Page 18 of The Cocktail Bar
She inhaled deeply, fighting back the tears, knowing full well that once she started, she’d never stop. But the tenderness of skin upon skin lingered, even moments after his hands were gripping his glass again, a trace of electricity surging back into her own body, as if there it had always belonged. This was crazy, why had she never felt like this with him before? All she knew is she had definitely never felt this way with any of the others, not a single Beverly Hills residing,Armanitoting,Nobudining one of them.
On the other hand, it could just be the jetlag, east to west was the worst. And yes, she’d experienced it before, but normally she’d have a chauffeur driven limo waiting to pick her up and take her somewhere like The Dorchester, or her sister Tamara’s spare Notting Hill pad. This time was different though. She and Tamara had fallen out over her last choice of boyfriend and his shoe fiasco; Glenn had only gone and stepped out in crocodile skin loafers, red rag to the staunchest of animal rights bulls. Which had had nothing to do with Alice, she was hardly his personal dresser, she’d been in Guadalajara at the time, he at an award ceremony in Palm Springs. Sodding typical that Tamara had stumbled across the pictures in the society pages at the rear end ofHello. As for her parents, they’d long ago withheld regular payment into her trust fund; the trust fund she’d found herself equally regularly dipping into to top up her fifty-per-cent-less-for-being-a-female salary that came with the band.
And then there was the not so small matter of Lennie blocking her credit card since she was in breach of contract.
In short she was destitute and homeless. But she couldn’t land all of this on River today, not until she’d told him the news that would shakehisworld.
“I’m okay, I’m fine, it’ll be…,” she cut off to blow her nose, eyes scanning the premises moments later in case anybody was sneakily filming her sad demise on their mobile phone.
“You’re not okay.” He shook his head at her. “But you will be, everything will fall into place, I promise. There is life out here after the band, you know? Look at me.”
She smiled a wobbly smile. He’d done amazingly for himself, especially when she considered his somewhat off-kilter single parent upbringing. The quirky Heather; Alice had always had a soft spot for her, in fact Heather and her veggie lentil hotpot were the very reason she’d stopped eating meat herself.
“I’ve got nowhere to—”
“Shh.” He put his finger to his lips. “You’ll stay in my penthouse at the Hotel Guinevere, at least for tonight. I’m fine with my old room at Mum’s. After that we’ll find you a nice apartment, or maybe the hotel has another large room going free. Either way, the last thing I am going to do is abandon you. We started this adventure together… we’ll finish it together… in style.”
He lifted his tumbler to suggest a toast. Alice’s hand trembled as she did the same, not so much through lack of sleep, but the unshakable feeling that River Jackson was in fact, the love of her life.
