Love notes (10 page)

“I’ve told you, I have a throat
problem. Aiden has nothing to do with this.”

“For all I know, you’ve started
seeing him again,”

Relief at Marty’s mistake
flooded through her and she relaxed enough to feign offence. “I’ve
told you, I want nothing more to do with him. Not that I’d be able
to meet him in secret with half of London’s paparazzi on my trail.”
She waited for the truth of this to sink in. “Trust me, Marty. This
isn’t a trick. I need to see a doctor if I’m to prevent serious
damage to my voice.”

Marty stood before her, caught
between relief at having an excuse to head down to the capital, but
terrified that his main source of income was about to dry up. Money
took priority and he snatched up the hotel phone to dial reception.
“I’ll have a car here within the hour. We’ll be in London in time
for dinner.”

“No!” This wasn’t at all how
Erika intended it to go and she panicked. “There’s no point in me
going today. The doctor can’t see me until six on Monday.”

“Three days! Does he know who
you are?”

“He knows exactly who I am which
is why he’s seeing me at the end of the day. He’s clearing his
clinic before I arrive so there’s no chance of this getting
out.”

Marty was all too aware of the
potentially-disastrous effect this news could have on Erika’s
future prospects – no record company would dare extend a contract,
or sponsor a stadium tour, if its star had a career-threatening
throat problem.

As a confirmed control freak,
this took Marty beyond his sphere of influence and he cursed
obscenely.

“We can still go today. The
European promoters are desperate to talk to me about a tour and I
can catch them over the weekend.”

“Then why not go on ahead?”
Erika leapt upon this perfect excuse to get rid of Marty. “Sort out
the hotel. See your people. Get back to civilisation.”

“I can’t leave you alone
here.”

“Why not? I’m far less visible
here than in London. Once I head south, I won’t be able to walk out
of the front door.” When she saw this argument had no influence
with Marty, she tried another tack, hating having to lie but
telling herself it was justified. “The doctor said rest and fresh
air are the best things possible for my throat. There’ll be
precious little of either in London. I need to stay here but
there’s no point in you hanging around.”

The temptation of being in
London played out against the risks of leaving Erika alone,
plunging Marty into an agony of indecision. But then he remembered
something else and he shook his head, his expression telling Erika
that she needed to be a great deal cleverer to catch him out.

“What about Aiden?”

“I told you, he’s checking out
today.” Erika pulled a disgusted face as if the idea of Aiden
Thirstan revolted her. “If you’re worried, stay with me until he’s
gone. Or hire some extra security and post them outside my door.
They’ll be doing me a favour if they can keep him away.”

Marty thought for a long moment,
but then he made the fatal mistake of underestimating Erika and
gave in. “I’ll make some calls. Line up a suite at The Savoy.”

“Two suites,” Erika corrected
him as she swept her arm around the room. “I can’t live like this.
I need my own place.”

She’d shared suites with him
once too often and was glad of the excuse to snatch some privacy.
After all, she could hardly make secret phone calls to Aiden with
Marty the other side of the door.

“I’ll hook up with a couple of
bodyguards too,” Marty went on, thinking out loud. “They’ll keep
the paparazzi off our backs.”

And ensure I can’t breathe
without someone watching, Erika thought but agreed to anything
rather than set off any alarm bells in Marty’s head.

“I’ll have a car here for you
first thing Monday,” Marty went on. “But you’ve got to promise not
to leave the hotel.”

“I promise. The manager’s put a
piano in one of the private dining rooms for me so I’ll spend the
weekend working on some new material. I won’t set foot out of the
door. I swear.”

“I wish I could believe
that.”

Marty looked sideways at her,
still uneasy, but his mobile rang and he went through into his
bedroom to retrieve it. Erika heard him talking to her tour manager
in Los Angeles and guessed it wouldn’t be a two minute
conversation. Marty started asking the caller all kinds of
questions in advance of the meetings with the European promoters
and Erika decided to leave him to it. She put her head in through
the bedroom doorway where Marty lay on the unmade bed, phone
clamped to his ear in a familiar pose. As she went to leave, she
saw his laptop lying on one of the sofas, half buried by cast-off
clothes. It was too good an opportunity to miss and she snatched it
up before heading out of the suite. She ran down the back stairs to
Aiden’s landing where she banged on his door, her heart hammering
louder than her fist at the thought of facing him again so
soon.

“I have Marty’s laptop,” she
said, barging her way in as soon as Aiden opened the door, and not
daring to look at him. “I thought we could see what’s on it.”

Aiden flattened himself against
the wall as she swept past and slammed the door, rather than closed
it, behind her.

“Good morning. I didn’t expect
to see you any time soon.” He glared. “After your little seduction
yesterday, I assumed you’d have moved on to someone else by
now.”

“What do you mean?” she asked,
playing for time and hiding her rising embarrassment under a layer
of irritation.

“It was hardly subtle. You took
what you wanted and left.”

“Oh, get over yourself, Aiden.”
Erika pretended she had neither the time nor the patience for his
sudden attack of a moral conscience. “Are you telling me you’ve
never used someone for sex?” She paused but knew he couldn’t deny
it. “I felt horny, you have the most incredible body and I could
trust you not to post the pictures on Facebook. End of.”

His jaw tightened. “I’m swept
away by the romance of it.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” she
warned, standing in front of him and measuring herself against him.
“You’re twice my size. You could have stopped me at any time.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Didn’t want to miss out on sex
with Erika Fenn, you mean.” She stared him out, daring him to
disagree.

“Perhaps I’m not as calculating
as you think.”

This Erika couldn’t believe and
walked away to the sofa, glad to have her back to Aiden for a
moment so he couldn’t see how excruciatingly embarrassing she’d
found the exchange – for all her bravado. “Stop complaining. I made
you come so hard, your heart stopped.”

“At least you acknowledge I have
a heart. That’s progress.”

“So what’s your problem?”

“I don’t like being used.”

Erika shrugged as if she
couldn’t have cared less. “I doubt a tart like you will be
psychologically scarred by the experience.”

She heard Aiden repeat the word
tart under his breath as she sat down and switched on Marty’s
laptop. When she dared glance across at him, she saw him still
standing in the hallway, hovering between irritation and what
looked like amusement, not quite sure which way to fall. She
wondered whether she’d gone too far but decided she didn’t have
time for niceties.

“Are you going to help me, or
not?” she demanded. “I stole this laptop when Marty was on the
phone. He could miss it any minute.”

Setting aside his annoyance,
Aiden sat down next to her and began searching through the
documents, downloading several onto a memory stick but many were
password protected.

“How do I get into these?” he
asked, tapping in the password combinations Erika gave him to try.
Marty’s inbox yielded the first time but all of the financial files
remained locked. Aiden swore under his breath.

“It’s no good. I need help,” he
said, standing up to fish in his pocket for his mobile.

Erika watched him in the way she
had at the poolside, her eyes drinking in every detail, and
deciding his body looked almost as good dressed as it did
naked.

In fact, delicious enough to
undress all over again, she thought wickedly.

Aiden had his back to her as he
dialled, standing over by the window, one hand in the pocket of the
faded jeans that sat low on his hips and clung tightly around his
pert bum. His white T-shirt fitted close to his torso, stretching
tautly across his shoulders that flexed as he raised his hand to
his hair.

The movement sent a shock of
recognition through Erika. Whenever Aiden concentrated hard he
rubbed the short hair on the back of his neck and she guessed he’d
be biting his bottom lip too. When he turned, she saw he was and
smiled to herself.

Erika hadn’t even realised that
she’d remembered these details about him – or perhaps it went
deeper than remembering.

Recognising these little
gestures – or the cleft in his chin when he struggled not to laugh,
and the birthmark across his shoulder that she’d kissed so often –
had been among the tiny intimacies that had bound him to her.
Somehow they’d become instinctive; like the way she’d known where
to touch and please him in bed, or the ability she had to make him
laugh because she understood his off-beat sense of humour.

Knowledge like that didn’t come
with a passing friendship or a vague acquaintance, she realised. It
happened when two people threw open their hearts and let down every
defence, making themselves totally vulnerable. Only then could they
love completely or, as had happened to Erika, be at risk of having
their heart irreparably broken.

A sad sigh escaped her,
diverting Aiden’s attention. He came back to the sofa, the mobile
still cradled between his shoulder and his ear while he followed
the detailed – and probably highly illegal – instructions on the
other end of the line. He tapped away on the keyboard, calling up
information that lay hidden deep within the heart of the computer,
and Erika moved away, figuring the less she knew, the better.

After ten more minutes Aiden
hung up and looked at Erika.

“I’ll messenger this down to
London,” he told her, holding up the memory stick he’d just
unplugged. “My techno-people will get onto it straight away.”

“Any idea what’s on it?”

He shook his head unhappily.
“It’s all encrypted. But hopefully, they’ll find something to give
us more leverage.”

“The contract?”

“Impossible to say. In
twenty-four hours we’ll know a lot more.” He handed the laptop back
so she could replace it. “Have you arranged anything with
Marty?”

At least here, Erika could
report success. “He’s heading for London this afternoon but leaving
me here until Monday, on condition you’re moving out.”

“OK.” Aiden looked around his
suite and worked out how long it would take him to pack. “Get Marty
downstairs on some pretext and I’ll check out while he’s
there.”

“Be careful. He’s suspicious. He
thinks we’re seeing one another again.”

Aiden glanced toward the open
bedroom door, the implication obvious. “And are we?”

“No!” Erika couldn’t have been
more definite.

“So what was yesterday?”

“Yesterday was your lucky day.
But don’t expect an encore.”

“Shame. I was hoping for
one.”

Erika decided it was a good job
Aiden would be moving into a different hotel that afternoon. Heaven
knows what would happen if he were in touching distance for the
whole weekend.

I can hardly trust myself, let
alone trust him, she thought.

She took a few steps past Aiden
but stopped before reaching the door. Even though she hadn’t worked
out his motives, she understood Aiden was doing a great deal to
help her, without any apparent benefit to himself, and she’d hardly
thanked him. She turned to find him standing close behind her,
smiling in that warm, easy way and her heart melted a little.

“Up until now, I haven’t exactly
seemed grateful,” she began, “but I really do appreciate everything
you’re doing for me.”

Aiden played it down. “It’s
nothing. A few phone calls. Speaking to a couple of contacts.”

“It’s not nothing. You’ve shown
me a way out. Until I saw you again, I hadn’t realised how much I
wanted it all to end.”

“What else do you want?”

Erika laughed at this. “Can we
start with the smaller questions and work up to the big ones?” she
said, letting down her guard at last. “I’ve hardly had time to
think, let alone plan out the rest of my life.”

“So why don’t we talk it through
over dinner tonight?”

“Dinner?”

“Yeah. You know. That meal in
the evening.” His smile widened. “I know how much you like to
eat.”

“I’m not sure.” The hesitation
returned as Erika wondered whether it wouldn’t be more sensible to
keep her distance from Aiden. Life around him had a habit of
getting so complicated.

“Please?” A current of
uncertainty flashed across his tiger’s eyes and he appeared
unusually ill at ease. “I know a little place not far away…”

“No. I can’t leave the hotel. It
would be just like Marty to check up on me.”

“Then we’ll eat here. Marty need
never know you’ve left your suite.” When Erika took a long while to
answer, Aiden resorted to easy-going coercion, softening it with a
smile. “In any case, you owe me.”

“How do you work that out?”

“Because it’s polite to buy
someone dinner before taking them to bed. You apparently prefer to
do it the other way around.”

Ten minutes earlier Erika would
have coloured furiously and run out of the room but this softer,
gentler Aiden disarmed her and she burst out laughing. “That is
probably the cheesiest line I’ve ever heard. Even from you.”

“So is that a yes?”

“I don’t appear to have any
choice.” Erika had been backed into a corner but, surprisingly, had
absolutely no desire to fight her way out of it. When Aiden smiled
triumphantly, she issued a warning. “We’ll keep it casual and eat
in the bistro. Nothing fancy.”