Baby Be Mine (42 page)

On Friday, Bess and I are sitting out by the pool. It’s an unusually warm day for November. I couldn’t be bothered to change out of my jeans when I realised how hot it was, but Bess is in her tankini and wearing the largest, darkest pair of shades I think I’ve ever seen.

‘I can’t stand this,’ I snap, out of the blue.

‘What can’t you stand?’ Bess asks me lazily.

‘This! Being stuck here! I feel like I’m marooned!’

She lifts up her sunglasses and gazes at me. ‘There are worse places you could be, you know.’

‘I know.’ I sigh and try to enjoy the sunshine, but I can’t. I’ve got itchy feet.

Johnny comes out to the terrace. ‘What’s up with you?’ he asks me curiously. I’ve started to hop on the spot.

‘Sort her out, Johnny,’ Bess says casually.

‘What is it?’ He frowns.

‘I’m
fed up
with being stuck in this goddamn house!’ I explode.

He stands and stares at me for a moment. ‘So let’s get out of here.’

‘Ooh, you sounded just like Johnny from
Dirty Dancing
, then!’ Bess says gleefully.

Johnny gives her a weird look, not understanding the reference. ‘Are you okay looking after Barney for a couple of hours?’ he asks her, moving on.

‘Sure . . .’

‘Come with me.’ He grabs my hand.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Out,’ he says shortly.

I glance back at Bess. She raises her eyebrows, smiling.

He drags me all the way around the outside of the house to the garage. I could have shaken his hand off ages ago, but for some strange reason I’ve let myself be pulled along by him. It felt kind of nice, somehow. A break from the norm. And I’m bored – so bored – of the norm.

He flicks on the lights in the garage and stalks determinedly to the Ducatti. He passes me a helmet and a jacket. I hold them up and look at him with a grin.

‘Really?’

‘Really,’ he says firmly as he shrugs on his biker jacket. He straddles the machine and looks over his shoulder at me. I climb on behind him and then he starts up the engine with a roar and we ride out of the garage. He lifts his hand at his security team up ahead and they open the gates and hold back the crowd with perfect timing. The paps don’t know what has hit them. I can barely hear anything over the noise of the engine as we shoot past them and down the winding roads, but I know what a frenzy they’ll be in as they scramble into their cars to try to follow us in hot pursuit. They’ll never get close. They’ve got no chance. I hold tighter to Johnny’s waist and scream with delight. I can feel his stomach tensing as he laughs.

I have no idea where we’re going, but the freedom of this is mind-blowing. Johnny keeps to the hills and out of the city, but after a while we head to the ocean.

‘Hungry?’ he asks over his shoulder as we approach a petrol station.

‘Always room for chocolate,’ I reply.

‘I should’ve known you’d say that.’

He pulls in and fills the tank, while I run inside to pick up some snacks and pay. The man behind the desk gives me a funny look and I wonder if he recognises me from all the press this week, but we’re out of there and on the road again before he can do anything about it.

Eventually we arrive at a cliff overlooking the ocean. Johnny climbs off and helps me down and for a moment I feel like we’ve flashbacked to a few years ago when everything was new and exciting and far less complicated. He meets my eyes and I wonder if he’s also remembering back then, when I was merely his employee, or even a few months later, when he claimed he was in love with me. But as quickly as it appeared, that look in his eyes has gone again. We walk as close to the cliff edge as we dare and then sit down on the grass, taking off our jackets. I lean back on my elbows and tilt my face up to the sun. Contentment settles over me. Johnny lies down beside me. Neither of us says anything and it’s perfect; just what I needed. I rest my head down on the grass. I find myself taking a series of deep breaths and the weight I’ve been feeling inside seems to lift a little. For a brief moment I remember the lone blonde doing yoga on the hill in Cucugnan. Next to me, Johnny moves and I feel alert again. I open my eyes and turn my head. He’s propped up on one elbow, looking down at me. My heart flips.

‘Better?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ I reply, feeling vulnerable and exposed in a strange way.

He reaches over and pushes a strand of hair off my face, doing nothing to alleviate this feeling.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ he says quietly, and for a while I’m lost for words. I just stare back at him until my pulse begins to quicken.

He starts to hum a tune and I muse to myself that if any other guy did this it would seem corny, but that’s not a word that could ever be used to describe Johnny.

‘What’s that?’ I ask. ‘Something you’ve been working on?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Sing it to me?’

‘I don’t have all the words yet.’

‘Hum it to me, then.’

‘I am.’

I smile across at him and he winks at me. My heart flips again and for once I don’t chastise myself for the feeling. Right now, I just want to be. I’ll be back to reality soon enough – I can’t be in danger of losing myself in the space of an hour, surely?

‘Aah, Meg . . .’ His voice trails off and hearing him say my real name instead of Nutmeg makes the butterflies swarm around even more.

‘I suppose we’d better get the chocolate out before you fade away.’

‘And before it melts,’ I add.

He reaches for the plastic bag and delves inside. ‘What have you got for me?’ he asks.

‘Crisps. You’re a savoury boy, through and through. That’s why it could never have worked between us,’ I tease.

‘Oh, that’s why, is it?’ he asks, drily. ‘See, I disagree.’

‘Oh?’

‘Think about it,’ he says, lying back down on his side, food forgotten for a moment. ‘If we went to the movies, I’d have salt popcorn and you’d have sweet. You’d be able to have it all to yourself, none of this annoying nicking business.’

‘You’ve got a point,’ I reply with a grin. ‘But I like my popcorn mixed.’

‘Sweet
and
salted?’ He screws up his nose. ‘Your taste buds are sick and twisted, girl.’

‘I can’t disagree with you there,’ I reply jokily. ‘I have very bad taste. Terrible taste in men, too, as it turns out.’

‘Ouch.’ He nudges my arm and my heart flips.

Yep, again.

We’re still smiling at each other. Up this close I can see the freckles on his nose – the ones they airbrush out in magazine shoots. I could never understand why anyone would want to do that. They make him more . . . human, somehow.

‘Pass. Me. The chocolate,’ I say in a monotone voice. He grins and sits back up. He’s wearing a light-grey T-shirt with pink graphics on the front. The muscles on his arms flex as he moves, and at that very moment, I want nothing more than for him to hold me tight in his arms.

We will be leaving in two days . . .

I’ve found a place near Henley in Oxfordshire. We’re renting to begin with. There wasn’t enough time to push a sale through, and anyway, I didn’t want to rush into buying anything. It’s bigger than I wanted it to be, but both Johnny and Lena insisted it had to be of a certain size to accommodate the security staff. Plus, it needs its own garden with private access and you don’t get too many tiny cottages that meet those kinds of requirements.

‘Have you heard from Joseph?’ Johnny asks, out of the blue.

‘Yes, I have. It wasn’t him, Johnny. He didn’t leak it to the press.’

‘If you say so.’ Pause. ‘Are you seeing him again?’

‘I don’t think I’ll have time to before we leave.’

He looks down and then starts to pick at the grass between us. I can hear the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks below.

‘How’s Dana?’ I ask.

‘Fine.’

‘What’s she been up to this week?’

‘Recording.’

I’d almost forgotten she was allegedly the Next Big Thing in music. It makes me dislike her even more.

‘You must be missing her . . .’

Please say no, please say no . . .

He shrugs. Very non-committal.

‘When are you going to see her again?’ I press.

‘When you leave, I guess,’ he replies and it stings.

‘Is she the one?’ I find myself asking and holding my breath at the same time.

He glances at me. ‘I don’t know. But there’s something about her that I’d find hard to give up.’

I didn’t think it would hurt this much to hear him say that.

I sit up and put the rest of my chocolate bar back in the plastic bag. I don’t feel like eating anymore. ‘Do you think we should head back?’ I ask.

‘Guess so.’ He gets to his feet and holds his hand down. I feel resentful about taking it – now I don’t want him to touch me – but it seems wrong to shun his help. He pulls me to my feet and for a split second I want to forget everything he’s just said.

I want him to kiss me, and he knows it.

He cups my face with his hand and I feel dizzy.

I want to forget everything he’s just said . . . But I can’t.

I step away from him and reach down to pick up my jacket. ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s go.’

I sit behind him on the way home with my arms wrapped around his waist and I feel like this is the last time I’ll ever be close to him. He can’t see the tears in my eyes, or feel the deep aching sadness in my heart, but both are a clear indication to me that I need to get away from here. Fast.

  Chapter 44  

‘I’m so sad you’re leaving,’ Lena says to me on Friday evening, just before she leaves for the weekend. We won’t still be here on Monday when she arrives for work. ‘Are you really going to go?’

‘Yes,’ I nod. ‘We have to.’

‘But do you?’ she presses. ‘Do you really? I thought all this was just a smokescreen.’

‘A smokescreen?’ I’m confused.

She looks away, edgily.

‘What?’ I press.

She shrugs. ‘I thought maybe to get Dana out of the picture.’

I laugh sharply. ‘Dana’s going nowhere, and why you keep saying things like that is beyond me. It’s like you think Johnny and I are somehow, ooh, I don’t know, destined to be together.’ My tone is sarcastic and I expect her to smile, but she doesn’t. ‘Lena?’

‘I do think you’re meant to be together.’

‘Oh, stop it,’ I brush her off.

‘I do!’ she insists. ‘You’re good for him.’

I look at her seriously. ‘Well, he’s no good for me. You know that, don’t you.’ It’s not a question.

‘I thought he might’ve been,’ she says quietly. ‘It didn’t work out the way I thought it would.’

‘The way you thought it would,’ I repeat with a roll of my eyes.

‘The way I planned it,’ she adds quietly.

‘What?’ I glance at her.

‘If he hadn’t had that stupid party,’ she spits.

‘What are you talking about?’ I don’t know why I suddenly think of the car seats in Johnny’s supercars, but there they are: a picture in my mind. Then it hits me. She wanted me to drive Barney around in his cars . . . She wanted me to be spotted by the press . . .

‘You were the one who leaked the story,’ I whisper with horror.

She doesn’t deny it.

I cover my mouth with my hand. ‘How could you do such a thing?’

She looks deflated. ‘I thought it would work out differently,’ she reiterates, more dully this time.

I sit down and put my head in my hands.

‘Please don’t tell Johnny,’ she begs.

‘I can’t believe you did that.’

‘I’ll lose my job.’

I look up at her. ‘I know you will. How could you violate his privacy like that?’

‘I had good intentions.’ She sits down next to me.

‘Which were?’

She sighs. ‘I thought if it was all out in the open . . . I don’t know, that you and Johnny might get back together . . . I can’t stand Dana!’ she adds bitterly.

‘Oh, Lena.’ I look at her sadly. ‘How did you do it?’

‘Anonymously. I put the thought out there and the journalist pieced together the rest. Except he didn’t piece together the right facts.’

‘I can’t believe you expected him to.’

‘I was naive,’ she admits. ‘Oh, God, I’m going to lose my job. Katya will kill me.’

‘Katya will forgive you,’ I say. ‘And Johnny will too.’

‘You’re going to tell him?’