crying Stephanie continue to hold me as if I had indeed slipped from this life. I guess I kind of had. Slowly pulling myself to sit upright, I had little time to remove the oxygen cords when Damon – or, rather, Scott Johnson – burst back through the hospital doors so fast the fake wall frame shook.

  ‘Great job, everybody. I really think we nailed that scene. Especially you, Abby; I mean, wow! Powerful stuff.’

  A coldness swept over me as I plucked off the wires taped to my body, my brows pressing downwards.

  ‘Trust you to compliment my acting when I play dead.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I can appreciate it wasn’t as easy as it looks,’ he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. He was trying for sincerity, but it only made me want to glower some more.

  What a total suck.

  I peeled back the covers. I could appreciate how awkward I was making the situation, but whenever Scott was around I couldn’t help exuding a certain amount of disdain. Whenever I looked into his big, stupid, sorrowful eyes, I felt the urge to imprint his cutesy, crooked grin on my knuckles.

  Derek, the director, never missed a thing. He hovered between us, and asked perhaps the most overused question of the past few agonising weeks: ‘Are you alright?’

  There was no way to prepare for this. Right now it all seemed so surreal as I passed my chair with my name on the back. Well, the name I had come to think of as mine these past three years.

  Cassie Carmichael, the youngest daughter and heir to the Carmichael shipping dynasty on Australia’s number one drama, Ship to Sea. The cast jokingly referred to the show as Shit to Sea because, for a small coastal town, a whole lot of shit went down. Over the years I had survived a bushfire, a flood, a hostage situation, an explosion, three broken hearts, a pregnancy scare and a mystery illness. I had survived it all, until the tragic car accident that had spelled my end. But all of the above situations were a walk in the park compared to what I had to face on a daily basis.

  Calling upon my professionalism, I smiled brightly – my finest acting performance of all time. ‘Fine, absolutely fine.’

  I pushed past Scott and the set crew, slamming my palms on the makeshift hospital doors and padding my way down the corridor, sporting a butt-crack gown and a thick bandage wrapped around my forehead. I was glad no cameras were allowed on set to capture my glamourous ensemble, set off by the novelty pink flamingo pyjama bottoms I sported beneath the gown and the lime-green Crocs I slipped onto my feet. I stole a biscuit from the refreshment table before continuing my storming, squeaky steps down the hall.

  I was getting those looks again; sympathetic glances, this time accompanied by whispers of concern for the crazy lady. Usually I wouldn’t be caught dead in my weekend slob attire but, let’s face it, I didn’t have anyone to impress. Well, not anymore, I thought bitterly, stepping up into my trailer and slamming the door behind me. I slumped against the rickety barrier, wishing it were made of something stronger, a sturdier defence against the realities of the outside world.

  I felt strangely numb, but not due to shock that my character had been killed off. You see, the Ship to Sea executives had chosen something different with this season’s cliffhanger. We had all been given three alternative endings to the season – three alternative deaths – so none of us knew who was really going to die – a ploy to keep the tension high. But I knew Naomi Kline’s bee-sting death was the most likely ending; Naomi’s contract was up and, rumour had it, she had her eye on a new pilot for an opposing network. It was the worst-kept secret ever and, safe in the knowledge that we’d be staying in the show, we’d embraced our death scenes. My car-crash-coma death seemed kind of mundane, though, considering Brian Formosa’s character had been killed off by suffocating in a shipping container. How did they come up with this stuff?

  I fell into my favourite chair in my trailer, the one that I spent hours in remembering my lines. I tried not to worry about the energy I wasted on my death scene that would go nowhere, which was a tragedy in itself. A smile crossed my lips as I recalled the looks on the faces of the crew and audience at the end
of the scene; it felt bloody amazing to shove it in the faces of the naysayers. I didn’t want to admit it, but a large part of me wanted to impress Scott, my on-screen – and, at one time, off-screen – love interest. We had kept it on the down-low, but we’d been pretty bad at it.

  My smile slipped away, the way it always did whenever Scott entered my mind, which seemed to be every damn minute of my solitude. That’s why I wanted to keep busy: to pause was to remember, and I really didn’t want to remember. But as my eyes landed on the corner of a tabloid magazine sticking out from underneath my script, images flashed in my mind.

  Scantily-clad lovers embracing on what I had thought was a private beach, but long lenses have a way of seeking you out. We were laughing, having a good time, and my arms were wrapped around Scott’s shoulders as he grinned down at me like I was the only girl in the world. Unfortunately, as the magazine stated, I was not the only one he had eyes for. I know you are not meant to believe everything you read, but when ‘Homewrecker’ is the caption under your picture it makes you sit up and take notice.

  I stared at the caption now, having slid the offending publication out from under the pile. The magazine was tattered and dog-eared, thanks to the fit of rage that had seen me throw it across my trailer, then attempt to rip it in half. As I looked over the pictures again, I saw nothing but ugliness. The dimples of cellulite on my thighs, the sandy wedgie of my bikini. The shot of Scott checking his phone while I sunbaked beside him held a whole new meaning. As I’d blissed out on our weekend getaway, little did I know that waiting at home was Scott’s very pregnant girlfriend. Reading over the article for the hundredth time, it still didn’t seem real.

  Scott Johnson had been dating Sydney model and socialite Danielle Kendall for the past eleven months. I thought back to all the dinners, the late-night talks, the trips we’d taken over the past year – it just couldn’t be possible, could it? I felt sick. I really needed to get rid of this magazine.

  Instead, I slid it into the drawer, at the ready should I feel the need to torture myself again. I felt dead inside, a fitting emotion considering my last scene. I recalled the feeling of Scott’s lips upon mine, the first real contact we had since I’d whacked the shit out of him with the rolled-up magazine.

  He hadn’t denied it.

  Guess he didn’t have much of a defence when her Instagram was loaded with photos of them together. Thanks to a fake alias, I’d managed to get myself befriended onto her private profile for a bit of detective work. I wasn’t proud. It wasn’t my finest moment, but neither had been discovering all of their happy snaps on their loved-up weekends away, and even mountain family get-togethers. It was like shoving a dagger into my heart and twisting it. We didn’t remain Insta friends for long; I couldn’t stomach it.

  A part of me had wanted to be killed off from the show, so I wouldn’t have to see Scott every day, and act in emotion-laden scenes with him that hurt like hell. Though it probably made me look like an amazing actress, my feelings were all too raw, too real. Had it not been for the support of my manager, Ziggy Forsyth, I might have given up long ago.

  And just like that, as if I had summoned her from my very imagination, a knock sounded on my trailer door, and she whipped it open – as always – before I’d given permission to enter. But as she stood before me, still, silent, in a way I had rarely seen before, I knew something was wrong. ‘Cyclone Ziggy’ was always filling the space with movement and noise, but not today, and that could not mean anything good.

  I straightened in my chair, still wearing the hospital nightgown and head bandage. I cared little for how I looked as I focused on Ziggy’s solemn face, her wild, woolly hair and cherry-red glasses failing to soften her expression.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Crisis meeting.’

  ‘How bad?’

  ‘It’s bad.’

  ‘On a scale of one to ten?’

  Her lips pressed together in a grim line. ‘Put it this way, I think we might have broken the machine.’

  Oh shit.

  Chapter Two

  I had only ever been in two crisis meetings in my time. The first was the intervention for legendary stage and voice actor Robert Stanton for his binge-drinking habits and his wandering hands in the make-up chair. He had called it a witch-hunt, but everyone else had simply called him out. He was killed off in a flash-flooding disaster. But when the front-cover spread hit, serious damage control was necessary, and I was called to my second crisis meeting.

  Scott was a reigning Gold Logie winner, and Damon and Cassie’s tumultuous relationship was a huge ratings driver; it was widely believed that if our characters ever got married, the event would break the Internet. The photographic proof of our real-life liaison had surely sent the Interweb into meltdown, not to mention the studio heads we were forced to meet with.

  We had built a brand, a fantasy for young, daydreaming housewives and wide-eyed teenyboppers, and now one magazine article had smashed that dream. No one wanted to see Cassie as a homewrecker, and people certainly couldn’t get their heads around Scott’s secret, pregnant girlfriend. But as I sat in that room, it hadn’t taken me long to realise that I was the only person unaware that Scott was in a relationship with someone other than me. It was almost incomprehensible how blind I had been to his many, many flaws.

  I’d declined the stress leave that was offered. I wanted to stand my ground, to show that I wasn’t the villain here, the cheater. He was the homewrecker; it just so happened that the title was under my picture. I’d been mad, madder than hell, and Ziggy had been equally outraged by the double standards. The men’s club had sheltered their commodity. It had left a sour taste in my mouth, and the prospect of another stoush with those old dinosaurs caused my spine to tingle unpleasantly.

  ‘What now?’ I sighed, unravelling my bandage and moving past the divider to my little bedroom to ditch the flamingo PJs, probably not the best attire to front the big bosses in.

  Ziggy took a seat and waited, which was unnerving, silence falling between us as I pulled on some jeans and a top. I sat opposite her at the small table, my stomach churning. ‘Do we have to meet with Sal?’

  ‘Yes, he wants to see us now.’

  Okay, this was bad. Really, really bad.

  ‘And you’re here to give me the heads-up?’

  Poor Ziggy – being the bearer of bad news seemed to be her job of late, tentatively sliding magazine covers in front of me before schooling me in damage control. But today, mercifully, there was no magazine to be seen, and I felt a bubble of relief inside of me. It didn’t last very long.

  ‘Danielle Kendall has given an exclusive interview to The Desk.’

  My blood ran cold. The Desk was a primetime topical news program, with killer ratings and award-winning interviewers. I had appeared on the program myself – it was the go-to place for promotion.

  I sat in silence, unable to press for more, but Ziggy continued regardless.

  ‘Look, I am not going to sugar-coat it for you, Abby. I think you need to hear it – all of it – before you meet with the heads.’

  I nodded. ‘Hit me.’

  ‘Based on the teary snapshots they have been promoting, it’s going to be brutal. She’s pregnant and popular, and you are the scarlet woman, the villain.’

  I closed my eyes; it was everything I had predicted.

  ‘I’m going to try to talk to her again. She needs to know that I had no idea they were together. If I had known, there would be no way I would even – ’

  ‘It’s no use, Abby, she’s going to stand by her man and play happy families. There’s no amount of talking to her that will help, and I seriously advise against it.’

  I could see it now, on the cover of a women’s magazine. Danielle and Scott dressed in white, standing in their white kitchen, holding their little bundle of joy, under the title ‘The gift that saved our relationship’. Tabloids were nothing if not predictable.

  ‘What do I do?’

  ‘Be calm, p
rofessional. We have your back, Abby. Sal is a reasonable man. He has known you a long time, and this is not their first rodeo.’

  ‘Is Scott going to be there?’

  ‘He’s in a separate meeting right now.’

  ‘Good,’ I nodded. I just couldn’t see him right now.

  I hoped that they were telling him to mop up his mess, do an interview himself to confess his sins, take responsibility for being a two-timing rat, flirting and feeling me up in my trailer. Stolen kisses and promised futures. All a big fat lie. I knew I had to be professional, but if saving my reputation meant throwing Scott under the bus, then so be it. Despite the situation being far from ideal, I was filled with a new sense of calm and confidence. Or maybe that was the power of Ziggy, who was always preparing me for my most important roles.

  I rubbed my clammy hands along my thighs. ‘Okay, well, let’s do this.’

  Ziggy stood, moving to the trailer door and opening it for me.

  ‘Remember, Abby: cool, calm and professional.’

  ‘You have to be fucking kidding me!’

  Ziggy’s nails dug into my knee so hard that I felt their bite through the denim, but in that moment I welcomed the pain: maybe it would wake me up from this nightmare.

  I stood abruptly, my chair flinging back and falling to the ground. ‘You’re killing me off?’

  I thought Sal might have looked troubled. Lord knew Derek was squirming in his seat. Ziggy’s hands were now on the table, clasped together so tightly that her fingers matched the red-coloured tips of her manicure.

  ‘We think it would be for the best, in light of what is unfolding.’

  ‘Unfolding? I’ll tell you what’s unfolding – Scott’s oversized tongue of lies.’

  ‘Abby,’ Ziggy warned, but I wasn’t listening. Apparently being told that you were going to be killed off derailed any form of logical thinking.

  ‘Scott’s a separate issue,’ said Derek, causing a stern look from Sal, who apparently thought he had said too much already.

  ‘So is he going to get killed off too? A boating accident, maybe? A mudslide? Freak kite-flying accident causing decapitation? Seriously, you guys should be writing this stuff down.’