by Julie Cohen
‘Jane knows my real name,’ Jonny told him.
Thom bobbed his head in delight. ‘Excellent, that is excellent. You’re really getting to know each other, huh?’ He patted Jane’s hand. ‘I’ve been telling Jonny he needs a good woman to lighten him up, and I’m glad I was the person to introduce you.’
‘Yes, it was quite a fateful lunch, wasn’t it?’ Jane smiled at Thom, with only the smallest of glances at Jonny to gauge his reaction.
‘Written in the stars,’ Thom agreed.
Thom didn’t appear to be going anywhere until he’d done his full share of congratulating the two of them on their so-called relationship.
‘Would you like a drink, Thom?’ Jonny asked.
‘I’d kill for a beer, dude. Make sure it’s cold, though.’
‘This is a café, Thom.’
‘Oh. Yeah, okay, a macchiato, thanks. So, Jane, tell me what you love about our friend Jonny here.’
Jonny paused halfway out of his chair. He’d offered Thom a drink so that he could walk away and gather his thoughts for a minute, but now he wasn’t sure that he wanted this conversation to go on without him.
Thom glanced at him and made shooing gestures with his hands. ‘Go get out of here. I’m conferring with your girlfriend.’
‘“Girlfriend” is perhaps a little—’
‘Your red-hot babe friend, then. Go away.’
He went. All the way to the counter he kept his ears pricked, trying to hear Jane and Thom’s conversation over the buzz of the café and the whoosh of the coffee machine. He didn’t have much luck.
And what, precisely, did he want to hear, anyway? he wondered as he paid for Thom’s drink. Did he want to make sure that Jane wasn’t going ahead with the ‘pretending to date’ thing without his consent?
Or did he want to hear something that Jane loved about him?
He nearly spilled the macchiato all over his T-shirt in his haste to get back to the table. Jane was smiling and blushing and Thom was grinning and nodding in that ‘all is cool with the world’ way he had.
‘What are you two talking about?’ Jonny couldn’t stop himself asking as he put the coffee down in front of his agent/friend and sat in his chair again.
Thom clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Dude, you are one lucky man.’ He took a swig of his macchiato and grimaced. ‘Sugar,’ he said, and got up and loped to the counter.
‘Don’t worry,’ Jane said as soon as Thom was out of earshot. ‘I didn’t give away any secrets. We’ve been talking about your career, that’s all.’
‘And how devastatingly attractive you are,’ Thom added, from halfway across the room.
‘Hmmph.’ Jonny covered up his disappointment by drinking his coffee, which was, by now, almost cold.
‘Anyway, I’m sorry to interrupt your little cosy date thing,’ Thom continued, while he finished crossing to them and sat back down in his chair, dumping five or six packets of sugar on the table, ‘but I was on the way to Jonny’s hotel to take him out for a beer and get the skinny on how it went today and I saw the two of you in here. And I want to pick your brains about somebody you work with, Jane.’
‘You mean Gary?’
Jane was too quick to say it, and Jonny swallowed bitter coffee.
It was back to Gary again. Everything came back to Gary, it seemed. Jane’s work, her feelings, this charade she wanted him to take on.
She’d just broken up with the bloke, after all. And how could he, Jonny, compete with that? As well as he believed he knew Jane, as much as he cared about her, when it was all said and done, besides the years as kids and that one night of wild passion, he and Jane had an internet relationship. And Jane was impressed by him being a model.
Compared with years of living and working with Gary, what he and Jane had together had to be shallow.
His coffee tasted like stale jealousy.
Thom was shaking his head, though. ‘No, I mean your art person, who was at the shoot yesterday. Amy. She’s hot, man. Is she seeing anybody?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Awesome. Tell me all about her.’ Thom leaned back in his chair as if it were a hammock.
‘She’s a very good art director. Completely reliable, and very creative. I don’t have any talent at the visual side of things myself, so it’s wonderful to have her on my team. I was very impressed with her CV when she joined the company last year, and she’s completely lived up to it.’
‘Yeah, yeah, that’s great. But what about her? What does she like, what kind of guy does she go for, what’s her favourite food? Does she like boxers or briefs? Wine or cocktails?’
Jonny saw Jane blink a few times. He remembered what she’d said about not having any friends.
‘Um,’ she said, and the slightly lost look in her eyes made him want to hug her. ‘I’m not sure about her favourite food or drink or underwear.’
‘Anything, I’ll take anything. Help me out here.’
‘I know she’s got a little girl, who’s about six,’ Jane said slowly. ‘I think she’s called Stacy.’
‘Oh.’
Thom didn’t say anything else, but his face fell and Jonny could see his mind working. Thom’s conception of a ‘hot babe’ probably didn’t include her having a six-year-old daughter.
‘And she’s really nice. Amy, I mean. I haven’t met Stacy, though I’ve seen her photo on Amy’s desk. Amy’s divorced.’ Jane’s brow furrowed. ‘Or maybe they were never married. No, I think they’re divorced.’
Thom’s face was getting gloomier and gloomier, and Jane was obviously feeling awkward. Jonny opened his mouth to say something to rescue them both, but Jane beat him to it.
‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I know she’s very excited about your party. She said she was definitely going to come and that she was impressed that you’d invited her yourself.’
Thom brightened. ‘My party, yeah. It’s going to be totally gnarly. The decadent decade, nineteen twenties theme all the way. Art nouveau building, beautiful people dressed like something out of The Great Gatsby. Awesome.’
Jonny had been to Thom’s parties before, in California, always packed with glamorous people. He wasn’t exactly the ‘see and be seen’ type himself, but there were usually interesting people there to talk to. And of course it was fun to see Thom in his element, talking with people, playing the host.
‘Sounds great,’ he said, privately hoping there would be lots of people there, so he could escape early and do some work on his book before its deadline without Thom noticing. HTML for Utter Beginners had been neglected lately, what with the photo shoots and the hot sex and the trying, and failing, to sort things out with Jane.
‘And don’t think you’re going to slip off early and do some writing while I’m not looking, Clark Kent,’ Thom said. ‘I want to see you escorting your new lovely lady, fetching her drinks all night and whirling her around the dance floor and all that romantic stuff. You hear me?’
Jonny glanced over at Jane. Now was the time to come clean about their lack of relationship, before Thom expected them to put on a show in front of everyone he’d invited to the party.
Which included Jane’s ex, and his new girlfriend. And everybody who had seen him kissing Jane.
Jane’s expressive grey eyes pleaded with him. Underneath the table, he felt her hand seek out his, and grip his fingers.
The touch of her skin, only this small extremity, was wonderful. He remembered holding her hand, sprinting down the pavement to his hotel and the most incredible experience he’d ever had in his life.
‘I hear you,’ he said. ‘We’ll be there.’
Jane checked her hair for at least the fourteenth time. She’d like to check her outfit, too, but for some reason Gary had owned the only full-length mirror in their flat and he’d taken it with him. The closest she could get to looking at how her rose-coloured drop-waisted silk dress fitted her was to stand on a chair in front of her mirrored bathroom cabinet and twist her body so that she could see
the reflection of both her chest and her hips at the same time.
She didn’t really need to look at her dress in the mirror. She’d only bought it this morning, and she’d looked at it plenty then, from every angle, trying to work out if it showed any humiliating bulges or gaps. It had taken quite a while before she’d decided that it was both concealing enough not to embarrass her and sexy enough to show the world that she was over Gary, happy with a new man, and on her way up.
She stood on her tiptoes and looked at her chest. Definite cleavage showing. If she were planning on trying to seduce Jonny—which she wasn’t—she would say that this dress pretty much conformed to all of what he’d told her he liked in his date’s clothing.
Not that she cared about that.
And then, of course, this dress was pink.
Jane forced herself away from the mirror. Second-guessing herself wasn’t going to do her any good. She’d bought this dress especially for Thom’s party, and any minute now Jonny was going to pick her up to escort her there, and, in any case, she didn’t have anything else to wear. Her only other suitable dress was all wrinkled from being shoved up around her hips while she and Jonny …
She went right back to the mirror. Second-guessing herself about her dress was much better than thinking about the last time she’d dressed up for Jonny.
Perhaps if she put on a different shade of lipstick her dress wouldn’t look quite so pink. She dug in her handbag to find the lipstick.
Jonny wasn’t going to think that she was dressing up for him, anyway. She’d made herself quite clear on that point: they were friends, and that was it. She was glad that he’d agreed to go along with the act that they were seeing each other, but he definitely understood it was an act.
He hadn’t called her, or emailed her, or sent her any more flowers; he was reserving his attentions for public display. When she’d visited the photographer’s studio this morning to see how the last day of the shoot was going, he’d greeted her with a warm smile and a kiss on the lips that was equally warm, but over nearly as soon as it began.
She pursed her lips to check the effect of the lipstick. It had been a brief kiss, but an effective one. She’d seen it register with the photographer and his assistants.
And it had certainly affected her.
As had the arm he’d casually draped around her waist while speaking to her, and the long looks he’d given her with those deep blue eyes.
All of them purely for show.
Jane found a tissue in her bag and wiped off the lipstick and put the first one back on again. She didn’t think either one of them made any difference: her dress was still the pinkest thing she’d ever worn and she was pretty sure she looked like a big fluffy stick of candyfloss.
And she was almost as sure that this boyfriend act wasn’t saving her friendship with Jonny. Because if they were still friends he would have emailed her as he had nearly every other day of their friendship, wouldn’t he?
Her bell rang. Quickly she stuffed lipsticks and tissue back into her handbag and went to answer the door.
Jonny stood in the hallway. And for a moment, all she could do was stare.
He wore a black suit and a crisp light blue shirt and brighter blue tie, but on Jonny these articles of clothing stopped being merely clothes and were vehicles for his gorgeousness. His suit emphasised his broad shoulders, his lean waist; his shirt and tie made his eyes still bluer. His hair was pushed back from his face in a calmer version of the messy hairdo the stylist had given him for the photo shoot, and even that showed off his high cheekbones, the perfect shape of his jaw.
And, as always, he smelled of warm cotton and Jonny, familiar and yet new.
‘You look wonderful, Jane,’ he said, and only then did she realise that he’d been looking back at her.
‘You don’t think it’s too pink?’ she blurted, because that was the only thing she could think to say. Her brains appeared to be entirely muddled by the idea that she was going to be spending the evening with a man who looked and smelled and, God forgive her, felt and tasted as incredible as Jonny did.
‘I don’t think anything could possibly be too pink,’ he said. ‘It’s a good colour on you.’
‘It’s very girly.’
‘Which fits, because, last time I checked, you were definitely a girl.’
With that, her circulatory system, which seemed to have been on pause since she’d opened the door, started up again and she felt the blood rush to her face. ‘Uh, come in.’
He stepped past her and stood in her living room, surveying the space. ‘Nice flat.’
Jane closed the door behind him, suddenly becoming aware that this was only the second time since they were eleven years old that the two of them had been totally alone in a room together, with no observers.
Except this time, she wasn’t going to allow herself to touch him.
‘Thanks,’ she said, trying to sound nonchalant.
He nodded at the empty space in the centre of the room. ‘Have you got something against furniture?’
‘Gary took it. Would you like a drink before we go?’
He didn’t seem to have heard the question; instead he was looking at her with that typical Jonny kindness.
‘I’m sorry, Jane. I would have thought the bastard would at least have left you somewhere to sit down.’
‘I can get new furniture.’
‘Yes, the furniture will be easy to replace.’ There was something harsher than kindness in his emphasis on the word ‘furniture’. He wandered across the hardwood floor to her desk, set against one of the unfinished brick walls. He touched her closed laptop lightly, and then laid his hand on the back of her chair. ‘This is where you talk with me.’
‘Uh-huh.’ And that was exactly where she’d been sitting when they’d had their last online conversation. About sex. And where she’d been sitting when she’d waited in vain for him to email her, yesterday and today.
‘You were wonderful at the photo shoot,’ she said, to change the subject.
He looked up from his scrutiny of her desk. ‘Are you talking about my modelling, or my acting?’
‘Both.’
He nodded and reached into the pocket of his suit. ‘I have something for you,’ he said, and pulled out a small white box.
She was nervous enough to fumble slightly opening it. Inside, on a bit of velvet, rested a silver necklace with a fine chain and a pendant in the shape of a heart.
‘Oh, Jonny, it’s lovely,’ she said. She touched the heart, and then her own chest, between her breasts where the pendant would lie. ‘You didn’t need to give me anything like this.’
‘It’s strategy.’ He took the box from her hands and lifted out the necklace. She turned around and held up her hair so he could fasten the chain around her neck. The warmth of his hands feathered across her nape, and she felt his breath on her skin as he spoke.
‘What you do, is you fiddle with the necklace all night, and then whenever anybody comments on it, you say that I gave it to you. It should be convincing.’ He turned her around and looked at her.
She touched the heart, so close to where her own was beating. The necklace was a tool, then. To achieve what she’d said she wanted.
It was still just as beautiful, but it suddenly seemed less precious.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ she said, hoping he was looking at the pendant, and not how his near-touch had hardened her nipples underneath her dress. ‘You’re trying to save money, aren’t you?’
‘Some things are worth spending money for.’
He raised his eyes to her face, and in the momentary heat she saw there she knew he’d noticed what his touch did to her.
Then he was neutral-faced, a man she couldn’t quite read. ‘Don’t worry about anything, Jane. I haven’t forgotten our plan. I intend to be the perfect boyfriend tonight. The model boyfriend.’ There was the slightest hint of bitterness in how he said the last three words.
But then he smiled, like
Jonny, and held out his arm for her to take. ‘Let’s go and put on our show.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘STOP here, please, mate.’
The cab pulled up to the side of the road several metres from the front of the building where Thom was having his party. Jane gathered her wrap and her bag, looking at Jonny questioningly.
‘Strategy,’ he told her again. ‘Stay here for a minute.’ He got out of the cab, paid the driver, and went around to open her door for her. ‘May I?’ he said, offering her his hand to help her out of the cab.
‘I don’t need help,’ she said, but she couldn’t resist taking his hand anyway. Fifteen minutes in a cab next to Jonny, her leg just brushing his when the uneven London street jostled them, was enough to tempt a saint’s patience.
He was warm and steady. She stepped down from the cab and saw a flash. Jonny pulled her close to him and slipped an arm around her waist as something flashed again.
Jane felt dizzy from the lights and Jonny holding her. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Thom usually gets someone to tip off the paparazzi about his parties,’ he murmured in her ear. ‘We’re relatively small fry, but we might make a couple of the glossies. Smile—it’s good publicity for your company and for our relationship.’
He brushed her hair back and gave her a kiss on the temple before he twined his fingers around hers and began to walk with her down the pavement.
Dazed, Jane held onto Jonny’s hand and looked around for a camera to smile at. There were quite a few, all pointed at them as they traversed the distance between the cab and the party. The route Jonny had chosen brought them directly into the path of the photographers.
Strategy, indeed.
She glanced over at Jonny. He was smiling, confident, gorgeous. Of course, he was used to cameras. She tried her best to look like someone who belonged holding hands with him. That was, like someone other than herself.
They reached the door, flanked by large bouncers, and Jonny gave their names. He led her through a short corridor and into a wonderland.