Everybody Needs a Hero, page 1
EVERYBODY NEEDS A
HERO
KC LUCK
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
products of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events, locales or persons either living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 KC Luck Media
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in
any form whatsoever.
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
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
About the Author
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1
C atching 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.
FINGERING her 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
&nb
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?”
The producer sighed as he pinched the bridge of his nose
with his thumb and forefinger. “Then I reach into my drawer,
pull out the contract you signed four months ago, and explain
you don’t have a real choice,” he answered. “In case you
didn’t read the fine print, the final say as to who is cast in the
role is mine.”
Feeling her face start to flush from anger, Drew lifted her
chin. “You’re really going to do this to me?” she asked, trying
to hold her temper in check a little longer. As much as she
wanted to blast the man for pulling a fast one on her, letting go
of her emotions wouldn’t help her case. “There’s got to be
someone else. Anybody.”
Shaking his head, the producer pulled a glossy headshot
off a pile of tattered scripts on his desk and held it up for her to
see. The face looking back at Drew was of a startlingly
beautiful woman who was immediately recognizable. “I don’t
understand why you are so upset,” he said, giving the picture a
shake. “Tess Landish is an A-list actress, and her name alone
will help ticket sales.”
Drew didn’t care about ticket sales or how many millions
the thing made at the box office. This can’t be happening, she
thought, working to keep her breathing even though she was
ready to scream. All she wanted was for the movie to be
quality. “We searched for three months and held a hundred
