Bad Boy Brit (A British Bad Boy Romance) (12 page)

Mikey continued to chatter as the cab sped on through the night, back towards my hotel, leaving Liam and the car show behind me. Though we were getting further and further away from the event, the memories of the night remained sharp and piquant.

I wasn’t sure what was going to happen now, but I did know one thing for certain…

I should’ve damn well gone back to America when I was supposed to.

Chapter 12

Liam

Getting down from the podium to a riot of applause and some inappropriate cheering, I looked around for Allison. Now that I’d done my duty, we could, with a bit of luck, get out of here and head back to my place so I could cook us up some dinner. I smiled at the thought—all in all, tonight hadn’t gone nearly as badly as I’d feared it might, and I’d gotten through it without feeling that I’d driven Allison away too much or made her feel too unwanted. Being so close to her and yet unable to touch her or kiss her had been absolute fucking torture, but I was determined that I would make up for that with the rest of this evening.

Now, if only I could find her...she seemed to have completely vanished. Perhaps she was just in the bathroom.

“Hi.” The word was drawled with such honeyed allure that it ought to have left drips on the carpet.

I looked up from my hunt for Allison to find myself face to face with one of the models hired for the evening. She was tall and bleach-blonde with a button nose and a face that suggested regular Botox, lip fillers and cheek fillers. Not at all ugly, but decidedly unnatural.

“Er…hi,” I replied.

It occurred to me that in normal circumstances, I would’ve found this woman relatively attractive and would’ve already been planning to bed her. In current circumstances, however, I felt absolutely nothing and found it hard to keep my eyes on her at all, as I was still desperately hunting around for Allison.

“It’s such an honor to meet you, Mr. Croft.”

“Thanks. Always great to meet fans.”

“I thought you and me might…”

My eyebrows shot up as a hand very deliberately closed over my crotch and squeezed.

The model looked directly into my eyes, giving me what she must’ve thought was her best smoldering gaze. Truthfully, she just looked like she was auditioning for a pornographic reality show. “So the stories are true,” she purred.

“Be that as it may…” I detached the hand from the front of my trousers and subtly repositioned myself. “I’m flattered, but spoken for.”

I really was, wasn’t I? For once.

“
You’ve
got a girlfriend?” The model sounded unconvinced, and she leaned in. “Because I don’t mind, you know.”

“Well, I do mind.”

The woman stole a look behind her then turned back to me. “Here’s the thing, I told one of the other girls that I already knew you and that we’d already done it.”

“Did you?”

“On top of the Eiffel Tower, during Paris Fashion Week.”

I scoffed. “Really?”

“Yeah, and I said that you obviously wanted to hook up again for a rematch, and…well, I’d really hate to lose face, you know. Besides, I know I’m your type.”

I frowned. “Just to be clear—you want me to cheat on my date and have sex with you, just so your friend doesn’t find out you’ve lied to her? Yeah, that sounds rational,” I said, voice thick with sarcasm.

“Well not
just
that,” the model stressed. “I think it’d be quite a lot of fun as well. For both of us.”

Her hand had found its way back to my crotch and was now massaging it. I removed it again. Usually, something like this would’ve gotten me rock-hard, but my cock was as limp as a dodgy car salesman’s handshake.

“No. Thanks for the offer, and I’m sure it would have been aggressively mediocre, but no.”

“What’s all this?” Brian suddenly descended upon us as if from nowhere. “Dammit, you can’t stop this boy! Never off the job. Now who’s this lovely lady you’ve picked up for the night?”

Fuck.

I winced at the camera flashes all around us, recording me and the nameless model who made the most of her moment in the limelight, draping herself appealingly across my torso. This was the version of me the media so adored: the playboy player. My eyes darted around, and for once, I was quite relieved not to see Allison—I would prefer her not to see this.

When the melee broke after what seemed like an eternity, I hurried off in search of Allison again. At first I just thought I was having trouble finding her amongst the busy swarm of people, but the longer I looked, the more it seemed that she’d actually gone.

She’d left without saying goodbye.

Of course it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that she’d received an emergency call of some sort, taking her away, but an ominous feeling still cast its pall over me. Had she seen me with that blonde model? Had Brian threatened her? There were any number of unpleasant possibilities, and the sooner I sorted them out the happier I would be.

I pulled out my phone and dialed her number, and the phone rang but was quickly cut off. Well, that could hardly be a good sign. But then again this was London; phone signals got lost all the time, and she might have gone into the Underground. I decided to try calling her a second time.

Again the phone rang, again it was cut off.

Definitely a bad sign.

I decided to send a text:
‘What happened? Where’d you go? You OK?’

I didn’t have to wait long for a response:
‘Please don’t call me again’.

That seemed to confirm pretty incontrovertibly that something was wrong. But she’d asked me to stop calling, not to stop texting, and so I took advantage of the loophole:
‘Don’t understand. Did I do something wrong?’

The ominous answer: ‘
You know what you did. I really thought you were different after the other night. But you’re the same ‘bad boy’ version of Liam Croft that I always thought you were.’

Was it possible that she knew about my conversation with Brian, and that I’d inadvertently put her job at risk?
Shit.
That didn’t seem likely, as only Brian knew, and it wasn’t in his interest to say anything to her about it.

I texted once more:
‘I really don’t. I’m so sorry I couldn’t spend more time with you. Part of the job. Doesn’t mean I didn’t want to, though. I did. Really.’

‘Right. Sure. I heard that Paris girl of yours talking to her friend. Did you have fun?’

Well, that at least narrowed the sphere of inquiry but it also raised more questions. Who the hell was ‘Paris girl’? There’d been many girls at the event, the bulk of them models who may have been to Paris at some point, and it was possible that among them were some I’d ‘known’ previously—I was embarrassed to admit that I couldn’t have said for certain. But Allison knew I had a rather sordid past, so surely that wasn’t enough to upset her. Besides, her text message, curt though it was, definitely seemed to hint at something that had happened at tonight’s event, and the only thing that had ‘happened’ was that one of the models had come up to me after my speech and propositioned me.

Was it possible that Allison had seen that? I guess it wasn’t impossible, but even if she had, so what? I hadn’t done anything wrong. I’d rebuffed the woman repeatedly and in no uncertain terms. Of course, to an observer who couldn’t hear what was being said, then it might’ve looked a bit more familiar than that, especially when the girl had grabbed my crotch. Could Allison have seen that and read more into it? Again, it was possible, but her text suggested something else; something she’d overheard.

Something about Paris…

Suddenly I remembered something that the model had said, about her bragging to her friend that she and I had had sex on top of the Eiffel Tower and that I wanted a rematch. The rematch. That was it—that was what Allison had overheard! It had sounded as if I was trying to hook up with this model while I was at the car show with Allison.

Goddammit. No wonder she left in such a damned hurry.

I swiftly texted back:
‘Think I know what happened. All a misunderstanding. Please let me explain!’

It felt like a very long time before I felt my phone buzz again, although it was in fact not much more than a minute. My heart leapt: it wasn’t a text, Allison was calling me. With shaky hands I answered, and once again, that struck me as odd for a guy like me. My hands had never trembled for any woman before, but Allison Flores had that effect on me.

“Allison?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. Her voice was hard, but I also thought that it sounded like she’d been crying. “So let’s hear it. And if I think you’re lying to me, I’m hanging up.”

“Okay. Fair enough.” I struggled to put my thoughts into order—I’d only get one chance at this. My brother’s earlier words echoed in my head: ‘
Don’t screw this up’
. “You’re probably wondering why I was behaving a bit weirdly at the event tonight. Maybe it seemed like I didn’t want to be seen with you…”

“I’m not wondering about that,” Allison interrupted harshly. “I already know why. You wanted to appear nice and available for your model friends, like your little blonde buddy from Paris!”

“No. Not at all.”

I could practically hear her rolling her eyes on the other end of the line. “Really?”

I sighed. “I should’ve told you the truth from the start, but I didn’t want you to know that I…well, that I might’ve maybe—inadvertently—endangered your career.”

“What? How?”

“Look, here’s what happened.”

Omitting no detail for fear of being called out for lying, I recounted my earlier phone call with Brian. I brought up his suspicions, and how thanks to my careless stupidity, I might have placed her job and future career in jeopardy. I explained how I’d been so worried about revealing my idiotic mistake to her that I’d decided not to tell her. I explained that if I’d done the obvious thing and simply not invited her to the show, then Brian would’ve become even more suspicious, and the situation might’ve been made worse.

“Okay,” she said. Her voice had taken on a tone of grudging but still suspicious acceptance. “That might—
might
—explain why you wouldn’t go near me all evening. But it doesn’t explain what that model said, does it?”

“No,” I said. “Okay, so now, I can only guess what you overheard that model say—and I think I know the girl you mean: tall, blonde hair, skinny…

“That describes all of them,” Allison pointed out. “I’m talking about that really plastic-looking one with the fish pout.”

I shrugged. That sounded about right. “I think we’re probably talking about the same girl. Anyway, like I said, I can only guess at what you overheard her saying to her friend, but based on what she said to me later…”

“So you do know her?”

“Allison, is there any chance you could let me finish a sentence?”

There was a sharp intake of breath from the other end of the line, and then a deep sigh.  “Sorry. You’re right. Go on.”

I picked up the thread of what I’d been saying. “I’ll tell you what happened to me, then I’ll tell you what I guess you overheard her saying. And then…well, to be honest, I’m not sure if I can prove any of it, but we’ll take it from there.”

As close to word for word as I could remember, I told Allison about my grabby encounter with the model, stressing how I’d turned her down but admitting that the pictures in the papers tomorrow would do little to back that up, thanks to Brian’s untimely intervention with the camera crew.

“So that’s what
actually
happened between her and me,” I finished. “I’m guessing you overheard her telling this friend about her and me up the Eiffel Tower—I’ve never even been to the bloody Paris Fashion Week, by the way—and that I’d been in touch with her this evening saying I wanted a ‘rematch’. Which I didn’t. And it wouldn’t have been a rematch anyway because I’d never fucking met her in my life before tonight, let alone anything else.”

There was silence at the other end of the line, but I knew Allison was still there, so I continued. “And even if I had met her before, I wouldn’t have wanted her because I was there with you! You were all that mattered to me tonight. And I know it can’t have seemed that way because of the way I was acting, and then you overheard her saying that stuff…look, believe me, I know how this all sounds and how this all looks, and I’m not sure I would believe me if I were in your position. But you’ve got to believe me. I mean, I guess you don’t
have
to believe me but I really hope you do because I like you a lot and…well, that’s it, I guess.”

I was babbling like a twelve-year-old boy who was having his first conversation with a girl, but I didn’t give a shit. Everything I’d just said was true, and Allison needed to hear it.

She finally spoke, quite calmly. “When is Paris Fashion Week?” she asked.

“What? I don’t know. Not the sort of thing I know anything about. Like I said, I’ve never been.”

“Give me a second. I’ll call you back.”

She hung up abruptly, leaving me unsure as to what I was supposed to do next. I settled for sitting down outside and staring at my motorbike, which I found to be an oddly calming pastime.

A few minutes later the phone rang. Allison again.

“I just Googled the dates of Paris Fashion Week. You weren’t there,” she said after I answered.

“I know I wasn’t, but how do you know?”

“I know your playing schedule,” she said. “I was following your team all last year and, even with the Eurostar, there’s no way you kept up with that schedule and found time to pop across to Paris for a few days to do skanky models up on the Eiffel Tower. And I guess if that part of her story isn’t true, it does cast the rest of it into doubt as well.”