How to Wed a Movie Star: Rich and Famous Fake Weddings, #4

By Genevieve Goodwin

What would you do if you became fake engaged to Hollywood's hunkiest action star completely by accident?

When Jocelyn Godfrey shows up unannounced to pitch her screenplay to a major movie studio, she inadvertently signs on to be A-Lister action star, Ryan Roberts' fake fiancé in a case of mistaken identity. She desperately needs rent money, so she decides to play along.

Ryan Roberts built his career and subsequent fame and fortune as Hollywood's notorious bad boy, a PR stunt that has finally came back to bite him. When his alter-ego persona gets him in trouble with his studio, he is forced to fix his false bad boy reputation or give up the role in his wildly successful series of action films. Hiring a sweet, aspiring actress to be his fake fiancée was the genius idea of his PR manager and agent.

But will this Oscar winning performance for the Hollywood gossip columns turn into true love?

 

Genevieve Goodwin writes sizzling sweet Contemporary Romance and Romantic Comedy with swoony heroes that will melt your heart. She loves writing witty banter, real life emotions, and forcing her hero and heroine to wake up and realize they've found the love of their life. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Love Smitten Books
• Release date: Aug 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9798215339244

Genevieve Goodwin

Genevieve Goodwin writes sweet, romantic Contemporary Romance and Romantic Comedy with swoony heroes that will melt your heart. She loves writing witty banter, real life emotions, and forcing her hero and heroine to wake up and realize they've found the love of their life. She love chocolate, traveling and an endless cup of carmel machiato coffee. She currently lives in Florida where you can find her on the beach with her toes in the sand, when she's not spinning another story for her next book.

Book preview

How to Wed a Movie Star

Genevieve Goodwin

Books by Genevieve Goodwin

Rich and Famous Fake Wedding Series

How to Wed a Billionaire

How to Wed a Quarterback

How to Wed a Country Music Star

How to Wed a Movie Star

Evergreen Crushes Series

Crushing on my Enemy

Crushing on my Boss

The Joy of Christmas Series

Her Christmas Billionaire

Click here to get a free copy of The Wedding Date!

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locals is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher and author. For more information regarding permission, contact the author.

Copyright © 2019 Genevieve Goodwin

All rights reserved.

Love Smitten Books

Description

She’s a struggling script writer who dislikes famous actors with bad boy reputations. Until a case of mistaken identity results in her becoming fake engaged to one!

When Jocelyn Godfrey shows up unannounced to pitch her screenplay to a major movie studio, she inadvertently signs on to be A-Lister action star, Ryan Roberts' fake fiancé in a case of mistaken identity. She desperately needs rent money, so she decides to play along.

Ryan Roberts built his career and subsequent fame and fortune as Hollywood’s notorious bad boy, a PR stunt that has finally came back to bite him. When his alter-ego persona gets him in trouble with his studio, he is forced to fix his false bad boy reputation or give up the role in his wildly successful series of action films. Hiring a sweet, aspiring actress to be his fake fiancé was the genius idea of his PR manager and agent.

But as time goes by, they begin to fall in love for real until secrets and surprises come to light. Can they overcome their mutual deceits and find happiness together?

Chapter One

Ryan Roberts stood in his trailer on location at Silverline’s studios with a grim expression plastered across his face. I won’t do it. You are both crazy. Ryan felt he was being bullied by the very people supposed to support him.

Ryan’s agent, Dean Walden shook his head, ignoring Ryan’s pleas for the hundredth time. You’re golden now. You’re about to get your own star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. And you are on the A-list for every big budget action film by every famous director at nearly every major studio in Hollywood once your contract ends next year. I won’t let you throw it all away because you debauched Hollywood’s latest sweetheart, he said.

Debauched? What is this? The sixteenth century? I told you, I didn’t date, debauch or do anything else with Vanessa Clarke outside of our movie scenes. I had nothing to do with her marriage break up.

Well, it appears to the public you did, Pamela joined in. Pamela Erich was Ryan’s PR manager though sometimes she acted as if she thought she was his boss rather than his PR manager. That rather scandalous photo of you two kissing on a beach was pretty convincing.

That was photoshopped. And I plan to sue whoever published it. Come on, what is wrong with you all? You know me. I don’t mess with married women, or someone else’s girl. And I don’t date people I work with, especially actresses. You know those gossip columnists will do anything to sell a story.

We’re only trying to help you, Dean said as if he were speaking to a child.

We need the media attention to be positive. Your last film is an Oscar contender. The studio is very concerned. Silverline Cinema wants damage control,

What you are suggesting is insane, Ryan argued. I won’t do it.

If you want to continue to be an A-lister you will, Pamela said. I don’t think your ego could take the fall.

Ego? Now she was really ticking him off. I worked hard to get where I am. No one gave me fame and top movie roles on a silver platter when I arrived in LA. I worked as a waiter and lived with five roommates like most actors do starting out. I paid my dues, he said as he paced the floorspace in his trailer. While he had one of the largest and most luxurious trailers on set, he suddenly felt confined, as if its walls were closing in on him. I won’t hire a fake fiancée like some desperado just to prove I didn’t have an affair with Vanessa Clarke. Whatever or whoever broke up her marriage wasn’t me.

Dean emitted a sound that sounded more like a whine than a sigh. It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do. It is the appearance of what you did that matters. Silverline Cinema will kick you off the next sequel if you don’t handle this in a very public way.

Ryan jerked his head around and stopped pacing. Are you kidding me? They can’t do Jesse Cross without me.

I talked to the head boss. She said she’d have Jesse Cross killed off unless you clean up this PR mess. Dean shrugged as if there was not a thing that he could do about it. If that was true, then what did he need an agent for?

Fat chance of that. It won’t be a Jesse Cross movie without Jesse Cross. It will tank and they will lose millions.

I’m just the messenger, Ryan, Dean said.

Did you tell her I didn’t do the things I’m accused of doing?

You have a reputation Ryan. A bad boy, play boy reputation. Of course, I told her, but she didn’t believe me.

Ryan pointed his finger at them as they sat with stoic faces on his white leather sofa, like they were judge and jury. Maybe you’ve forgotten, but it was your idea to create my bad boy persona. Have you forgot that? Pamela, you said it would sell out movie theaters and Dean, you said that the fame it generated would give me a choice in any film I wanted.

Pamela pursed her lips. It did all those things. But it also gave you a reputation, and that is not an easy thing to shake.

Ryan’s anger was building. You are the one who created it. None of it is true!

Pamela shrugged. That bad boy reputation pathed your way to fame and fortune.

No, my hard work and acting skills did that. I have every reason in the world to fire you both.

Double coughs from the two of them filled the small living area of the trailer. I think that is rather rash, Dean said. We can fix it. The public loves a good redemption story. We’ll get someone to be your fake fiancée, a real sweetheart. We’ll arrange it so the paparazzi will follow you around, snapping plenty of romantic pictures. We’ll send you to all the A-list parties with her and in a few months’ time, you can quietly break up. Everybody knows Hollywood relationships usually don’t last past six months.

Six months! I’m supposed to fake date some stranger for six months? Are you out of your mind?

She won’t be a stranger once you meet her, Dean quipped.

Do you have any better ideas? Pamela asked.

Do you want to give up the Jesse Cross movies? The role of a lifetime? Dean added.

Ryan was backed into a corner, and he didn’t like it. He never should have played up the bad boy angle, never should have taken advice from the two people who sat in front of him. He’d been young and broke at the time and easily led. No longer. He’d worked like a dog to get where he was, and he sure as heck wasn’t going to walk away without a fight.

I get to choose her, he said. And your job now, he said staring at Pamela, Is to create a new persona for me. No more bad boy, play boy or lover boy. I just want to be myself. Ryan Roberts, a simple guy from Colorado, who happens to like martial arts and motorcycles. And sweet, down to earth women. He nodded towards the door. Now, I need to go over my lines. This is the last week of shooting.

They got up and started for the door in silence. He shook his head as they shut the door behind them. He knew it had been a mistake to do a film with Vanessa Clarke. Despite being America’s so-called sweetheart, which was nothing but an excellent job by her PR people, he knew the truth about her. Wild parties and affairs were things that were magically kept out of the press for Vanessa Clarke. Whoever she’d had the affair with hadn’t been him. But someone was trying to frame him for it, and he couldn’t shake the feeling this was someone wanting to take him down. Someone with a vendetta. No matter. He’d fix things fast. He was no longer going to play the part Ryan Roberts, bad boy of Hollywood. That role was over now.

Thank goodness for that.

~

Jocelyn Godfrey had managed to get past Silverline Cinema’s strictly guarded gate by the luck of a pretty, young extra flirting with the guard. While she explained she had an interview at Blue Moon, a white lie to get on the studio lot, the guard had hastily opened the gate while a cute blond girl in a miniskirt graced him with a captivating smile. Without hesitation, she flew through the gates with the California Spring sunshine at her back and a smile on her face. Luck was the one thing Jocelyn really needed now as she was down to the last twenty dollars in her bank account, and the hostess job at a mediocre restaurant just wasn’t enough to pay the expensive rent in LA.

Even though she shared a home with four other struggling girls who had Hollywood ambitions of their own, she was always struggling to make ends meet. All she had to do was have one of her screenplays just optioned, and she could get her own place and stop stressing about bills all the time. That would be a dream come true. She didn’t know what it felt like not to have to worry about money. She’d been poor all her life.

She had the name of the producer and director who were currently on set who she just knew for certain would love her screenplay, a romantic thriller she’d titled, Secret Entanglements. If they didn’t throw her out first. Her writing coach told her it was like a modern Hitchcock crossed with a Ryan Roberts action film. She’d accepted his words the way he intended, as a compliment, though she hardly thought her screenplay was anything like a Ryan Roberts movie.

Those macho movies with their overuse of special effects, elaborate fight scenes, and Ryan’s trade bad boy sarcasm may make some women swoon, but not her. He was about as appealing to her as a dolled-up caveman. Because let’s face it, you can dress up a caveman but underneath it all, he’s still a caveman. And Ryan Roberts was a typical Neanderthal; a macho, arrogant play boy, whose string of ex-girlfriends from the last six months could fill a football field standing up.

Unwanted complementary comparison’s aside, she planned to create her own brand of action-thriller films, one from a women’s perspective with strong female leads and a reasonable male lead who didn’t steal her thunder. Yeah, she was writing fiction all right. She just hoped a few of the female buddy films that had gone viral recently would help her successfully