Unmasked (Revealed #1) (24 page)

Scrabbling to grab the remote and turn the sound up, I heard Sean’s low, raspy voice for the first time in weeks and it sent a delicious tingle running down my spine which simultaneously made me want to slap myself around the face for being so pathetic. As much as I wanted to turn the television off, I found myself completely unable to, as I continued to watch enraptured, cradling my forgotten bowl of cereal as it turned to a soggy mush.

Such was my desperation to soak in his image, I realised that I was sat like a goldfish, barely even blinking. It was like I was addicted to him. Sean was my drug, and was proving to be a bloody hard habit to kick. From what Jessica was saying, it seemed Sean was doing some sort of promotional interview for his latest series, but as he finished discussing the plot Jessica leaned in, pouting her cherry red lips and narrowing her perfectly mascaraed eyes seductively.

‘So, Sean, any leading lady in your life at the moment?’ I knew that as well as fishing for gossip, Jessica was dropping a really unsubtle hint about all the rumours that Sean had a habit of sleeping with his leading ladies. I grimaced as unwelcome images of him in bed with other women flashed in my mind. Would he care for them like he had me? Ensuring they got pleasure as well as him? Washing their hair and drying them off too? Probably. It was no doubt just his usual repertoire. My face crumpled at the thought. I once again remembered his adamant statement to me that he didn’t sleep around any more … but he was way too good in bed to not be practising his skills on a
very
regular basis. Bloody liar. Snorting out a dismissive grunt, I scrunched up my face in annoyance at how easily I’d given in to him.

Obviously reading straight through Jessica’s line of questioning, Sean gave a rare public smile, but it was the fake almost smirky one he’d first given me, and not the real, dimpled show-stopper that I’d discovered was the true Sean smile. Even though it shouldn’t have done, the thought that he wasn’t giving Jessica his real smile pleased me immensely.

‘Well that would be telling, wouldn’t it?’ he said with a soft hum, apparently happy to tease.

Jessica looked a little stunned for a second, then disappointed at the immediate lack of gossip. ‘That
is
a mysterious answer, Sean, I’m sure there are plenty willing to take the part though.’

Ugh. She was blatantly flirting with him, and I absolutely hated her for it. As she leaned forward, her perfectly manicured fingers touched his knee as she giggled with a flutter of her eyelashes that practically made me gag. God, did she have no shame? Her bright red nails briefly rubbed higher over his trouser-clad thigh, making me glance down at my own hands in distraction. Unlike Jessica’s perfect hands I had short, closely-trimmed nails, and the remains of some marker pen on my palms from an art lesson I had taught yesterday. How glamourous. Not. Once again I was reminded of the cavernous gap between famous people like Jessica and Sean and regular folk like me.

Now utterly depressed, I clenched my stupid non-perfect hands into fists and turned my attention back to the screen just in time to see Sean’s response to her groping. He had tolerated Jessica’s touch for no more than a second or two, before giving a thin, fake smile and discreetly shifting his leg away, which delighted me.

Apparently sensing she should change tack, Jessica sat herself up again and persevered with her questioning. ‘When you’re not filming, you seem to practically hide yourself away in your big house in the English hills. What’s the reason behind that?’

On screen, Sean uncrossed his long legs and shrugged, looking thoroughly bored with the interview and keen for it to finish. ‘Movie sets are chaotic places, so when I’m not on one I like peace and quiet.’

Nodding thoughtfully, Jessica leant forwards again, no doubt trying to tempt him into looking at her abundant cleavage which was practically spilling from her low-cut top. To my glee, Sean didn’t bite at all, his eyes resolutely set on her face. ‘So you haven’t got a fair lady hidden away up there who keeps you occupied?’ she joked lightly, still doggedly persevering with her trawl for gossip.

Sean seemed to visibly tense, his face looking impassively blank for a few seconds before the fake smile was back on his mouth. ‘Afraid not, Jessica.’ He paused again, and I watched in fascination as he tilted his head and briefly pursed his lips. ‘I did have one recently, but unfortunately, she escaped.’

Jessica paused, looking momentarily stunned, before throwing her head back and laughing. ‘Sean, you are so funny!’ giggled Jessica, obviously assuming that he was joking, but my breath had caught in my throat at his words. Oh my God. Had that been a comment about me?

At that very moment Sean turned his eyes away from Jessica and looked into the camera. For a second it felt like he was looking directly through the lens and into my eyes, leaving my head reeling and my chest impossibly tight as I struggled to draw in a breath, managing only a pathetic wheeze. He had made no attempt to contact me in the two and a half weeks, so surely that comment had just been an off the cuff remark?

After sitting in confused silence for a moment or two, I let out a frustrated scream, switched the television off, and threw the remote control at the wall, sending a cascade of batteries and shards of plastic flying everywhere and leaving an impressive crack in the plaster.

Bloody bastard
. Even when he was thousands of miles away he still managed to haunt me.

In the time I had spent moping last week I’d tried to consider it all logically, and had realised that I barely knew Sean at all, so had come to the conclusion that it must just be the attention and sex I was missing, not the man himself. I mean, realistically, I didn’t know anything about Sean at all, not real, proper, personal stuff. I didn’t know his favourite food, colour, or music. I didn’t know his idea of a perfect day, or his favourite travel destinations. All I really knew was that he was amazing in bed, could be temperamental, domineering, and sometimes heart meltingly sweet.

Hoping to rectify my brooding singleness, I had arranged a night out with Sarah to try and get back on the horse. Excitingly, even Cait was going to be joining us because her belated Christmas trip to the UK had come about after all. Really, she was travelling from the Far East over to Los Angeles and wanted to break up the flight with a week’s touchdown here, but I wasn’t going to complain. It had been over a year since the three of us had been out together and I was so excited.

As well as a girly catch up, tonight was my first night out since leaving Sean’s house. I obviously wasn’t planning on sleeping with anyone – I wasn’t usually reckless enough to jump into bed with strangers, that was just the effect Sean had had on me – but I did intend to do some drinking, dancing, and even a little flirting to try and boost my flagging self-confidence.

Determined to put him out of my mind once and for all, I dumped my cereal bowl on the coffee table and stalked upstairs to plan what I would wear for my night out.

After selecting an outfit – my favourite little black dress – I then donned my trainers, grabbed my iPod and decided to burn a few miles by going for a mind cleansing run.

SEVENTEEN

Allie

As I often did when I had things on my mind, I’d spent much of the afternoon running around the woods until my legs were sore and it had started to get dark. I’d even managed to get a blister on my right big toe – which was a clear indication of just how far I’d run. I was blaming Sean for both the sore legs
and
blister, because if he hadn’t popped up on my television first thing this morning I wouldn’t have felt the need to run myself into the sodding ground. Bloody stupid man.

Not that I was going to let him ruin my girls’ night out. No, I had been looking forward to this all week, so thoughts of Sean were now officially banned for the rest of the evening.

Sean? Sean who?

Looking around Monk cocktail bar, I smiled and adjusted myself on the tall leather stool on which I was perched. This place was as close to a trendy London bar as you could get around here, and considering I essentially lived in the middle of nowhere, it was an absolute lifesaver and all round awesome find. The bar was one of several properties set within a beautiful old terrace and had exposed brick interiors, quirky furniture, brilliant music, fabulous cocktails, and best of all, a late licence until midnight.

Neither Sarah nor Cait were here yet, running traditionally late as always. Sarah lived close to Cait’s parents, so they were coming together, meaning that if Sarah was late – as she was every single time we went out – then Cait would be too. About five minutes ago I’d had a text telling me that Sarah’s babysitter – her mum – had just arrived so they were on their way. She’d also asked me to order some drinks for us all before happy hour ended at eight, so after perusing the menu, I absently signalled a barman over.

As he wandered across I gave him a closer look and felt myself flush when he gave me a most stupendous grin and a cheeky wink. Hmm, perhaps I should add ‘handsome servers’ to the list of this place’s qualities, because this guy was a real cutie. Sparkling green eyes, dimples in his cheeks, and a contagious grin. Nowhere near as handsome as Sean, but at least there were no scowls or irritated lip-pursing in sight.

Blinking away the infiltrating memories of Sean, I forced a smile onto my face and continued my appraisal. His hair was blond, with that deliberately messy look that indicated he probably took hours to perfect it with wax in front of his mirror before leaving the house, and he was wearing jeans, a white shirt open at the neck, and a black waistcoat. All in all, rather nice. And he was young too, probably my age, or perhaps even a year or two younger, which after my recent experience with over-confident, unreliable older men, was just fine by me.

‘What can I get you this fine evening?’ he asked with a soft, Northern accent and another smile, and for a crazy second I vaguely contemplated replying with ‘you’, but decided that that was
way
too over the top for me, even if I was supposedly on a drinking, flirting, forgetting-about-Sean mission.

‘Three Thyme Sides, please,’ I said instead, naming our usual – gin cut with lemon, infused with thyme and some orangey taste that finished it all off perfectly. Let’s face it, who cares what’s in it if it taste great?

‘Three?’ he enquired with a tiny narrowing of his eyes that told me that he was either interested in me and disappointed that people were joining me, or merely trying to work out if I was attempting to get around the happy hour rule of one drink order per person. ‘Are you thirsty or is someone meeting you?’

It was the latter then. Silly me. Clearly my fling with Sean had scrambled my brain so I now imagined that all men who smiled at me were actually interested in me. ‘My friends are on their way, they’ll only be two minutes.’ Nodding, he flashed me a wink, and went about making our drinks as I watched his bottle-twirling in admiration.

There was an excited shuffling of high heels to my right and hands landed on both of my shoulders as Sarah greeted me with her usual flamboyant style, and Cait simply rolled her eyes in the background. ‘Girls’ night out!’ Sarah whooped gleefully, and I couldn’t help but grin as I slid from my stool and embraced her, then flung my arms around Cait.

‘Oh my God, it’s so good to see you both. Cait, it feels like it’s been ages,’ I murmured, feeling tears prick at the back of my eyes as I hugged my friend fiercely. Gosh, I had missed these two so much. With Cait away travelling and Sarah having a business to run and her son to look after, we hardly ever all got together anymore.

‘It
has
been ages,’ Cait confirmed lightly. ‘But you still look gorgeous as ever,’ she said with a smile, stepping back and hanging her coat over a bar stool.

Glancing at my friends, I saw Sarah dressed up in a lovely red, sleeveless dress that was tight around her body but flicked out to float just above knee level, a similar length to my own black dress, while Cait was the most formally dressed of the three of us in a pair of black trousers and a pale pink blouse. She looked beautiful, but basically all of her skin was covered – as it always was. An observer might think this was as a result of the cold January weather, but I knew better. Cait never exposed great quantities of skin in public, not ever, because of a particularly traumatic experience with her ex-boyfriend that left her extremely fragile around men.

This careful dressing was one of many protective measures Cait had implemented since Greg the twat, and was one of her ways to try and limit unwanted attention from men. It never worked though, because no matter how many layers of clothes she wore, Cait’s beauty always shone through.

‘Where do we start? We have so much to catch up on!’ Sarah giggled happily as she haphazardly attempted to drag a stool in her huge high heels. She was the most brilliant mum, but bless her, when Sarah got a chance at a night out she was in her absolute element and went full out with outfits, effort, drink consumption, you name it.

‘Drinks, and then gossip!’ I declared, seeing the barman putting the finishing touches to our drinks. Not that I was planning on sharing
my
gossip … that was still a bit too fresh and painful, but hearing my friends chat would be great distraction.

‘Sounds like a plan,’ Cait agreed, picking up the drink being slid towards her by my cute barman, who I noticed she completed blanked by staring at the drink instead. I don’t know how she did it. I understood why Cait didn’t date, but she never even allowed herself to so much as check out a guy.

Maybe if I had her discipline I wouldn’t be in this mess, I thought with a sardonic twist of my lips.

Luckily, Cait distracted me from allowing my thoughts to sink further when she raised her glass and chinked it against mine. ‘Well, I don’t have any man gossip, obviously,’ she said with a subtle roll of her eyes, acknowledging her rigidly single status, ‘but I headed across to Laos for Christmas, which was quite an experience. They don’t really celebrate Christmas, but it was really hot so we spent a great day going out on a boat with a local fisherman. We swam, helped him pull in his nets, and barbequed the catch on the beach with his family later that day.’