Bad Boy Rock Star (19 page)

I didn't want to hurt Eric but I didn't have those kinds of feelings for him. I'd never met a sweeter guy or a better friend but the only guy who could touch my heart was Jack Colt.

"We should stop here and get some groceries," I said
, seeing a supermarket up ahead. "I think this is the last big town before we get there."

Our drive down the coast
had gone well.  We’d missed most of the after work commuters and had clear roads to drive and sing. Jack concentrated on his driving. He drove fast but not dangerously. I could relax with him behind the wheel.   He didn’t want to talk, but in an easy way, not the usual sulky not talking way.

We pulled into the supermarket car park and went in to browse the aisles.

Inside the supermarket, country folk stood around chatting, getting in our way.
When we passed them, they'd stop talking and look us up and down, silently judging then return to their conversation. I guess we looked out of place. Jack in his black skinny jeans and studded leather jacket. His hair tied back in a ponytail and a chain of silver rings on his fingers. Me in a cute dress and heels, instead sweat pants like everyone else.

I loaded up the trolley with tinned food and snacks.

"Can't you cook?" Jack asked, looking at the stuff I had.

"I can cook.
It's just we might have to store stuff for a while." I thought I was being really sensible.

"Right, because the place won't have a refrigerator and we can't drive to get more food."

"You never know. It's always good to be prepared for an emergency."

"I don't think any emergency requires eating canned chicken."
He picked up the can and read the label. "Is this stuff even edible?"

"Wow, and you call me a princess!"

Jack grinned and put the canned chicken back on the shelf. Instead, he got vegetables and a huge tray of steaks.

"We don't need 14 steaks."

"You mightn't. I'm a man."

"A caveman?"

He grinned. Sometimes, I wondered if he wasn't so far removed from a caveman. Except that he had that look in his eyes, the look that made girls practically swoon when he played guitar.

Jack grabbed some beer
, so I got a couple of bottles of wine.

When we got back in the car, I turned the stereo down.
It felt weird driving along without talking. He could damn well talk to me for a while.

"So,
you're broke," he said, as he backed the car out of the car park.

"Way to state the obvious that is plastered all over the papers.
I'm poor. Just like you." I sipped on a coke. Maybe poorer, I thought.

"You aren't like me.
You were raised like a princess. Even without money, you still have that. You can't change what's inside you."

"I can change," I said.
If I thought about it, I already had. It'd only taken a few short months for me to become a different person, for the whole pattern of my life to change. I'd had no option but to change.

"If I was still at uni, I'd be taking exams now," I said.
"I'd be so stressed. I guess this is a blessing in some ways. I get to relax and hang out at the beach instead."

He snorted.

"If you had the money, you'd go running back to that old life in an instant. You can't say you've changed when you never really had the choice. You still wear the designer clothes, even if you do eat canned chicken."

I didn't tell him how I'd sold my designer clothes to pay for the video or how I had to eat things I didn't need to cook so the smell didn't get into my clothes in my shitty room.
Designer clothes are protection. They get you places you need to go. People judge you on how you dress. I didn't make the rules but I knew how to play by them. I'd taken damn good care of the few precious clothes I had left. If he thought that made me a bad person, then screw him.

"I'd sure as hell move out of that room if I had money, that's a fact.
It's not like you’re living in a hovel. You have it pretty damn sweet."

That must've been the wrong thing to say because he seemed to shut
down after that. He turned up the music again as if to say conversation over. That made me mad. As if he was the one making all the rules and I didn't even know what they were. Things I could and couldn't say. Things I couldn't do. It's not as if it was my fault I was rich. It's just something you are born with, like being pretty or having good fashion sense.

I leaned against the window and stared out into the darkness, looking at the moon's reflection on the water and the lights of boats out to sea.
Maybe being by the water would let me sort out all these emotions. Would I go running back to my old life? I wasn't so sure. I couldn't really go back, anyway. It seemed like a dream I'd had that had faded around the edges and in the reality of day, I couldn't distinguish the facts. The things that had seemed important then, like hanging out with the right people and getting good grades and shopping, had come to mean nothing to me. As for Jack Colt, I think money meant more to him than he let on. He seemed to have some kind of hang up about it, as if he was so much better for not having any.

We made good time getting to the beach town.
The road had been clear and Jack drove well. Once we got to the town, I took out the map Frank had given me and navigated.

"You sure this is the right road?" asked Jack.
"There doesn't seem to be much down here. And this road is wrecking the suspension on the car."

It was a pretty rough road but that
was what the map said, the third turnoff after we left the town then a couple of kilometres down the track to the beach house. The town itself had been tiny. A surf shop and a couple of souvenir shops and a café. Then there'd been a big stone pub on the corner, the old style with big verandahs. That'd pretty much been it.

"There's a place
," I said. "Must be it. Pull over just here, there should be a turn off."

In the lights of the car, it didn't look like much.
Frank had said that it had all the mod cons and I'd expected something closer to the beach but this place was old and there was no beach in sight, as far as I could tell. Some of the boards were falling off the outside and the garden looked overgrown.

We grabbed our bags and headed to the front door.

"The key doesn't work," I said.
I wriggled it, trying to get it into the lock. It didn't even fit, let alone turn.

"Let me try. You must be doing it wrong."

Jack took the key from me and tried to get into the lock. Not that he did any better.

"There's not another house?"

"This looks like it's the only one. Wouldn't it be on the map if we had to drive past another house? Maybe there's another door?"

We walked around the house looking for another way in.
I stumbled over a fishing net, left leaning against the side of the house. It was hard to see in the dark, trying to make my way through the long grass. The place had a strong smell of fish and a lot of weird stuff sitting around outside. Maybe Frank was into fishing.

"There's no other door.
What should we do?" I asked but there was no answer. "Jack? Jack?"

I walked back around to the front of the house, calling out to him.
This was like a bad horror movie, where someone goes to investigate something and they never come back and then their body is found all dead and grotesque. I really hoped Jack hadn't been hacked up. I'd be all alone, and I'd have to fish the car keys out of his jeans pocket and he'd probably be all blood-splattered and gross.

The front door of the house swung open.
I screamed. It was the insane clown hacker dude, come to get me.

Jack stood in the doorway.

"What the hell are you doing? I thought you were the evil clown. Don't ever do that again." I beat my hands against his chest until he pushed me away.

"I got in through the window.
This place is a little… rough… isn't it?"

I walked in and turned on the lights.
He wasn't wrong. The floor was covered in worn lino and the walls were cheap chipboard. In some places, they weren't even lined. Frank had really talked this place up. The single room had mismatched furniture and the place was freezing cold. I couldn't even see a bathroom. There was more fishing stuff around the place – some fishing rods and nets. The whole place reeked of fish too.  Dead fish that had gone rotten in the sun.

"I'm famished," I said.
I went into the kitchen area and freaked. "What's this?"

I stared at a big monster of a stove.
It looked like something you'd see in a museum.

"I don't think we'll be cooking much, not unless you know something about historical stoves."

I
pulled a bag of corn chips out of the bag of groceries and opened them.

"It looks like a wood
oven. Is there any wood stacked anywhere?"

I found some in a basket near the stove.
Jack mucked around and got a fire going, we just had to wait for it to heat up. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing. Arranging the wood in a pile over some newspaper. I'd have not even known where the fire should go.

I looked around some more.

"There is only one bed! What the hell?"

"That's okay," said Jack.
"I'll take the sofa."

"The sofa is the bed."
It didn't even look that comfortable, to be honest. It was about 60 years old and a couple of the springs looked as if they were busting through the worn fabric.

He didn't say anything, just wriggled his eyebrows.

"We can't share the sofa bed. We just can't." I'd rather sleep in the car.

"Why not?
Do you think you can't control yourself around me?" He grinned. A wicked grin that signalled he had something in mind. His eyes locked into mine and did that thing that made me have no control over myself.

"Yeah, I can control myself.
I can totally control myself." But my voice sounded strangled and unconvincing even to me.

With that
, he walked over and stood within centimetres of me. Heat emulated from his body. He reached down and grabbed my wrists, the calloused skin of his fingers barely touching me. Chills ran from my wrists, through my body. I couldn't look at him. I didn’t want him to be able to see how much I wanted him, but he put his hand under my chin and raised my head. My heart raced so wildly, he must be able to sense it. He stroked my cheek with a touch so light I could barely stand it. I didn't want to submit to him. I remembered how he'd been with that skanky chick. He did this all the time. It was just a game to him. But, at that moment, I just wanted him to kiss me.

I gathered every bit of strength I had and tried to move away.  I picked up my bag.

"I have to call Ang, let her know where I am."

That would give me some space.  But he took
my bag out of my hands.

"
You can call her later."

And again, he moved to
ward me.  His face so close to mine, it felt like the promise of a kiss.  My hands trembled. I wanted to touch him. I wanted him to touch me. I couldn't even breathe. His hands moved down to circle my waist and he pressed his mouth to my neck. Suddenly, he nipped the skin. A soft nip that sent delicious shivers throughout my whole body.

I moved in closer to him, pressing myself against hi
m. His hands ran down, tickling over my hips and then cupping my butt. His lips ran lines down my neck. I shivered all over.

He bit harder making me moan.
I gave a throaty laugh that didn’t sound like my voice at all.  This was what he did to me.  He made me become someone else and what I needed to decide was: did I like this Hannah?  Did I want to be her?

I ran my hands along his ches
t, tracing his rock hard muscles, moving down to feel every bump of every rock hard ab.  I wanted to count each ridge along his stomach as though I were exploring the topography of an unknown land.  I want to explore it with my fingers, my mouth, my tongue.  I wanted to know the taste of him.

"
Have you ever had a man make love to you, Hannah?"  He ran his finger along my lips. "Make love to you so that you explode into a million little pieces and aren’t quite sure how to put yourself back together again?"

I almost giggled but the
smouldering in his eyes stopped me.  That look, it would burn a girl.

When his lips met mine,
I turned to liquid.  I melted into a mess of desire.  My hands clutching for him, tangling in his hair and pulling him closer to me.  No matter how hard he kissed me, it wasn’t enough.  The stubble of his chin scratched my face but I didn’t care.

His hands inch
ed up my thighs, under my dress.  His fingers moved against my hot flesh and I had no desire to push them away. Even standing there in that horrible kitchen with its smell of rancid fat and fish guts, I'd let him touch me however he wanted.

"What's going on here?"
A voice boomed from the doorway.

We both jumped apart like a couple of schoolkids being caught out.