Page 1 of Saving Mr. Bell

Chapter One

Rudolf

I turned my head, the bright lights of the nightclub making me blink and reminding me of being on stage. Of sitting there frozen while thousands of people stared at me expectantly. Waiting… Wondering… Trying to work out what was going on with the man they’d paid an exorbitant amount to see.

No! I wasn’t going there. Not tonight.More booze. That was what I needed. Enough to stop me from remembering how badlyI’d fucked up a few weeks ago. I’d thought I was drunk, but apparently I wasn’t drunk enough.

Once I reached the closest bar, I slammed my hand down on it, the noise satisfying enough to make me laugh. “Another drink,” I demanded of no one in particular. Fingers hooked around my left biceps to tug me away from the bar, but I planted my feet and refused to be moved. When they didn’t let go, I turned to face whoever was manhandling me.

I’d expected to find Nelson, my bodyguard, but where Nelson was tall, muscular, and wider than any man had a right to be, this guy was thin and willowy, and looked like a strong breeze might blow him over if he wasn’t careful. He had a piercing through his eyebrow and another through his nose, the glint of light from the nose ring momentarily hypnotizing me before I snapped out of it.

“I think you’ve had enough,” Mr. Thin and Willowy said, his brow creased with a concern that seemed unwarranted when I didn’t know who he was.

“Yeah? Well… I don’t.” I flicked my arm hard enough that he had no choice but to let go. Where was Nelson? Why wasn’t he telling this guy to back off? Oh, that’s right. I’d given him the slip at the hotel. I’d pretended to take an early night and then snuck out. “And I don’t know who you are to be telling me what I can and can’t do.”

Hurt immediately blossomed on the guy’s face, extreme enough for guilt to filter through the alcohol.Fuck!Had I spent last night with him? I struggled to recall the previous night, brief snatches coming back to me. Someone’s house. A private party. This guy’s? So much booze and drugs on offer that I couldn’t even remember leaving, never mind what had happened in the hours before my departure. To say it was a blur would be an understatement. If I’d had sex, I’d topped, the lack of any soreness telling me that even if my memory couldn’t.

“Owen,” the guy said, the name meaning nothing to me. If something had happened between us, I either hadn’t known his name or I’d consigned it to the list of things that weren’t important. Which was pretty much everything, more things joining the list with every day that passed.

“Owen,” I said. “Right. Course. I knew that.” I turned back to the bar. “I get to decide when I’ve had enough. No one else. Not you. Not my father. Not even Father bloody Christmas. He can put me on the naughty list for all I care. I think I’ll cope.” I laughed, turning back to see if Owen appreciated the joke. He wasn’t there, nothing but a space where he’d been standing. It didn’t last long, spaces close to the bar as much in demand in this nightclub as they were in any.

I caught the barman’s eye, my wink doing exactly what I intended, and making him bypass whoever should have been next to serve me instead. “A double vodka and Coke,” I requested, “and whatever you’re having.” I fumbled in my pocket for a note, handing it over without bothering to look at what denomination it was, and with little regard for whether I got change. That was one advantage to being famous and the riches that came with it.

I drank my double vodka at the bar and then asked for another. Or maybe it was two. Fuck knows. I sure as hell didn’t. The next two hours were a blur of more booze, dancing—where I had no shortage of willing partners cozying up to me—and conversations that made little sense while I was having them, and that I already knew I wouldn’t recall a single word of the following day.

When the lights came on to signal the end of the evening, I swore. How was it that time already? “Come back to my place,” an accented voice urged. “We can carry the party on there. I have plenty of drink, some drugs, and…” His voice tookon a distinctive flirtatious note. “Something else you might be interested in.”

The something else was presumably his cock. I squinted up at him, my drunkenness having reached a level where all his features swam together. It was difficult to get excited at the thought of having sex with someone you couldn’t see properly. “Thanks, but no thanks.” I staggered back a few steps, apologizing when I bumped into someone. I ricocheted off them and into someone else, and then into a Christmas tree. Perhaps I’d had a little too much to drink.Perhaps.

“Rudolf, come back. I’ll call you a cab. Make sure you get safely back to the hotel.”

Same accented voice. What country was I in, anyway? Japan? No, that had been last week. Something beginning with an A. Australia? Azerbaijan? The fucking Antarctic. Probably not the latter. I didn’t think there were many nightclubs there. At least I hoped we weren’t in the Antarctic because I was in for a very rude and very cold surprise once I found my way out of this nightclub, if so. I found a cloakroom ticket in my pocket, leaning gratefully against the wall for support while the attendant went to find my coat.

She was back within a couple of minutes. I struggled into my coat, glad to find that non-drunken me had teamed it with gloves, a scarf and a beanie hat. My luck held when I located my phone in the pocket. I pulled it out, drunkenness rendering the task more difficult than it needed to be as I scrolled through my contacts to find the number I needed. There were missed calls, but I didn’t bother to look who they’d been from.

She answered on the third ring. “Rudolf?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” I slurred.

“Where are you? Nelson says you’re not at the hotel.”

“Not his fault,” I said charitably. “Gave him the slip. Wanted to be on my own for a few hours.”

My manager let out a sigh worthy of any soap opera. My father had hired Jade Turner because she had a reputation for running a tight ship and didn’t suffer fools gladly. Unfortunately, I seemed to be one of those fools. My father had hired everyone involved in my daily routine. Nelson. Jade. My publicist. My driver. My personal assistant. My hairdresser. The list went on and on. “Rudolf, we’ve talked about this time and time again. You can’t just take yourself off whenever you feel like it. It’s not safe. Nelson’s your bodyguard for a reason, and you need to use him as such.”

I closed my eyes against the lecture I’d heard before. “Yeah, yeah,” I said.

“I presume you’re drunk?”

I laughed at the censorious note in her voice. “As. A. Skunk.”

“Tell me there’s no press there.”

“Don’t think so.”

“Where are you?”

“At a club.”

---