Shafted (26 page)

‘Glad to hear it.’

Letting go of Corbin’s hand now, Larry gestured back to the drinks. ‘Can I get you something?’

‘Um, yes, please,’ Corbin muttered uncomfortably. ‘Martell. Actually, make that two, because I’m getting one for Frank. And a couple of white wines for the ladies – if it’s no trouble?’

‘None whatsoever,’ Larry assured him, going back to the bar and looking for glasses.

Slipping his hands into his pockets, Corbin wandered over and stood beside him. Watching him from the corner of his eye, Larry saw that he was sweating, and licking his lips as if he wanted to say something.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes, fine,’ Corbin replied. Then, ‘Actually, I wanted to congratulate you on the undercover show you did. I had a chance to look over the clip before it aired tonight, and it was really very good. You must be delighted it’s going to be shown over here.’

‘I wasn’t really bothered if it came out over here or not, to tell you the truth,’ Larry lied, shrugging nonchalantly. ‘It got an amazing reception in the States, so it’ll just be a nice little bonus seeing it over here.’

‘I’m sure it’ll open lots of doors. I believe you’ve already been getting offers?’

‘Yeah, some. But Georgie’s sifting through them – cutting the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.’

‘Good, well, let’s hope you get what you deserve out of it.’

‘Isn’t that what people were saying last year when I was being ripped to pieces by the press?’ Larry said softly. Then, turning to look straight at Corbin, he winked and added, ‘But, hey, that’s all water under the bridge now.’

Sensing that Larry was still bitter about the aftermath of the telethon, despite the affected nonchalance, Corbin said, ‘There were contributory factors which led to all that, Larry.’

‘Like me being a piss-head?’ Larry quipped, leaning back against the bar and folding his arms.

‘Well, frankly, yes,’ Corbin replied bluntly, refusing to be made to feel guilty. ‘You placed the telethon in jeopardy, and then there was all that business with the girl.’

‘Who
was
old enough, despite the rumours,’ Larry reminded him. ‘Even though I didn’t actually
do
anything with her.’

‘Yes, well, that’s a matter for your own conscience,’ Corbin murmured, still not altogether sure that he believed the girl’s denial, because it had all seemed a little orchestrated for his liking.

Larry was struggling to maintain the façade of calm. Everybody he’d spoken to since he’d come back on the scene had been eager to let him know that they had been on his side all along, but Corbin obviously considered himself too important to run with the crowd. It irritated Larry that the man seemed to be implying that he still didn’t believe him about the girl – because he genuinely
was
innocent.

Walking in just then, Raine said, ‘Oh,
there
you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’

Swallowing hard, Corbin looked from her to Larry as a nervous flush suffused his face. Surely she wasn’t stupid enough to make an overt display of her affection in front of Larry of all people? He wasn’t ready for that. His wife was in the next room, and she had no idea that anything was going on – and this was not the way he intended for her to find out. When the moment came, it would be in private, and there would be no mention of Raine.
She
would only come into the picture after a suitable period of separation, when she would be unveiled as the replacement, not the cause.

‘You’re a very naughty boy,’ Raine went on, slinking sexily across the kitchen. ‘I thought you said you were coming right back to me?’

Blinking rapidly with confusion when she bypassed him and linked her arm possessively through Larry’s, Corbin gave her a questioning frown.

Smiling back at him as if he were nothing more than a work colleague, Raine said, ‘I think your wife was looking for you, Alan. Weren’t you supposed to be getting her a drink?’

‘Yeah, and I was supposed to be pouring it,’ Larry said, using it as an excuse to extract himself from her clutches. ‘Two white wines, you said?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ Corbin muttered, still peering at Raine. He was waiting for some sort of signal from her to explain her behaviour and let him know that she wasn’t trying it on with Logan, as she very much seemed to be doing.

Giving him a defiantly unconcerned look in return, Raine shrugged, and mouthed,
‘C’est la vie.
’

Loading the four glasses onto a small tray, Larry handed it to Corbin. Thanking him, Corbin flicked Raine a look which said that this wasn’t finished with, then walked out of the room with as much dignity as he could muster. Raine was a proud woman, and he could only assume that she was punishing him for bringing his wife along tonight. But Raine had personally invited her, so what was he meant to do?

Having picked up on the tension between Raine and Corbin, Larry said, ‘Am I missing something here?’

‘Nothing whatsoever,’ Raine lied, reclaiming his arm and giving him a sultry look. ‘But
I
missed
you
while you were away, so why didn’t you stay in touch?’

Peering down at her, Larry wondered if she was on drugs, or something. What did she mean, why didn’t he stay in touch? They’d never
been
in touch – not in the way she apparently meant, anyway. She’d already been established by the time he’d hit the screen with
Star Struck
, and had treated him like an office junior whenever their paths had crossed. She’d been more forthcoming when his star had really started to rise, but they’d barely seen each other to say more than a passing hello, so it wasn’t like there had ever been any sort of friendship. Certainly nothing to make her think that they were rekindling something they had once had and lost, anyway.

Taking his silence and the way he was staring at her as a sign that he was nervous, Raine lowered her eyelashes and traced a fingertip over his hand. Poor little Larry might look and act like an experienced man about town, but he’d obviously never had a red-blooded woman like Raine Parker show an interest in him, and he looked completely out of his depth. But he had nothing to fear, because she was about to take him to a whole new level of sensuality.

Inhaling deeply, wondering how the hell he was going to get out of this without offending her, Larry was flooded with relief when the girls from the top R-’n’-B girl-band Teeza walked into the kitchen in search of booze.

Spotting him, Shari, the lead singer, yelped, ‘Larry, baby!’ and rushed over to throw herself into his arms. ‘I didn’t know you were already here,’ she gushed, planting a big kiss on his lips. ‘We only just got here ourselves, but I was just telling Kaylise that you’d better show your ass soon or I was outta here, ’cos I only came to see you!’ Smiling at Raine now, with her arms still looped around Larry’s neck and her pretty head resting on his shoulder, she said, ‘No offence, Ray, but I haven’t seen this boy for the longest time, and I just love him to bits.’

‘Yes, well, we’re all very fond of him,’ Raine said smoothly, determined not to let the pushy little bitch see how irritated she was by the interruption. She didn’t know why the band had been invited in the first place, because she’d specifically told her PA to only invite the cream of the crop, and surely
Teeza
didn’t fall into that category – however many number ones they had been clocking up lately.

Getting a look-in now that Shari had had her fill, the other girls moved in to give him kisses and hugs, and Larry encouraged them with sexy smiles and compliments – more to put Raine off than to turn them on. Gorgeous as these girls undoubtedly were, they all had huge hip-hop boyfriends, and there was no way Larry wanted any of them thinking he’d been trying it on with their women.

‘Hey, come see who’s here,’ Shari said now, grabbing his hand. ‘You’ll
die
when you see her.’

Snatching up his glass as the girls surrounded him and hustled him towards the door, Larry gave Raine a what-can-I-do? shrug to let her know that he wasn’t being deliberately rude.

Giving him an understanding smile, she nodded, sure that he would find an excuse to come and seek her out when he was done with his fans. She wasn’t concerned about them, anyway. As far as she knew, Larry had never been photographed with any black girls, so they probably weren’t his type. Pouring herself a fresh drink now, she smoothed her hair down and went back into the party to mingle with her more important guests.

Someone had made the DJ take off the mellow background music Raine had ordered him to play and put Teeza’s latest album on instead. Going straight into their routine when they heard the first bars of their latest single, ‘Watch Me Now’, the girls sang along as people cleared a path to watch them do their thing.

Edging his way around the room when he saw Jooce, the gorgeous American singer the girls had brought to the party, Larry headed over to her. The first and last time they’d met, she’d been performing the final gig of her first British tour at the MEN Arena, and Shari had introduced them at the backstage party. They’d all gone on to Bone from there, where they had partied for a few hours before Larry and Jooce had sneaked off to spend the rest of the night having crazy sex at his apartment. It was one of the few times when Larry had managed to outwit the paparazzi and, if he remembered rightly, Jooce had greatly appreciated that because she’d only just got married. She certainly hadn’t wanted her new husband to see pictures of her getting jiggy with a sexy white boy while she was still effectively on honeymoon.

‘Hey,
you
!’ Jooce drawled now when he reached her, her voice every bit as husky and sexy as he remembered from when she’d whispered dirty nothings down his ear that night. ‘I hear you’re the man of the moment, huh?’

‘So they say,’ Larry said, thinking she’d put on a couple of pounds as he gave her a hug – and loving the feel of it. ‘That’s some booty you got there, girl,’ he whispered now, copying her accent.

‘You know it,’ she giggled, pushing her breasts up against his chest. ‘Remember these babies, ’cos they sure remember you?’

‘How could I forget?’ Larry chuckled, detaching himself in case anyone got the wrong idea. ‘So, how’s the husband?’

‘He’s
fine
,’ Jooce drawled, smiling up at him coyly. ‘I’ll introduce you soon as he gets here, ’cos I told him all about you, and I know he’d like to meet you.’

‘Hey, I hope you didn’t tell him
every
thing?’ Larry drew his head back.

‘Oh, now don’t be stressing on me,’ Jooce teased. ‘Bo knows you and me is friends, and that’s all he
needs
to know.’

‘Hope so,’ Larry said uncertainly. He’d never seen Bo, but Jooce had told him that he was a pro basketball player, so he had to be at least nine feet tall and built like a rhino.

‘How are you, anyway?’ Jooce asked now, her wide-spaced eyes glowing like ebony coals of compassion. ‘Shari kept me up to date about alla that stuff you went through last year, and I was so mad about it, I was all set to hop on a plane and come rescue you. That ho never shoulda gotten away with fixing you up that way, and I’d have made sure she paid for putting you through something like that.’

‘Nice to know you were thinking about me,’ Larry said, thinking that it was quite amazing that Shari had bothered telling
her
when she hadn’t actually bothered to contact
him
during that time to ask if he was okay.

‘Never stopped,’ Jooce said, giving him a very pointed smile. ‘Any time you wanna catch up, just give me a call. Matter of fact, you’d better take my number before Bo gets here – but don’t be telling my girls, ’cos they be leakin’ green from their eyes if they hear we hookin’ up again.’

Assuring her that he wouldn’t breathe a word to them or to anyone else, Larry took her number – just in case he needed it. Who knew when he might get called over to the States, and it’d be good to have a contact when he got there – especially one who was as big a star as Jooce was, seeing as he’d never seen or heard from the rap group Unreal again after unwittingly dragging them into his bad publicity that time.

He’d just put his phone away when Jooce spotted her husband coming through the door. Waving over Larry’s head, she said, ‘Hey, here’s my baby now.’

Turning, Larry gulped when he saw Bo, who was every bit as big and muscular as he’d imagined. He looked like he’d stepped straight off a bad-ass-rapper video set.

‘Baby, I want you to meet Larry,’ Jooce said when Bo walked over and kissed her. ‘Remember I told you about him from last time I was touring here?’

‘Ah, yeah,’ Bo drawled, giving Larry an easy smile as he reached for his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you. I caught you on that undercover cop show a coupla weeks back, and you were cool, man. The way you handled that crazy dude with the knife, that was just
whack
, man.’

Sensing that Bo was a decent guy, Larry felt an unfamiliar twinge of guilt, knowing that he hadn’t only slept with his wife but had just taken her number so that he could contact her if he ever wanted to get properly reacquainted. But Jooce obviously wasn’t worrying about it, because she tipped Larry a promise-laden wink, even though she was sitting on Bo’s knee now, with her arms wrapped around him like they were love’s young dream.

Feeling increasingly uncomfortable, Larry thanked Bo for the compliment and told him it had been a pleasure to meet him. Then he made his excuses and left them to make out in peace.

Wandering around the room chatting to his old so-called friends and acquaintances while keeping a couple of steps ahead of Raine who kept trying to catch his eye, Larry wandered out onto the balcony after a while to get a bit of air. He was tired again, and wished he could take off so he could hit the sack. But no one else seemed to be in any hurry to leave, so he couldn’t just up and go – not when the party had been thrown in his honour.

Sipping at the vodka, he rested his elbows on the railing and gazed down at the darkly glittering waters of the canal below. It was a beautiful complex consisting of four blocks of apartments, two of which sat on either side of the narrow waterway. The ground floors of each had been leased out to commercial businesses, and there were units displaying everything from shoes to candelabras to exotic deli foods in their darkened windows. There were also several tiny wine bars, which were still brightly lit, their waterfront tables buzzing with customers as tinkling musak filtered out through their open doors. It wasn’t a particularly warm night, but Larry could understand why they’d chosen to sit outside with a view like this. And, anyway, alcohol tended to make you feel warmer than you actually were.