All Fired Up (9 page)

‘Spook,’ Ash had to prompt him.

‘Yeah.’ He shrugged off his air of sadness. ‘It’s a long, sordid tale of passion, lunacy and deceit. It’ll make your hackles rise and balls shrivel.’

That didn’t sound good, even if Spook was trying to dress it up with a dose of humour. ‘Go on.’

Spook ruffled his hair. ‘It’s not the sort of story to be sharing after midnight. It’s late, Ash. I want my bed.’ He stood. ‘
Godnatt, Ash
.
Sova gott.
’

‘Sleep well,’ Ash repeated. He thought he probably would now, though possibly not as well as if he’d been spooned against Ginny.

If this was what it took to keep her secret, he didn’t think he’d manage it for very long.

‘S
o, you’re definitely not coming?’ Xane enquired, leaning over to prod Ash in the midriff.

Ash responded with a pathetic cough. He’d been faking big-style for the last twelve hours. He knew better than to suddenly announce he was sick in order to skive off an interview. To be convincing you had to put work into the build-up. His brother had taught him that when they were kids. The rest of the band had been giving him a wide berth in the hopes of avoiding whatever evil lurgy he had. Of course, it’d meant he’d had to down a few of Rock Giant’s folk remedies, but he hadn’t had to swallow anything too grim, and the pay-off – getting to see Ginny – would totally be worth it.

‘Seriously, you had to get sick now, when Sally wants us all to play nice?’ Xane complained.

Their PR manager had odd ideas sometimes. They never played nice, not even when they were all hunky-dory and besties rather than the fucked-up mess most of them were right now.

‘You realise they’re going to ask all sorts of crap about Iain, and if you’re not there I might feel obliged to spill a few home truths.’

‘He’s going along with you,’ Ash croaked. He drew his duvet a little tighter around his head. ‘And you won’t say anything crass because it’ll only piss him off, and then we’ll be screwed for tonight’s gig because we won’t have a drummer.’

‘Are we going to have a lead guitarist?’

Sneezes were harder to fake, but he conveniently got a bit of dust in his nose at that moment, and let off enough of an explosion that Xane had to cover his ears. ‘You will if you let me sleep. Few hours of shut-eye and I’ll be fine. Promise.’

Xane eyed him sceptically. ‘If I have to play guitar tonight so that we can perform, I’m going to murderlise you.’

‘What does murderlising involve?’ he heard Dani ask Xane a moment later.

‘Murder, but with more pain, and no actual deaths.’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘And you’d do that to him when he’s this sick.’

‘Yup, I might forget if I wait until he’s all better.’

‘Seriously, all I need is some rest and a bit of menthol rubbed on my chest,’ Ash piped up. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure if Xane doubted his ability to recover in time for the show or the authenticity of his illness. ‘Maybe you could loan me Dani to do the honours.’

His friend dropped an f-bomb in response. The man had zero sense of humour where Dani was concerned. ‘She’ll be coming with us.’

Excellent. That’s what he wanted to hear, and what he’d been hoping to achieve by his remark. For his plan to work, he needed everyone clear of the bus for a few solid hours.

The moment he heard the limousine pull away with the guys inside, Ash hurriedly dressed. It wasn’t as if he enjoyed lying to them, but Paris had been several days ago and he needed to see Ginny. Between Xane’s insistence on near-continual practice sessions – Iain still couldn’t get a handle on ‘Fatal Error’ and he frequently ballsed up ‘In Love Enslaved’ and ‘Sweet Sanctuary’ too: coincidentally all favourites of Xane’s – and hours and hours of tedious travel, he’d not managed to see her since they’d eaten breakfast in bed together at her Paris hotel. Phone conversations had proved tricky too. On past tours, everyone had tended to congregate and hang together during their down time, playing games and watching DVDs, but now everyone was scattered around the bus. If Elspeth and Rock Giant were in the kitchen, then Xane and Dani would be in the studio and Spook would be up front talking to their driver, Troels, or else in the upstairs lounge reading a book. A couple of the other roadies were often milling about, and Iain seemed determined to shadow Ash wherever he went. It was getting a little irksome. Basically, the only place he could phone Ginny from and be assured of privacy was the toilet, and then only for a few minutes before someone was hammering on the door begging him to hurry up and piss faster.

By the time he’d shaved, he’d shrugged off most of his guilt about lying. It wasn’t as if it took six of them to open a shopping mall. Cutting fancy ribbons only required one pair of scissors. Whose dumb idea had that been in the first place? It had to be a Sally special. Sometimes their battle-axe PR guru dropped the ball spectacularly, and this sort of pop-idol stuff would be the result. Ash reckoned the only reason Xane had gone along with it was that he wanted to take Dani shopping. The weird son of a bitch actually enjoyed looking at shoes and cosmetics. Although, as Ash recalled, he did draw the line at handbags. Elspeth had once dragged them all out to hunt for some designer purse or other that looked like the unfortunate offspring of a mutant armadillo.

Now, if Sally had booked them to play at the mall opening, that would have been a different story, and he’d have been royally screwed.

It took ten precious minutes for Ginny to arrive. ‘I heard someone on board requires a bit of expert TLC,’ she said, while giving him and his outfit a once-over. She’d dressed a little more plainly than he’d grown to expect, in a knee-length dress with a floaty hem and a halterneck. ‘Cute,’ she remarked of his Danger Mouse T-shirt. ‘It’d be better without the ketchup stains.’

‘I was dressing down,’ he replied, looking for the offending stain and failing to spot it. ‘I’ve had it since I was seventeen.’

‘That’d be why it’s too small.’

‘It’s not too small.’

‘No,’ she drawled, prodding him so that he turned and she could observe him from various angles. ‘That’d be why your biceps look so huge, and it shows a fraction too much strain across your chest. If I take you out looking like this, you’ll stop traffic.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ he said, reaching for his leather jacket – not the one with ‘Black Halo’ emblazoned across the back, but one with a buxom, scantily clad gothic nymph sitting on an enormous skull holding a halo. He pushed his arms through the sleeves and patted down his pockets to ensure he had his phone and wallet. ‘All set.’

‘I still say that T-shirt needs to come off.’ She pushed a hand under the hem and stroked her palm over his taut abs. Then she grabbed him by the belt buckle and tugged him towards the back of the bus and the only actual bedroom.

‘Ginny.’ He dug his heels in. ‘Come on, it’s part of my expert disguise. See, I borrowed these from Xane.’ Minus his permission. ‘He reckons they never fail.’ He snatched a pair of aviator shades off a table as they passed and perched them across his nose.

‘It’ll never work.’

‘Wait.’ He stopped shy of letting her drag him over the threshold of Elspeth’s domain. ‘My clothes aren’t even in here.’

‘You won’t need them if I’m taking you to bed.’

For half a second he was almost tempted. If it’d been any other bedroom he’d have capitulated on the spot. ‘No, not in here. Too weird.’ His gaze flicked over to the dressing table, which Elspeth had transformed into a shrine to Steve Matlock, complete with posters, old clothing and a forest’s worth of drumsticks.

‘Jeezus! She needs help.’

Ash closed the door, blocking out the sight. The less said about that the better. ‘We said we’d go out and do some normal stuff. You wanted us to be about more than just sex, remember?’ He actually liked the idea more than a little too. When was the last time he’d been on a date that wasn’t just an extended prelude to sex? For that matter, when was the last time he’d been on a date? Sure, he and Ginny might well end the afternoon in one another’s arms, but the run-up would be about companionship, not seduction. Well, that was his intention anyway.

‘I’d still like the sex part to happen,’ she remarked, squinting at him as though he’d grown an extra head. Ash grabbed her hand and rubbed it over his trouser front, just to establish that she was still talking to the real him and not some alien clone. He was kind of relieved about the sex bit too. At least now, if he flunked companionship, he could still ace the alternative.

‘Maybe I can sex you while we’re strolling,’ he suggested.

‘That’ll be an accomplishment.’ She tugged on his waistband, dragging him closer so that she could rise on tiptoe and kiss him. ‘Although I’m not sure that sentence really means what you meant it to, unless you’re actually confused about whether I’m a woman.’

‘No doubts there,’ he said, cradling her closer. ‘You’ve lady bumps, and I’ve seen your hoo-ha.’

His use of euphemism made her snort. She rested her head against Danger Mouse’s eye patch and he felt her upper body tremble as she tried to contain her mirth. ‘Come on then, super sleuth, let’s go and stroll.’

* * *

Ash decided he liked holding hands. OK, so their height difference meant his shoulder ached after about twenty minutes, and he had to go for the alternative of wrapping his arm around her so they could show off their couple-like status, but he definitely liked the whole togetherness thing. They explored the banks of the river Scheldt first, then some of the older parts of the city, stopping to enjoy a round of Bolleke, an amber beer from the local De Koninck Brewery – he only knew because he read it off the bottle label – at a congenial antiquated bruin café full of grizzled locals. The best part of the experience was that nobody bothered them. Sure, he caught a few glances, he was a good-looking guy and Ginny was an absolute bombshell, but most of those looks were from ladies his mum’s age, obviously appreciating the signs of young love. Not a single blessed fan-girl came at him with her arms outstretched, and for the whole afternoon he wasn’t obliged to sign anything other than a debit-card receipt. It was absolute bliss.

All right, so he wouldn’t want to live like this all of the time. He knew he was an attention junkie but, as an afternoon of normalcy went, it rated pretty well.

‘I suppose I’m going to have to give you back soon,’ Ginny moaned as she consulted the tourist information leaflet she’d picked up from a stand inside the café-bar. ‘That’s a shame – it might have been nice to go and check out Rubens’ house. The artist,’ she clarified, in response to his puzzled look. ‘He lived here. His house looks gorgeous.’ She showed him a picture.

‘We might not have time for that, but we should have time to do something else Antwerp is famous for.’

‘What’s that?’ she asked.

Ash turned over the leaflet she held. ‘Let’s go shopping.’

‘Shopping?’

He rested his finger on a picture in the leaflet. It showed a single exquisitely cut diamond.

‘Ash, you’re not serious.’

‘What else would we go shopping for in the diamond capital of the world? Maybe I can buy you something sparkly to wear in my favourite intimate piercing.’

Her eyes widened, caught the sun and glittered like diamonds, or at least two spectacular pieces of golden jade. ‘I hardly think they sell that type of jewellery.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, I bet they do. I can’t be the only man on the planet that appreciates sparkly things in sparkly places.’

‘I don’t remember my pussy being covered in fairy dust.’

‘No, but it makes me feel as if I’m covered in fairy dust when I’m fucking it.’ She prodded him in the elbow to silence him, but he knew she liked it when he was crude. It turned her on. Hey, it turned him on too.

It didn’t take long to find the specialist diamond dealers among the mediaeval streets. Ginny snatched the sunglasses off Ash’s nose as they peeped in through the window, and put them on herself.

‘You remember those aren’t mine,’ Ash reminded her.

‘Yeah, but I don’t mind you getting the blame for having half-inched them, and I think I might need something to help obliterate the price tags so I don’t faint. You honestly want to do this?’

‘Yeah. Now, serious face on, and make like we’re totally in love or something and we’re shopping for an engagement ring.’

* * *

If he actually made her try on engagement rings she was going to have a ruddy heart attack. Not that she wouldn’t be thrilled and flattered, and a whole lot of other things, but no. Just no. Not yet. It was way too soon. For Christ’s sake, he wouldn’t even acknowledge their relationship publicly. Also, she had reasons for turning him down that she really didn’t want to deal with.

Ginny stayed as close to Ash as she could as they ventured inside the shop. This sort of high-end boutique always made her feel like a speck of lint on the floor, so much so that she found it difficult to admire the items for what they were. Ash, bastard that he was, cooed over things with eye-melting price tags and even made her try things on. Ginny decided he just liked making the assistants’ hearts flutter. They got a kind of crazed look in their eyes whenever he inspected a particularly pretty rock. Hopefully they were thinking about the commission they’d make and not how much they’d like to do him.

‘Seen anything you like?’ he asked.

She shook her head.

‘What we’re really after is a J-curved diamond-tipped barbell.’

He was a devil. An absolute stinking fiend. The assistant, bless her, gaped at him, obviously clueless.

‘Case 233,’ remarked the manager, sending the assistant off to fetch it with a flick of her wrist. She returned a moment or two later with a small display case that she unlocked.

‘I like this one,’ he said, tugging her closer. ‘What about you?’

‘Ash, don’t. This isn’t necessary.’ She tightened her fingers around his forearm. ‘It’s too much for something that tiny that nobody’s ever gonna see.’

‘I’ll see it.’ He quirked his eyebrows significantly. ‘And what’s the point in having money if you can’t spend it on making the people you care about smile?’