Stolen Kiss with the Hollywood Starlet, page 1
An innocent country girl...
With stars in her eyes!
In this Brides of the Roaring Twenties story, hotshot lawyer Walter Russell knows an innocent country girl like Shirley Burnette is going to find it tough in cutthroat Hollywood. A stolen kiss with this bright, young singer may be worthy of the silver screen—but Walter hates show business and has sworn off starlets. He knows he should steer well clear...if only he wasn’t so compelled to help her!
Brides of the Roaring Twenties
Finding husbands in Hollywood!
Helen and Shirley are looking for a fresh start, and the bright lights of Hollywood beckon.
They thought they’d left scandal behind them, but find plenty more adventure awaits them among the speakeasies, starlets and the silver screen.
What they need are two handsome Hollywood bachelors to guide them through this dazzling new world—and down the aisle?
Read Helen’s story in
Baby on His Hollywood Doorstep
And Shirley’s story in
Stolen Kiss with the Hollywood Starlet
Author Note
Everyone has a dream. One thing they’ve dreamed about doing, being, seeing. For some, they don’t stop until that dream comes true. Others continue to dream because that’s the most important part for them, the dream itself. That’s the wonderful thing about a dream. It’s yours. To use however you want.
Shirley, the heroine in this story, has a dream of becoming a singer. Her dream defines her, pushes her forward through trials and tribulations, but like a carrot dangling before her nose, it’s there, yet she just can’t catch it. I loved how she never stopped trying, but more than that, I loved how she never stopped dreaming.
Walter, the hero of this story, has had his dreams shattered and attempts to convince Shirley to give up on hers. She can’t do that and, along the way, authenticates the importance of dreams to him. They are important, to each and every one of us.
I hope you enjoy Shirley and Walter’s story.
Keep dreaming!
LAURI ROBINSON
Stolen Kiss with the Hollywood Starlet
A lover of fairy tales and cowboy boots, Lauri Robinson can’t imagine a better profession than penning happily-ever-after stories about men and women who pull on a pair of boots before riding off into the sunset...or kick them off for other reasons. Lauri and her husband raised three sons in their rural Minnesota home and are now getting their just rewards by spoiling their grandchildren. Visit her at laurirobinson.blogspot.com, Facebook.com/lauri.robinson1 or Twitter.com/laurir.
Books by Lauri Robinson
Harlequin Historical
Unwrapping the Rancher’s Secret
The Cowboy’s Orphan Bride
Western Christmas Brides
“A Bride and Baby for Christmas”
Married to Claim the Rancher’s Heir
Diary of a War Bride
Oak Grove
Mail-Order Brides of Oak Grove
“Surprise Bride for the Cowboy”
Winning the Mail-Order Bride
In the Sheriff’s Protection
Brides of the Roaring Twenties
Baby on His Hollywood Doorstep
Stolen Kiss with the Hollywood Starlet
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To my sister-in-law Jeannette.
An angel among the living.
Contents
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
Epilogue
Excerpt from The Duchess’s Secret by Elizabeth Beacon
Chapter One
1927
Look out, Los Angeles! Shirley Burnette’s rolling into town!
Shirley giggled at her own thoughts. Could almost hear Pappy saying them.
He used to say, “Look out, Shirley’s up and at ’em,” every morning without fail.
Nose glued to the window, she was enthralled, so thrilled her own breath kept fogging up the glass. Swiping the glass clean, she felt her excitement rise higher and higher as she watched the buildings roll by.
Big ones, little ones and those in between.
Los Angeles.
Hollywood.
The place where dreams came true.
No more washing dishes. No more shucking corn. No more mucking out stalls. Nebraska was half a nation behind her, and that’s where it was going to stay.
The train whistle, a screech that could make the hair on your arms stand on end, sounded like bells straight out of heaven to her. She’d waited years to hear that sound.
Years and years.
This wasn’t just her dream, it had been her mother’s, and she had to make it come true. No matter what.
There had been times she’d wondered if that was possible, especially four years ago, when Pappy had died. That’s also when she’d focused on making it come true even harder. She’d tucked away every spare penny she’d made working for Olin Swaggert, and made sure none of the overgrown thugs he called sons didn’t get their grubby hands on it. She made sure they didn’t get their grubby hands on anything else, too.
Olin kept saying that she was bound to fall in love with one of his boys, get married and live right there on that pig farm forever.
She’d assured him that would never happen.
Never.
Ever.
A lot of lazy dewdroppers, that’s what the entire clan of Swaggert boys were, and more than once she’d wanted to throw in the towel. The only reason she hadn’t was because Olin had paid her. The Swaggerts were one of the few families who could afford to have a live-in worker.
Live-in because, thanks to some city slicker lawyer, as soon as Pappy had died, the Swaggerts got the farm. Lock, stock and barrel. The lawyer claimed Pappy had owed Olin money. Lots of it. She’d argued that, but that hadn’t done a wit of good. In the end, she’d been left with no place to live. No place to do much of anything. Olin had offered her a job—out of the goodness of his heart, that’s how he’d put it.
A heart like his didn’t have any goodness. He’d known how badly it had hurt her to see the house she’d grown up in, lived in her entire life, torn down, but that hadn’t stopped him from tearing it all down and plowing up the land.
Corn. That was all that was there now. A field of corn.
That lawyer hadn’t had a heart, either. He’d refused to listen to a word she’d had to say. So had the sheriff, who’d ordered her out of the house. It had been hard to swallow, that there was nothing left of her family. Other than memories and a dream, so with no other options, she’d taken the job with the Swaggerts and turned her focus to saving up the money to get here. To where the only thing she had left was sure to come true.
Los Angeles. The City of Angels.
It was fitting. A girl who sang like an angel should live in the City of Angels.
People had been saying for years that she sang like an angel. Pappy, of course, and other family members before they’d died, but town folks had said it, too.
Granted, the population of Roca, Nebraska, was little more than two hundred, but a couple of churches in Lincoln had paid her to sing at funerals. Donations. She’d gotten donations. Piddly ones. But money was money and every penny she’d earned had brought her one step closer to this day.
She was here to become a singer. Sing like she and Pappy used to. Sing like her mother had, years ago, when she’d been young and traveled the country. That’s how her mother and father had met. He’d heard Momma sing at a playhouse in Lincoln. Within two shakes of a cat’s tail, they were married and Momma moved to the farm.
Pappy had claimed that Momma had never regretted that because she still sang all the time. Just not on a stage. Shirley couldn’t say if that was true or not. She’d been young when her parents had died. Sometimes, late at night when it was dark and quiet, she could hear her momma singing inside her head and her heart. That’s where her singing lived, inside her, where no one could take it away from her.
Pappy had said that, as a baby, she’d never cried. She’d sung instead. Sung her lungs out from the day she’d been born. He said it was in her genes and that she’d grow up to be just like her momma. A singer. A famous one, like her momma had dreamed of becoming before she’d married her father.
That’s what she was here to do. Become a singer. A famous one. She would learn how to dance, too. Really cut a rug. Had to. The two, singing and dancing, went hand in hand.
Oh, yes, she was going to sing and dance, and live and laugh!
The train jerked and bucked as it rolled into the station, and she swiped away the fog on the window one last time before straightening the collar of her blue paisley dress and picking up her purse, ready to get her first real look at her new world.
An entire new world that was there for the taking. Her taking. Like apples hanging on a tree ready to be plucked.
Life is good. When you make it that way.
Smiling at her own thoughts, Shirley was first in line, standing at the door, when the heavy metal was slid aside. She rushed down the steps, wishing she could twist her head like an owl. There was so much to see.
Buildings that went so high into the sky a person could dang near touch the clouds if they were to stand on top of one, and cars, more than she’d seen in a month back in Nebraska, and people. Tall ones, short ones, skinny ones, fat ones, old ones, young ones...just all sorts. All sorts!
We’re here, Momma. The place where our dreams are going to come true!
In an attempt to quell her enthusiasm long enough to collect her luggage, she gave herself a nod and leaped off the edge of the train station platform.
A second later she comprehended the baggage compartment was in the other direction, and had to step back up on the wooden platform and follow the crowd heading that way.
That didn’t faze her.
She was too happy.
Too free.
Shirley stood in line, tapping a toe and looking in all directions, until it was her turn. Then she collected her suitcase, thanked the man wearing a bright blue coat with shiny brass buttons and spun around while filling her lungs with California air.
Full of train smoke, the air stuck in her throat. She had to cough three times to clear her passageway, and wipe aside the tears the coughing caused.
But none of that fazed her, either.
Nothing could.
Her ordinary life was over.
Or soon would be. Her first order of business was to find a job. The money she’d saved was down to a pouch of coins and a few bills.
She wasn’t overly particular, and certainly wasn’t afraid of hard work. Things took time; she fully understood that. Becoming a singing sensation would be no different. Until then, she could only imagine that no matter where she got a job, it would be wonderful. It had to be. This was California!
Swinging her purse in one hand, her suitcase in the other, she headed toward the blocks upon blocks of tall buildings. Made of brick and concrete, every building was connected to the next one. The entire block was that way. Every block for as far as the eye could see. Some buildings were tall, some short, some had arched windows and decorative dormers, others just had rows and rows of windows.
Ten. That one building had ten rows of windows! She couldn’t help but wonder what could be behind all those windows, and scurried forward, rushing across the street to the next block. The first floors of most every building were businesses, all sorts of them. One sold only shoes. Another cigars and tobacco. Another one sold cakes.
Just cakes?
She stepped closer and peeked in the big window. Sure enough. That’s all that was inside there. Cakes. And people buying them.
People. Good heavens but there were people everywhere. Dressed in fancy suits and work clothes alike. Men, that is. The women, they all had on stylish clothes. Not simple dresses like the one she was wearing. Someday, she’d have dresses like they were wearing, but she wasn’t going to worry about that. Not today. Not when there was so much to see.
Like that cake shop.
Who’d have thought a store could sell nothing but cakes? That was truly fascinating.
Everything was fascinating.
There were big signs, like the one about selling nothing but cakes, everywhere. In all the windows. On the storefronts and on the sides of the buildings, even sprouting out of the rooftops like an old man with only a few strands of hair sticking straight up.
Billboards. That’s what those signs were called. She’d seen pictures of them in magazines. Every chance she’d got the past few years, she’d popped into Lester Frank’s store and read those magazines cover to cover. When she had time to read. Other days, when she had to hurry or be left behind by one of the Swaggerts, she’d just looked at the pictures. Every last picture before she put the magazine back and bought the items on her lists.
The pictures in those magazines looked just like everything around her.
Everything.
Except those pictures had been black-and-white. Here, everything was colorful.
Right down to the automobiles parked along the curb and those buzzing up and down the street. They were red, green, yellow, blue, silver, even white. Why, there was hardly a black one to be seen.
Back home, they’d all been black.
Dull black cars. Just like her life had been. Dull. Colorless.
Happiness bubbled inside her. She was here. Truly here! And everything about her old life was behind her.
All those colorful cars, of all different makes and models, were something, but the roads, they were amazing. These roads weren’t made of dirt like back in Nebraska. No, sirree! They were paved. And the sidewalks concrete. Her heels clicked against it as she walked.
That made her smile.
Everything made her smile. She spun in a circle, looking up at all the signs, around at all the stores and cars and down at all the concrete. It was all she’d dreamed it would be.
Stopping before she made herself dizzy, she drew in a breath and set her focus on her first necessity.
Money made the world go around and she needed to find a way to make a few bucks—seed money—to get her world spinning.
Her smile increased upon noticing a newspaper stand across the street.
Ask and you shall receive!
She stepped off the curb and walked between two parked cars. When there was a break in traffic, she took the opportunity and hurried forward to cross the street.
Out of nowhere, a sound, or flash of color, had her looking left.
A big red car was barreling right at her.
Shirley leaped backward, but her feet went out from beneath her as a screech the likes she’d never heard before scared the very soul out of her body. The next second, her rump landed on the pavement so hard her teeth nearly rattled out of her mouth.
* * *
Walter Russell shut off the engine of his Packard at the same time he threw open the door. Thank goodness the roadster had mechanical brakes on all four wheels, otherwise he would have hit the woman. He didn’t think he had hit her, but couldn’t see her over the hood. She’d gone down while his brakes were squealing like a stuck hog.
Where had she come from? It was as if she’d shot right out in front of him on purpose.
He rounded the front of the car, saw her sitting on the pavement and ran closer. “Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?”
Eyes wide and mouth open, it was a moment before she shook her head. “My behind is throbbing and my teeth are stinging ’cause this here pavement is a hell of a lot harder than dirt. I can tell you that. And hotter. Boy-oh-howdy but it’s hot. That sun is doing its job.”
He held back a grin, because it certainly wasn’t funny. Not even her thoughts about the pavement. She just looked so cute, so startled, sitting there, shaking her head.
Walter gave his head a clearing shake. “Here,” he said, taking ahold of her arm. “Let me help you up.”
She pulled her arm away. “I can get up all on my own. Been doing it every morning since the day I was born.” She let out a tiny giggle. “Well, dang near since then.”
He stepped back as she planted her heels and palms on the pavement, then arching her back, she literally leaped upright. It was a smooth, somewhat graceful movement, just one he’d never seen done before. And wasn’t overly sure he’d seen it this time. She was a little thing. The top of her head barely came up to his shoulders. That could explain why she was so agile. How she’d hopped up off the ground like some acrobat in a circus show.
“Hand me that suitcase, would you?” she asked, nodding toward the Packard as she picked up her handbag.
