Moving slowly I turned in the bed. Someone was next to me buried under the cover.
I dared to hope. “Kylie?”
The covers moved and a tousled head appeared. “What time is it?”
“Just after seven,” I replied as the lead sinker of disappointment plummeted into the pit of my stomach.
“How do you feel?” Alexandra asked, drowsily.
Ignoring her question I replied with one of my own. “How much did I drink?” I groaned.
I felt her turn in the bed as I lay a forearm over my eyes. “A lot,” she said. “A hell of a lot. It stinks in here.”
Without taking my arm from my eyes, I didn’t want to look at a face that wasn’t Kylie’s next to me, I said, “What are you doing here?”
The bed moved and I sensed Alexandra get up and move away.
“I didn’t want to leave you alone. You were pretty bad.” She shut the bathroom door and after a pause I heard the toilet flush and then the sound of Alexandra washing her hands. “So I stayed over,” she added as she returned. The bed dipped again when she climbed back in. Her arm went around me and I realized we were both naked.
“Don’t do that, Alexandra,” I snapped. I flung her arm off me and, with a groan, rolled out of bed and stood a little unsteady on my feet. “Thanks and all that but you shouldn’t be in my bed.”
“That wasn’t what you said yesterday, Damien,” she purred back at me with a slow smile spreading across her face. “Nice butt!” she called as, full of self-loathing like acid bile churning in my stomach, I walked to the bathroom.
Who was that bloke guy I saw in the mirror? He looked like shit. Still, he’d earned it. It was Kylie’s fault – smiling sweetly and lying to my face. How could she do that? How could she lie to me, saying she’d be at her father’s only to go gallivanting around the flesh-pots of Hollywood?
But somewhere in the back of my head, where there was no hangover ache, in a lucid part of my consciousness I sensed something wasn’t right about the whole thing. I had a suspicion of something being out of kilter, but being in the early stages of a killer hangover I couldn’t work anything out.
Had I really invited Alexandra into bed? Maybe I would have in the past, a long time ago, but surely I’d moved beyond that kind of behavior now?
I peed a nuclear stream of dehydration into the bowl, grimacing as I imagined the crap I’d put my own liver and kidneys through. As I’d done innumerable times before I swore off the drink and decided a shower would do me good. I stepped under the spray; first as hot as I could stand before I forced myself to endure two minutes of a cold water cascade.
Feeling marginally better after brushing my teeth I padded barefoot but covered by my bathrobe into the bedroom.
Alexandra threw back the cover and, naked, got out of bed.
“Feeling better?” she asked, deliberately taunting me with her body as if to say: Look at what you’re missing.
“Put a robe on, Alexandra,” I growled. “I’m sorry but I don’t need to see you naked. I’ve got a hangover from hell, the film schedule is shot to shit, there’s no fucking lead. On top of that, I’ve lost Kylie …
“The last thing I need right now is to complicate things by fucking you.” It dawned on me then as the possibility that I’d already shagged Alexandra percolated through my whisky-soaked brain. “Shit,” I spat. I looked at her face. “Did we …?”
I’ve known Alexandra long enough to know she can be a calculating bitch. She’s helped me out lots of times during contract negotiations, and I knew she was capable of lying to the Pope’s face if the situation warranted it. I saw something in her expression, a brief shadow that flickered, just for a second, behind her eyes.
She was considering whether or not to lie to me. I sensed it intuitively.
Alexandra sighed and walked towards the bathroom door. “No,” she admitted wearily as she took a robe dangling from a hook behind the door. Alexandra shrugged. “We didn’t do it. You were too far gone to be capable. You passed out about 3pm, woke up at 6, yelled for more whisky and staggered up here an hour later. I undressed you and got in next to you.”
She wasn’t lying! Relief flooded through me. Thank God, I knew I wasn’t that bloke anymore.
It isn’t that Alexandra isn’t hot, because she is. I’d never even seen her in a bikini before, so seeing her naked just confirmed what I already thought, smoking hot body to go with her sharp intellect. Yeah, the old me, the selfish, uncaring Damien Taylor, he would have tumbled her into bed in a heartbeat.