by Crane, Megan
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?’
18
Just as Jenna remembered, and had once upon a time breathlessly assembled into a scrapbook, the papers were abuzz with Tommy’s near-death experience. Ken Dollimore was beside himself with joy that he could infuse the station’s coverage of ‘the event’ with real commentary from ‘an anonymous source at the scene’, and Video TV launched into ‘Tommygate’ with round-the-clock coverage – above and beyond what the situation merited, in Jenna’s opinion.
Jenna was somewhat less delighted, a fact she had time to consider as she made the trek from Ken Dollimore’s office towards the warehouse down near Wall Street where the Wild Boys were filming their latest video. Fall had swept in as October began, kicking out the meandering remains of Indian summer and treating the city to the cold winds and rain that heralded the coming winter. More than this, the gloomy weather reminded Jenna that Tommy only had a few weeks left to live.
She knew that the ‘accidents’ kept happening, until the final one. The trouble was, she wasn’t exactly sure when they happened. Which meant that she had no option but to trail around after Tommy even more than she already did. Which should have been fine, except her resistance to him waned more and more every day. Or maybe it was that her desire for him expanded, something she would have said once was impossible.
She was forced, in the absence of Aimee, to give herself a talking-to on this subject as the cab lurched down Broadway in the middle of the usual midday Manhattan chaos. The rain drummed against the roof of the taxi, and miserable-looking pedestrians slogged down the grey sidewalks outside the foggy window. Jenna wrapped herself tighter in the wide-shouldered, oversized plaid atrocity that had been the only fall-coat option in Aunt Jen’s closet, and settled back against the seat.
Why was she resisting Tommy the first place, Jenna demanded of herself with all the Aimee-esque concern she could muster? Hadn’t she loved this man since she was a pre-teen? Hadn’t she made her entire adult life a shrine to the fantasy of his perfection? Hadn’t she found her own long-term boyfriend and short-term fiancé lacking, in comparison to that fantasy? Hadn’t she accepted the fact, just last week if memory served, that she had been hiding from everyone else and the whole world in her fantasy of Tommy Seer and who she wanted him to be?
So why, after he had overcome his initial reluctance which, no matter how embarrassing to herself, she understood, and more to the point after travelling through time to meet him, was she now desperately trying to keep him at arm’s length like some tragic, dithering virgin? Sure, she had issues with commitment. But it wasn’t as if Tommy had proposed marriage. He hadn’t proposed anything at all, in point of fact. He didn’t need to propose something – all he had to do was touch her and her body went up in flames.
So what was her problem? It didn’t make sense to keep saying no.
The fact was, on some level, she didn’t believe that he really wanted her. But she couldn’t get her head around the way he touched her. She’d experienced the Tommy-faking-it version before, and it had been nothing like this. It had been colder, more distant. It had been nothing so … combustible.
And she’d certainly never felt like this before. Not about Adam. Not about anyone. Not even about her own fantasy version of Tommy himself. Even that paled in comparison to the reality.
She tried to relax into the seat behind her, but her shoulders refused to come down from around her ears. Or maybe that was the effect of the ubiquitous shoulder pads, which made her feel like she was in
a Star Trek uniform.
The thing was, she didn’t think she was in 1987 by chance. Unless, of course, she really was locked away in Bellevue and this was a delusion – but that merely meant this was the only reality her poor, broken brain could handle, so it all ended up the same.
Jenna wasn’t a particularly religious person. She’d been raised mildly Protestant, and celebrated Christmas, and otherwise didn’t spend a great quantity of time thinking about it. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure what she believed about God, or fate, or destiny, or the universe, or karma, or whatever else.
But she didn’t think that it could be an accident that, of all the people in the world who might have been in that supply closet at the exact moment the lightning hit, it had been her. The one person who knew down to the last nit-picking detail what Tommy Seer had done with his last weeks on earth. The one person who was invested enough in Tommy Seer that she would stay by his side and try to help him, rather than, for example, heading back home to Indiana for a heart-to-heart chat with her former self – a trip that could not only change the course of her own personal history, but could conceivably allow her to mete out a little justice to some of the bullies of her junior high school.
The fact that it had never crossed Jenna’s mind to do this – or to buy Microsoft stock, or do any of the other things which would make her own life better or different – had to mean something.
Didn’t it?
The truth was, she didn’t think the universe – or God, or fate, or whatever had sent her back in time, and she didn’t care who or what it was – cared if she slept with Tommy. But by the same token, she couldn’t bring herself to believe that the purpose of her trip was to finally get it on with the object of her desire. Because that was just ridiculous. The purpose of her trip had to be to save Tommy. To stop that car from going over the bridge. This unexpected mutual attraction was one more obstacle, that was all.
You make everything so much more convoluted than it needs to be, the Aimee voice in her head said softly. This is not an obstacle, Jenna. You only want it to be.
Maybe the problem was that Jenna kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for reality to reassert itself. Because the reality was that he was Tommy Seer. He dated supermodels in line to the British throne. She was nothing more or less than a regular old New Yorker in her mid-thirties. She wasn’t ugly. On good days she thought she was pretty cute. But she wasn’t the kind of cute that attracted superstars, and she knew it.
Maybe she was waiting for Tommy to realize that simple truth himself. And maybe she was protecting herself, too, because Jenna didn’t know what would become of her if he came to that inevitable realization, say, five seconds after sleeping with her.
Because if she weren’t so scared about getting hit in the head with that dreaded other shoe, it would make all the sense in the world to start sleeping with Tommy. What better way to make sure she was with him night and day, alert to the danger he didn’t even know was stalking him?
Too bad she was far too alert to the danger she was in.
* * *
‘This video is particularly asinine,’ Tommy said in an amused undertone. ‘I think that the video for “Once You Might, Twice Tonight” was by far the most absurd, but this one is coming in a strong second.’
He was sitting in full make-up, complete with drawn-on tattoos all across his face, as the set was being prepared for yet another take of all four Wild Boys, who were expected to crawl across the floor – covered in scarves and sinuous, half-naked models – in full battle regalia that was both futuristic and vaguely reptilian. All this while lip-syncing and attempting to look seductive, naturally.
Up above them, huge steel cages hung from precarious-looking hooks. Jenna knew that the Wild Boys would each spend some quality time in those cages, getting his own moment in the sun for his section of the fan base, but she knew that from her memories of the finished product – it hadn’t happened yet in the shoot.
‘This video was—will be fantastic,’ Jenna said confidently, without looking at Tommy. ‘One of the best in the Wild Boys catalogue. I have a feeling.’
‘I can’t help thinking that all of this takes away from the song, somehow,’ he said after a moment. He shrugged. ‘Don’t you think? What’s wrong with us singing the song, instead of performing kabuki theatre?’
‘This is the Eighties.’ Jenna smiled. ‘And nobody does Eighties kabuki video better than the Wild Boys.’
‘I’m not sure that’s a compliment,’ Tommy said after a moment. He sprawled in his chair, his legs stretched out before him, as if he was some indolent princeling. Jenna, meanwhile, knew perfectly well she was sitting as if she’d chosen to carry a selection of hot pokers with her, lodged in an intimate place. She tired herself out, she thought with an internal sigh, and of course, he thought it was funny that she was sitting there like some prim schoolmarm. She could tell he thought it was funny by that crook in the corner of his mouth, the one that was so much warmer than a smirk.
‘You’re good at what you do,’ she said. ‘Of course it’s a compliment.’ He shifted in his seat.
‘What would you think if I changed what I do?’ he asked.
‘You mean, if you became a car salesman?’ Jenna replied drily. ‘I don’t think that would be the best use of your skills, to be honest.’
‘Not exactly what I meant.’ He looked at the set. ‘What if I wanted to play a different kind of music?’
‘Well,’ Jenna said, frowning as she thought it over. Did he mean to go all jazzy, the way Sting had after The Police? Not the worst career move in the world. ‘The Wild Boys—’
‘Not the Wild Boys. Me. I told you, I want to leave the band.’ He sighed. ‘I want to do something different. Something less—’
He broke off, and indicated his face paint with his fingers.
‘Then you should,’ she said, staunchly. ‘You should do what you want to do. You certainly have the talent for it.’
‘But that doesn’t mean anyone will want to hear it,’ Tommy said. His gaze was intense. ‘Maybe I’m only good at pageant and kabuki theatre, after all. Maybe I shouldn’t want anything more than that.’
Jenna ached for him in ways she didn’t wish to explore. She reached over and put her hand on his, and felt him twitch in surprise. It was the first time in a long while that she’d touched him first, and they both took a breath, then another.
‘I think,’ she said, and looked him full in the face, so there could be no mistake, ‘that you’d be wonderful. No matter what you sing, or how.’
He looked almost taken aback, as if he hadn’t expected her to be that direct. His green eyes looked almost dazed. She hoped it was because of her sincerity, and not because he suspected she’d succumbed to the groupie zombie virus once again. She knew she hadn’t. She knew she believed in him. The real him.
‘Jenna …’ he said, her name little more than a breath.
‘Places!’ someone yelled then, and they both jumped.
Tommy flipped his hand over, capturing hers in his much bigger one. He didn’t say a word, he only held her hand for a breathless instant, the warmth from his palm sinking into her skin like ink.
Then he got up and walked towards the set without looking back.
Jenna sighed, and looked around the set, trying to concentrate on the various people running here and there, because she knew that all the bodyguard types in the romantic suspense novels she read were always looking around, always watching, always on high alert for any hint of danger. And even though she felt a bit flushed with the pleasure of connecting with Tommy like that, she still had to protect him. That was the reason she’d come back in time. It had to be.
Scowling, she watched the Wild Boys assemble themselves according to the director’s orders, with Tommy front and centre and the other three some distance behind, still enmeshed in the models. She let her gaze drift. To the windows, and then back up to those heavy cages.
And that was when she saw it
.
She frowned, and squinted – not sure.
The biggest of the cages was rocking back and forth, right up there above the Wild Boys – but not as if there was a wind. Not in a controlled way at all, the way she knew it would rock when the band was in it. It was almost as if—
‘WATCH OUT!’ Jenna screamed at the top of her voice, leaping to her feet and lunging towards the set. ‘It’s going to fall! It’s going to fall!’
But it was too late, even as she ran. Even as she screamed out the alarm, she could see it happening.
The cage separated from the hook with a screeching noise, not in slow motion at all, and dropped like a stone towards the set below.
Towards Tommy.
19
‘I think you have to accept the fact that someone really is trying to kill you, and that was their second attempt,’ Jenna said in that bossy voice of hers, which, unaccountably, Tommy found adorable.
She was frowning and generally vibrating with tension in the back of his limo, and Tommy had the sense that if she weren’t still afraid to touch him, she would be fretting over him like some kind of mother hen. All hands and worry, like mothers – generally speaking, not his – were supposed to.
He found that cute, too.
‘Things happen on sets,’ he said nonchalantly. ‘And on city streets, too. No one is trying to kill me.’
‘You’re the one who told me that you thought Duncan was—’ she began, her voice cracking with temper. With concern, he realized. For him.
‘I know what I told you.’ Tommy sighed. He ran his hands over his face, scrubbed clean of the day’s make-up – too clean, in fact, so that it felt reddened to the touch. ‘And I’m not a big fan of leaping out of the way of various heavy steel objects, but I think it’s a coincidence. Duncan looked like he wet himself when that cage hit the floor.’