by Emma Grey
She gently opens the door to his bedroom. It’s dark, but the glow from the hall gives enough light for her to see him sleeping. On his front. White sheet twisted around his lower half, one muscled calf and a foot exposed, a long arm reaching across the bed . . . cradling the laptop.
Tilly’s eyes travel over his skin. Only because his body is in the way of her having what she wants, she tells herself. Even in this poor light she can make out the stubble on his jaw and the firm lines of his shoulders and back, dipping to his waist . . . but the link between these details and the successful resolution of her quest is quite tenuous, so she instructs herself to focus on the mission.
She leans over the bed, takes the corners of the computer and tries to wriggle it out from his clutches. Her efforts only strengthen his hold. What is he? Private security officer of the novel? He draws the laptop closer to his chest in his sleep and, along with it, Tilly’s hands. She can’t extricate herself without touching him, now. And nor can she maintain this weird pose without getting a cramp in her foot. What to do?
Of all the ludicrous situations in which Tilly has found herself over the years, and there have been many, this one is right up there. Hovered over a practically naked – or perhaps fully naked, for all she knows – pop star, as he sleeps, trying to steal back her intellectual property despite a threatening foot cramp. And a threatening fit of the giggles, of all the wildly inappropriate times!
No, not threatening. Actual. Humour is always her default in a crisis and this qualifies. A snort escapes, and he flinches. The sight of him flinching at her snort provokes another snort, and she lets go of the laptop and collapses onto the bed beside him, burying her face in the pillow, laughing.
‘Maguire,’ he says groggily, ‘if you want something, just ask.’
She pulls herself together, turns her head on the pillow to face him, and tries to compose herself. This is not funny. She hates Reuben Vaughan. She hates everything he represents. Well, not everything. She can’t fault the way he represents the male physique, right now, and if she was an advertising executive from the computer company she’d have him freeze exactly where he is with that laptop and bring in a film crew.
‘What are you thinking?’ he asks, rolling onto his side to face her, the sheet twisting around his abdomen.
It’s a fine question without a halfway acceptable answer. ‘I’m leaving,’ she says, and just like that the laughter fades.
He sighs, rolls onto his back and runs his fingers through his bed hair in a way she guesses is just part of his normal waking-up routine and not some elaborate delaying tactic designed to bamboozle her. Now is her chance to take the laptop. She reaches for it, but suddenly he opens his eyes, puts his hand on her arm and says, ‘Don’t!’
‘That’s my story!’ she says, sitting up now. Genuinely annoyed.
He sits up too, and in the half-light as his eyes adjust, she watches him conduct a mental inventory of all the things he’s lent her and needs back. Laptop. Good hair. Shirt . . .
‘You said I could borrow the computer,’ she argues, and he drags his gaze back to her eyes.
‘You can. I just need to finish something first.’
‘There’s nothing on there but my story. You’d better not be interfering in my fictional life now as well!’
‘It’s not your fictional life I want to interfere with,’ he says under his breath.
Tilly frowns. He’s actually admitting this? All this weird behaviour? These bizarre ideas . . . Reuben pulls the sheet up and rests his elbows on his knees then holds his head in his hands like he’s trying to stem a migraine.
‘Take a risk,’ he whispers.
‘Are you kidding? What do you think I’ve been doing for the last day and a half in front of the entire world?’
‘Not you,’ he clarifies.
Then he takes a deep breath and pushes the computer across the bed towards her.
‘Before you go, there’s something I want you to read.’
Chapter 26
Reuben watches as Tilly shivers, and slips under the covers of his bed, right beside him. He immediately springs out of it, wishing he was wearing more than a pair of boxers, and drags a chair over to the bedside, where he sits and leans forward, not knowing what to do with his hands, like he’s back in high school and has no idea how to act around girls. This is ridiculous.
She opens the screen and finds the only two documents on the desktop. I Didn’t See You Fall, a novel, by Matilda Maguire. Beside it, ‘You Didn’t See Me Fall’, music and lyrics by Reuben Vaughan.
He can barely watch.
She looks at him, confused. ‘What is this?’
‘It’s a song. Well, the start of one. Totally first draft. A two-am thing, you know?’ Now who’s the one unsure of his creativity?
‘Based on my chapter?’ she asks.
He shifts uncomfortably. ‘Inspired by it.’
‘You Didn’t See Me Fall,’ she begins. ‘Music and lyrics by . . .’
‘Don’t read it aloud, Tilly, please,’ he implores.
Of course she ignores him and pins some strands of hair behind her ear, where they stay for about a second before falling softly across her face again. He doesn’t know how much more of this he can take.
‘You hadn’t slept in days,’ she begins. ‘Crashed through my world with your madcap ways.’ She raises her eyebrows. ‘Really? Madcap ways?’
‘I know . . .’
She thinks for a second, ‘Hmm. What about . . . A thirty-six-hour daze,’ she types.
He frowns. It’s better.
‘An unpredictable maze,’ she continues.
‘Gunning to be my lyricist, now?’
‘Hardly!’ She clears her throat and resumes: ‘Feeling no fear, though I know I’m too near to this ferocious blaze.’
He regrets this already. ‘You can read silently if you like, Tilly. Or just . . . don’t . . .’
‘Looking straight into the sun . . .’
She flicks off the covers and gets on her knees on the bed, moving towards him, reading it. In that shirt. With that hair.
‘Blinded, by a hit-and-run . . .’
She stops at the edge of the bed and looks at him.
‘Knowing the end, that it cannot bend, the deal’s already done.’
‘You catch the wick in your vice-like grip,’ he prompts. ‘And we’re playing with fire.’
‘Soul combusts in luxurious lust, now we’re down to the wire.’
Four more lines. She looks like she isn’t going to read them.
‘Reuben . . .’
‘It’s just a song,’ he explains inadequately, knowing that’s just a last-ditch attempt to protect himself.
‘Is it?’
His heart stops. He doesn’t believe in love at first sight. He never has. He’s not a ‘romantic’. All these boy-band lyrics and soppy videos they’ve been making for years have always felt like a bit of a joke. A slick marketing effort that converted millions of fans. Until now. Four more lines and this torture will be over!
She sits and swings her legs over the side of the bed so she is in front of him, their knees almost touching. He instinctively wants to back off. Sort of.
For a moment, she just looks at him. Deeply unpredictable.
He bows his head – he’s never felt more exposed than this in his life. He closes his eyes, takes a breath, and just says it. What does he have to lose?
‘Built on lies and deception, on mistakes and misconceptions, and after it all . . .’
She discards the laptop on the bed beside her and stands in front of him. He can’t breathe. He looks up at her. ‘And after it all,’ he says. ‘You didn’t see me fall.’
Chapter 27
Standing in front of Reuben, Tilly suddenly feels woefully under-dressed. And comprehensively confused. As implausible as it seems, it would appear that Reuben Vaughan has written a song about her. Reuben Vaughan. One of ‘England’s most eligible’, according to practically every silly arti
cle she flicked through in the online tabloids last night. A person she’s known less than two days. Her childhood crush.
A song about falling. For her?
This is the kind of crazy-fast, head-over-heels experience that only ever happens in movies. Or in one of his band’s totally unrealistic songs. Not in real life! Not to her!
She didn’t see him fall. Oh my God, the way he’s taken her book title and transformed it into that song. She can’t believe she’s really been his muse.
And while she stands there, wildly second-guessing herself, he sits patiently in front of her, almost as if he’s waiting for her scrambled thoughts to catch up with the unexpected reality in which they find themselves.
He’s even more woefully under-dressed than she is, it occurs to her now, as heat rises to her face and her heart pounds. What happens next? How does she even feel, other than confused, and dangerously close to doing something she never in a million years would have imagined herself doing with someone as famous, and no doubt experienced, as Reuben Vaughan. She isn’t ready!
A montage of images flashes through her mind from all the stories she’d seen last night online. All the girls he’s been pictured with. All the models and actresses and singers . . . and princesses he’s tumbled in and out of cabs with or walked beside on the red carpet. Every single one is amazingly glamorous. Every single one except her. What is he doing even looking at her when he could have any one of them? And why is he looking at her like that? Like she is literally the first girl he’s ever actually seen.
She sucks in a breath and realises she is shaking. It isn’t from cold. If anything she is hot. Very hot.
In fact, she is seconds from giving in to that familiar and rapidly increasing fight-or-flight impulse and, as if he is reading her body, he reaches out, slowly, from where he’s sitting, and brushes her hand, which is dangling beside her thigh. Then he glances up at her face as if he’s checking in, seeing if he has permission.
Whatever expression he finds there, it mustn’t be either fight or flight. It only appears to will him on, because he doesn’t stop. He threads his fingers through hers, like he’s exploring how their hands fit together. Then he draws the back of her hand to his lips, and kisses it lightly, almost as if she’s the princess, after all . . .
Then he lets go of her hand and his fingertips reach out and brush the back of her knees . . . coaxing her a step closer. His touch makes her shiver. A primal signal from her body to his that lights a fire in his eyes, even though his lips barely twitch in a smile.
She feels her own eyes widen as he moves forward on the chair and stands up, slowly, the action dragging his hands with excruciating lightness up the outsides of her legs, gently pulling at the hem of the flannelette shirt but not quite lifting it, as he brushes his fingers over her hips and rests his hands at her waist.
Every part he touches tingles. She can’t look at him. Can only manage staring ahead, at his chest, aware that her breath must be warming his skin, wondering if she is doing to him even half of what he is doing to her, right now.
And then he draws her close and wraps his arms around her, tight, in the kind of hug that squeezes the air from her lungs. She feels his mouth softly touch her forehead and hears him breathe her in, the air filling his chest as it expands against her face, and she listens to his heartbeat quicken, before he leans and kisses the top of her head. Just once.
He didn’t see her fall, either. Not as a fangirl this time.
Didn’t know that, in this moment, everything became clear. How she felt. What she wanted . . . And that was him. All of him.
She tries to break from his embrace. Tries to wriggle out of his arms so she can throw her own around his neck and kiss him, the way she’d kissed him the night before in front of the media outside the restaurant.
He holds her even tighter and she wonders, alarmingly, if he’s reading her mind as cleverly as he seems to be reading her body. ‘Let’s not rush this, Maguire,’ he whispers.
Chapter 28
Brilliant, Vaughan.
Reuben tries to figure out exactly how he is going to extricate himself successfully from Tilly’s embrace and follow through on his crazy promise to take this slowly.
But he has to.
She has no idea what she’s about to slam into when they reenter London’s A-list stratosphere, as they will inevitably have to do, and soon. That’s when she’ll find out what it’s really like being with him. Terminal velocity. Unrestricted invasion of privacy. Inability to move or think or breathe, sometimes.
He predicts she’ll hate it. She’ll burn out fast.
More worryingly, she’ll stop writing because the pressure to perform and the opportunities to be criticised when she is ‘known’ and exposed will be so much more intense. He knows the creative block that comes from that pressure. He doesn’t want it for her. Not right at the beginning, before she even has a chance to prove herself.
He sighs. It’s the right thing to do. Put the brakes on. He needs her fully informed before she makes choices she might regret.
She looks up at him, face flushed, and he sees his own desire reflected in her eyes. Don’t do it, Reuben. Do. Not. Kiss. Her.
Tilly Maguire belongs in Reuben’s life. She belongs in it longer than the usual fun few weeks. Crazy as it is, he knows that already, and he can’t let this run the same course as all the others. He doesn’t want to wake up in a month or two and read her name in a list of the band’s ‘exes’. Worse, a list of his ‘conquests’. The media is mad.
It’s the first time this kind of rational thought has intruded into his bedroom and put a stop to things. Conquests? If he doesn’t move away from her now, he will be one of hers . . .
‘You’re going to have to stop looking at me like that,’ he warns, and she breaks into a smile. ‘I mean it, Maguire, you’re in dangerous territory.’
‘What are you going to do, Reuben? Write another verse?’
He laughs and lets her go. The shift in mood allows him to pull on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt before he can change his mind. ‘It was the last verse that got us into trouble,’ he says.
‘Technically it was the chorus,’ she argues. ‘The verse needs some work.’
He picks up a pillow and throws it at her. He can’t get enough of this girl. ‘Come to London with me,’ he hears himself saying.
The words launch straight into confused silence, unsurprisingly.
‘Because we’re slowing this down?’ she asks.
In the same way that you stem a tide with your bare hands, yes. She’s standing there with his shirt askew, shoulder exposed, legs for miles, rumpled hair – looking like he’s forgotten to kiss her.
He clears his throat. ‘Don’t think it’s because I don’t want to . . .’ Don’t tell her how much. ‘I want to spend time with you, but not here,’ he explains. ‘This isn’t real. This isn’t my world.’
She twists a strand of her hair, turning over his words. ‘How do I know this isn’t all part of your plan,’ she begins, wrapping herself in a blanket from the bed. ‘And Henrietta’s, and Belle’s? Because last night, I said I was leaving, and suddenly . . .’ She hugs the blanket across her chest more tightly, as if she needs extra armour. As if she doesn’t trust him.
‘You came in here, Maguire,’ he gently reminds her. ‘You fell into my bed, remember?’
‘You had my story.’
‘I had my song. I wasn’t ready to show you.’ I wasn’t ready for any of this.
‘You and Belle,’ she says carefully. ‘Don’t play with me’ is written all over her face.
‘Friends. That’s all it ever will be. I promise.’
She picks up the laptop. ‘This isn’t about the diversion anymore? We’re not trying to distract anyone? For some reason, I’m giving you a second chance here, Reuben. I must be crazy.’
‘The diversion still helps Belle,’ he says honestly. ‘But it’s not about that, now. If you come to London, you’d be there with me because you
actually want to be.’
Chapter 29
Tilly can hear Caitlin talk but can’t see her face until the video kicks in. It’s been a long time between phone charges, but it’s like they’ve never been apart. ‘Two days stuck in the wilds of the English countryside . . .’ Caitlin is gushing, as if she’d been holding her breath and finally has an opportunity to speak. ‘You’ve been shacked up with a pop star and a princess, splashed all over the world’s media, wearing red for the first time in your life, and then . . . then . . . oh my God, Tilly – a kiss that’s getting tens of thousands of hits per day, at least half of them from your mother, by the way – all of that, and we finally get on a call together and all you talk about is your book? I mean, seriously! For once in your life, you don’t have to make something up!’
Tilly smiles. She’s missed Caitlin. A part of her also misses having the kind of life where she’d had to invent fictional excitement. A week ago, she’d have conjured up a hero like Reuben, instead of having him sit here, large as life beside her in the back seat of a chauffeured car while she has her earbuds in, catching up with Caitlin as they drive into London. Caitlin might be salivating for details, but Tilly is hardly going to provide them right in front of him.
She tilts the phone screen, slightly, so Caitlin can catch a glimpse and understand Tilly’s verbal restraint. The result causes Tilly to have to whip the earbuds out altogether to protect her hearing. She laughs, hard. Reuben glances up from his book.
‘He reads?’ Caitlin quips, when she’s calmed down enough for Tilly to put the earbuds back. ‘He’s perfect!’
‘Not necessarily,’ Tilly replies carefully.
‘Look at him!’ Caitlin commands.
Thick blond hair. Blue eyes. Black-rimmed Hugo Boss reading glasses. Winter sunlight streaming through the car window onto his cream crew-neck jumper and dark, designer jeans. It occurs to Tilly that there’s something very ‘deconstructed pop star’ about Reuben Vaughan. She imagines plucking him out of this world and slipping him into a Cambridge cafe, where he’d sip short blacks and talk Wordsworth and Keats and Shakespeare with post-grads . . . and the idea of it totally works.
