Star Struck Read online

  Still no answer. Maybe I hadn’t called loudly enough. Maybe Gethryn was giving Erlon a tour of the mobile home. Maybe they’d snuck off to get away from Her Outside with the prison haircut.

  I walked further in. The floor was carpeted a deep grey which made the place look very dark, and there were signs of recent habitation in a shirt dropped over the back of a couch, a half-eaten apple turning slowly brown on the table. I picked up the shirt and self-consciously sniffed it. It smelled of some unknown cologne, something musky and citrusy, like the smell of sex itself, with an undertone of something alcoholic.

  As I stood, breathing in the smell of Gethryn, I heard a sound. A low groan, as if coming from the back of a throat. I put down the shirt and moved towards the noise, picking my way down a mirror-lined corridor until it opened out into a vast bedroom. In the middle stood a bed too large to be called king-sized, it had to be emperor-sized, or possibly dictator. Spread-eagled face up across the bed with his hair dangling from one side, lay Gethryn, surrounded by a much stronger smell of alcohol. In fact, if I’d struck a match, the air would have flamed like a Christmas pudding.

  ‘Gethryn?’ I approached cautiously, keeping one eye on the distance between me and the door.

  Another groan.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  A hand waved. It had a bottle in it. So, now I came to look at it, did the other hand. Liquid had poured over the bed sheets, over Gethryn’s clothes, and his hair was damply roped with it. I took a step back and put one hand on the wall to steady myself.

  ‘I think I’d better fetch Jack.’

  At the sound of the name, Gethryn sat up, still clutching both bottles. ‘No! Don’ wan’ that bastard in he’. Am havin’ day off. Entitled to day off, aren’t I? For rest and …’ he sloshed the bottle in his right hand, ‘relaxation.’ Now he got to his knees, carefully. ‘Why you come here, anyway, Skye? You here to keep me company? Man needs company on his day off. Have a drink.’ He held out a bottle my way, his whole body bouncing slightly as the bed moved underneath him.

  ‘No, thanks.’ My heart was pushing blood into my throat, where I could feel it bashing the walls of my veins and, beneath my feet, the carpet felt dry and full of electricity. ‘I ought to …’ Not wanting to turn my back on him, I began shuffling in reverse towards the doorway with the skirt tangling around behind my legs like an over-affectionate cat. ‘The others will be here in a minute anyway,’ I said quickly, just in case he decided to make a lunge for me. ‘I came for the photoshoot. For the e-zine? Us in our ball costumes?’

  ‘Fuck photoshoot.’ Geth walked forward on his knees to come closer. ‘They can’t make me do it. Only had to appear at the convention to fulfil terms, after the ball I’m free as a bird! More free, in fac’.’ He clambered down off the bed to stand in front of me, swaying slightly. ‘Tired of filming in bloody cheap places, all sandy and Canadian. I’m goin’ to Holwoody.’

  Even unfocused those yellow eyes were fascinating. ‘You mean Hollywood,’ I said, transfixed by his stare.

  ‘Yeah. That.’ He leaned in and sour breath bounced off my cheek.

  ‘But you told Erlon that you’d do the shoot for him. He said he’d spoken to you?’ I shuffled back a few more steps, the thick carpet snagging at my heels with a crisp sound. The adrenaline flooding me tasted sour and my heart was beating so fast I wondered that I wasn’t airborne. Deep in the skirts of the dress I bunched a fist in case of a sudden swoop.

  A long pause. Then, ‘Fuck. Yes. Did. Bollocks. Mustn’t know I’ve been drinking.’

  ‘Erlon mustn’t know you’ve been drinking?’

  A vigorous head shake that made his snakes of hair whip his cheeks. ‘No! Not Erlon, Erlon’s lovely guy. Lovely. Drinks tequila with the little worm in. An’ brandy. Jack. Don’ wan’ Jack to know I’ve had a drink. He’ll tell people I’m a drunk. I’m no’ drunk, he’s a bastard. Doesn’t like me drinking, but thass bollocks, isn’t it, lovely? Just ’cos he’s on some Ten-Step programme thing, reckons we should all give up the booze. Bastard,’ he repeated.

  ‘Jack doesn’t drink?’ I found I was fascinated, despite my fear.

  Gethryn squinted. ‘He’s not told you then? Oh, thass good, that is, the Iceman not telling the pretty little girlie allllllll about his lousy habits.’ He hiccupped. ‘Our Iceman, he’s a bit handy with a bottle, bach. Didn’t wan’ to give up, oh no. Had to. That or lose the show.’ He took another shaky step towards me and suddenly wrapped both arms around me. I heard the bottles clang as they made contact behind my back. ‘Oh, our Jack’s got them secrets just pilin’ up. You look ve’ sexy in that dress. What do you look like out of it?’

  A wobbly finger ran along my spine. I felt the slow trickle as the bottle he was holding tipped and spilled drink down my back. This dress was going to smell like a winery. ‘Erlon will be here in a few minutes,’ I said, scared to move in case it encouraged him. My pulse began to race again, and I checked the distance to the door, not sure how capable he’d be of stopping me getting away. My hands readied themselves to claw, to punch, to fight my way out.

  ‘Shit. Bugger.’ Gethryn wobbled dramatically and only managed to steady himself by holding onto my shoulders. More liquid rolled over the dress, beads of it sinking into the soft fabric.

  Golden eyes narrowed to take in my face, golden hair wrapping itself against me. I saw the small blond prickles of stubble breaking out on his chin, the little indent under his lower lips that jutted his mouth forward in a permanent half-kiss. He was beautiful. Very, very lovely. But he wasn’t Lucas James. He was a mixed-up drunken actor, that was all, and I’d made the classic mistake of confusing the actor with the script. All that heartbreakingly wonderful language, all that emotion. It was Jack’s. Without knowing it, I’d fallen for Jack, a man who could only express his locked-down feelings by giving the words to someone else to say.

  ‘You can kiss me, though. Come on, girl, gi’ us a kiss.’ He blinked hard and screwed his eyes up as though trying to bring my face into focus. ‘Bet you go like a train, doncha?’ A hand rolled down my neck and squeezed at the front of the dress, where boning and corseting protected my breasts and a knee tried to brush aside my skirts. ‘Where d’you keep the good stuff then, eh, girlie? ’S got to be under here somewhere …’ The hand stopped trying to fondle my boobs and groped futilely amid the masses of velvet, trying to locate me underneath it all. ‘Gonna show you a goo’ time …’

  And then I realised that I wasn’t scared, not any more. Gethryn wasn’t a threat, with his posturing and his leery eyes; he was a sad drunk with terrible people skills and absolutely no chat-up lines at all. A single slap to the cheek was all it took to knock him sideways and from there it was ridiculously easy to push him backwards onto the bed with one hand to his solar plexus almost knocking him completely off his feet and sending him sprawling down onto the soaked bedding. ‘Stop it, Gethryn.’

  ‘Playin’ hard to get, eh?’ It was pathetic really, to hear him trying to talk sex when he couldn’t even manage to rock himself to his feet. ‘Like my girlies to fight a bit, I do. Bit of life, d’you see? No’ juss lyin’ back and lettin’ me …’

  ‘So you do it even if they’re fighting you off?’ I tried to brush the droplets of liquid off the plush fabric with the back of my hand, keeping half an eye on Gethryn’s attempts to get up. ‘Don’t you think it might have meant that they wanted you to stop?’

  ‘Nah. They wanted Lucas James, all of ’em.’ He hiccupped loudly again, swore and shook his head, looking at me out of each eye alternately. ‘Think I’m gonna be sick,’ he muttered.

  I looked around. ‘Bathroom?’

  A hand waved towards a mirrored wall. ‘’hind there.’ A cheesily ominous belch followed, and I dragged him off the bed towards the indicated wall, flinging myself at it until I hit whichever secret button opened the door, and flung Gethryn inside with a strength
I hadn’t known I’d got until it came to potentially getting vomit on the dress. It was going to be bad enough with the alcohol, but at least I could hang it up outside and pray for that to evaporate – sick was pretty much terminal.

  Gethryn began making unpicturesque noises. ‘I’ll go find you some water,’ I said, whisking the dress out of reach.

  He raised a bleary face. ‘Not gonna offer to hold my hair back for me? Oh, shit …’

  I looked at him sternly. ‘I think you’ll manage.’

  I was in the kitchen, investigating the potential of the enormous fridge for ice cubes, when there came a hammering on the van door. Not just a gentle knock but a proper, closed-fist banging. Then a voice. ‘Skye! Are you in there?’

  Jack.

  Oh God.

  If I let him in, he’d know about Gethryn. That he had been – not just drinking, what Gethryn was went way beyond being merely domestically drunk; he was gloriously shooting out of the far side of sloshed, and Gethryn clearly didn’t want Jack to know, for whatever reasons of his own. But, if I didn’t let Jack in, he’d make assumptions. He might even think that I’d come back to finish what Geth and I had started out in the car park under those merciless stars, and I didn’t want Jack to think of me as a girl who went back for seconds of that sort of thing.

  ‘Hold on a second,’ I called, flinging a few sad ice-drops into a glass and dashing as best as I could in the long dress back to the bathroom, where Gethryn was now lying on the floor. ‘Jack’s here,’ I said succinctly.

  Gethryn just groaned.

  ‘You’ve got to sober up.’ This could mean his career, didn’t he realise? ‘Can you stand?’ And there, in that tiny bathroom which was almost flooded with the smell of vomit, I began to strip Gethryn Tudor-Morgan naked.

  Oh, how many times had I imagined slowly undressing Geth, gradually revealing the Celtic tattoo which lay along one jutting hip, just asking for a tongue to trace its smooth length? How many ways had I conjured of watching my fingers pass over his taut, muscular stomach, tanned as golden as the rest of his skin? But in none of my daydreams had Gethryn actually peed in his tight, button-fly jeans, or had to be helped to pull his shirt over his head because his balance was too unsteady for him to let go of the wall.

  ‘Just get in the shower.’ And I turned it on, viciously, to extreme chill, and gave him a shove. His golden nakedness immediately puckered and pimpled as the cold water hit, and he gave a scream, plunging helplessly directly under the impressive torrent. I half-ran, half-tottered from the room back through the acres of Winnebago and opened the door. Jack, looking customarily furious, stood on the steps with a large, bestubbled man who appeared to have no chin, just an expanse of face sloping gently down into his neck.

  ‘Erlon?’ I ignored Jack and held out a hand to shake. ‘Gethryn’s just … ummm … He’ll be out in a minute.’

  ‘Cool.’ Erlon moved past me and began fiddling with the camera in his hand. ‘In here’s good. On the sofa, maybe?’

  Jack stayed in the doorway with a bitten-back expression on his face. ‘What took you so long?’ he asked me in the sort of furious hiss that mothers use to ask questions to which they already know the answers. Then he sniffed suspiciously. ‘What have you been doing with Gethryn?’

  I was desperate not to lie to Jack. As I watched his expression alternate between moody and frustrated, I had to work quite hard not to reach out and touch him, to reassure him that he was allowed to lighten up every now and again.

  ‘And stop bloody staring at me! Just tell me, what are you doing over here?’

  Keep him talking. ‘I came over for the photos. Of course. You know that. Why are you here, couldn’t Erlon manage to take the pictures on his own?’

  ‘Vanessa told me you’ve been here for nearly half-an-hour. You stink of booze. And worse.’

  I presumed Vanessa was the punitive-haircut girl outside. ‘I had a drink while I was waiting for Gethryn. And I’m all sweaty; it took me ages to walk over in this dress.’

  ‘So where’s Geth?’

  ‘Having a shower.’ Now I couldn’t miss the look Jack was giving me. It was two-thirds contempt and the rest was made up of scorn. Maybe with half a percent left for pity. ‘And will you stop eyeballing me like that? I’ve not been having rampant sex with him, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Get a look at this dress, Jack. I doubt I could brush my teeth wearing this, let alone get down and dirty.’ I wafted a hand at myself. His eyes followed the hand.

  ‘Looks good on you.’ There was a bit of a spark in his eyes now. ‘I’ll just go get Geth …’

  ‘No!’ If he set one foot in that reeking bedroom he’d know that Gethryn had been on a bender. Jack eyeballed me a bit more and the spark died. ‘I’ll go and fetch him.’

  As I spoke I tottered out, down the hallway again and into the bedroom, where Gethryn was just emerging, tawny and splendid, from the shower. ‘Hey, girl.’ He sounded steadier. ‘What’s the rush?’

  My eyes were transfixed by his chest, which rivulets of water were still navigating, passing between nipples so perfectly brown and round they looked like pennies, and down into uncharted regions, now concealed beneath a fluffy blue towel. Even with all I knew about him now, I still felt a little tremor of lust – Felix was right, I was shallow. ‘Erlon’s here,’ I started to say, but my voice went all thick at the way his fringe split into fragments, each with its own diamond-tip of water over those treacle-golden eyes. ‘And Jack.’

  ‘Fuck.’ Gethryn muttered something I couldn’t hear, but it didn’t sound good. ‘Better get back out there, cariad. Don’t let him in here, he’ll know something’s up. Like a bloody terrier that man is. Just …’ he swiped a hand over his wet hair and blinked hard, ‘just keep him talking. Okay?’

  ‘Right.’ Again I tottered down the hallway, arriving just as Jack had started to walk towards the bedroom and we ended up nose-to-nose. I performed a little jig to prevent him from getting past me without pressing me into the opposite wall. From the look on his face, pressing me anywhere at all was a long way from being on the agenda.

  ‘What is going on?’ We were back to the hiss again and the spark in his eyes now was one of anger.

  ‘I want to go to the ball with you.’ I’d meant to lead up to it, to smile and soften his expression first, but it just came out, I don’t know why. First thing in my head, probably, pushed out by that smouldering look on Jack’s face, the way his eyes burned into me. He was like a cold supernova, a black hole. Dragging me in with his gravitational field.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Remember, you asked me? To go to the ball? I want to. Please,’ I added. ‘You said you could dance.’

  He looked curiously behind me, towards the bedroom. ‘You’re behaving very strangely. What’s going on back there – have you left Geth dead on the bed or something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why are you … why choose now to tell me you want to come with me to the ball?’

  ‘What’s wrong with now?’

  We stared at each other again, until Erlon interrupted, clearing his throat. ‘’Um, maybe I could just do one or two of you first? Maybe, with Jack?’ He waggled his camera under his non-existent chin. ‘While we wait.’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea.’ Jack spoke with his teeth clenched.

  ‘Aw, go on. Just be natural.’ Erlon led me to the velvet couch, onto which the dress snagged like Velcro. ‘Look as if you’re chatting.’ Defeated, Jack slumped beside me, folded his arms and dropped his head down onto his chest. If we were chatting, it could only be about death and despondency. ‘Now, put your arm around Skye.’ The world’s most reluctant hug commenced as Jack slid one arm between my neck and the couch, leaving his hand flopping onto my shoulder. ‘Ah, that’s great.’


  Erlon’s digital camera didn’t have the decency to go ‘click’ so we didn’t know when it was safe to relax. Jack remained with one hand behind my back, the other loosely in his lap, as though covering up some furtive groinal activity, and both my arms lay lifelessly along the seams of the wine-dark dress. We looked like a mannequin and a mannequin fetishist.

  ‘Hey, Jack.’ Gethryn wandered in, fully dressed in his uniform. He smelled very strongly of aftershave and his eyes were a bit unsettled, but apart from that he looked sober. ‘Erlon. So. Pictures then?’

  I thought I heard Jack mutter, ‘Thank God,’ but it might have been something else, as he made way for Gethryn to pose alongside me. Geth looked lip-lickingly tasty in the tight uniform, hair still curling damply down his neck but, when he sat beside me, there was a distinct whiff of sourness on his breath and his pupils were shrunken. Erlon took a few shots, then made us stand up, arms around one another, smiling into the lens. My smile was tight, I could feel tremors running up and down Gethryn’s body and there was a faint alcohol-scented sweat breaking out on his neck.

  To think, only a few weeks ago I would have eaten my own arm for the chance to stand this close to Gethryn Tudor-Morgan. I’d seen him naked for God’s sake! And now … now that the glamour had broken and I’d seen Gethryn for who and what he truly was, I could still admire that sexy physique and that sculpted face, but I was glad that there were other people with us. Gethryn had clearly been in another room when the self-control was being handed out.

  Jack was gazing at us both with a very odd expression on his face.

  As soon as Erlon had the last picture satisfactorily in his camera, Jack hustled me out of the van. He almost manhandled me down the steps and around the side of the motel, not letting me stop to hitch up my skirt and I had to settle for letting most of it trail behind me in the dust, where it sent up little flurries of worried sand as I moved.

  Finally we reached the yard near the dumpsters, and Jack let go of my arm. ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, what?’ I reeled in as much of the skirt as I could and tried to brush the worst of the dirt off with my hands.