I Love the 80s (20 page)

And he really wished they had been on a date. That was the worst part. Everything involving Jenna was the worst part. And here he was, begging for more. He disgusted himself.

‘I don’t need an escort,’ was what she told him. Scowling.

They were in a curtained-off section of the emergency room at St Luke’s Roosevelt, and he was awash in irritating protective instincts. His mood had not been improved by Duncan’s inevitable arrival – he didn’t know who had even called him, he suspected the doormen in his building were on the payroll – or the subsequent medical attention. It worsened as he took in Jenna’s body language – arms crossed over her chest, hair scraped into a knot on the back of her head, shoulders hunched over like she was trying to ward him off.

She
was trying to keep
him
at a distance.

It made him crazy. It made him want to leap across the small space and show her exactly what he thought of
distance
, and what the hell was his problem that all he could think about was leaping over furniture? What was he, an animal?

‘I didn’t ask if you needed an escort, I told you I’m doing it,’ he snapped at her, unreasonably enraged. At his own response to her, mostly, but he decided that was her fault too. Might as well snap at her.

‘Not really interested in the alpha-male thing, thanks,’ she threw back at him with extreme snottiness, but she didn’t storm off and leave him sitting there on his gurney, she just planted her hands on her hips and glared.

Tommy interpreted this as a victory.

‘Why were you sitting in front of my building?’ he asked, watching her closely.

She shrugged, and then, suddenly, she looked shifty. Uncomfortable. Had she been waiting for him? If that car
hadn’t come at them – and Tommy blamed too much alcohol and a bad driver no matter how many times Jenna claimed it had been headed right for them – what would have happened? Would she have come upstairs with him? Was that what she’d been waiting for? An invitation?

Somehow, he didn’t think so, despite his body’s enthusiastic response to that idea. Which made him that much more surly.

‘Are you going to answer the question?’ he asked when she didn’t speak. He swung his legs slightly as he sat on the high bed, bracing himself with his hands against the edge.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, still not looking at him. The bustle and noise of the hospital swam around them, beeping machines and moans of pain, quiet conversations and occasional announcements, and then the two of them alone in the midst of it.

‘You don’t know if you’re going to answer the question or you don’t know why you were there?’ he asked, his voice still light. ‘Because I’m happy to come up with my own explanations.’

‘Really.’ She looked at him then. Her dark eyes measured him.

‘Of course.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m Tommy Seer. You certainly aren’t the first groupie to sit for hours outside my house, desperate for a glimpse of me. Some girls wait for days.’

A smile tugged at her lips. He wanted her to laugh more than he could remember wanting anything else.

‘I’m sure that’s true,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think I count as a groupie any more. Do I?’

‘I’m not in charge of groupie classifications,’ he said, trying not to smile himself. ‘I just know them when I see them.’ She laughed then, and it made Tommy’s chest swell. It was ridiculous, and it wasn’t even a big laugh. More of a rueful sort of laugh.

Was he
categorizing
her laughter? What was
wrong
with him?

‘Zombie eyes,’ she said. Her brows arched. ‘Isn’t that what you told me? Isn’t that the usual way to tell?’

‘There are zombie eyes, sure, and then there’s sitting outside my house in the dark all night,’ Tommy replied. ‘It’s hard to argue with a good stalking. It pretty much speaks for itself.’

‘For all you know I was there for exactly thirty seconds,’ Jenna pointed out. ‘Hardly stalking.’

‘Were you?’ He dared her. Because somehow, he knew she’d been there longer. He just knew.

She grinned. ‘You’ll never know, will you?’

‘Why were you there?’ He laughed when she sighed. ‘Why can’t you tell me?’

‘I already did.’ She shook her head. ‘I had some thinking to do, and a park bench seemed like a great place for it. I don’t know.’

‘I think you do,’ he suggested, his voice going lower. ‘It’s a big city, Jenna. There are thousands of benches. What made you pick that one?’

She met his gaze then, with a challenging sort of expression in her eyes. Her chin tilted up.

‘You seem to think you know.’ She crossed her arms
over her front again. In defence. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’

And he would have – in graphic detail – but the curtain was tossed back without ceremony and the doctor hurried in, with Duncan and a tight-mouthed Eugenia in tow.

‘Darling!’ Eugenia cried in carrying tones, the better to alert the waiting journalists, no doubt. ‘I was so worried! I only
just
heard the news!’

She rushed to his side without sparing a glance for Jenna, who, Tommy thought, looked entirely too relieved.
Just wait
, he promised her silently, suffering through one of Eugenia’s overwrought embraces because the doctor was watching.
I’m not done with you yet.

‘Practise your smile,’ Duncan told him, in a pleasant tone that Tommy assumed was for the doctor’s benefit. ‘There’s a crowd out there.’

‘They think it’s a publicity stunt,’ Eugenia said crisply, the doctor clearly beneath her notice. ‘Lead singer in peril, and so on.’ She looked from Duncan to Tommy. ‘You don’t really think that car was
trying
to hit you, do you?’

‘Yes,’ Jenna said firmly from her corner, even as Tommy shook his head.

‘No,’ he said, with a quelling look her way. ‘I think it was an accident.’

‘Doesn’t make any difference,’ Duncan said, dismissing the entire incident with a wave of his hand. ‘You get to look cute, wounded, and brave. The fans will eat it up.’

Tommy forced a smile. That made him sound like a Cabbage Patch Kid, or something else equally toothless and inane. Duncan did wonders for his self-esteem.

‘Great,’ he said, and managed to keep himself from slapping Eugenia’s talons off his shoulders.

‘And you,’ Duncan said, his tone changing as he turned towards Jenna. ‘I don’t know what you were doing there, but this needs to spin as
Tommy saved by his staff
, not
Tommy with random girl.
Do you get me?’

‘Absolutely,’ Jenna said, much too quickly for Tommy’s taste. ‘In fact, I think I’ll slip out the back while Tommy faces the press, so there’s no confusion.’

‘And then it looks like I have something to hide,’ Tommy argued smoothly, without meaning to speak. ‘They all know I came in with a woman. Why would you slip away if you were only my assistant? It looks as if you’re avoiding my fiancée.’

‘Touché,’ Jenna said grimly. He could feel her glare, but he didn’t look at her. He was too busy trying to keep his smirk at bay.

‘Good thinking,’ Duncan said, rubbing his chin. ‘We’ll all leave together.’

‘Everyone wants to make sure you’re alive and in one piece,’ Eugenia crooned, still touching him, the very model of the supportive fiancée.

‘You’re ready to go,’ the doctor said then, in a diffident voice, evidently intimidated by Duncan. Or maybe by all of them. Tommy forgot in moments like this that he was supposed to be impressive himself. It was one more benefit of self-loathing, his constant companion.

‘Let’s do this,’ Duncan growled. His gaze swept over Tommy, and hardened.

Tommy stared back at him blandly and buttoned up his shirt.

Jenna, naturally, was staring at the floor, her expression shuttered.

‘Try to look pathetic and heroic, Tommy,’ Duncan snarled as the doctor threw the curtain back once again. ‘Instead of pissed off, if you think you can manage it.’

He not only managed it, he rocked it. Anything to make it end, so he could escape his supposed fiancée and her cloying, faked attentions. And then he’d literally manhandled Jenna into the back of a taxi, jumped in after her, and fled.

‘That did not hurt,’ he said, again, as she rubbed at her arm and glared daggers at him.

‘It’s my arm. I get to decide if it hurts or not.’ She sniffed in disgust. ‘And by the way, I know you’re famous and all, but you can’t go around physically
forcing
someone—’

‘I helped you into the cab,’ he interrupted, in a bored tone. When really, he was enjoying himself. ‘It’s called chivalry. I did not
physically force
anything.’

‘You grabbed my arm. It was not chivalrous at all. I think I might have bruises. And then you shoved me into the back of a taxi.’ She glared. ‘Completely unacceptable.’

‘If you were hurt,’ he said in a reasonable voice, ‘you wouldn’t be giving me such a hard time, would you?’

‘And now I understand the rise of political correctness,’ she snapped. She shook her head. ‘What are you, a Neanderthal?’

‘I feel like a Neanderthal when I’m around you,’ he muttered. He frowned. ‘What did you say? Political what?’

‘Never mind.’ She turned away and faced the front of the cab. ‘I could have taken a cab by myself.’

‘Jenna.’ He waited until she looked at him, reluctantly. ‘I think you saved my life. The least I can do is make sure you get home all right.’

That shut her up. Although he was pretty sure he could hear her mind racing as they sat there in tense silence. The cab shot across town in the usual fits and starts, even so late at night. Tommy didn’t know why he was so insistent that he see her home. The more she made it clear she didn’t want him to do it, the more he took perverse pleasure in doing it anyway.

He’d been kidding about the Neanderthal thing, but now he wondered. Maybe it was true. Maybe he’d gone completely prehistoric.

The cab pulled up on a quiet enough street in the wilds of the distant Upper East Side, and Tommy followed her out into the night and then into one of the buildings. It was a smaller building, no more than five storeys. It wasn’t dumpy, exactly, but it bore no resemblance to his own breathlessly fancy building or even the quiet elegance of the town house. It was a place where regular people lived.

They went through two security doors and up flight after flight of stairs. When they reached the top, she was red in the face and short of breath. He was too, to his shame, and he wondered if it was time to take Sebastian’s commitment to the gym more seriously. They stared at
each other on the landing, and Tommy couldn’t help but think of other activities that would lead to the two of them in the same sweaty, breathless condition. Preferably with fewer clothes on.

‘Stop staring at my mouth,’ she ordered him. Her voice sounded prim, but her expression was not.

‘I was staring at your ass all the way up the stairs,’ he told her deliberately, enjoying the way her eyes darkened, with temper or desire, he didn’t much care. Is that better?’

‘This is my door,’ she said, waving at the one she stood before. ‘You can go now.’

‘My mother taught me to always see a lady
inside
her door,’ Tommy told her, laughing down at her.

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said, but he saw her swallow. He stepped closer, to see what she’d do, and he wasn’t disappointed. She jumped, skittish, and edged away from him.

But not
too
far away from him.

‘I’m lying,’ he said, almost smiling. ‘My mother had no interest in manners. She was more into truckers and construction workers. Why don’t you open the door?’ That last came out softly, more like a whisper. A plea.

Her eyes widened, and she stepped away again, only to find herself backed into her own front door. Tommy stepped closer, so that if she took a deep breath her breasts would brush the planes of his chest, and settled one arm over her head. That brought them face to face. Lips nearly touching lips.

‘I don’t want this,’ she breathed, but her pupils were
huge and her nipples hardened into little peaks beneath her sweatshirt, and they both knew she was lying.

‘Why not?’ he asked lazily. He used his free hand to trace a pattern along the exposed skin south of her ear, and felt her pulse skip and hammer against her neck.

‘It doesn’t matter why,’ she told him. She was barely forming the words aloud. He had to lean in to hear her. ‘It just matters that I don’t want to.’

‘So why did you come all the way across the city to sit outside my building?’ he asked, in the same soft voice. She shook her head, as if she wanted to escape him but lacked, somehow, the will. ‘Why did you wait for me?’

‘You’re lucky I did,’ she told him, her eyes flashing, and she wiggled backward as if she hoped the door might bend behind her and put more space between them. She turned her head away from his touch.

‘That’s me,’ Tommy agreed in a murmur, leaning in to catch the scent and heat of her skin. ‘I’m a lucky guy.’

He put his mouth where his fingers had been, hot and wet against the line of her neck, the curve of her jaw. She made a sound that caught in her throat, then became a moan. He threaded his hands into the heavy mass of her hair, like silk around his fingers, and tilted her head back, exposing her full mouth and her lashes that fluttered closed. It would be so easy to prove her a liar, to settle his mouth against hers, to press himself into the inviting cradle of her body. But, instead, he ignored the roar of his own body, and waited.

Her breath was ragged. She opened her eyes. Her pupils
were dilated, and he could feel the shiver that snaked through her.

‘Goodnight, Jenna,’ he said.

She blinked, confused. He leaned over and kissed her gently, chastely, on the forehead. He heard her suck in a breath, then release it in a rush.

‘What are you … ?’

He liked the stammer in her voice. The thickness.

When he stepped back, she sagged against the door, and grabbed the frame to hold herself up. She looked dazed. He liked the fact that he’d made her look that way without actually kissing her mouth.

Like hell she didn’t want him.

‘I’m not going to sleep tonight,’ he told her, with very male satisfaction he didn’t try to hide. His smile was almost cruel. ‘Why should you?’