The Bad Boy Wants Me(49)

‘Well, I really should be going back,’ I say, and my voice shakes. My heart feels hurt. What will he think when I tell him about me? About the real me? The me that was crazy about him? The me that travelled across half the world to close the door on my crush? Will I too become that person he holds in so much contempt?

‘Are you OK?’ he asks with a frown.

I force a smile. ‘Sure. Just don’t want to accidentally fall asleep here.’

‘When do you plan to tell my sister? I don’t like this sneaking about?’

‘Soon,’ I promise.

But first I have to tell you about the real me and then you might not want to be in a relationship with me anymore.





Chapter Twenty-seven


Tori

Since Britney’s birthday party is no longer to be a surprise, she decides to hold it a week later. Right after Alkaline’s concert in Milan, in fact. The concert is on a Friday and the party will be that Saturday night at the Hunter residence. The plan is for everybody to fly back for it.

The days leading up to the concert are a busy time for Cash. He is at the recording studio a lot working on their new album. He works from mid-morning to late at night or even the early hours of the morning, so he sends a car around to take me to his apartment to make sure that I am already there by the time he comes in.

Even though he would have been working all day and sometimes looks dead on his feet, he will still be full of pent up energy. Most nights he falls on me like a starving animal. After that he is always hungry.

‘Feel like some Chinese food?’ he asks that day.

‘It’s already one o’clock. I’m going to get fat eating so late every night,’ I grumble.

‘No way. You eat barely enough to exist.’

‘I eat a lot during the day, thank you. It’s all right for you. You’re practicing dance moves all day long and burning up energy performing at concerts, but eating at this time of the morning is bad news for someone whose idea of exercise is dipping a couple of chicken nuggets into barbeque sauce.’

He grins and hands me the leaflet menu from Green Jade Royal Cuisine. In the front it bears the caption in red letters.

‘Eat more! The heavier you are the harder it will be to kidnap you.’

‘Thanks for the suggestion Green Jade Royal Cuisine, but I have absolutely no intention of foiling my kidnappers by letting myself get fat.’

Cash laughs. ‘Fine. You can watch me eat.’

He calls them on his mobile and puts through an order that would feed a football team. After he ends the call, he drops his mobile on the table, and walks over to me. ‘The food will be thirty minutes. Want to have a shower with me?’

‘Midnight feasts and showers. All dangerously tempting offers, but I think I’ll pass.’

He cocks his head. ‘Strange how that came out as a question. It was meant to be an order.’

I giggle. ‘I don’t know what kind of girls you have been hanging out with, but all this macho caveman shit doesn’t work with me.’

‘No?’ he asks as if giving serious consideration to my statement.

‘No,’ I say firmly.

He nods, bends down, and scoops me up still laughing and protesting.

Yes, we have a shower, a very interesting one. One that actually gives me an appetite. Flushed red and wrapped up in one of Cash’s big toweling robes, I sit in the living room next to him with all the food spread out on the low coffee table.

I watch his large, wonderfully masculine hands peel a pancake, spread a thin layer of plum sauce on it and load it up with shredded duck meat. Then he lays julienned cucumber and spring onion on top of the meat, rolls it up, and takes a healthy bite.

‘So what did you do at work today?’ I ask.

‘You seriously want to know?’

I pick up a prawn cracker. ‘Uh huh.’

‘We were laying down vocals for the new tracks.’

I bite into the cracker and let it melt on my tongue. ‘How’s it sounding?’

‘They have to mix it further of course, and the finished product will sound totally different, but so far, it’s not bad.’

‘Good,’ I say and casually pick up a crab claw and dip it into a container of sweet chili sauce. ‘So … was Octavia there?’

He starts building another pancake. ‘She popped in for a bit, yeah.’

I drag the claw in the dip. ‘She didn’t stay?’

He stops chewing. ‘Octavia in the studio? No. She just books the studio times for us.’

‘Doesn’t she stay to make sure that everything works and stuff?’

‘Octavia has many talents, but she’s no sound engineer or music producer.’

‘But she is a good manager, isn’t she?’