Page 42 of Star Struck

A wobbly finger ran along my spine. I felt the slow trickle as the bottle he was holding tipped and spilled drink down my back. This dress was going to smell like a winery. ‘Erlon will be here in a few minutes,’ I said, scared to move in case it encouraged him. My pulse began to race again, and I checked the distance to the door, not sure how capable he’d be of stopping me getting away. My hands readied themselves to claw, to punch, to fight my way out.

‘Shit. Bugger.’ Gethryn wobbled dramatically and only managed to steady himself by holding onto my shoulders. More liquid rolled over the dress, beads of it sinking into the soft fabric.

Golden eyes narrowed to take in my face, golden hair wrapping itself against me. I saw the small blond prickles of stubble breaking out on his chin, the little indent under his lower lips that jutted his mouth forward in a permanent half-kiss. He was beautiful. Very, very lovely. But he wasn’t Lucas James. He was a mixed-up drunken actor, that was all, and I’d made the classic mistake of confusing the actor with the script. All that heartbreakingly wonderful language, all that emotion. It was Jack’s. Without knowing it, I’d fallen for Jack, a man who could only express his locked-down feelings by giving the words to someone else to say.

‘You can kiss me, though. Come on, girl, gi’ us a kiss.’ He blinked hard and screwed his eyes up as though trying to bring my face into focus. ‘Bet you go like a train, doncha?’ A hand rolled down my neck and squeezed at the front of the dress, where boning and corseting protected my breasts and a knee tried to brush aside my skirts. ‘Where d’you keep the good stuff then, eh, girlie? ’S got to be under here somewhere . . .’ The hand stopped trying to fondle my boobs and groped futilely amid the masses of velvet, trying to locate me underneath it all. ‘Gonna show you a goo’ time . . .’

And then I realised that I wasn’t scared, not any more. Gethryn wasn’t a threat, with his posturing and his leery eyes; he was a sad drunk with terrible people skills and absolutely no chat-up lines at all. A single slap to the cheek was all it took to knock him sideways and from there it was ridiculously easy to push him backwards onto the bed with one hand to his solar plexus almost knocking him completely off his feet and sending him sprawling down onto the soaked bedding. ‘Stop it, Gethryn.’

‘Playin’ hard to get, eh?’ It was pathetic really, to hear him trying to talk sex when he couldn’t even manage to rock himself to his feet. ‘Like my girlies to fight a bit, I do. Bit of life, d’you see? No’ juss lyin’ back and lettin’ me . . .’

‘So you do it even if they’re fighting you off?’ I tried to brush the droplets of liquid off the plush fabric with the back of my hand, keeping half an eye on Gethryn’s attempts to get up. ‘Don’t you think it might have meant that they wanted you to stop?’

‘Nah. They wanted Lucas James, all of ’em.’ He hiccupped loudly again, swore and shook his head, looking at me out of each eye alternately. ‘Think I’m gonna be sick,’ he muttered.

I looked around. ‘Bathroom?’

A hand waved towards a mirrored wall. ‘’hind there.’ A cheesily ominous belch followed, and I dragged him off the bed towards the indicated wall, flinging myself at it until I hit whichever secret button opened the door, and flung Gethryn inside with a strength I hadn’t known I’d got until it came to potentially getting vomit on the dress. It was going to be bad enough with the alcohol, but at least I could hang it up outside and pray for that to evaporate — sick was pretty much terminal.

Gethryn began making unpicturesque noises. ‘I’ll go find you some water,’ I said, whisking the dress out of reach.

He raised a bleary face. ‘Not gonna offer to hold my hair back for me? Oh, shit . . .’

I looked at him sternly. ‘I think you’ll manage.’

I was in the kitchen, investigating the potential of the enormous fridge for ice cubes, when there came a hammering on the van door. Not just a gentle knock but a proper, closed-fist banging. Then a voice. ‘Skye! Are you in there?’

Jack.

Oh God.

If I let him in, he’d know about Gethryn. That he had been — not just drinking, what Gethryn was went way beyond being merely domestically drunk; he was gloriously shooting out of the far side of sloshed, and Gethryn clearly didn’t want Jack to know, for whatever reasons of his own. But, if I didn’t let Jack in, he’d make assumptions. He might even think that I’d come back to finish what Geth and I had started out in the car park under those merciless stars, and I didn’t want Jack to think of me as a girl who went back for seconds of that sort of thing.

‘Hold on a second,’ I called, flinging a few sad ice-drops into a glass and dashing as best as I could in the long dress back to the bathroom, where Gethryn was now lying on the floor. ‘Jack’s here,’ I said succinctly.

Gethryn just groaned.

‘You’ve got to sober up.’ This could mean his career, didn’t he realise? ‘Can you stand?’ And there, in that tiny bathroom which was almost flooded with the smell of vomit, I began to strip Gethryn Tudor-Morgan naked.

Oh, how many times had I imagined slowly undressing Geth, gradually revealing the Celtic tattoo which lay along one jutting hip, just asking for a tongue to trace its smooth length? How many ways had I conjured of watching my fingers pass over his taut, muscular stomach, tanned as golden as the rest of his skin? But in none of my daydreams had Gethryn actually peed in his tight, button-fly jeans, or had to be helped to pull his shirt over his head because his balance was too unsteady for him to let go of the wall.

‘Just get in the shower.’ And I turned it on, viciously, to extreme chill, and gave him a shove. His golden nakedness immediately puckered and pimpled as the cold water hit, and he gave a scream, plunging helplessly directly under the impressive torrent. I half-ran, half-tottered from the room back through the acres of Winnebago and opened the door. Jack, looking customarily furious, stood on the steps with a large, bestubbled man who appeared to have no chin, just an expanse of face sloping gently down into his neck.

‘Erlon?’ I ignored Jack and held out a hand to shake. ‘Gethryn’s just . . . ummm . . . He’ll be out in a minute.’

‘Cool.’ Erlon moved past me and began fiddling with the camera in his hand. ‘In here’s good. On the sofa, maybe?’

Jack stayed in the doorway with a bitten-back expression on his face. ‘What took you so long?’ he asked me in the sort of furious hiss that mothers use to ask questions to which they already know the answers. Then he sniffed suspiciously. ‘What have you been doing with Gethryn?’

I was desperate not to lie to Jack. As I watched his expression alternate between moody and frustrated, I had to work quite hard not to reach out and touch him, to reassure him that he was allowed to lighten up every now and again.

‘And stop bloody staring at me! Just tell me, what are you doing over here?’

Keep him talking. ‘I came over for the photos. Of course. You know that. Why are you here, couldn’t Erlon manage to take the pictures on his own?’

‘Vanessa told me you’ve been here for nearly half-an-hour. You stink of booze. And worse.’

I presumed Vanessa was the punitive-haircut girl outside. ‘I had a drink while I was waiting for Gethryn. And I’m all sweaty; it took me ages to walk over in this dress.’

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