by Megan Crane
‘Surly,’ he repeated. The arrogant head tilt came, this time, with an almost-puzzled expression, as if he couldn’t quite take it in. ‘Surly?’
‘Surly,’ she retorted, overenunciating the word. ‘It means bad-tempered and unfriendly. Obviously.’
There was a long, tense moment, and then, very carefully, Tommy set the guitar next to him on the couch. Without looking away from Jenna for even a second, he uncurled himself from his sitting position and rose to his feet, with that lethal sort of grace that made him so fascinating to watch in all those music videos.
Except this was not a video, this was three feet across a coffee table, and Jenna’s heart stopped beating for a single, startled moment before kicking back into high gear as he loomed above her. Her mouth went dry, and she could feel her eyes widen. Panic. Or lust. She wasn’t sure she could tell the difference.
He’d changed out of the outfit he’d worn on set earlier, and was wearing nothing more dramatic than a tight black T-shirt and faded jeans. Both clung to that lean body of his the way she’d often dreamed of doing herself. His feet were bare, long and narrow against the cream-coloured carpet, which struck Jenna as somehow over-poweringly erotic. He was so close that she could see his dark hair, freshly washed, was thick and lustrous and almost shaggy without all its usual product. Suddenly he didn’t look like he was stuck in a time warp, he looked like any smoking-hot male animal in any time, and the force of his attention was entirely focused on Jenna.
Like she was a target. Or prey.
She ordered herself to breathe.
‘I know the meaning of the word surly,’ he told her, his voice low and husky, though she didn’t mistake the bite in it. Just as she didn’t mistake the way he held himself, all taut and furious and so very full of himself. Arrogant.
And yet, what Jenna wanted to do was apologize, for anything at all, just to make him stop looking at her that way. To ease the tension. That was exactly what she’d do in any real-life scenario that got even remotely as intense as this one. She’d all but apologized to Adam as he’d headed out the door, hadn’t she? So, of course, she couldn’t let herself do anything of the kind. Not here. Not with this man. Not any more.
‘I’m glad you do,’ she told him, and she was ninety per cent sure she hid the tremor in her voice. ‘Maybe you can try a little bit harder not to be surly, then.’ Okay, maybe it was more like eighty per cent, but she had the snooty tone down pat, thanks to practising it so often in her head.
His mouth moved slightly – as if he thought about smiling, and not in a nice way.
‘Or what?’ he asked, and there was no mistaking the laughter lurking there, in both the fine lines around his eyes and his voice. Laughter directed at her. Mocking, arrogant laughter. Not a shared moment of levity, by any stretch of the imagination. It put her teeth on edge.
‘I can report to Duncan or I can report to you,’ she snapped at him, once again doing the exact opposite of what her instincts screamed for her to do. ‘Your choice.’
‘My choice,’ he repeated. He looked away for a beat, and when he looked back, his face was wild with a sudden fury. ‘My choice,’ he said again, spitting out the words. He sounded incredulous. And so, so angry.
‘Yes,’ Jenna said, or meant to say, because she was caught up in the play of emotion across his face. Emotions she, such a scholar of this subject, had never seen, in any of the hundreds of hours of videos and documentaries and interviews she’d watched. There was that searing fury, something dark, and something else that looked a whole lot like self-loathing, something Jenna had seen on her own face from time to time, but never on his. Never.
‘What fucking choices do I have?’ he hissed at her. Then he abruptly cut his hand through the air, cutting himself off. ‘This is bullshit,’ he muttered, and turned away, hands on his narrow hips.
Jenna had no idea what had just happened, but she felt the air around them was infused with electricity and any wrong move might send it jolting through her. In response – or preparation – her body thrummed like a live wire. As if she’d had way too much caffeine. Like six or seven venti lattes too many.
And still she wanted more.
When he turned back around, his eyes had gone distant, as if he’d pulled a veil across the emotions Jenna had just seen, but he was smiling a far more familiar smile.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I get moody when I’m working on a song.’
‘That’s okay,’ Jenna said at once, and could have kicked herself, because why should she rush to appease him? The familiar, adorably crooked smile deepened.
‘I did ask you to work for me,’ Tommy continued, his tone apologetic. His smiled widened, and she forgave him. Just like that.
‘Duncan told me to pay attention to what you say and do.’ She ordered herself not to squirm or otherwise indicate she was moved by his proximity. ‘He thinks the band will trust me, now that I proved myself with the Video TV idea.’
‘We’re a bunch of trusting fools,’ Tommy said, though that note of mockery was back in his voice. Whether directed at her or at himself, she couldn’t tell. He crossed the room to the bar set in an old cabinet, and made himself a drink with a few economical movements. ‘What are you drinking?’ he asked, suddenly playing the perfect host.
Jenna opened her mouth to ask for a soda, because she didn’t want him to think she was the sort of person who required a drink in the afternoon. Two things occurred to her simultaneously. First, he was apparently the sort of person who required a drink in the afternoon, which, sure, made sense as part of the whole rock-star lifestyle, but even so, why worry what he’d think if she did, too? And second, this was supposed to be about going against the instincts that had thus far kept her malleable and passive for her entire thirty-plus years on the planet. Which meant it was high time she stopped worrying so much about what other people thought of her.
‘I’ll have whatever you’re having,’ she said with all the bravado she could muster. She walked towards him, trying to feel the way a woman who was about to toss back whisky with abandon and told international rock stars to behave themselves should feel.
Wordlessly, Tommy handed her a heavy-bottomed glass with a generous amount of whisky. But then, who needed words when he had green eyes that reminded Jenna of the sea and storms all at once? She turned her attention to the glass in her hand, and the amber liquid that swirled in it.
‘To working together,’ Tommy murmured, and reached over to clink the rims of their glasses. He saluted Jenna briefly with that half-smile, and then tossed back the contents of his glass in one easy gulp.
Jenna thought that was a spectacularly bad idea, which meant, of course, that she had no choice but to follow his lead.
The whisky burned down her throat and charged like a wildfire along the length of her oesophagus to warm her belly. It took Herculean strength of will, but Jenna managed to keep herself from making a face or coughing. Though she couldn’t do much about the tears that pricked the back of her eyes.
And yet he was still looking at her with that slight tilt of his head, as if she was a specimen beneath a microscope and he the lofty scientist. Arrogant, yes, but also inviting, somehow.
‘Yum,’ Jenna said, her voice huskier than it should have been, thanks to the fire still raging in the back of her throat. Something in his expression made her think he knew all about that fire, and so she hurried on. ‘Working together should be fun,’ she said, which wasn’t a particularly interesting thing to say, and it was too soon to blame the whisky. ‘Assuming you can behave yourself,’ she added, frowning at him. Trying so hard to seem tough, to stand up for herself, even though she could hardly remember why she wanted to, with him right there in front of her.
‘I can try,’ he murmured, and suddenly he was much closer, and Jenna had to tilt her head back to look up at him. His beautiful mouth hovered so near, and she caught her breath against the tide of longing that swept through her. ‘How do you want me to behave?’ he asked, bare
ly above a whisper, and moved even closer.
Jenna put out a hand, to stop him – but then it was lying there on the hard plane of his chest, and she forgot all about stopping him.
She forgot everything.
She forgot about acting tough. Everything within her melted into that fire already burning in her belly, igniting into something much hotter, much lower, and much more dangerous.
It was all so familiar, so right. He was so close. She could feel the heat of his body through the soft, clinging fabric of the T-shirt he wore, burning into her hand. She could smell the fresh scent of the soap he’d used, mixed with the darker notes that were all him. She could see the perfect lines of that face of his, the face she had loved for so many years, from afar.
She knew the proud thrust of his cheekbones, the dark arches of his brows above those mysterious eyes that were now hooded, his attention focused on her mouth. She knew the hard chin and the sensual lips, so close now to her own that she quivered. She could sense more than see the broadness of his sculpted shoulders, the chiselled length of his torso.
She knew this dream like the back of her hand.
She’d had this dream a million delicious times. First he would lower his mouth to hers. Then he would whisper something loving and sexy, sometimes both. Then he would pull her close, and things would get even more amazing. She knew all of his moves, having choreographed them to her satisfaction more times than she could possibly count.
She decided it was high time she stopped being passive in that area, too. Why wait for his moves? It was her dream, she should make her own damn moves.
So she reached over and wrapped her hand around the back of his neck, like she had every right, and pulled his mouth to hers. She felt him stiffen for the briefest moment, and then he was kissing her, hard. Hunger bloomed inside of her, liquid and hot in her core.
This was more like it.
His mouth moved over hers, and his large hands cupped the sides of her face. Jenna lost control of the situation when he slanted his head for a better fit, and she felt it all the way down to the soles of her feet.
He tasted like whisky and something else, something magical.
Jenna was on fire. She moved closer, and made a sound of protest when he pulled his mouth from hers – a protest that quickly turned into a sigh when he turned his attention to her neck. His hands roamed down her sides in long, drugging strokes, then scooping beneath her T-shirt. It was all happening so fast, and her head spun. She shuddered helplessly when he cupped her breasts in each hand and then dragged his thumbs across the rigid peaks.
This was amazing, she thought with what was left of her mind, the best dream yet, the most real – and then she opened her eyes to savour it and saw the look on his face.
Cynical.
Weary. Bored.
If he’d thrown a bucket of cold water in her face, Jenna could not have reacted more violently.
She reared back, pushing away from him. His hands fell from her breasts. She put as much space between them as she could on her shaky legs, which amounted to a few feet. Her breath came in short, horrified bursts, but she couldn’t seem to look away from his face. That beautiful, bored face.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked in that same seductive tone, except this time she knew he was faking. The tone, the whole thing. Faking.
If she’d thought she’d felt humiliated before, Jenna now knew that she’d never experienced the emotion in all its glory until this very minute. She was afraid for a long, panicked moment that she might scream, or burst into tears. Anything to release the horror, to get it out. While she had been losing her mind from the pleasure of his kiss, he had been bored. Bored.
‘Why … ?’ She didn’t want to ask the question, because she was certain she didn’t want to know the answer. Real-life Jenna would already have bolted, and would be halfway across the city by now. So she cleared her throat of the tears she knew she would rather die than shed in his presence, and tried again. ‘Why would you … You’re not even interested.’
He flashed that adorable grin of his, but she could see through it now. She could see it was little more than a costume. That it was an act. His act. The act she’d been in love with for years.
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, with that magazine-ready smile, and she was sure he knew how delectable he looked with his hair spilling across his forehead.
Of course he knows, she thought then. It’s his job to know.
She saw all of those magazine covers in her head, all of those poses, all the shots in all the seductive positions, and what had she thought? That the photographer had come across Tommy Seer that day and he’d happened to be gazing hungrily at the camera, in soaking wet pants and no shirt?
This is part of the job to him.
He’d all but announced it earlier, when he’d asked if she’d been with Duncan Paradis.
‘I don’t want to seal the deal, or whatever you called it,’ Jenna gritted out, shocked by the emotion in her voice, by the dark currents that swept through her, over her, threatening to send her tumbling along with them. Her knees felt close to giving out again. He only arched those dark brows of his, and waited. ‘That’s disgusting! I’m not like that!’
‘If you say so,’ he said, and while his voice was mild, non-committal, his gaze was so cynical it bordered on bleak.
Jenna backed further away from him, her head spinning, humiliation and shame swirling through her, fighting for prominence.
He thought she was just another groupie.
He thought she was a groupie – and if that were not heinous enough, she knew she had behaved like one. She had thrown herself at a complete stranger because, what? She thought it was at all likely that an international rock star would have fallen head over heels in love with her the moment he saw her? How often did that happen? Even in dreams?
She felt herself flush, and a deep red washed over her.
But she would not let herself run. She gathered whatever dignity she could manage, which mostly consisted of keeping her spine straight and her head high, despite the hectic colour she could feel heating her cheeks and neck. She did not say a word, and he only stood there, gazing back at her, unknowable – a face she knew too well concealing a person she could not, did not, know at all.
So she did the only thing she could. She turned on the sharp heel of her ankle boot and walked away from him, before she burst into tears or collapsed to the floor and made an even bigger fool of herself than she already had.
8
Outside, the afternoon sun was giving way to the long summer evening. Shadows stretched across the street as Jenna stumbled down the front steps of the town house, not that she noticed. She looked around wildly, blindly, and then walked off in the vague direction of the nearest corner – wanting to get that town house and everything that had happened there as far behind her as possible before she stopped and got her bearings.
She wanted to go home, curl up in a ball, and die. Or at the very least, pretend none of this had ever happened. She knew she was good at that, at least. Jenna sucked back something that felt like a sob. She couldn’t get that awful, bored expression Tommy had worn out of her mind, and she couldn’t breathe, either. She was flushed and sweaty and she knew she couldn’t blame that on the August humidity, much as she’d like to.
On the corner of Barrow and Bleecker Street, she started to head uptown, her head already way out in front of her. She could visualize sinking with pleasure into the comfort of her one-bedroom in Hell’s Kitchen, where she had great plans to disappear into her sofa cushions and comfort-eat at least six pints of Ben & Jerry’s Oatmeal Cookie Chunk and New York Super Fudge Chunk ice cream. Six of each. And then, she vowed, she would eat an entire emergency pizza. She deserved it.
It was not until she’d made it to the V of Eighth Avenue and Hudson that Jenna recollected herself. The ageing hippies and leather boys she’d passed along Bleecker Street hadn’t intruded on her brooding, but in retrospect, she shoul
d have realized that the fancy hipster mafia was notably absent and the Village was significantly more quaint all around her than she knew it to be. It was not the place she’d loved so much in her college days, either, when she and Aimee had spent endless hours sitting in a café on MacDougal Street planning the ways they’d take over the world. Everything was off. Different. Grimy and wrong.
1987 strikes again, Jenna thought, feeling incredibly sorry for herself. And maybe a little bit scared, too. She kept walking, too weirded out to stop. None of this is the Manhattan I know.
There would be no welcoming apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, an area Jenna wouldn’t dare enter if this was really the late Eighties. Even if she did muster up the courage to go there, in defiance of everything she’d ever heard about the urban blight that had taken over back then, she was pretty sure she would find her apartment building occupied by the crackheads and prostitutes who had helped give the neighbourhood its bad reputation in the first place. There probably wasn’t any Ben & Jerry’s either, at least not on offer in the corner deli, which struck her as just about as awful as her sudden homelessness. She decided she would go to the office, where she was more than happy to sleep – and then remembered that she no longer had a private office to hide in. No private office, and no convenient four seasons’ worth of extra wardrobe inside that private office. How would she explain herself to Ken Dollimore if he was still there?
Not to mention she had no desire to discuss her interaction with Tommy Seer. Not with Ken Dollimore, or anyone else. Not even with herself. Not ever.
Which meant she had nowhere to go.
Jenna removed herself from the flow of pedestrian traffic, put her back to the nearest wall, and took a moment to try to catch her breath. She was perilously close to breaking down into tears, though she cautioned herself sternly that nothing productive was likely to come from sobbing on a street corner. She’d learned that lesson repeatedly back in her NYU days. She blinked back the heat in her eyes that threatened to spill over, and forced herself to look around instead.
