It Happened One Fight

by Maureen Lenker

Genres: Historical Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

Joan Davis is a movie star?and a damned good actor too. Unfortunately, Hollywood only seems to care when she stars alongside Dash Howard, Tinseltown's favorite leading man and a perpetual thorn in Joan's side. She's sick of his hotshot attitude, his never-ending attempts to get a rise out of her?especially after the night he sold her out to the press on a studio-arranged date. She'll turn her career around without him. She's engaged to Hollywood's next rising star, after all, and preparing to make the film that could finally get her taken seriously. Then a bombshell drops: thanks to one of his on-set pranks gone wrong, Dash and Joan are legally married. Reputation on the line, Joan agrees to star alongside Dash one last time and move production to Reno, where divorce is legal after a six-week residency. But between on-set shenanigans, fishing competitions at Lake Tahoe, and intimate moments leaked to the press, Joan begins to see another side to the man she thought she had all figured out, and it becomes harder and harder to convince the public?and herself?that her marriage to Dash is the joke it started out as.

Release date: July 11, 2023

Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca

Print pages: 376

Sample

CHAPTER 1

JOAN DAVIS TO WED MONTY SMYTH!

JUNE 11, 1936

Is that a new piece of platinum we spy on Joan Davis’s hand? The rumors are true. Hollywood’s princess is engaged to 1936’s rising matinee idol Monty Smyth. It’s certainly sudden! Mr. Smyth and Miss Davis have been spotted out on the town together three times in the last six weeks—and already it’s wedding bells for this divine duo.

Miss Davis tells reporters the proposal was a complete surprise, and it happened over cocktails on the patio of her Beverly Hills home. “I came out with the cocktail shaker, ready to top off our glasses, and there was Monty down on one knee! Of course, my answer was immediately ‘Yes,’” she told Confidante, a rosy glow in her cheeks—only matched by the sparkle in her eight-karat Asscher-cut diamond ring. The couple have said they are aiming for a September wedding. That’s only three months away. Anyone who’s somebody in Hollywood will be there.

Miss Davis’s star hasn’t shined quite as brightly of late—her last two films flopped at the box office. But audiences are gaga for Monty whose ten-minute scene in Where Devils Dare earned the tall, dark, and handsome hunk an Oscar nomination. And he can’t go anywhere without a gaggle of adoring fans. It’s Monty Mania everywhere you look!

Mr. Smyth’s long-time roommate, Jerry Scott, was spotted celebrating at the Cocoanut Grove last night. He was blotto with a capital B, celebrating his pal’s good fortune. According to our sources, Monty’s already asked him to be best man.

But there’s one man we haven’t heard a peep from—Dash Howard, Miss Davis’s costar in six pictures. He was spotted at his new favorite haunt, Café Trocadero, last night, but was otherwise

engaged with a titian-haired distraction. At one time, all of America was yearning for wedding bells between Dash and Davis. And undoubtedly many were still holding out hope even after she slugged him in the kisser at the Cocoanut Grove. Has Joan Davis landed another blow? What does the King of Hollywood think about his leading lady getting hitched?

Nothing was going to spoil Joan Davis’s mood today. Not the stickpin jabbing her in the side from her costume fitting. Not even the press’s insistence on linking her with Dash when she was engaged to someone else. Because everything was going according to plan.

She held the skirt of her pale-blue gown nimbly between her thumb and finger as she sauntered across the lot from the wardrobe department to her trailer. She was carrying the issue of Confidante announcing her engagement in her left hand, her inverted art-deco manicure curled just so around the magazine so that her life-size engagement ring rested atop the photo of it on the cover. It glinted in the sunlight, and she preened as secretaries and receptionists on coffee breaks, and grips and best boys wheeling equipment down the sunny streets of the lot, called out felicitations to her.

She cheerily returned her thanks, flashing her gleaming smile and giving her best movie-star wave, which was really more of a back-and-forth glide than anything. But it did make the ring reflect the sun.

It was an absolutely perfect day, one of those miraculous early- summer Los Angeles days when everything was balmy and temperate. The type of day you’d put on a postcard. She was doing what she loved most in the world: getting ready to make a new picture, one she really believed in this time. One with potential to finally earn her the respect as an actress she yearned for. It would be her final picture with Dash Howard to boot. Harry promised.

After that night at the Cocoanut Grove when he’d tried to use her for publicity and she'd

clocked him, working with Dash had been hell. She had begged Harry for four years to end this on-screen partnership. She could barely stand to look at Dash. Once, she’d wanted to move past the incident and be professionals about it. But every time it seemed they were close to a breakthrough, Dash pulled a prank and reminded her why they were like oil and water. It had taken four years of needling, but she’d finally gotten Harry to agree to let them make one last picture and go their separate ways once and for all.

But why was she thinking about Dash at a time like this? She was engaged to be married to the most desirable man in Hollywood. That pesky “box-office poison” label she’d acquired last year would be a faint memory soon.

She couldn’t wait to get back to her trailer and go through the stack of announcements again, the reams of paper dedicated to her and Monty’s engagement. Some were better than others. She could do very well without The Hollywood Reporter’s inquiry, “From Box-Office Poison to Blushing Bride?” But the cover of Silver Screen, bearing the caption “A Match Made in Hollywood” and featuring her and Monty in an affectionate embrace she had taken great pains to stage on her patio—that was more like it. Every paper in town, every rag, every fan magazine, anyone who cared to spare the ink to write about Tinseltown had her picture and the news splashed across it.

She stopped short to find her assistant Arlene, Evets’s Studios’ newest screenwriter, pacing back and forth near the steps of her trailer. “What is it?”

“Nothing, nothing, don’t worry about it.” Arlene waved her hands limply. “Is that the dress for the dinner scene?”

“Yes, it is.” Joan struck a pose to model the diaphanous sleeve that buttoned delicately around her wrist. “It’s just as you wrote it, darling. I had to show you. They let me walk across the lot in it so you could see it. But stop changing the subject. Why are you wearing a hole in the concrete? Let’s go in the trailer.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Arlene said. “Why don’t you go back to wardrobe and I’ll take care of it?”

Joan lunged, and Arlene spread her arms across the door that had Joan’s name painted on it in gold. “Joan, trust me.” But Joan was too quick for her, slipping her hand under Arlene’s outstretched arm and turning the doorknob to gain entry to what had been her inner sanctum on the lot for the last four years.

She ducked under Arlene’s arm and darted in, surveying the room. Nothing looked amiss

. Her favorite Hurrell photograph of herself was still framed and gleaming on her dressing table; the lights surrounding the mirror were on, waiting for her to touch up her makeup; and her monogrammed robe was laid across the armchair in the corner, next to the stack of papers and magazines announcing her engagement. The only thing noticeably different was the myriad of floral arrangements congratulating her and Monty, filling the room with a cloying aroma.

Even the zebra-skin rug was perfectly placed in the center of the room, not an inch different from how she’d left it earlier that morning. Except…had it moved? That wasn’t possible; it was faux, it had never been alive to begin with. But no, there it was again, a little shiver as if it were inching its way across the floor of her dressing room.

She squinted and that’s when she saw it. It wasn’t the rug that was moving; it was a black-and-white creature that had been camouflaged against it now snuffling its way through the center of her space. “Skunkkkkkkk!” she shrieked, backing up into Arlene who promptly joined in her blood-curling yelps.

“Move, Arlene, get out of my way. Evelyn will kill me if that thing sprays this dress and she has to start over.”

“I told you, I told you, I told you.”

The two women practically tripped over themselves, scrambling to get back out the door and slam it shut. They crouched near the door, and Joan pressed her ear against it, listening for any sign of the creature.

Arlene was above her, one hand clinging to Joan’s shoulder, the other to the railing, trying desperately not to fall over. “What are you doing?” she hissed.

“Shhhh, I’m trying to hear if it’s spraying.”

Arlene snorted. “You can’t hear whether it’s spraying through the door.”

Joan grimaced. “Well then, I have to check.” She turned the brass doorknob ever so slowly, inch by inch until the door creaked open, making a crack barely small enough to see through. Something scampered past the door, and she pulled it shut, yelping in terror and collapsing against it.

This time, the sound of her distress sent a harried-looking production assistant in a newsboy cap sprinting to the scene. “Miss Davis, Miss Morgan, what’s wrong?”

“Joseph, thank

 God, there’s a skunk in my dressing room,” Joan hissed, pointing at the door with a deliberate motion, as if the skunk were a bomb and if they were too loud it might go off.

“Well, how on earth did a skunk get in your dressing room?”

“How should I know? I certainly didn’t put it there.”

“All right, all right, don’t flip your wig. I’ll handle it.” The boy cracked the door open and slipped inside, while Joan resisted the urge to bite her nails. Everyone would want a picture of her ring finger now; she couldn’t have a nail out of place.

Arlene looked as if she was going to be sick. “What if he frightens it and it sprays all over the place?”

Joan laughed. “Well, I guess it will cut the overwhelming smell of flowers. It was a bit intense, even for my taste.”

Arlene shook her head, mirth and disbelief mingling on her face. “I don’t understand how it could have got in there since this morning. They’re nocturnal!”

Joan had a vague idea. There was one person on this studio lot who loved to have a laugh at her expense, one person who could not resist a practical joke even if it cost the studio time and money.

The sound of a scuffle came from behind the door. Joan closed her eyes and massaged the bridge of her nose. So much for her perfect day. The phone in her dressing room started to ring. Most likely someone else wishing her and Monty all their best. They could call back later.

As the shrill ring of the telephone ended, the production assistant emerged from Joan’s dressing room holding the skunk aloft and away from his body, as if the creature were a live grenade. “I got him,” he huffed. Somewhere along the way he’d lost his hat and a button.

Joan arched an eyebrow. “An epic struggle between man and beast, it seems.”

The boy blushed. “He didn’t want to come out from under your dressing table. I had to coax him out with my hat. For some reason he didn’t spray, though. He lifted his tail and everything, but we got lucky.”

Joan sighed in relief. At least she didn’t have to face that disaster. “I’ll call Harry and ask him to tell the mayor to award you a medal for your service.”

Joseph chuckled. “That’s not necessary. I’ll just see about getting this fella relocated.”

Arlene and Joan pressed themselves up against the railing of the steps leading to the dressing room, giving Joseph and the critter the widest possible

 berth.

“Oh, and this was tied around his neck.” He handed Joan a red silk bow tie with a small piece of paper affixed to it.

She thumbed it open and read it. Congrats to you and Monty on your engagement. Hope your marriage doesn’t stink! xoxo, Dash. Just as she’d suspected.

She crumpled the paper and stormed back into her now mercifully vermin-free dressing room. “The nerve,” she snapped. “Couldn’t even let me have one day.”

Arlene was right behind her, tiptoeing cautiously. “Dare I even ask who?”

“You know who,” Joan snarled. “Dash Howard. That loathsome, egotistical fool left that, that, that…thing in my dressing room as an engagement present.”

She thrust the piece of paper at Arlene as proof and crossed to the soft pink velvet armchair in the corner, tossing her robe aside and collapsing with a heavy sigh, dramatically swinging her arm across her face. The phone rang again, and she groaned. She couldn’t take any more surprise well-wishes. For all she knew, an opossum was calling with a special delivery.

“Arlene, would you answer that?”

Arlene nodded, gave one last suspicious glance at the rug to make sure it wouldn’t unexpectedly spring to life, and went to answer the phone on the side table. “Whoever it is, tell them I am indisposed from celebrating my engagement.”

Arlene shook her head and picked up the pale-pink phone from the receiver. “Hello, Miss Davis’s dressing room. Arlene Morgan speaking. Yes… No, no, I’m afraid Miss Davis is indisposed at the moment. I beg your pardon! I am certain that whatever it is can wait.”

“Who is it?” Joan mouthed, peeking out from the hand she still had theatrically flung across her eyes.

“It’s Leda,” Arlene hissed.

“Oh, well, she’s probably steamed we didn’t give her the exclusive engagement announcement. You know how she is. She thinks she owns me and Dash. Put her off.”

Arlene nodded and elevated her voice to its haughtiest tones. “Why, may I ask, are you calling?”

Joan grabbed the latest copy of Variety lying atop the stack of press clippings on the coffee table. BOFFO AT THE BOX OFFICE AND AS A BRIDEGROOM—MONTY SMYTH VIES FOR HOLLYWOOD GREATNESS, the headline read. No wonder

Dash was in top form. It must’ve infuriated him to see Monty atop the headlines. Because of her. She had all the press she needed. More importantly, all the press she wanted.

There was no need to speak to Hollywood’s most notorious gossip columnist at a time like this. Leda had been riding Joan’s coattails for years, cashing in on Dash’s plot at the Cocoanut Grove. Joan didn’t know how she’d done it, if it was happenstance or if Leda had been in on it the whole time. All Joan knew was the next morning the front page of every gossip rag in town had been plastered with photos of her canoodling with Dash, then slugging him. And there in the Los Angeles Examiner had been Leda’s first byline where, ever since, she’d peddled her poison as a journalist. If you could call her that. Joan had a lot of worse names for her but she didn’t use them. Because somehow, someway, Leda had discovered Joan’s greatest secret. Harry had paid the reporter handsomely to keep quiet. But Joan still didn’t want to get near the woman with a ten-foot pole. So no, Joan would not be answering any of her questions today. Or ever.

“Well, Miss Price, I’m sure whatever you need to tell Miss Davis, you can share with me. I’ll be sure she gets the message.”

Joan looked up because Arlene had gone silent—and she was startled to see her former assistant’s face was ashen. Something was very, very wrong. Wordlessly, Arlene gestured for her to come to the phone, and Joan struggled to extricate herself from her seat, tripping on the as-yet-unhemmed skirt of her costume.

After what felt like an eternity but was likely only a few seconds, she pried the phone from Arlene’s hands. Her assistant was gaping at her like a goldfish, her lips moving, but no sound issuing forth. The only way to deal with Leda Price was to be equally as haughty as she was.

Joan cleared her throat and put on her best movie-star voice, the one she reserved for red carpets on opening nights at Grauman’s. “Leda, darling, what can I do for you?”

“Cut the crap, Joan. I’m not calling for a gushing pronouncement of your love for Monty Smyth.”

“Why are you calling, then? My latest picture starts filming on Monday, but you know all about that already. So my engagement is the only news about me there is.”

“Hardly,” Leda scoffed. Joan could imagine her eyes glittering and her mouth turning up at the corners, like the cat that caught the canary.

“Well, spit it out, then, Leda.”

“Oh, well now, I was just wondering what your fiancé, Mr. Smyth, thinks about bigamy?”

“I don’t know. Shall I ask him? I hardly see what that has to do with our engagement. What’s your point?” Joan knew Leda would stop at nothing to create a scandal.

“Oh, Joan,” Leda purred, drawing out the final n like she was sucking on a candy. “It has everything to do with your engagement. Considering you are already married—to Mr. Dash Howard.”

Joan laughed. “You and half the country wish!”

“I assure you this is no idle Hollywood fantasy, Miss Davis,” Leda said, an iciness entering her voice. “I have a marriage certificate from City Hall signed with both of your names sitting right here.”

“That’s not possible,” Joan spluttered.

Leda chuckled, a cold laugh devoid of mirth. “Oh, it is. And by tomorrow morning, it’ll be on the front page of every paper, starting with my column in the Los Angeles Examiner. You shouldn’t have neglected to tell me of your engagement, Joanie.”

Joan heard the line go dead, but it didn’t matter. The phone was slipping out of her grasp anyway. She crumpled to the floor alongside it, clutching at the satin ruffles lining her dressing table.

How was this possible? She wasn’t married to Dash. She detested him. They had spent precisely zero time in each other’s company off of a set since that horrible night four years ago. It wasn’t as if they’d had some drunken escapade she had forgotten. That was entirely not her style.

She heard Arlene whisper beside her, “Did she tell you?”

“Do you think I’d be on the floor if she hadn’t?”

“It’s not true,” Arlene insisted, as if saying it would make it so. Some color was starting to return to Joan’s face, and she returned the phone to its receiver. “How could it be?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. But I’d bet my contract Dash Howard had something to do with it. Anyway, if Leda prints it, does it matter if it’s not true? God, how could I do this to Monty? This wasn’t part of the deal. He’ll hate me.”

Arlene knelt beside Joan and wrapped her arm around her. “No, he won’t, Joan. Not if he loves you.” That was just like Arlene. Believing in the

knight on the white horse and happily-ever-afters. Joan knew better.

She stared up at the ceiling, searching for an answer in the crown molding she’d hand-selected. Like everything else in this room. Everything she’d come so close to losing this last year when she’d tried to make pictures without Dash. Audiences hadn’t wanted to see her without that buffoon making love to her, and a string of flops had earned her the dreaded box-office poison moniker.

Leda had started it, part of her personal vendetta against Joan. From the moment Joan had slugged Dash instead of making love to him, she had refused to play Leda’s game, and Leda seemingly hated her for it. Joan would never be the snitch Leda wanted. She needed press but not the type Leda offered, and she did everything in her power to stay out of Leda’s web. Maybe Leda’s reason for hating Joan was as simple as that—Leda needed her, but she didn’t need Leda. So Leda dragged her name through the mud every chance she got, trying to clear the way for a new starlet who might be more amenable to her schemes. Joan had been dismayed when the rest of the press had started tarring her with the same brush. Admittedly, the scripts for her recent films had been terrible. But she’d been so desperate to try a project without Dash, she’d agreed to them anyway.

None of that mattered now though, because this engagement was supposed to put her back on track. It was all lined up—the headline-grabbing engagement, a motion picture worth her talents finally in her grasp. Even if she did have to costar with Dash again. From the outside, her life looked like a fairy tale.

Arlene didn’t know the truth. Monty most definitely did not love her. He was fond of her, to be sure. But scandal and whispers of bigamy was not what he’d signed up for when they’d agreed to this arrangement. She wouldn’t blame him if he wanted to end this engagement before it had even begun. But she couldn’t tell Arlene any of that.

Her mind sparked into action. “We need to get ahead of this. We have almost twenty-four hours.” She stood and placed her finger in the number “one” on the rotary dial, letting the whirr of the phone spin its way to the only person who could fix this and calm her. “Harry, your office. Now.”

 

CHAPTER 2

Dash groaned and rolled over. He’d been facedown in his bed, dreaming about a lovely blond, but that blasted ringing in his ears wouldn’t stop. He must have drunk a good deal more than he’d thought. He’d lost track somewhere after the third gin martini. He pulled a pillow over his face, trying to drown out the noise. What had he done last night?

He’d gone out to the Trocadero and requested his usual booth. Some aspiring starlet—Judy or Betty or something or other—had approached him for advice, and he’d been happy to give it. And other things. The studio would pick up the tab and clean up any messes.

Harry wanted him to be a playboy. That’s what everybody wanted. For him to be the embodiment of his moniker, the King of Hollywood. Lothario. Academy Award winner. A man’s man who the husbands wanted to be pals with and the wives wanted to sleep with. That was his job, right? To keep selling that fantasy?

He fumbled around, making sure the other side of the bed was empty. It was. It always was. No one bothered to stick around to discover the real Dash. Whoever that was.

No one in this town was who they claimed to be. Except maybe Joan Davis. That woman was pure movie star, always had been. He snorted into his pillow. Heaven help the fool who ever thought otherwise. He rubbed his face in frustration. Why was he thinking of Joan, anyway?

He’d been having a perfectly enticing dream about a blond taking a bubble bath in an enormous champagne glass. A dream he intended to tell the studio about when he was significantly more awake and not nursing the aftereffects of a generous bartender. Maybe Harry could find a way to include a leggy girl in a champagne glass in his next picture. He rolled over and squeezed his eyes shut, striving in vain to return to the dream.

But his head was ringing. He’d really overdone it last night. Was the ringing getting louder? And now someone was knocking too. Blast! Couldn’t a man have a hangover in peace?

“Go away,” he bellowed to the door. But too late. Martin, his butler, was coming in with a telephone.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but they won’t stop calling. They simply must speak with you.”

“Damn it, Martin, this is why I hired you. To get rid of whoever ‘they’ is and let me nurse my headache alone. In the dark.”

“If you don’t mind my saying, sir, that’s hardly why you hired me. At any rate, I’ve told them you’re indisposed all morning. But now it’s past noon, and they really are insisting.”

Dash sat up and blinked, letting his eyes adjust to the relative darkness of the room. At least Martin had the decency to leave the curtains drawn. “It’s past noon?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, why’d you let me sleep so long?”

“But, sir, you said—”

“Never mind, just give me the phone.” Martin did as he was asked, giving a meek little bow and backing out of the room. Blast it, Dash didn’t mean to be rude to the man. But he was paying his butler a small

ortune and he had a raging headache. He’d apologize to him later.

“Hello, hello, who is this?”

“Dash, my good fellow, this is Harry.” Good God, why was the head of the studio calling him before 2:00 p.m. on a Friday? They knew he’d been out late last night. The studio made sure of it. The more times per week he was spotted at the Trocadero and written about in the gossip columns, the more money his pictures made. Thus, they had a tacit agreement that when he wasn’t making a picture, they would never call him until the afternoon.

He couldn’t wait to start this next film. Even if it meant enduring Joan’s disdain once more. He’d get to be on set again. In his element. And it would give him an excuse to cut back on the playboy act he hated. He was increasingly losing himself in it, and he needed strict call times and an intriguing script to help him scramble back up that slippery slope. The work gave him structure, order, a purpose.

“What do you want, Harry? This better be an emergency.”

“I’m afraid it is, Dash. We need you down here right away. Joan is beside herself.”

Oh. He should’ve known. He chuckled. “Ah, so she got my engagement present?”

Harry coughed. It sounded like he was trying to cover a laugh. Dash grinned.

“Well, yes, that is part of it.”

Dash rolled over and leaned on his elbow. “Well, tell her not to get her knickers in a twist. ...