The One You Really Want (46 page)

A spark of disappointment flickered in Carmen's eyes. Defiantly she said, ‘Well, good.'

Rennie waited, idly stroking the side of her neck. ‘Unless you want me to.'

Another spark, this time of relief.

‘Why would I?' Carmen's tone was challenging with an undertone - a very faint undertone - of flirtatiousness.

‘Well, it might be the sensible thing to do. Just to make sure we're compatible.'

Carmen nodded thoughtfully. ‘That does make sense. You might not know how to do it properly.'

‘Exactly. Could have been doing it wrong all these years. Better find out then.' Rennie's green eyes glittered with amusement. ‘Tell me if I have.'

Carmen closed the gap between them, her mouth seeking his. For the first time in his life Rennie experienced the sheer pleasure of a kiss in its own right, rather than as a prelude to sex. A warm, exhilarating sensation like electricity flooded his body. His mouth and Carmen's fitted together just perfectly.

So this was what he'd been missing out on all these years. If he was honest, he'd never really seen the point of mouth-to-mouth combat before.

But now he knew. This was what kissing was
for
. Even more extraordinarily, his natural reaction at this point would have been to slide his hand beneath the chunky Starsky cardigan in order to reach the strip of exposed flesh between Carmen's polka-dotted crop top and the waistband of her pyjamas,
but he wasn't doing it
. Possibly the hideousness of the cardigan was acting as a kind of contraceptive device. Then again, he knew that he couldn't afford to make a mistake. This was his chance to impress Carmen and he mustn't,
mustn't
blow it.

‘Right.' Having made the effort to pull away, Rennie was delighted to see the look of disappointment on her face. ‘You put the DVD in. I'll fetch the Pringles.'

Flushed and bright-eyed, Carmen attempted to smooth down her hair. ‘OK.'

‘Coffee? Or more wine?'

‘Um . . . coffee, thanks.'

Heading for the kitchen, Rennie paused in the doorway. His heart turned over with love at the sight of Carmen on the sofa, still flustered and making ineffectual attempts to tie a double knot in the belt of the Starsky cardigan.

‘By the way,' he said lightly. ‘How was I?'

Carmen smiled over at him. ‘So-so.'

‘Fine. More practice, that's what I need.' Rennie felt ridiculously happy at the prospect. ‘Don't worry, I'll get the hang of it in the end.'

As he waited for the kettle to boil, Rennie thought his heart would burst. Carmen was in the living room wanting him to kiss her again. And he wasn't going to. If it killed him, he was going to prove to her that he could wait.

Seconds later the kettle clicked off and the front doorbell simultaneously rang. Clutching a tube of paprika Pringles, Rennie went to answer it. Rose was home early, another excellent reason why he and Carmen shouldn't have stayed glued together necking like teenagers on the sofa.

It wasn't Rose. Rennie found himself staring at a bespectacled tabloid journalist whom he vaguely recognised, having seen him before at various music awards ceremonies.

‘Rennie, hi, how are you?' the journalist said matily. ‘Eric Carson, remember?'

For a bizarre split second Rennie wondered if the man was here to ask him for details of his relationship with Carmen. Hastily pulling himself together he said, ‘What's this about, Eric?'

‘Brrr, chilly out here.' Eric stamped his feet as if he were in the Arctic.

‘Excuse me if I don't invite you in,' said Rennie. ‘I'm busy.'

‘Of course you are.' Eric glanced at the Pringles tube. ‘And I won't hold you up, I promise.' Behind his spectacles his eyes gleamed. ‘I just wondered how you're feeling about the news that you're about to become a father.'

‘Who is it?' said Carmen, when Rennie dived into the living room to grab his mobile phone. The mobile phone he'd deliberately switched off two hours earlier so that his all-important evening with Carmen wouldn't be interrupted by irritating, unimportant calls.

‘No one.' Switching the phone on, Rennie saw the messages stacked up. Abruptly he left the room, returned to the front door. Felt sick when he saw the spark of schadenfreude in Eric's beady eyes.

Bluntly, Rennie said, ‘Who is it?'

‘Biba Keyes.' Eric licked his lips. ‘Remember her?'

Biba Keyes. Oh yes, he remembered. New York, last summer. Biba had appeared backstage after a concert, introduced herself as a fellow Brit and invited him along to a party. With her waist-length blond hair, flawless figure and saucy sense of humour, he hadn't needed much persuasion. She had done a bit of Page 3 modelling, Rennie subsequently discovered, a spot of acting and a lot of turning up wherever the paparazzi were most likely to be, dressed in improbably skimpy outfits. As she'd cheerfully confessed at the time, it beat working for a living.

They'd spent a weekend together. Beneath the airhead exterior, Biba Keyes had actually possessed a quick brain and a refreshingly down-to-earth attitude. She was twenty-two years old and life was what you made it. An added attraction as far as Rennie was concerned had been her acceptance that their fling was just that, a bit of fun to be enjoyed before they headed their separate ways. Unlike so many girls, she hadn't told him she loved him and begun to fantasise that they might have a future together.

The other added attraction, needless to say, had been her proficiency and boundless enthusiasm in bed.

Jesus.

‘She's saying it's mine?' Rennie forced himself to breathe slowly. ‘How pregnant is she?'

‘Eight months.'

New York. Count back. Fuck.

‘You'd think she might have mentioned it before now.'

Eric shrugged. ‘According to Biba, she's tried. Phoned you, left messages and texts, but you never bothered to reply.'

Rennie's blood ran cold. Was this true? Sometimes he deleted texts and voicemail messages without reading them if they were from girls he had no interest in seeing again. But Biba wasn't stupid; if she'd wanted to contact him, she could have done so via his agent or manager.

‘So might we be hearing wedding bells in the near future?' Eric's tone was deliberately provocative.

‘No comment.' Thinking how nice it would be to punch him down the steps, Rennie made a move to close the front door.

‘She's calling you the love of her life,' Eric shouted as the door slammed shut.

Wrong, thought Rennie. The love of his life was sitting twenty feet away, wondering what was keeping him out here.

And he suspected she wasn't going to take it well when she found out.

Carmen didn't cry or yell or throw heavy objects at Rennie. What would be the point? He was Rennie Todd, always had been. It was a wonder this hadn't happened before.

If anything, she should be glad it
had
happened, serving as a salutary reminder of how Rennie led his life. Finding out now was almost unbearable, but finding out in six months' time, when she would have been that much more deeply involved with him, would be infinitely worse.

‘She means nothing to me!' Rennie was raking his fingers through his hair, scarcely able to believe this was happening. ‘The baby might not even be mine!'

‘But you slept with her,' Carmen said wearily.

‘Well, yes, but—'

‘What about safe sex? Didn't it even occur to you that something like this could happen?'

‘Of course it did. We used condoms. It can't be my child, she's just—'

‘Rennie, condoms can fail.' Exasperated, Carmen banged her fist against the arm of the sofa. ‘This girl is pregnant and she says it's yours.'

‘But it doesn't have to change things between
us
,' he pleaded.

‘It does.' Carmen couldn't look at him. ‘It already has. Because this is what you're like. You sleep with girls like other people eat biscuits, just because they're there.'

‘But that was eight months ago.' Rennie's voice rose. ‘I wouldn't do it now!
I love you.
'

‘Sorry.' As she shook her head, Carmen heard a key turn in the front door. ‘It would never work, Rennie. I was stupid to even think it might.'

‘Coooeee,' Rose called out, signalling her return home and appearing moments later in the living-room doorway. Her eyes bright, she beamed at them. ‘Had a lovely evening, you two?'

Carmen rose to her feet. ‘You can tell her,' she said to Rennie. ‘I'm going to bed.'

 

The double-page spread in the newspaper that had broken the story featured three photographs of Biba Keyes. The first was a reprint of an old Page 3 photo, the second a casual snap of her and Rennie carousing at the party they had attended in New York on the night they met. The third and largest was a demurely posed portrait of Biba, eight months pregnant and with her long blond hair tied back in a plait, tenderly cradling her vast bump whilst gazing with wistful eyes into the lens of the camera.

Rennie had already left the house for an emergency meeting with his manager and agent. Carmen, who had barely slept, wondered if this was Spike's way of letting her know how stupid she'd been to even contemplate getting involved with someone as wildly unsuitable as his brother.

Biba Keyes had confided some pretty salacious details of her torrid, albeit brief, affair with Rennie. ‘We couldn't get enough of each other,' Carmen read, hunched over the paper and feeling sick. ‘He has the best body I've ever seen. And he seemed to like mine too! But it wasn't just the sex, although that was mind-blowing enough. We really connected as people. I knew Rennie cared deeply for me. He promised we'd see each other again and I believed him, but he cruelly went back on his word. I was devastated. When he told me he loved me, I thought he meant it. Still, now that I'm having his baby, I hope Rennie will reconsider. I know we could have a fantastic life together. He's the only man I've ever really loved and I know I could make him happy. I've even given up drinking and going out to parties for the sake of our baby, that's how seriously I'm taking my responsibilities. You're more likely to see me in Mothercare these days than the latest trendy clubs.'

Nancy put a cup of tea on the kitchen table in front of Carmen and gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘I've got to get to work. Will you be OK?'

‘Oh, I'll live.
Again
. Third time unlucky and all that.' Having swallowed a mouthful of hot tea, Carmen said drily, ‘I'm really getting the hang of it now.'

‘And I'm not far behind you. Catching up fast.' Nancy pulled a face. ‘Fine pair we are.'

Carmen managed to smile, because Nancy was besotted with Connor and Connor was seeing Tabitha, and Nancy - thanks to the bonus Zac had given her - was beholden to Tabitha to the tune of, so far, twenty-three thousand handbags, with more orders pouring in by the day. It was actually funny in a tragic kind of way.

‘Go to work. I'll be fine, really.'

Nancy gazed one last time at the photograph of Biba in her white Lycra top and hip-hugging pink jeans, displaying her distended belly with pride. ‘It might not be Rennie's baby. We've only got her word for it.'

‘It doesn't matter whether it is or not,' said Carmen. ‘It's been a wake-up call for me. I must have been mad to even think we could be happy together.'

The letterbox clattered, signalling the arrival of the post. Nancy brought the handful of letters into the kitchen and left for work. Sorting dispiritedly through them, Carmen left the ones that were obviously bills and opened a cream, manila envelope franked with the logo of Pariah Records, the company Red Lizard had been signed to prior to Spike's death. Fans sometimes still wrote to her (and sometimes, more worryingly, to Spike) and the record company forwarded the letters every couple of weeks.

But this wasn't a fan letter. Feeling hot and ashamed, Carmen read the opening lines.

 

Carmen stopped and took a deep breath. She had pretended not to remember Big Russ for her own selfish ends. She'd betrayed him, refused to acknowledge him. What a Judas. She wasn't nice at all.