by Megan Crane
And yet … It was something about that unruly mess of curls that today exposed the delicate line of her neck. And that mouth of hers that she abused, like now, as wariness crept back into her expression and she bit down on her full lower lip. He imagined that mouth put to much better use, and then wished he hadn’t, when his too-tight pants immediately got tighter. He shifted, uncomfortable.
‘Or maybe not,’ she was saying. ‘I mean, Eugenia’s and my current relationship involves me standing there while she rants at me. The only real improvement is that it’s been a few days now since she was ranting about me.’
He was just barely still man enough to admit to himself that he’d been reacting to her like a teenaged boy – why not just punch her in the arm and get it over with? He was disgusted with himself.
‘You are a Chevy,’ he informed her. Reminding himself at the same time. So what if it sounded crazy. The whole situation was crazy. He was definitely crazy.
‘A Chevy,’ she repeated, her eyebrows jacking up and her chin lifting. Because there was no way being called a Chevy was a compliment, and she wasn’t an idiot.
‘A Chevrolet.’ In case she was confused as to which Chevy he meant.
‘A Chevrolet.’ She didn’t look confused. She waited. When he didn’t speak, she cleared her throat. ‘I am an automobile.’ Her voice went up at the end there, making it a question. An icy sort of question.
‘A Chevy.’ He made an impatient gesture. ‘Not a De Lorean. Or an Aston Martin.’
‘I see.’ Her tone was arid. ‘Am I a Chevy station wagon? Maybe with wood panelling? Because those were always my favourites. They were so sleek and powerful. Who wouldn’t want to be a Chevy Caprice Classic, for example?’
Her sarcastic tone could have peeled paint. He ignored it, and concentrated on her strange use of the past tense. He frowned.
‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘But calling me a Chevy does?’ She held up a hand before he could answer. ‘Silly me, of course it does. It’s a secret car code known only to rock stars. I’ll just ask Billy Idol the next time I run into him.’
‘I drive luxury cars,’ he told her. Firmly, as if that settled things. ‘Luxury sports cars. Expensive machines that other men would kill to touch.’
‘Yes, Tommy,’ she replied, soothingly. With that bite underneath. Treating him like a child. An annoying child. ‘You’re a very rich, very famous man.’
‘Exactly.’ But as he glared at her, and she failed to fall apart before him, he realized that he was in trouble.
And the worst part was, he knew why.
He hadn’t always been a very rich, very famous driver of very fancy cars. The Tommy from a trailer park in Buffalo, who had never been near a De Lorean in even his wildest wet dreams, was the problem. He had spent some quality time in the back seats of numerous sturdy, unpretentious American cars, Chevys among them. He liked American cars, and the little slice of heaven Donna Castiglione had showed him in her daddy’s Buick. He wasn’t such a snob that he couldn’t appreciate that mouth Jenna was worrying, or the way the tight jeans covered her ass.
The problem wasn’t that Jenna Jenkins was a Chevy. The problem was that, deep down, he was.
‘You’re looking at me like you want to kill me.’ Jenna’s voice yanked him back to the here and now. ‘With your bare hands.’
‘That’s not what I want to do with my hands,’ he retorted, before he could think better of it, and there was no getting around it once he’d said it. Her startled gaze flew to his and he felt heat gather where it shouldn’t. He pointed at her. ‘You’re a Chevy,’ he spat at her, and then he turned around and escaped back across the room, where all the primping and preening and posing in the world couldn’t change the fact that he wanted her.
And he could feel her watching him, making it worse with every second.
14
With the new single out, and the record about to launch, the Wild Boys’ schedule got hectic. No more long days of hanging out at the studio – Jenna was instead dispatched along with the band to their never-ending cycle of interviews and press junkets.
Which was annoying for many reasons, chief among them the fact that she was pretty sure she’d figured something out – something that could help Tommy live through 1987 – if she could just work out how to tell him about it without sounding like a mental patient. I’ve written down everything I can remember about 1987 – because, you see, I am from the future—
She couldn’t seem to get past that point.
She imagined Tommy would be unable to get past that point, too. It was an unpassable point.
‘Might as well make yourself useful,’ Duncan barked at her the day after the weird photo shoot, the one where Tommy had started ranting incoherently about cars. Maybe he really does have a substance-abuse problem, Jenna thought. Maybe Eugenia wasn’t lying all those years later.
But that was unlikely. Eugenia, the Eighties version, was at that moment lounging in a chair at the kitchen table in the town house, pretending to sip at a cup of black coffee while watching Jenna’s interaction with Duncan like a hawk. She would, and did, lie at the drop of a hat. Maybe Tommy is just insane, Jenna thought with something like regret. Paranoid delusions. Chevys versus De Loreans, all out of nowhere and a little too intense—
‘Are you listening to me?’ Duncan was outraged, and far too close.
Jenna eased herself away from him, aware of Eugenia’s possessive glare, and edged around the breakfast bar in the kitchen. Out of his immediate reach. ‘Of course I’m listening to you,’ she said smoothly. ‘Usefulness, you were saying?’
‘People who work for me need to earn their keep,’ he growled, fingering the tight shirt collar that was digging into the red folds of his neck.
‘They talk about you,’ Jenna said, not for the first time. ‘They just don’t plot against you. I’m sorry.’ She felt a sudden boldness. ‘They don’t like you very much, if that’s what you wanted to know.’
‘Because this is a popularity contest suddenly?’ He stopped messing with his collar and shook his head at her. ‘I don’t give a rat’s ass if they like me.’
‘That works out then,’ Jenna retorted, with that intermittent flash of bravado that she couldn’t seem to predict or control. It wouldn’t win her any points with Duncan, she knew.
‘Welcome to your new role,’ he said, ignoring her last remark, though his cold eyes flicked across her face in a manner she definitely didn’t like. He handed her a clipboard. ‘PR.’
‘PR?’ Jenna took the clipboard automatically, staring down at it.
‘Public relations,’ Eugenia chimed in from the table, overenunciating as if Jenna maybe didn’t know what PR meant. Jenna restrained herself from flinging the clipboard at Eugenia’s head.
‘You’ll sit in on the interviews,’ Duncan said, ignoring Eugenia as always. ‘Anything that’s on that clipboard doesn’t get discussed. Some reporter starts talking about any one of those bullet points? The interview is over. It’s your job to make sure the band sits there and behaves, and that the reporters ask what they’re supposed to ask and don’t get creative. Got it?’
‘I guess so,’ Jenna said. She frowned at the clipboard. ‘You do know I’ve never done PR before, right?’
Duncan glared at her. The back of her neck started to tingle a warning.
‘Does this sound like a difficult job?’ he asked, his voice quiet. Jenna hated the quiet voice. Everyone hated the quiet voice. Quiet and so very, very mean. It was as effective as a slap across the face.
‘Uh, no, of course not,’ she stammered, quaking despite herself.
She was relieved when he left, Eugenia with him – though not without throwing a warning sort of glare over her shoulder at Jenna.
Please, Jenna thought almost scornfully. Like I’m afraid of you when your boyfriend is so creepy!
She was getting her breathing back to normal when Sebastian walked into the kitchen, as immaculately turned out as ever
. He unapologetically spent hours in the gym, slaving over his appearance. Unlike Tommy, who took a much lazier approach to fitness, meaning that he relied mostly on his metabolism and dissolute lifestyle.
‘Good morning,’ Sebastian said in his pleasant voice, his English accent by all accounts the real deal.
Jenna smiled her hello at him, and didn’t object when he peered over her shoulder at the clipboard she held.
‘I’m your PR person today,’ she said. She liked Sebastian. He had been the first band member to talk to her like she was a person rather than an appendage of Duncan’s, twitching malevolently among them. To be fair, only Tommy had really treated her that way. Richie and Nick had appeared largely indifferent.
‘Ah, yes,’ Sebastian said with a self-deprecating smile. ‘My heterosexuality must be promoted at all costs. You should be prepared for me to make reference to various sleazy orgies involving numerous women. It works best if you jump in and try to cut me off.’ His smile thinned. ‘Much more believable.’
‘Why don’t you come out?’ Jenna asked, not without sympathy. ‘Wouldn’t that be easier in the long run?’
Sebastian straightened, and moved over to pour himself a mug of coffee, giving Jenna ample time to kick herself in the noticeably cool silence. What business was it of hers whether Sebastian came out or not? Not to mention this was 1987. George Michael was all over the television singing ‘I Want Your Sex’ to various women. What did Jenna know about choosing to remain straight in the eyes of the world as a famous person?
It was almost cheering to think that despite everything, things had changed enough since 1987 that Lance Bass’s announcement of his homosexuality could cause nary a ripple of backlash. In fact, if Jenna thought about it, it seemed to her that more boy-band members were gay than weren’t.
‘Have you been talking to Richie?’ Sebastian asked after a moment. His voice was still pleasant enough on the surface. He stirred Sweet and Low into his coffee.
‘No,’ Jenna said. As far as she could tell, Richie didn’t talk to anyone outside the band, for any reason. He was the prettiest of the four of them, objectively speaking – the youngest, and the most self-contained.
‘So this is simply your unsolicited opinion, knowing nothing about me or my life, then?’ His voice was crisp as he turned around to face her again, his dark gaze hard. ‘A tidy solution for me, one I’ve obviously not considered? How thoughtful.’
Jenna cringed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t trying to be …’
‘You can’t possibly understand,’ he started, then stopped, and shook his head. He let out a short laugh. ‘It would kill my mum, if you want to know the truth. And even if I decided to do it anyway, I can’t. All references to my preferred gender of sexual partner must be cleared through Duncan, according to the contract I signed. So I’m trapped either way.’ He smiled, faintly. ‘And none of this is any of your business.’
‘I know it isn’t.’ Jenna was appalled at herself. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’
Sebastian raised his coffee mug in a mock salute.
‘Why don’t you get over Tommy?’ he asked in the same polite tone. ‘He’s adored by millions, dates only supermodels, and is actively rude to you. Why not pine for someone else, instead?’
Jenna closed her eyes, and sighed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘Really.’
‘I know,’ Sebastian said. He sighed. ‘I like you, too.’
Later, in the hotel suite, Jenna held on to her clipboard for dear life and wondered how they did it. She felt as if she’d been run through a blender, when all she’d had to do was check journalists in and out, and make sure no one talked about forbidden topics, like sexuality (Sebastian and Richie) or fistfights apropos of nothing (Nick) or tabloid pictures of supposedly engaged Tommy with certain young actresses (staged, Tommy had told her tersely). All she had to do was listen, and interrupt whenever necessary. She tried to channel the awesome CJ Craig from The West Wing while she did this. The band, meanwhile, had to somehow sound up and excited and interesting and themselves – for hours.
And here Jenna had always believed that being in a famous band must be glamorous.
Glamorous was not the first word that came to her mind as she spent hour after hour listening to the band answer the same questions over and over again. The journalists giggled and laughed and flirted, apparently unaware that their questions were not at all new or interesting. Sebastian and Richie had a running competition to see who could get the most laughs off the same, canned jokes. Nick would spontaneously change his accent in the middle of a sentence, while chain-smoking, to see if anyone would call him on it. Tommy, who began the day in a slouch against the sofa cushions, became more and more prone as the interviews wore on. By afternoon, he was practically reclining, propping his head up with one languid arm and stretching his long legs in front of him, while talking about nothing at length in the British accent that now sounded completely ridiculous to Jenna’s ears.
He also spent most of the day staring at Jenna, with that brooding look of his, the one that shorted out her nerve endings and made her feel jittery.
The one that made her feel like prey.
But not, she could admit to herself, in a bad way.
There was no way he suddenly woke up one morning and found her irresistible. She actually laughed out loud at that, and had to cough to cover it when everyone else in the room looked at her.
‘Excuse me,’ she murmured, and tried to look deeply interested in Nick’s sweet story about singing the new single to his grandmother which wasn’t even true, and which she had already heard in excess of seven thousand times.
When the journalist was finally finished, and Jenna had escorted her from the suite, she was thrilled to see that according to her list, they were done with interviews for the day. She walked back inside to tell them so. The band reacted to the news predictably – they all raced from the room at top speed, off to stop telling lies and start living their lives, no doubt.
All except Tommy.
He didn’t move.
He simply reclined. His gaze never left her.
‘Don’t you have somewhere to go?’ Jenna asked, trying to keep her voice light. She wanted to tell him that she had stayed up into the wee hours almost every night since they’d talked, trying to record every single fact she knew about these months, and had reached a startling conclusion, but she couldn’t. How would that conversation go? Here’s a list of everything that’s happened since late August through next month – I’m very psychic. This is how I know that you will begin to experience a number of what look like accidents but are, I believe, attempts on your life. The first will be tomorrow night, when you are nearly hit by a car. No, no, I won’t be the one pushing you, I will be saving you. The insanity isn’t really insanity if you consider the fact I’m a time traveller.
Yeah, right.
‘There’s some dinner somewhere.’ Tommy shrugged. He had dropped the British accent. Jenna liked his real accent better. Warmer, unclipped. She wasn’t sure when that had happened.
‘You don’t want to be late,’ she said, but she didn’t care if he was late. She felt spellbound by that almost angry look on his face, and the slow way he was getting to his feet then, never looking away.
‘I’m expected to make a grand entrance,’ Tommy said quietly. The suite seemed particularly, dangerously empty all around them. Jenna gulped down some air. Her feet felt fused to the carpet below them.
‘Don’t let me keep you,’ she said nervously as he stalked across the room towards her. ‘I have to call Ken anyway. He likes updates, you know, since he lost his secretary …’ The babble died out as he stopped in front of her, forcing her to look up at him.
‘This is driving me insane,’ he said. Definitely with an angry undertone, which was completely unfair. What was she doing except a job she hadn’t even wanted in the first place?
‘That’s pretty much how I’ve felt since I met you,’ she replied,
stung. ‘And if you mention Chevrolets again, I won’t be held accountable for my actions.’
‘We are way past Chevys,’ Tommy said gloomily, a tone that did not match the heat in his gaze.
‘I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, as usual,’ Jenna said loftily.
‘I know,’ Tommy said. He sighed.
And then he reached over, slipped his warm hand around to cradle the nape of her neck in his palm, and fitted his mouth over hers.
15
God, she was sweet.
Jenna froze beneath him, and then started, opening her mouth as if to gasp.
Tommy took complete and shameless advantage, angling his mouth over hers for a better, deeper fit.
She was like cotton candy. Sweet but with a kick, and she went right to his head. He had only meant to kiss her, once or twice, to remind himself that he’d kissed her before and been bored by it.
Except he wasn’t bored now.
Not at all.
She made the softest sound in the back of her throat, and something triumphant raced through him. His hands cradled her face, then traced shapes across her neck, and over the delicious curves of her body. He wanted her naked, and under him. Over him, next to him, he didn’t care, he just wanted to be in her.
He thought he might have groaned then.
He put his mouth against her neck, and delighted in her shiver of response. He pulled her hips flush with his, and her eyes opened, dazed. He rocked into her, letting them both feel how hard he was. She was soft against him, and so sweet.
Then he took her mouth again, worrying that lush lower lip the way she’d done all day, then licking into her like she was cream. Like she was his.
She made another incoherent noise, and then she pushed him away, with the flats of her palms against his chest.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked him. He noted, with satisfaction, that her breathing was uneven and her pupils were dilated. Good.
‘I thought it was obvious what I was doing.’ He smiled. ‘I can try and do it better, if you want.’
