The Celebrity and The Small-Town Girl

By C.J. Butcher

After agreeing to take on a hospital charity event for her boss, Cara McKenzie is overwhelmed when she doesn’t have any entertainment. The one band she wanted to perform more than anything has turned her down and she has 2 weeks to find somebody else.

His manager’s just turned down the opportunity of a lifetime and Justin Nichols is flying out to fix the problem. There is only one glitch in his plan...Cara McKenzie. She’s never on time, she keeps forgetting everything, and she’s an accident waiting to happen. Did he happen to mention that she’s an accident waiting to happen? She's a klutz. He's a celebrity. She's going to wind up setting her own house on fire and he wouldn't mind that except he's going to be staying in it for several weeks!

He just wants his band to perform a concert. She just needs entertainment. They each have what the other person needs.

What happens when you put a clumsy small-town girl and the charismatic lead singer of a boy band together for a couple of weeks? Find out in the first full-length novel of The Celebrity Series!

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.J. Butcher
• Release date: Aug 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301672943

C.J. Butcher

C.J. Butcher was born in Maryland. She now resides in North Carolina and lives in the country with her 2 puppies. She enjoys reading, writing, and hanging out with friends and family. She finds inspiration by living by the golden rule and treating others as she would like to be treated.

Book preview

To my Mom and Dad, I couldn’t have done this without you. Always remember how much I love you. Thank you for being patient while I really did all the things that happened in the book. To Grandma and Grandpa, who were the best grandparents I could have ever asked for. To my first Shelby, you will always and forever be in my heart – Rest in Peace baby girl. To the Lord, thank you for all the blessings that you’ve bestowed on my life.

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, organizations, or person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

About the Author

A Little note from the Author

Chapter 1

Cara McKenzie glanced at the clock lying on her bedside table and threw the covers on her bed back. It was almost 6 a.m. and she still couldn’t sleep. She had tried warm milk, reading the bible and as a last resort a sleeping pill. She had gone to bed at 11 p.m. and had only managed a couple of hours of sleep before she was wide awake again at 2 a.m. Cara stumbled out of bed and shuffled down the hallway, stopping in the living room to turn on a couple of lights. She went into the kitchen and pulled a bottle of Ibuprofen out of the cabinet; she popped two tablets and chased them down with some water. She had a lot of things going on in her mind and she couldn’t rest. She had the Hospital Charity Ball she was planning and maybe once that was finished; she would be able to get some sleep.

Her boss, Dr. Andrew Knight, sponsored the charity event every year and this year was no exception. However, due to his recent marriage and promotion to partner, he was leaving most of the decisions up to Cara. She had found out last night that the donations raised would go to build a new children’s wing onto the hospital. With the closest children’s hospital being almost four hours away and the Pediatrics office expanding; Dr. Knight had thought that they needed a bigger wing to accommodate them. He was still an active member of the hospital board - which meant he still chose where the funds went. This new development had her feeling a little more pressure than she would have liked. After all, they were doing this for the children and Cara couldn’t screw this up.

She had most of the details worked out except for the entertainment and that was proving to be difficult. Initially, she’d wanted someone who could bring in a bunch of money, but that would cost a fortune on their end. She had tried to get a popular band to play the event, except the manager had wanted more money than she would have collected. He had been insistent about not going down on the price even though he knew that it was for charity. That had been the shortest telephone conversation in history. She’d had some other ideas that she’d written down last night before she’d went to bed and she would run them by Dr. Knight and his wife, Laura, later in the morning. At first, she didn’t know if she would like working for an office manager that was married to one of the partners in the practice. However, as she got to know Laura she had come to respect her as both a colleague and a friend. She was fair when it came to handing out work assignments and she never showed favoritism.

She plucked her glasses off the nightstand and went into her study where her computer was. Lately, she had started bringing more and more work home and more times than not, she was staying up late to do it. For instance, the night before last she had been up half the night trying to figure out what everything was going to cost. She was on a budget and the food alone was costing upwards of several thousands of dollars. She put the papers she’d been working on in her briefcase and took it out to the living room so she wouldn’t forget it. She had to be at the office at eight and by the time she hopped in the shower and ironed her clothes - it would be time to go to work.

Cara looked in the mirror and hoped that in an hour and a half she could make herself look presentable. She really needed to find a way to tame her naturally curly hair especially with spring right around the corner. It didn’t matter if she straightened her hair or not - once the humidity got to it she looked like little orphan Annie. What she really needed was a cut and color. Her friend Julianna was always pestering her to have a makeover and Cara thought about taking her up on the offer. She needed to see if she could make her unibrow or monobrow as Julianna liked to call it into two separate eyebrows. Not that she really had a unibrow because she didn’t. Cara arched one eyebrow and then the other just to be sure.

Cara pursed her lips in the mirror and looked at herself with a critical eye. She stood at almost 5’2 and was about 20 pounds over what she should be. If she had to pick the one thing that was her best feature - it would have to be her eyes. She had huge brown eyes, framed by thick long lashes that sometimes irritated her to no end. She knew that having long eyelashes was considered a blessing and not a curse. Still, it didn’t keep her from plucking the occasional eyelash out of her eye. She had a button nose like her mother that turned up just a little on the end and her lips were full and pouty like her father. When she smiled, she showed even white teeth that had come from the result of many years of braces. She ran her tongue over her teeth and grimaced, she hated that taste in the morning before brushing. She jutted her chin out and looked side-to-side. She guessed it could be worse…she could have had her father’s nose and chin. The only thing she had really wanted was to have green eyes like her father. When she’d told her mother how much she hated having brown eyes, she’d asked why she hated something that was the color of chocolate. Everyone she knew loved chocolate and Cara had to admit she had a point there.

She took one last glance in the mirror before turning on the shower. She needed to put some makeup on because she looked deathly pale without it. Her mother always said that makeup was the greatest invention and that some women needed to embrace it. Her philosophy was that there were women who were naturally pretty and then there were women that needed some extra help. Cara looked over at all the makeup that cluttered her sink and shook her head. She’d been wearing it since she was twelve when her mother had given her that very first makeup set. Pulling the curtain back to the shower, she tested the water and found that it was freezing cold. This was the second day in a row that she was going to have to take a cold shower. What was going on with her pipes and her water heater? She was going to come out an icicle before all this was over. She could just see that it was going to be one of those days where nothing seemed to go right.

Justin Nichols looked at his watch for what seemed like the hundredth time. Cara McKenzie was late. Her secretary had told him that she would be here by eight and after looking at his watch, he could see it was already eight-thirty. He took off his coat, baseball cap and sunglasses and placed them on the couch. He walked over and sat in the black leather chair sitting behind her desk. He leaned back, relaxed and closed his eyes. He knew she could walk in at any moment, but after being on a plane for almost eight hours and then having a four-hour layover, he couldn’t bring himself to move. Her chair was just too comfortable. He heard a noise and opened his eyes. Whoever this woman was, she sure did have funny taste in furniture. Half of her office looked like a child’s playroom and the other half looked like a normal business office. She had several bookcases lining one wall with a couch and coffee table on one side of the room. On the other side, she had a little play area and a miniature pool table that looked tall enough for children to play at. He spun around and looked at the books and magazines in the shelves behind him and found nothing too weird there. He could tell by her décor that she had a good sense of humor. She had a coaster on her desk that said I see stupid people and he laughed out loud. He gazed at the many photos that were strategically placed around her office

His manager had told him that Cara wanted him and the guys to sing at a charity event and that he’d turned her down because she couldn’t meet their usual fee. Justin had prayed about it and told his manager that he was flying out to meet her and even though Sidney didn’t like the idea, Justin knew he wouldn’t try to stop him. In his business, there were a bunch of opportunities for them to get taken advantage of and he wanted to see for himself if this was one of those times. Justin reached across the desk and picked up a picture of a little boy. He studied the child before him; big mischievous green eyes stared back at him and curly blond hair. He had a big smile on his face and identical dimples on each chubby cheek. This must be Cara’s son and now he understood why her office was so childlike and he felt a little disappointed. A part of him was kind of hoping she wasn’t married. He sometimes wondered what it would be like to have a wife and a son, but a relationship was the last thing he needed right now. He was at the peak of his career and he had everything going for him. At least, that’s what he kept telling himself. He always tried to focus on what God had blessed him with and not on what he didn’t have. He’d only been sixteen when he and the guys had gotten their big break and they’d been lucky when they’d gotten that. Now, it was seven years later and he had everything he could ever want. Well, almost everything.

Justin had never really considered himself model material, never placing himself on a pedestal and frequently kept a level head on his shoulders. As a singer, songwriter and performer, he kept his mind on his music. Keeping his body in shape for his performances was a part of the job and not one that he particularly enjoyed. Looks had never really mattered much to him and being labeled the pretty boy of the group was a nuisance more than anything. People just saw the outside of who he was but they never got close enough to see what was in his heart. He wondered what it would be like to live like a normal guy and have a normal life. The Lord was the only one who knew what he was really like inside and out. He knew his heart’s desire, his insecurities and loved him anyway. Even though he had his faults, he could always get on his knees and ask God for guidance. That was the part of him that the public didn’t get to see, they didn’t see the man he was when it was just him and God. They saw the perfect hair, the perfect body and the perfect persona, but not what he was like when all the stage lights were off and no one was there to see him. For several months he felt like something was missing and that there was something more out there. Maybe, just maybe, this charity event could shed some light on what was lacking in his life. There had to be more purpose in his life than going town to town every night of the week. At least he would be doing something for someone else and not for his own personal gain.

He turned the chair around and closed his eyes again. He had a bunch of ideas floating around in his head and he would need to go over them with Cara. He’d asked the guys before leaving if they would be willing to do a pro bono concert and they had said it was up to him. He hadn’t been this excited about a concert since he was a teenager. In fact, he was pretty sure this was going to be the best one yet. The guys were going to enjoy this little detour in their touring plans. How often were they able to play for something or someone other than screaming teenagers? Not that it was a bad thing singing for teenagers because it wasn’t, but he was starting to burn out just a little bit. This trip would be a chance for him to take a bit of a break and he hadn’t had one of those in a long time. He had worked non-stop for almost seven years and he hadn’t realized till just now how tired he really was. Even the plane ride to the middle of nowhere had exhausted him. It wouldn’t be so bad except he didn’t have anywhere to call home anymore. He could say that his mom’s house was his home. After all, she still lived in the town where he grew up, but he hadn’t been back in years. But to say that he actually had a home of his very own…he couldn’t say that.

Justin had been an only child and had been told that his dad had passed away when he was a toddler. When he was a teenager, his mom had been with him constantly. She’d made sure he’d had the best tutors and that he’d kept a strict schedule of no partying and no playing the field. She was the typical protective single mother, having to play both mother and father. Justin was the youngest in the group; therefore, he didn’t always get to do what the other guys did and that had been fine with him. Not all the guys had been raised in a Christian home. In fact, most of them hadn’t been. Justin had been lucky that his mom had been the kind of mother that was both loving and strict, but not judgmental. She had opened her home and her life to all the guys and their families. Now that he was an adult she had stopped coming on the road as much. He only saw her on holidays and occasionally she would spring a surprise visit on him. He needed to call her this week and tell her he was back on her side of the globe.

Justin looked at the clock again, seeing that it was almost 9 a.m.; he leaned back in the chair and got comfortable. He was used to long hours, but he’d been up a lot longer than he should have been and with the time zone difference and jet lag, he was starting to think that a nap might do him some good while he waited for Cara McKenzie.

Chapter 2

Cara came barreling through the office door as she did every morning. She was always pushed for time and even when she got up early - she was late. She had decided to run by the hospital on her way to the office and pick up all the physician’s mail. Then she’d stopped at the local donut shop and picked up two dozen donuts for the office. She greeted her secretary, Amy, as she pushed the door open to the lounge.

Good Morning, Amy! Cara said breathlessly and laid the donuts on the table.

Good Morning, Cara. I see you brought us all something special. Amy said excitedly. Amy wasn’t a very talkative person, so to see her excited over a donut, was something else. She was usually the type who kept to herself and didn’t speak unless she was spoken to. However, over the past several months she had begun to loosen up some. She was the most detail-oriented secretary Cara had ever seen and she was thankful to have her.

I did. I thought some sugar might wake us up a little. Cara said smiling.

Oh Cara, by the way, there’s a man here to see you. He’s been here since eight and he said that you had an appointment, but there’s nothing written in your book. I put him in your office. Amy said and dipped her donut in her coffee. Cara frowned and bit her bottom lip. She didn’t have an appointment. Did she?

Hmm. I don’t know who it could be? Whoever it is isn’t going to be happy that I’m almost an hour late. Cara said and took a box of donuts with her. She might as well take them as a peace-offering. She opened her office door and looked around. There wasn’t anyone in her office. She noticed her high-backed office chair facing her shelves and she saw the top of a blond head leaning against the back of it. She cleared her throat and then waited. No movement. She laid the box of donuts on her desk and stepped around to look at the man in her chair. Her breath caught in her throat and she stopped dead in her tracks. Whoever he was, he was handsome and he looked almost angelic with his eyes closed. He had short blond hair, finely arched eyebrows, a sharp nose and a strong masculine jaw. He had full pouty lips that were pursed even in his sleep. His complexion was like porcelain and completely clear. It made even Cara envious. She could see smile wrinkles at the sides of his eyes and she would bet anything