All Night Long

by Madelynne Ellis

  Ginny rose off the bed behind and slipped her arms around his back. She clasped him tight in an all-embracing hug. Ash remained still, only turning when she forced him to. She stood before him in a simple vest and nothing else. With her fingertips she traced his flaming cheeks and then firmly tilted his chin so that he faced her.

  At first he resisted, refusing to meet her gaze, nearly closing his eyes in order to avoid the confrontation, but in the end he couldn’t resist, not when she was staring at him so hard, and when he was desperate to soak up one last image of her.

  ‘We don’t have to make it serious.’

  A tremble ran up through his limbs. ‘It would be. With you there’d be no alternative.’ He was already falling hard and fast. The obsession had already begun; he could feel it ticking away in his brain, filing details about her that he could conjure up later.

  ‘Try it.’ She rose up on her toes to press a soft kiss to his lips. ‘It’ll be a new experience for both of us.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good … idea.’ His head might not think so, but his heart thought it was a flippin’ awesome notion, and his body … well, he couldn’t help reacting to her every time she drew close. ‘Friends,’ he insisted. ‘Can’t we stick to what we discussed in the bath? We can meet up when I’m in town, eat, see a movie together …’ And have fucking awesome sex. He didn’t say the last part aloud, but he might as well have done so. They both knew that’s what he was thinking.

  ‘I don’t think that’s really an option, is it? Not even if I do give you my number and address.’

  He squinted at her. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Ash, I’ve had fuckbuddies before.’ She took a breath and then wet her lips before continuing. ‘It only works when neither party is emotionally invested in the arrangement. You’re already under my skin, and you can deny it, but I think you feel the same way.’

  She reached up again, kissed him one last time. He knew that’s what it was because it made his nose tingle and there was a finality about it. She’d tried. She’d made her decision and now, rather than turn into some hellish demon that screamed and tore slices off him, she was quietly walking away. ‘I need to find my friend,’ she said. ‘And you need to find yours.’ She stepped back and offered him her hand to shake.

  He didn’t take it.

  She took the rejection squarely, neither squalling nor petulant. Stoicism couldn’t hide the tears welling in her eyes, though. Stunned, he watched her leave his side and turn to her suitcase. She pulled on a fresh set of underwear and topped them with cargo pants and a skinny-fit lacy T-shirt with rips around the neck.

  ‘Ginny.’ He didn’t know what he was going to say. Only that he had to say something. She looked at him, clearly expecting it to be ‘goodbye’.

  ‘OK,’ he said. That one little word slipped out and changed everything. He knew she didn’t get it at first, didn’t understand how momentous those two syllables were. They shocked the living hell out of him, catapulted him into unknown territory. ‘OK, I’ll try.’

  Chapter Twelve

  For maybe two whole minutes she didn’t take in what he said. She heard the words, but the synapses in her brain failed to make the relevant connections in order to process his meaning. When the full realisation finally dawned, her first response was suspicion.

  Ginny stopped trying to zip her suitcase, straightened and looked at him, but kept the plethora of questions firmly inside her head. Seriously? What? Why now? And what did ‘OK’ mean exactly, anyway? Were they talking about a possible date or a genuine commitment? If it was the latter he had in mind, did they need to hash out some boundaries, establish some sort of relationship manual? Fucking other people was a definite no-no. Could he, would he, sign up to that?

  ‘Say something.’ Ash shifted uneasily. She watched him dig his teeth into his lower lip, unaware that she was making the same nervous response.

  ‘I’m not sure I heard you right.’

  He rubbed a hand across his mouth. Scratched his chin. ‘Wanna be my girlfriend?’ He frowned. ‘I’ve no idea if I’m doing this right. It’s not something I’m experienced at.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, launching herself at him. He caught her in his arms, hugged her close, while Ginny wrapped her legs firmly around his waist. ‘And you’re doing fine, by the way.’ She kissed his nose and teased the corner of his lips. ‘I guess you still have to go, though.’

  His face fell. ‘Yeah. Spook will be up here with one of the staff, forcing entry, if I don’t keep my promise soon.’ He gently lowered her back to the floor, and proceeded to hunt around for his shoes. There was one by the TV cabinet and another in the far corner under the lamp. He sat on the floor to tie his laces.

  ‘So, when do I get to see you?’ she asked, praying it was soon. Like tonight maybe.

  Finished with his laces, Ash rose to his feet. ‘I don’t know exactly. Not until I find out what the situation is with Xane and the band. It might take some sorting.’

  She nodded, sad that they didn’t have a firm time and place arranged, but accepting the facts. She couldn’t and didn’t expect him to drop everything simply in order to see her. If the band were still together, they had a gig on tonight. If not, well, he’d certainly have a whole heap of shit to wade through. ‘Let me give you my number,’ she offered.

  Ash shook his head. ‘No need.’

  Gobsmacked, she stared at him. What did he mean? How could they arrange anything if they had no way of contacting one another? Christ! Had the whole agreement, saying that they were an item, just been a scheme to get away from her?

  He tilted his head in response to her outraged expression and offered a wary grin. ‘I need to pay the bill. You booked the room, right?’ She nodded and lightning struck. Of course, all her details would be printed on the receipt: address, phone number, possibly an email address too.

  ‘Let me find my shoes. I’ll come down with you.’

  ‘No. Don’t.’ He curled his hand around hers. ‘It’s better if we say our goodbyes here. If we go down together it’ll only start rumours and I need to settle into this gradually. After we’ve seen one another a time or two, then we can think about letting people know.’ He suddenly became very serious. ‘Promise me, Ginny, that you won’t say anything to anyone about us. Not yet. Not even to your friend that’s missing. Actually, especially not to her.’

  ‘Dani wouldn’t say anything.’

  ‘Please. Promise me.’

  ‘All right,’ she agreed, praying this wasn’t another excuse, and he wasn’t planning to deny they had any sort of relationship once he was outside this room.

  Ash wrote down a number on a scrap of paper torn from the room-service menu. ‘This is my home number, not my cell. I told you, I keep losing them. Call me. Leave me a message. I’ll get back to you. It might take a while, and I’m sorry if that’s the case, but this shit with the band is serious. I know we were pissing about last night, but today we need to get on top of it.’

  ‘It’ll work out,’ she said, squeezing his arm. ‘I’m sure it will.’

  He avoided her embrace until they were standing on the threshold of the room with the door wide open, and his escape route was easily accessible. ‘’Bye then, until next time.’

  ‘As long as you’re sure there’s going to be one of those.’ Even with his number clutched tight in his fist she wasn’t a hundred per cent certain.

  ‘There will be. I promise.’ He walked backwards a couple of paces, then turned.

  ‘Ash.’ He turned his head to look over his shoulder. ‘You forgot something.’

  ‘Wha–’

  She pressed him up against the wall and kissed him right there in the corridor, where anyone could see them. Not that there was anyone about. ‘Now you can go.’ She patted him on the bum, sending him on his way. ‘Make sure you check your messages. I’ll leave you loads of filthy ones.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ he called back to her. ‘I won’t be able to walk straight for thinking about you.
Do you know how hard it is to play guitar with a raging hard-on?’

  ‘Can’t say I do.’

  ‘Painful.’ He entered the lift and, as the doors slid closed, blew her a final kiss. ‘I’ll miss you, Ginny.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘That’s everything settled.’ The receptionist handed Ash a stapled copy of the bill for the hotel room and associated extras, along with a VAT receipt. ‘There’s a link to an online survey at the bottom there, if you’d like to comment on your stay, with a chance to win a weekend away. I trust your stay was enjoyable.’

  ‘Totally. Thanks, I’ll be sure to enter.’ Ash flashed the receptionist a winsome smile. She was a pretty redhead with a zillion freckles. Normally, he’d have been angling for an opportunity to kiss everyone, but not today. You’ve got yourself a girl, he thought, and was stunned when a shiver of delight about that ran through him. It was crazy; he just wanted to smile whenever he thought about Ginny, even though his stomach still churned a little at the notion of being in a relationship.

  You have to trust her, Ash. Give this thing a go. It might be that it’ll actually work.

  Noticing that Spook was observing him rather closely, he busied himself checking that the receipt was in order. He wasn’t remotely interested in financial details. He hadn’t a clue what was in his bank account. More than he could ever hope to spend. But he needed to ensure Ginny’s details were on there, otherwise he was going to make a complete oaf of himself by tearing back upstairs to her room to grab her number after all.

  He breathed a very evident sigh of relief when he saw what he wanted to see, right at the top of the page, directly below the hotel chain’s insignia.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Spook asked. Somehow he’d managed to look perfect this morning, despite being dressed in last night’s clothes. OK, so the guy was a little pale and dark around the eyes, but he was still stupidly pretty, which would be why every woman in the foyer was preening. Not that Spook seemed to notice, or, if he did, he seemed to have decided they were all leching over Ash.

  Ash knew that was bollocks. He looked like shit. His clothes were filthy. What he needed was a hot shower and a shave, and a T-shirt that wasn’t covered in treacle stains. And he reeked of sex …

  ‘Seriously, Ash? When do you ever want a receipt?’

  ‘Graham’s always bitching about expenses.’

  ‘And you suddenly decide to be all compliant about them the day after Black Halo splits. Pull the other one, that one’s got bells and knobs and knobbly bells on it.’

  He offered his friend his best disarming smile. ‘If everything’s gone kaput, isn’t that the best time to get my finances in order? I might not have an actual income any more if we don’t sort things out. Speaking of which, weren’t you just hammering on the door telling me we needed to move fast and get on with finding Xane?’

  ‘Yeah. Do you know where he is?’

  ‘I might have a few ideas.’

  ‘Well, then, let’s hear them. Rock Giant’s taken the van back, and he’s going to check in with Graham and the crew to see how bad the press coverage has been, and whether anyone’s heard anything regarding Xane’s whereabouts, but I doubt it. The press haven’t found him, so I seriously doubt anyone on our side has either. You know what the industry’s like for leaks.’

  ‘Yeah, but they don’t know what I know.’ He folded the receipt and stowed it in the back pocket of his jeans, only for Spook to snatch it the moment Ash turned his back. ‘Hey.’ He made an unsuccessful attempt to reclaim it, but Spook was damn nippy on his feet. He sprinted outside into the daylight.

  ‘You sad fuck,’ he muttered, when Ash caught up. ‘Wouldn’t it have been easier just to ask her for her number if you were contemplating seeing her again?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He snatched the paper out of his friend’s hand, and stowed it again, this time in the inside pocket of his leather jacket.

  Spook folded his arms across his chest. ‘I hope I’m not expected to believe that. Given the fireworks happening between the two of you last night, you’d be a moron not to look her up. Mind you, you are pretty darn thick.’

  ‘We did, didn’t we?’ he muttered, not realising what he was saying, and completely incapable of keeping the grin off his face. Spook just stared at him and shook his head. ‘It’s fuck-awful timing, you know. I mean, if you’re gonna start something, you couldn’t have picked a worse time. You need to be focused on the band.’

  ‘And I am. She’s not hanging off my sleeves, see.’ He raised his arms to prove the point. ‘The paper’s not just about her anyway. It just so happens that it might also hold the key to tracking down Xane. That’s assuming my first hunch doesn’t pay off.’

  ‘What hunch?’

  ‘That he went home.’

  ‘Aw, come off it. You said he had a girl in tow. He’s not going to take some random chick to his place. Um, and which place are we talking about, exactly? Since when did he have anywhere around here?’

  ‘Xane has boltholes all over the place. My money is on him either having gone to his place or hers, so with the info I have here –’ he patted his jacket over the place where his pocket lay ‘– we should have no problem tracking him down.’

  A taxicab pulled up alongside them at the hotel entrance. Ash made an immediate dive towards it. ‘Gore,’ he insisted, when the driver wound the window down. He dragged Spook along with him, and the two of them took over the backseat, despite the driver’s insistence that he was there for somebody Clements.

  ‘I’m still not seeing what that has to do with Ginny’s address. She’s never even met Xane.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Forget it.’ Ash scratched at a sticky spot on his jeans, reluctant to announce his suspicions. He’d look pretty foolish if he was wrong, and, honestly, he hadn’t been paying enough attention when Xane had left the stadium last night; at least, not enough to be certain the girl he’d left with had been Ginny’s absent roommate. And even if it had, there was no guaranteeing that Xane had actually gone anywhere with her. He might, given the piss-poor mood he’d been in, just have screwed her up against a lamppost, or over the bonnet of her car.

  ‘Where to, lads?’ The cabbie had relented, Ash suspected, because he’d recognised them, and his actual passengers were nowhere in sight.

  Ash supplied him with the address of Xane’s secret hideaway. They could test other possibilities if this one failed, but, suspicions about Ginny’s friend aside, he fully expected to find Xane face-down in a pool of vomit, in a vodka-induced coma, but you never knew. Stranger things had happened. Like him meeting Ginny, for example.

  ‘Can I borrow your phone?’

  Spook cast him a wary glance. ‘Why? I don’t think warning him of our arrival is going to do us any favours.’

  ‘Not for that.’

  ‘You’re not using it to test Ginny’s number either. Use your own.’

  ‘Can’t. I don’t have one, do I? Sally banned me from carrying one after that girl in Oslo stole the last one.’ Sally Kettering their PR guru, had nearly minced him, since the thief had gone through the whole of Ash’s extensive list of celebrity contacts and posted most of them online, along with a few dozen highly dodgy photographs of people doing things they shouldn’t.

  ‘But you admit that’s what you were going to do?’

  Ash turned to look out of the window. Even when he’d handed over his home number, there’d still been a part of him that was seeking to find loopholes in the arrangement. The notion of having a girlfriend still knotted his insides in a distinctly uncomfortable way. Plus, the complications of them living in different worlds, and of him constantly being on the road, were genuine barriers to making things work. He might not have personal experience of trying to maintain a relationship under such circumstances, but some of the other guys had, and in every case they’d failed. Shame, then, that he couldn’t get the vision, the smell or the taste of her out of his head. He wanted her back in his arm
s. He wanted her holding his hand, supporting him.

  ‘It’s a bit soon for that.’ Spook glanced backwards out of the rear window. ‘We’re not even a mile down the road. You only left her five minutes ago. If you call her now she’s going to know your balls are in her fists. Get real, Ash. Since when did you ever get smitten? You average four women a night.’

  Trust his wingman to strip his life down to the basics. And to answer Spook’s question: none of the million others had ever been like Ginny. They hadn’t seen or affected him in the same way. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d only be checking the number worked.’

  ‘Not on my phone. Actually, not on any phone for at least forty-eight hours. That’s standard cooling-off period. Stuff like this you have to think about, be real certain about, otherwise you end up being shafted. And there’s enough crap going on already with Xane on the loose, without you sticking your head in the clouds.’

  ‘All right. I hear yer.’ Ash sighed. ‘I won’t call. Yet. But can I borrow your phone to call my mum? I ought to. She’ll be worried sick over all these news reports.’

  Spook shook his head. He slumped back against the seat and settled himself for the rest of the drive. ‘I’m not thick, Ash,’ he muttered, closing his eyes. ‘I know you’re a mummy’s boy but, seriously, you need to stop thinking with your dick.’

  ‘You can dial the number,’ Ash said persuasively. ‘Say hello too, if you like.’

  Spook opened one eye. ‘Still not stupid. You’ll let me make a fool of myself and then hang up. Besides, I know perfectly well she’s in Majorca at the minute. If you still want to call in forty-eight hours, then you can use my phone.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ he negotiated.