Star Struck (14 page)

‘She's not much of an advert for recreational alcohol abuse, is she?' Jack stayed sitting beside me, despite the fact that the little car was now as airless and hot as a bread oven. Felix clambered out and grabbed Lissa by the arm. He waited, like a prison warder, while she locked the car door – taking several stabs to hit the right button – and then half-dragged her towards the motel. Lissa had one hand over her eyes and vomit on her skirt but that was normal for Felix's girlfriends.

‘Skye.' Jack put a hand on my arm to prevent me from opening my door. ‘Can I just … you're interested in Gethryn, aren't you?'

I was so relieved that the driving was over I had a system throbbing with endorphins. ‘Well, I'm female, I've got a pulse.' My eyes followed Felix and Lissa, hoping that he wasn't going to take her to our room, as I was looking forward to a shower and a change of clothes, and a drunken Lissa wasn't my first choice of bathroom accessories.

‘He looks like he's got his eye on you.'

My heart did a little swipe around my chest.
Gethryn fancied me!
Me, little Skye Threppel from Nowhereville, with her scarred face and aborted acting career and her scuzzy hair. Me! ‘Does he?' I asked, trying to sound cool but remembering the soft touch of Gethryn's fingers on mine last night, the way his leonine eyes had held my stare. ‘Gosh. Did you put in a word for me?'

‘Me? Quite the reverse. Look, Skye, Gethryn's got … problems. What you see on screen, it's not him.'

‘It's all right, Jack, I might have some brain damage but I can still separate fantasy from reality just like everyone else.'

‘And it's Lucas James that you want, isn't it? I mean, you don't know Gethryn at all, would you normally contemplate … whatever it is that you're contemplating, with a man you don't know?'

Now I turned to look at him. He had
very
dark eyes, I noticed for the first time, almost black, and his hair snagged on the uneven stubble which peppered his cheeks. ‘You don't know
what
I'm contemplating.'

‘Okay, tell me it's a Scrabble match.' Jack leaned in closer and put his hands on my shoulders. I could see my reflection in his eyes. ‘I just don't think that someone like you should be anywhere near Gethryn at the moment, that's all.'

I screwed my eyes up. Why the hell should he care? ‘“Someone like me”? What's that supposed to mean? What do you think I'm like, then? And who died and made you Freud?'

‘I'm a writer. It kind of goes with the territory that we understand people, and I'm good at getting inside people's heads, at least I think I am. And I think you're too fragile for Gethryn.'

My eyes were dragged away from him, back to the accident-waiting-to-happen which was Lissa and Felix at the front of the motel. They appeared to be having a very shouty argument. ‘Are you calling me pathetic?'

‘No! Not at all. It's more that you've been damaged so badly the last thing you need is some bloke with issues getting his hands on you.'

‘Look.' This time he didn't try to stop me opening the car door. ‘I might have been injured but I'm over it. I'm learning to cope with the memory loss, I'm even getting over the whole stress panic attack thing, and if Gethryn wants – well, anything with me, then I can use my own judgement about the situation. I'm twenty-nine, Jack, and I didn't get to be twenty-nine by not having any critical faculties, you know.'

His head turned. Hell-black eyes moved over my face, lingering on the scar this time. ‘I'm sure you didn't. I just think that they might be overridden sometimes.' A slow, almost reluctant hand caught my chin and turned my face towards his. ‘It's when you think you're okay, when you think you're doing well; that's when life can rise up and shake you by the throat, you know that?'

I could see his eyelashes, the tiny fragments of green that lifted the colour of his eyes. I could smell the recent smoke on his skin, feel his fingers on my jawbone. I sat there, rigid, not knowing what was coming, or even what I
wanted
to come; there was something very powerful about Jack Whitaker in that second. As though his words were aimed at me but contained something of himself, something he wanted me to know.

‘Still. None of my business, eh?' His voice was suddenly flat, the northern vowels dropping like stones and he released his grip on my face. ‘Guess I'll see you at the Q and A tonight?'

‘What's the Q and A about?' My voice was slightly shaky as the sudden change of subject left me winded.

‘Everyone's chance to ask anything they want about the making of the show. Strictly back-room stuff. I'm on the panel with make-up and costume people. Wouldn't have done it, wouldn't even be here, but the writer who likes to turn out for these things has just had a baby. She was booked to come but the baby was premature and the network bosses thought it was time I put my face out in front of people; therefore, well, here I am.'

‘Juliette Coles. She had a little boy three weeks ago.' I couldn't help myself. It was a kind of hangover from the quiz.

‘Yeah. Sorry, forgot that I was talking to the
Fallen Skies
Brain of Britain.' He flipped the door open and unfolded himself into the air, then bent to look at me through the window. ‘Want to take bets on how many times I get asked where I get my ideas from?' He leaned a little closer. ‘Want to take bets on how many people ask me what Gethryn's
really
like?' A stretch of his lanky body as though his back was hurting him. ‘Want to take bets on what I say?'

The silence went on for a few seconds longer than was comfortable. I didn't want to get out of the car with him standing there. The hugeness of the world, the indefinite boundaries, the uncontainedness of it, all were suddenly nothing compared to the scary closeness of the man leaning against the car. I found my fingers were moving without my permission, picking and twisting around each other, snakelike. Scar to scar.

Without another word Jack walked off, heading not towards the motel but out into the grilling heat. His head was bent and his shoulders forward, hands deep into the back pockets of his jeans, drawing attention to the perfect nature of his backside. I didn't know whether he knew I was looking or not.

I let out a breath, then another. There was relief in feeling the air flood out of me, taking a little more tension with it every time. Sweat was rolling between my shoulder blades and pooling in the small of my back; I felt itchy and hot. And annoyed with Jack, and the annoyance managed to push me out of the car when the heat couldn't; into the motel and up to the room with the lure of a cool shower.

Chapter Fourteen

Jack ignored the sun burning a tattoo on the top of his head through his hair. Ignored the heat eating up through the soles of his tatty trainers, ignored everything physical. Walked and let his mind run free, let the ideas and scenarios play themselves out on the screen behind his eyes. Not for the first time he found himself thinking about home, not the apartment in LA but real home. The farm on the moors, the acres of rain, the sound of water racing. His head spun with the urge to go back.
Go home. Is it really that simple? Just … leave here and go back? Leave all this fame and fortune shit way behind and go back to the quiet life? And why do I even want to?
But he knew why. It was all because of Skye. Skye who reminded him that life could be simple and calm, that it didn't have to contain these high-octane, high maintenance lifestyles. A scarred girl with a gentle smile, who hated the manic and the overblown – everything that his life had become.

But Skye wanted Gethryn. She believed she knew him, understood him, although all she really knew were the words that Jack had given him. Which meant all she really wanted was the body. Which, Jack had to admit, was pretty spectacular. He'd seen Geth striding about in the buff more times than he cared to remember and he knew it was the kind of muscular, toned thing that the girls went for. A butt like two footballs and a six-pack you could have got a tune out of if you'd hit it with a stick.

Not like me.
For the first time in a very long while Jack wished he'd inherited his da's ability to talk to women, not just his spare frame and a way with words. Really
talk
, about the things that meant something, the things that hurt and the things that healed. The ability to have a relationship that didn't just skate along the icy surface, but smashed it and explored the depths beneath. Or even to have that twinkle that had so enthralled his mum, kept her giggly and girlish until the day she died. He'd got none of it. And now, for the first time,
it mattered
.

He'll ruin her. He'll take that lovely naivety and strip it back until she's chilly and hard. He'll play on her insecurities, make her feel worthless and unlovable, he'll take her to bed and …
Jack stopped suddenly.
Am I jealous? Is that it?
He played the thought of Skye touching Gethryn, stopped and rewound it, let it play out again, but every time it got as far as her taking her clothes off Gethryn would disappear and be replaced by a shadowy figure and the POV would switch until he was watching her strip through his own eyes.
So. It's not that I want to save her. I want her to want me.

He pushed his hands into his pockets to distract himself from the loop, which now had Skye tugging off the last of her clothes with an inviting smile, and shook his head. Knowing now that it wasn't saving Skye that was really on his mind, that keeping her from Geth wasn't about preventing a tragedy. This was all about saving himself. Jack Whitaker, the heartless, the emotionally invincible, was actually beginning to feel something.
And it hurt.

Chapter Fifteen

Doused and damp, I lay on the bed, thinking about Jack.

Well, less thinking and more wondering. Why was he so … so … cut off? I'd always expected the crew of
Fallen Skies
to be a rollicking bunch, full of in-jokes and private feuds, a tight-knit group who worked hard together for months on end. And, the others
were
. Felix had told me they crowded into the bar at night with the punters, joking and punching shoulders and telling elaborate stories about set-ups and on-screen mistakes.

But not Jack. I'd hardly seen him speak to a soul, apart from Gethryn and Lissa. Except for this Q and A panel he didn't seem to mix with the others, neither actors nor crew; he just sat in his room and typed on his laptop rather than carouse and party the night away. All the magazine articles I'd read about
Fallen Skies
had the show-runner down as a loner; lured away from writing his best-selling sci-fi series of novels by the network's head honcho to work on the now-defunct
Two Turns North
, then going on to mastermind his own show. So why did he come across as someone who kept himself a deliberate outsider? Why not enjoy his position, even exploit it a little? Why did he behave as though he was somehow ashamed of being successful? And why, in the name of all that was fashionable, did he go practically everywhere barefoot and put anything which even slightly resembled a cigarette into his mouth?

But he's more than just a little bit cute, too, eh Skye?
All those moody looks, those eyes like something out of a Poe novel … come on, admit it to yourself, you quite fancy that serious thing he's got going on, don't you?

Michael had been reckless, apparently. Hell bent on success, on living life fast and long. Never sleeping while there was mischief to be made.
That
was my type of man, the fun-grabbing madcap sort, not the shy, retiring type. Previous boyfriends had all verged on the illegally wild side, or at least the ones I could remember had. Maybe my tastes had changed? Or maybe I had … I rubbed the rough edges of my fingertips over my scar again and shook my head, troubled by the feeling that my life had become one huge stammer, disconnected ends that never met, a dotted line. Those gaps, they contained all the things that made me
me
, and I couldn't get them to join up, as hard as I tried.

I finally twisted my thoughts away from the shadowy writer and back towards where I wanted them.
Gethryn.
That head-singing moment of absolute bliss when Gethryn had talked to me last night. That almost-promise of further talking. I rolled gleefully on the bed – it wasn't my imagination, Jack had seen it too – Gethryn
wanted me
.

There was a knock at the door. I opened it. Felix stood there radiating a negatively attractive aura. He was horribly pale, his pupils were oscillating crazily and he seemed to have acquired a facial tic which caused his upper lip to wrinkle every few seconds. He had sand in his hair which fell like solid dandruff every time he moved, and either his eyes were extremely bloodshot or he'd been possessed by the devil.

‘Don't,' he said. ‘Just
don't
.'

Then he staggered into the bathroom and, without closing the door or taking off any clothes, turned on the shower and stood under it, eyes so wide open that his lids seemed to have been pulled up like blinds.

‘Fe?'

‘Is there any Valium left?' he slurred through rigid lips. ‘And, please God, let the answer be yes.'

I fumbled two tablets from the little brown bottle and took them into the bathroom where he swallowed them, tipping his head back to let the water from the shower carry them down his throat. ‘Oh God. Oh God. I am
wrecked
.'

‘But you've been drinking …'

One solitary, counter-rotating eye glared at me. ‘Lover, you are looking at the walking image of habituation here. I'd have to swallow the entire bottle before I felt even a little bit peaky.' He slowly closed his eyes, letting the water pound down on the top of his head, slicking his hair flat until he looked like a Brylcreem advert. ‘Oh, my Lord. How did Jack stand it? He must be made of fucking
iron
.' One eye opened again. ‘And if you have any information on that, lover, then give it up. Don't think I didn't notice the two of you dogging it behind us.'

‘We were worried.'

‘Quite right, too. She is crazy. Christ, she's got some serious issues and she is not afraid to take them out on innocent bystanders.' He winced. ‘I really need to sleep. Seriously.'

‘Oh,
Fe
. I thought you'd come with me to the Q and A session.'

‘Sorry, darling.' Felix flopped out of the shower and started pulling off his soaking clothes. ‘All I'm fit for now is to sleep it off. Q and A is at seven, that's …' he waved his watch in front of his eyes but was obviously focus-impaired at the moment, ‘
hours
away. I'll try and fit it in before I get busy. Okay, lover?' Stark naked he stood in front of me, swaying.

‘You're a mess.'

‘Yeah. Trashed.' A quick, glorious smile. ‘That's how you know you're on holiday.' Then he took a few, faltering steps into the bedroom and collapsed, still soaking wet from the shower, face down on the bed. ‘Thank God for Valium,' he muttered into the duvet, and either passed out or fell asleep.

*****

At five past seven I was hovering around inside the main doors to the motel. A few hardy fans were drinking in the bar behind me but the Q and A event and an impromptu Karaoke session, which had broken out in the diner, had soaked up most of the crowd. Felix was still out for the count on the bed and Jack was on the stage in Meeting Room One. A quick glance through the doors had seen him safely seated between a bearded special-effects wizard and a girl from the wardrobe department, holding forth in enormous detail on story-arc plotting.

Any other time I would have been entranced by just such a talk. To be honest, I'd have listened to Jack Whitaker reading from the phone book, under normal conditions. But, this was my only chance to get a glimpse of Gethryn, without Jack stomping around muttering psychological rubbish, or Felix's hair-tossing attempts to be noticed. I'd got my breathing under control, slicked my hair with that miracle serum, covered my scar with a careful layer of make-up, and here I stood. Staring out through the tinted plate glass at the wide-stretched ridged brownness that was Nevada, heaped foothills on the horizon and air that smelled of boiled dust.

But there was no sign of Gethryn. I'd been hoping that he'd come to hang around the bar like so many of the other
Fallen Skies
crew members were doing, lounging around in their logoed T-shirts drinking cold beer and occasionally becoming involved in deep discussions with earnest fans. I knew he hadn't dropped in on the Q and A; maybe he'd decided on an early night and was tucked up in the Winnebago with a whisky and a detective novel.

I'd give it another five minutes. I stood near the windows, my palms sweating, trying to look as though gazing out over the desert was my preferred way of spending time and hoping that Gethryn might at least choose to waft through with his posse once tonight. Thanks to the open-plan reception area with the bar at the back, I could look as though I was lost in thought and Nevada scenery whilst keeping my entire body on alert for his appearance in the reflections in the window. Just a little
peep
, I thought, longingly, just let me
see
him, and I promise I'll go to bed without a fuss. Just a sight of those well-muscled hips striding through reception, maybe another of those saucy winks thrown my way? Was that too much to ask?

And then, suddenly, there he was.

I watched his reflection saunter across the carpet, unacknowledged. He was wearing jeans with interesting slashes down the thighs revealing toned muscles and tanned skin, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to elbow height. A few of the drinkers greeted him, I saw his transparent self raise a hand in acceptance, but he remained unaccompanied as he approached the bar. Ordered a glass of something, then turned around.

I carefully kept my eyes front, still appearing to gaze out on the rapidly darkening landscape, but in reality unable to focus on anything other than Gethryn, who was staring at my back view in a very considered way. The expanse of tinted glass, silvered with night, was a perfect reflective surface and I could see every nuance of expression on his face, the slightly raised eyebrows and the half-grin that curled his mouth as he watched me. When I saw him ignore his glass and push off from the bar, I hastily wiped my hands down my skirt and made sure that I had a far-away look on my face.

‘All alone?' He spoke behind my left shoulder, and now I allowed my eyes to refocus, seeing his reflection embossed on mine. ‘You not wanting to hear all the backstage slander then,
bach
?'

Play it cool, Skye. I didn't turn around, but spoke to him whilst keeping my eyes on the desert. ‘It's more interesting here, listening to everyone chat.'

‘Ah, they're all talking bollocks, girl. We both know there's more to the world than
Fallen Skies
, don't we?' His ghostly self stretched its arms wide and I felt the brief, thrilling press of his chest against my back.

My heart scuttered and my voice had to work to get past it. ‘But they're here because
Fallen Skies
means something to them. It's touched them in some way.'

I felt Gethryn's hands come down from their stretch and lightly rest on my shoulders. Our reflections kept their eyes front. ‘Oh, our Jack is one fine writer, I'll give him that. He gave me speeches that have stayed in my head; that one about “the horizons of all worlds are reachable by all races –”, not a pair of eyes without tears on set when we recorded that. But …' he lowered his voice and his accent became stronger and thicker like good coffee, ‘at the end of the day,
bach
, it's just a TV show.'

I turned around. Over at the far side of the bar a small knot of women had realised Gethryn was in the room and a fumbling search for cameras and autograph books was underway. ‘Whoo-hoo, Gethryn honey!' One of the women held up a pen. ‘Could you come over a minute, my friend Dorinda here wants to get your picture?'

Gethryn still had his hands on my shoulders. ‘Uh oh,' he said lightly, close to my ear. ‘Bunch of menopausal matriarchs want some cuddle-shots. Better go, lovely.' The hands ran away down my arms, skimming lightly over the skin and raising hairs as they went. ‘But, look. You go outside, I'll get rid of the sci-fi Saga girls, and I'll meet you out there. There's this tree, out beyond the car park, wait by there.' Then, as if he hadn't just arranged an assignation that was making my skin heat up all over, he sauntered nonchalantly across to the bar where waiting hands seized him and pulled him into the centre of attention.

Oh God. Gethryn wanted me
alone
. Nevada, despite the perpetual brownness and heat, was now officially Paradise. A real-life, tawny-headed, lion-eyed bona fide TV star wanted to talk to me! Alone! Surreptitiously I watched him pressing flesh with the good ladies in the corner, and there was, despite their collective age, quite a lot of flesh on display. Low necklines, high hemlines and some well-preserved tanned skin on the peripheries, hair colours that could surely never be natural, and mountainous heels. Coral lips offered up kisses he couldn't turn down and I had to grin. He turned, in the midst of it all, saw me watching and gave a heart-melting smile, raising his eyebrows to indicate the ridiculousness of it all.

I dashed outside and headed out across the car park. There, just beyond the ranks of cars, stood one of the few trees in the area, a species I didn't recognise with scrubby, brush-like leaves. In fact, it didn't so much stand as squat, as though the heat and dust had beaten a perfectly normal tree down over decades. I went and sat beside it. The heat pushed my head down onto my chest, and my breathing felt like artificial respiration by hairdryer.

I sat for a while, during which I lost track of time. Darkness thickened around me and there were weird noises floating through the air, but, to be honest, I was more worried about being discovered by Jack than I was about being eaten by wolves. His utter condemnation of Gethryn was so inexplicable and profound that I wondered if it was a form of jealousy. Perhaps he was tired of losing out to Gethryn's burnished perfection, tired of his scratchy nature and persistent smoking habit being compared to Gethryn's easy temperament.

I shook my head. Jack was attractive with all that dark hair and those intense eyes: I'd seen plenty of the women at the convention watching him. He could have taken his pick of a bunch of the hangers-on, wannabe writers and TV groupies. But he clearly wasn't a groupie kind of guy. A little voice whispered in the back of my head ‘
and you really want to find out just what kind of guy he is, Skye, don't you?
'

‘Hey, lovely.' I shook my head again and raised my eyes to the skyline. ‘Sorry to take so long, got caught up. And the girls wanted to buy me a drink, would have been rude to refuse, wouldn't it?' The rise and fall of his accent was almost edible, like chocolate drizzled over cream, blunted just a touch by alcohol. He was carrying a bottle. ‘Fancy joining me in another?'