Page 1 of Everybody Needs a Hero

1

Catching her reflection in the glass for a moment, Tess Landish didn’t like what she saw—an aging actress without any makeup and too much gray in her long, golden-blonde hair. The appointment scheduled for later in the day with Raul, her fabulous hairstylist, would take care of the latter. There was nothing to be done about the former. At forty-six, Tess knew she was pushing the outermost edge of the celebrity envelope for desirable leading roles. Only her stunning track record of box office hits kept her in the running at all, but over eighteen months had passed since her last job, and she had started to worry. No matter how many promises her longtime manager made that she had a lot of years in front of the movie cameras ahead of her, Tess didn’t believe him. Until the last offer cropped up out of practically nowhere, because of another actress literally breaking a leg, the horizon looked bleak.But no longer, she thought. Tomorrow morning, Tess was back to work—day one of principal filming on a movie Hollywood critics were already buzzing about.

Learning the one hundred and twenty-seven-page script in such a rush had been a daunting effort, but her experience in the entertainment industry memorizing lines served her well. Seventy-two hours of mad cramming, and she would be able to get by with few or no prompts. The director was an old friend too, which would help her acclimate to the movie’s cast and crew quickly. She had no idea other than the name of her co-lead and a few other supporting cast as to who was making the magic happen, but it was no matter. After over two decades in Hollywood, she was familiar with pretty much all the major talent. Not that it truly mattered who was who. Tess was thankful to have the job as a lead on a big-budget feature. She wasn’t ready to be relegated to “mom” roles or other supporting characters. Not yet.

“Chai tea latte, skim, extra vanilla, and not too hot,” Tess’s daughter said as she slid open the patio doors to join her mother outside. She set a white ceramic mug on the large teak patio table. “Just the way you like it.”

Tess looked at the beautiful, blonde-haired young woman who was the light of her life—Ashley Landish, her twenty-eight-year-old daughter. Even though Tess had been barely eighteen and nothing but a starstruck, aspiring actress when a one-night stand with a married casting agent got her pregnant, she never regretted her decision to have Ashley. Of course, her own agent had dropped her as a prospect the minute she announced she was keeping the baby, and the casting agent father refused to acknowledge he had ever even met her. That had been a scary time for Tess, and it looked like all her hopes of being a big-name movie star were over. Yet, fortune shined on her, and through a friend of a friend, she landed a job as a commercial voiceover actress. The hours were long, and the pay wasn’t much, but it covered the rent of the shabby studio in Inglewood and kept her in the business. Looking back on all the priceless memories with her baby girl, as difficult as life was at the time, Tess wouldn’t change a thing. The challenges made her appreciate her later success and even more gave her the wonderment of raising an exceptional child.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Tess said as Ashley slipped into the padded patio chair at the table. “You are so talented at that espresso machine.”

Ashley laughed. “I would hope so,” she said with a smile. “I’ve been running my own coffee shop for three years now.”

Tess smiled in return. What she said was true. Her daughter wanted nothing to do with show business. Even though she was stunningly attractive like her mother and charismatic in a way that made her coffee shop customers adore her, Ashley had turned her back on the entertainment industry. Scouts had circled promising all kinds of roles, but Tess shooed them away. She insisted her daughter follow her own path as a businesswoman. Ashley’s first venture, Landish Coffee, did extremely well as a shop along the famous Venice Beach boardwalk, and Tess could not be prouder of all she had accomplished.

Fingeringher own mug of chai latte, Ashley regarded her mom over the patio table. She loved seeing the spark back in her famous blue eyes. The last year and a half had been rough to watch as no real jobs materialized for the once highly sought-after actress Tess Landish. Talking and texting multiple times every day, Ashley was very aware of how much her mom struggled with growing older. At only twenty-eight, she couldn’t quite comprehend the fear of being cast aside for younger actors, but she remained ever reassuring. “Something will come along,” Ashley said to her mom like a mantra. “It always does. You are Tess Landish. Everyone loves you.”

And she had been right. A spectacular opportunity landed right in her mother’s lap. Even though Tess appeared to have no clue about the book the movie was based on, Ashley had read the novel and loved it. The author, Drew Andersen, seemed to come out of nowhere to write a runaway hit and rule the New York Times bestseller list for months. What the critics called the book of the century was a heart-wrenching love story between a cynical, alcoholic nurse and a legendary actor fighting to hide his onsetting dementia. Ashley only hoped the book’s adaptation and her mother in the challenging role of the nurse would do it justice.

“How are you feeling?” Ashley asked. “You holed up here in your house memorizing that script for three days. We hardly had any contact, and I was beginning to worry you’d fallen off the face of the Earth.”

Tess put her hand over Ashley’s. “I know,” she said with a smile that lit up her face. “I missed you. But thank you for providing me caffeine nonstop. Having your staff run over here all the way from Venice Beach to keep me fortified was an absolute lifesaver. You have no idea.”

Ashley smiled back, and their faces flashed such a resemblance that people never missed guessing they were related. Even though she almost always wore her long hair up in a messy bun and toned down any makeup, at least once a day, a customer noticed Ashley and asked if it was possible she was Tess’s daughter. Occasionally, the fact irritated Ashley, particularly when she was in the middle of running her coffee shop, because there would be a million questions about her famous mom. Still, she never hid who she was because, in the end, she loved being Tess Landish’s child. Her mom was a fantastic woman, and Ashley was proud of her. Not only talented and a huge success, but warm, caring, and always there for her.

Especially when it came to heartbreak over another of Ashley’s failed relationships. One downside of looking gorgeous like her mother was finding a partner who wanted her for something more than her looks. Or her supposed contacts with the entertainment industry—something that didn’t exist. Besides, Ashley had never brought a woman home to meet her mother. No one had yet to come close to meeting that standard. Her mom was everything to her, and she would never expose Tess to some starstruck fan with their amateur movie script hidden under their coat.

“You know I’m super excited for you to have the role,” Ashley said. “I wish you’d had time to read the amazing book, though. Even at almost seven hundred pages, the story was worth every minute.”

Tess picked up her latte. “That’s not always a good strategy. It might put an idea in my head of how the role should be played,” she said before taking a sip and licking her lips. “And it might not align with what the director wants.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Ashley admitted but furrowed her brow. “But it really is an amazing love story.”

“I’m sure it is,” Tess said with a twinkle in her eye. “All the more reason I’m thrilled to be the one playing the role. We might be up for a run at awards season after this.”

Picking up her own latte, Ashley held it up as a toast. “Then, let’s drink to that,” she said as her mom laughed but touched their mugs together.

“It’s not champagne, but why not?” Tess said. “Hopefully, there will be plenty of bubbly in the near future.”

On her thirtieth birthday,Bryce stood at the edge of the dirt and noticed grass was starting to take hold in places. Considering the unusually high temperatures, especially for March, she considered it a good sign. Watered every day by the rotary sprinklers she heard working in the distance helped. Before long, the patch would be another indistinct grave in the vast green lawn of Bakersfield’s Hillcrest Memorial Cemetery. Only the marble headstone she picked out would mark the spot where her dad, Donald Cooper rested. Looking at it, Bryce read the simple text she picked to etch onto the stone. ‘Donald Allen Cooper. A Good Man Taken Too Soon.’ Underneath were the dates of his birth and his death. He had been fifty-three, and the once hearty and healthy man Bryce remembered withered to nothing from liver cancer.

Wiping away a bead of sweat that trickled down her temple, Bryce didn’t cry. In fact, she’d only cried once in a long, ugly, middle-of-the-night bout of pure anguish. That was all. Every other moment from when she returned home three months ago to start taking care of him until they put him in the ground, she was solid. No one was surprised that she didn’t shed a tear. Bryce was a United States Marine, trained to withstand any kind of pain, even emotional. That didn’t mean she was emotionless, though, and her eyes lingered over the three words—taken too soon. They reemphasized something Bryce had already started to figure out after her first mission in the Marine Corps. Life was short and death was unpredictable.

“Goodbye, Dad,” she said, not sure when she would be back to visit his gravesite again. There were some things she needed to take care of a hundred miles away in Los Angeles and resolving them might take a while. Or at least she hoped they would. And then there was the state of things with the Marines, and she had to consider what happened next in her career. She was due for reenlistment, and the Marine Corps was considerate enough to let her use extra leave to care for her dad. Their expectation was she would be back, especially after training her to be a reconnaissance specialist, but Bryce was no longer sure what she wanted to do with her life. With her dad gone, no brothers or sisters, and her mom long since remarried to a man Bryce didn’t get along with, the military was the only family she had left. It seemed an easy decision for her to reenlist tomorrow and continue to work her way up the chain of command.

Only one thing made her hesitate to pull out her phone and tell her captain to start the official paperwork. It was something with an outcome that would most likely amount to nothing. Still, she was too tempted to deny how she felt. All it required was getting in her dad’s old Ford pickup and making a quick trip to Los Angeles to visit a particular coffee shop. Although Bryce had never been there, she knew where the place was after googling the owner one lonely night in the middle of some Godforsaken country—Venice Beach.

Reading of the business owner’s success had not surprised her. The woman who ran the shop was brilliant, and when they were in college together, showed she had a head for business. When they worked as a team on class projects, starting a coffee shop in a popular tourist location was always the woman’s plan. For some reason she could not seem to deny, Bryce wanted to see the result. But the desire was more than that. She also needed to see the owner one more time and maybe, just maybe, find the courage to tell Ashley Landish how she felt.

2

Standing on the carpet in front of the oversized mahogany desk in the movie producer’s plush office, Drew Andersen’s head spun from what she heard coming out of the man’s mouth. She had to be in the middle of her worst nightmare, because what he said was nothing short of absurd.

“I know you’re upset,” the producer said with his beefy hands held in a manner apparently meant to pacify Drew. “But there was absolutely nothing I could do. We are already over budget, and shooting can’t delay any longer.”

When Drew didn’t respond, his lips pressed into a tight line, and she could almost read his mind.Why are writers always so damn difficult?His opinion wasn’t fair though, because Drew had done her best from the start to be flexible with the film adaptation while keeping the core of her book’s story intact. But she was only willing to go so far. Enough was enough.

Crossing her arms, Drew stood up to her full five-foot-two height and prepared for battle. “And if I say no to your crazy change?” she asked, eyes narrowed. “Then what happens to the movie?”

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