Portia MacIntosh - How Not To Be Starstruck

Nicole Wilde’slife is one of sell-out gigs, bunking on tour buses, trashing hotels and partying with the band all night long. But she’s not in the band. She is a music journalist, paid to be the world’s greatest groupie– and she loves it!

Nicole has the party lifestyle – and the hangovers to prove it – but no one stops her in the supermarket on a bad hair day. Until she is papped in an incriminating position with recently married mega-star Dylan King of The Burnouts and the tabloids start hounding her. This isn’t so fun. Especially when her make-up is a mess and she hasn’t yet had a chance to clean her teeth.

Dylan accuses her of ruining his marriage. His handsome PR agent, Charles, calls her a tart. She has to take gorgeous Luke from Two For the Road to hospital after a drug incident. And she’s dropped her mobile phone in the bath! Too much celebrity lifestyle for one week? Time to slow down and take stock? Maybe for somebody else. But Nicole Wilde is going to come out fighting!

Don’t miss Portia MacIntosh’slinked novella Between a Rockstar and a Hard Place to see where Nicole started out!

Also available by Portia MacIntosh

Between a Rockstar and a Hard Place

How Not to be Starstruck

Portia MacIntosh

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2014

Copyright © Portia MacIntosh 2014

Portia MacIntosh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2014 ISBN: 9781472094681

Version date: 2018-07-23

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Book List

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Acknowledgements

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

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Seventy-One

Chapter Seventy-Two

Chapter Seventy-Three

Chapter Seventy-Four

Chapter Seventy-Five

Chapter Seventy-Six

Endpages

About the Publisher

When she was fifteen years old, Portia MacIntoshfell in with a bad crowd…rockstars. After disappearing on tour and living the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle for a few years, Portia landed a job in the music industry – but only so that she didn’t have to join the real world just yet.

Now in her twenties, Portia is ready to spill the beans on the things she has witnessed over the years. Well, kind of. If her famous friends knew that she was borrowing their lives to inspire her fiction, they would stop inviting her on tour and banish her from the inner circle. Then she really would have to rejoin the real world, and she’s still not ready for that.

Portia only started writing novels to share her secrets, but then she realised she actually quite liked writing – maybe even more than she likes living on a bus with a bunch of smelly boys – and has since tried her hand at writing about other things.

Check out Portia’s blog at: www.portiamacintosh.tumblr.com

Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PortiaMacIntosh

…and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/macintoshportia

Massive thanks to the lovely HQ Digital UK team – especially Lucy, Victoria and Jo.

Thank you to all my music industry friends – if you guys didn’t do half the hilarious/terrible/unbelievable things that you do, I wouldn’t have anywhere near as much material to work with.

A big thank you to my Gosling Girls - Megan, Kirsty, Victoria and Laura - and to all the wonderful people who read and reviewed Between a Rockstar and a Hard Place .

And finally, the biggest thank you of all to my family and my band boy. You put up with an awful lot and without you none of this would have been possible.

For my band boy

Chapter One

The Fairy Tale

I wonder who started the bloody ridiculous rumour that women can multi-task effortlessly. I’d love to know so that I can send them a photograph of me right now (obviously someone else would have to take it for me) epic-failing my way to the office.

It’s 11 a.m. on an exceptionally cold Monday morning and I’m late for work. Again, and as always. Currently dodging my way through the busy streets of Leeds, I’m desperately trying not to drop anything. In my right hand I have four take-away cups of coffee – in a holder obviously, I’m good but I’m not that good – my massive Mary Poppins-style handbag hooked on my left arm and my mobile phone in my left hand. It’s still in my hand because, as I was leaving Starbucks, I received a call from work and without a free hand to put my phone back in my bag, that’s where it’s going to have to stay.

Thankfully work is just around the corner from my flat, although I was supposed to be at the office by 10 a.m. Stopping at Starbucks has only made me even later but I’m hoping the coffees will score me some brownie points with the staff. If you can’t be on time, the least you can do is suck up to people.

Just one more road to cross and I’ll be there. Balancing on the edge of the curb in my silly yet beautiful shoes, I feel like the slightest breeze could knock me off my feet. As the green man appears, I step off the pavement with the rest of the sheep. Eyeballing the window of my office for angry faces, I make it half way across the road when something hits me – literally hits me. As I fall to the ground in what feels like super-slow, Matrix -esque motion (although it probably doesn’t look quite so graceful to the people around me), my impressive coffee-handbag-phone balancing act comes to an abrupt end. Landing flat on my back, right there in the middle of the road, I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus. Was I hit by a bus? I can hear people fussing around me and the impatient blaring of car horns. They can piss off, I could be dead...although if I’m thinking that, chances are I’m probably still alive, right?