Good riddance for now.
I did not peek over my shoulder to watch Valerie and Sam walk away from us. No, indeed. I may be a silly woman who collects vintage Olivia Newton-John tour shirts, but my dignity is still intact.
Besides—I couldn’t look without Danny seeing me do it.
The air of doom that had haunted us at breakfast lifted, and I let freedom envelop me for the first time all day. We walked in silence, both of us tired and content enough to not have to fill the space. A few blocks away, I stopped him. “Danny, I didn’t really have anything I wanted to talk to you about. I just didn’t want to deal with Valerie tonight.”
“Who is Valerie?”
“Vanessa. Veronica?” Shit!
Danny laughed. “I guess she really winds you up if you can’t remember her name.”
I covered my face with my hands. “I’m sorry—my brain has no idea what time it is. Even if it did, the time
zone
is still a mystery. Yes, she’s new to me. Jeez, I sound like an asshole.”
“No, no. I’m afraid publicists are a necessary evil.”
“How do you think I’m doing?”
“What?” He pushed his sunglasses up.
I squeezed my temples—
what an idiot I am
. I hadn’t meant to ask him that. “I am…very tired—that was a stupid question.”
“Do you mean in the film?” We were in people’s way, so he pulled us under the awning of a shop. “I think you’re brilliant. Funny, likeable. The audience will be rooting for you the most.”
Erp, there it went. Hot face again. “That’ll be you.”
“Hopefully, both of us. Really—you are holding your own very well. The camera, it loves you. Honestly, it’s hard for me to focus on anyone else when you’re in a scene.” He reached out a hand to touch me, but stopped mid-way and snatched it back.
My head spun from his compliments. Below my layer of bravado and bad jokes, an undercurrent of doubt always bubbled, toiled and troubled. I was convinced that at any moment someone would snatch me from this life and scream, ‘It’s a lie! She’s nothing but a low-rent loser with no talent and bad taste in knick-knacks!’
“Do you have the next couple of days off? I do.”
And lo, the heavens opened up, and God smiled upon my mess of a life. I’d completely forgotten that I had some time free. “Yes.”
He shuffled his feet and stared at them, and the adorable gesture blitzed me like a basket full of kittens. “Have you been on the London Eye?”
“The terrifying, tall, wheel thingie that looks like it’s going to fall off its post and roll down the Thames, killing everyone trapped inside?”
His mouth fell open. “That’s not exactly how they market it.”
I reached out to touch his arm. My hand fell on his pec by complete accident. Also by accident, I concluded that he spent as much time in the gym as a movie star is supposed to. “I have a bit of a fear of heights. But I have leftover Xanax from my plane ride here.”
“It might be better to take you on a date you don’t have to be drugged for.”
“Some Hollywood player you are.”
His eyes crinkled at the corners. Mmmmmm. I said, “So, you want to take me on a date, huh?”
“I want to take you on fifty.”
I laughed—a peal of girly giggles that practically erupted from my mouth covered in pink glitter. “We’re working together.”
Why the hell had I said that? Stupid, stupid Samantha!
“You’re right.” He sighed and put his sunglasses back on. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“I’m glad you asked. My ego is growing like Pinocchio’s nose.” I removed my sunglasses and plopped them onto my hair. The sun created a halo around his perfectly-formed head. I took his hand and said, “Look, here’s the honest deal. I just experienced a breakup. It was”—bizarre, soul-sucking, causing one to listen to far too much Alanis Morissette—“confusing and difficult. You deserve someone who gives you her complete attention.”
“Love, only someone who would treat me well would say something like that.”
“Argh, stop being wonderful!”
He swooped in and laid a kiss on me. His sunglasses bonked against my face, so he whipped them off with an “I’m sorry,” and dived back in, this time with a yank of his arm around my waist. Suddenly I was covered in a warm wall of man—a state of being that I highly recommend. My every hormone emerged from hiding, gleeful to be feeling an emotion besides fear, heartbreak and angst.
Lust was the great equalizer.
We enjoyed the sort of kissing karma that made it good with no practice whatsoever. His fingers slipped ever so slightly into the waistband of my jeans, while his other hand cupped my neck. Fast and firm, his lips played with mine as if he wanted to nibble me whole.
Mmmmmm—he smelt like expensive sex. Like a cologne made of lion glands they only sell to men who can wet panties with a ninety per cent success rate. He began to slow down, tasting me, lingering. His tongue brushed my upper lip, and I nearly lost my balance.
I heard a giggle, and we broke apart at the same time.
Sometimes I’m a little psychic—because I had a sure feeling that the teenage girl filming us with her iPhone was about to come into some tabloid money.
Danny plopped his glasses back on, grabbed my hand and we took off at a fast, but not running, pace. Nobody followed, and a few blocks away we ducked into a coffee shop. We sat and stared at one another. After a moment of his handsome, earnest regard shining upon me, I burst into laughter.
He began chuckling, too. “I hope she funds university with the proceeds of that video.”
“We can’t be that important.”
“I’m Daniel Zhang, baby,” he said in his most smarmy tone.
“And me without my genuflecting pillow.”
He slumped back into the wooden chair. “It’ll be good publicity for the movie.”
“As long as it’s a decent movie.”
“Let’s hope so.”
I didn’t know what else to say. I’d even run out of stupid jokes.
“If everyone thinks we’re dating, we might as well date,” he said, casually, his fingers drumming on the small table.
“So are all your relationships dictated by the public?”
“Why do you think I was briefly engaged to Justin Bieber?”
“Oh, my God.” I banged my head on the table just enough to hurt and also feel good. “I’d tell you to stop being funny, but then you’d kiss me again.”
“That’s preposterous. Go on—try me.”
I glanced up to find him laying a very, super sexy smirk on me. I think if there existed a Samantha Kryptonite, it would be a very, super sexy smirk. The man who can convey dirtiness and humour at the same time is a rare man, and to be coveted.
But your Kryptonite is a dimple,
said my annoying internal compass.
We have chosen to have a lurid rebound affair with the world’s most awesome movie star in order to gain publicity!
I replied.
Ha! Take that, stupid conscience.
“Dinner tomorrow night?” he asked.
“Do you mean…dinner tonight?”
“No, I actually meant tomorrow night. This evening I have a previous engagement with my family. Grandma’s birthday.”
Of course he loved his grandma, the perfect jerk. “Tomorrow night it is. And then we can do…night things.” I grinned. He grinned back.
Oh, shit—‘night things’ sounded like sex! I wasn’t prepared to commit to the nitty-gritty already. Some boob action was all I would consider.
Unless the boob-play went well, then I reserved the right to increase the Official Slut Level from yellow to orange.
“I mean…you know, ‘night things’ as in…it’s a date. At night. Because we’re a bizarre variety of nocturnal animal called ‘actor’.” After I delivered this nonsense, I burst forth with an unexpected yawn that originated in my toenails.
“It’s a deal. May I show you to a cab?” he asked.
I nodded, overcome by such gallantry. I was jealous of his grandma all the way back to my place.
Chapter Eleven
Step Right Up and See Samantha, the Human Punching Bag
Int: Our Heroine’s Diamond-Encrusted Bedroom on her Yacht in the Mediterranean—night.
Lady Samantha Lytton
lounges in her sumptuous bed, her cat,
Viscount Taco
, purring beside her. She wears a satin bed sheet of pale blue silk—it ripples around her like she’s Venus rising from the Beautyrest. She wears no makeup, yet is flawless even so, the way women are naturally supposed to be. Except for a little mascara, because come on.
Angle On:
Husband One, Danny
enters the bedroom, dressed in buckskin trousers so tight he sways from lack of blood flow, and a puffy white shirt tucked in, yet still unbuttoned. He rushes to the side of the bed to kneel at Lady Samantha’s kitten-heel-clad feet.
Husband One, Danny: I am back from my duke meeting, The 737th Annual Sneer-A-Thon and Poetry Slam, where we studied duke-ly things such as the newest modes of cravat-ing, how to appreciate smart young women who buck society’s norms via obscene stamp collecting and which words rhyme with ‘soul’. How I’ve missed you, my beautiful
foal
.
Lady Samantha: Duke Danny, these last three days have been a torment! If I didn’t have another husband, well, I might have noticed you were gone and been very sad.
Husband One, Danny: My greatest honour is that you notice me now, fairest of them all. Is your hair even curlier than before?
Lady Samantha: Duh. I’m a romance heroine. If it doesn’t improve its own unruliness by five per cent a day, I get bumped down to ‘amusing and/or thick-ankled sidekick’.
Angle On: Duke Danny rushes the bed and rubs his throbbing manhood on Samantha, who also throbs.
Angle On:
Husband Two, Sam
enters by swinging on a rope through the balcony and into the bedroom. He is dressed in rough, black trousers so tight we can see what he ate for lunch, and a puffy white shirt tucked in, yet still unbuttoned. And an eye patch. He rushes to the side of the bed to kneel at Samantha’s kitten-heel-clad feet.
Husband Two, Sam: Why exactly, in this scenario, am I Husband Two? I totally got here first, yo ho.
Parrot on Sam’s Shoulder: Squawk, totally got here first! And by ‘here’, he means—
Lady Samantha: ’Tis true, Pirate Sam, that you were my first throbbing member. Well, maybe not
first
. What is this, 1950? …1750? Seriously, what the hell time period are we supposed to be in?
Angle On: The duke and the pirate shrug in the soft glow to the yacht’s electric lights.
Lady Samantha: But, darling Pirate Sam, you were definitely the first to plunder the depths of my…soul.
Husband Two, Sam: I love you from your perfectly-dyed red hair to your non-hairy mole.
Husband One, Danny: Gadzooks! I’m the elegant one who’s supposed to rhyme things with ‘soul’. I took an interactive seminar and everything. For example, ‘stole’, for Samantha stole my heart long ago.
Angle On: Danny shoots a dirty look to Sam.
Husband One, Danny: Perhaps you
should
be husband number
one
, if we’re counting eyes.
Lady Samantha: Now, now, boys. I enjoy both even and odd numbers of eyes. Let us all get along, and by ‘get along’, I mean—
Parrot on Sam’s Shoulder: Squawk, she means ‘gang bang’!
Angle On: The two husbands gaze hopefully at Samantha.
Lady Samantha: I do mean gang bang.
Both Husbands: Huzzah!
Lady Samantha: But Sam—no parrot in the room this time. I don’t like his…observations.
Parrot on Sam’s Shoulder: Squawk, if you can’t take the scathing recap, then get off my blog!
Angle On: Lady Samantha shoving the parrot’s feathered face out of the room, and then divesting both her husbands of their tight, rather useless clothing. They spend endless hours pleasuring her in every conceivable way, in-between feeding her ice cream. The night culminates as Duke Danny and Pirate Sam Jell-O wrestle for the privilege of—
No! Noooooooo! I was ripped from the world’s most amazing fantasy by some jackass banging on my front door. I pounded the bed in frustration and switched off Colin Firth.
They knocked again, tearing away the final wisps of my scenario of Danny and Sam wrestling. The winner would get to flip me over and—
Bang bang bang!
The real winner would have been me.
Full of horn-dog hormones, and vowing to get rid of this asshole so I could return to bed with Colin, Sam and Danny, I snatched up my robe and stomped to the door.
A split second before I opened it, I remembered that I was a public persona, so I probably shouldn’t open the door and scream ‘fuck off’ to a British Girl Scout or something. I took a deep breath and peered through the keyhole.
Like a mysterious rash acquired at a discount gym, she was back. “Valerie,” I said, my fists readying themselves.
“I can hear you breathing,” she sing-songed. “And also saying my name.”