Star Struck

by Jane Lovering

  Star Struck

  Jane Lovering

  Copyright © 2011 Jane Lovering

  First published 2011 by Choc Lit Limited

  Penrose House, Crawley Drive, Camberley, Surrey GU15 2AB, UK

  www.choclitpublishing.com

  The right of Jane Lovering to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the UK such licences are issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P 9HE

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-906931-59-9

  Contents

  Title page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  About the Author

  More Choc Lit

  Introducing the Choc Lit Club

  Acknowledgements

  So many people have assisted, prodded and generally cajoled this book into production that it seems almost churlish to single any out. But you all know I’m going to, so –

  My lovely, wonderful … superlatives fail me, Choc Lit Tasting Panel readers, without whom Star Struck would never have got off the ground in the first place; my terrific friends and ace prodders, Sarah Callejo and Tracy Tidswell, who have put up with more whingeing than any friends should ever have to face. Everyone at the Romantic Novelists’ Association for rallying round me when things got a bit dire and my agent Kate, for her patience; for Kit, despite everything, for making me into the truly awesome person that I am today, and to the entire Choc Lit family – authors and team. You’ve been fabulous. And you know what? So have I …

  Prologue

  Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away …

  The huge, helmet-headed alien moved forward, gas hissing slightly from the respiration packs on its back, but the man in the ripped shirt stood unmoving under the glare of the desert sun. He barely even blinked as the lumbering form came closer, merely held out his arms; one hand hovered close to his blaster-rifle, and his trigger finger twitched ominously.

  Behind them both, out of sight, out of range, Jack watched, bleary-eyed, feeling as though the back of his skull had been unscrewed and inexpertly replaced. All his muscles ached in the kind of concerted unity that meant things had been very, very bad recently and, although he vaguely understood what was going on, he couldn’t for the life of him remember what he was supposed to be doing about it.

  Suddenly the alien stumbled, lurched forward under the weight of the gas tanks, and its momentum carried it onwards and downwards until it hit the ground at the feet of the armed man, where it sprawled, helmet askew, grunting with the force of the impact.

  The armed man threw his head back and laughed at the sky.

  There was a sudden cry of ‘Cut! For fuck’s sake!’ and a third man burst onto the scene, large and angry in a worn T-shirt. ‘Christ! Gethryn, you could at least help the poor bastard to stand up!’ But Gethryn just put both hands out in a helpless gesture, bending forward under the weight of his laughter and the now helmetless alien, revealed as a skinny guy with an encroaching bald spot, was forced to scramble to his feet via his knees, finally being helped to stand by two flustered girls who had to let go of their clipboards to assist him.

  Jack watched warily, half a moment from helping. Behind his eyes pinpricks of light swung; gravity had no meaning other than to give ‘down’ and ‘up’ some kind of notional value, which his stomach was ignoring, and his ears registered a vague thrumming from some seriously heavy-duty engines somewhere off to his left. This isn’t good. In fact, this is so far out the other side of good that it’s probably circling hell.

  ‘Hey, Iceman!’

  That’s me, thought Jack. Yeah. Fairly sure that’s me. What does he want me to do? God, my head hurts.

  Angry-man walked over to him, clearly suffering a serious case of artistic strop. ‘You’re gonna have to do something about him, Ice. We can’t keep shooting the show like this, and, you know, he was four hours late onto set today. I had to shoot the battle scene first and that’s kinda thrown the timing out for tomorrow. Ice? You listening?’

  Urgh. ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m listening. Look … um … Scotty …’ Please let that be his name … ‘I’ll deal with it, okay?’

  A pause. Angry-man … Scotty (probably) stared into his eyes for a second, then dropped his gaze to the dusty desert beneath his feet. ‘Okay, boss, if you say so. Just, you know, make it soon, eh? Before we get cancelled?’

  Cancelled. That’s bad, I know that much. God, wish I could think straight. He squinted into the sunlight at the team of people behind Angry … Scotty’s shoulder. Bustling, busy, all moving with the precision of a machine, and here he stood like a loose cog. This was his machine, and it was going to break down if he didn’t fix it.

  I’m a waste of a watch-strap. A hopeless, guilt-ridden drunk – I’m being offered everything that could mean something to me and if I don’t sort myself out I’m going to lose it all.

  Chapter One

  ‘What do you want most in all the world?’

  Usually my answer to this is ‘to wake up gradually’, but this clearly wasn’t the answer Felix had in mind. He’s one of those congenitally cheerful people, full of energy and enthusiasm, like a spaniel. That talks. On amphetamines.

  ‘Right now, Felix, I want you to go away. To Australia, preferably, but anywhere a long way away will do. Somewhere where they punish people who are jolly in the mornings. Close the door behind you.’ I turned over and pulled the duvet higher around my ears. He might be my best friend, but jolting me out of blissful sleep was no way to go about showing it. ‘I mean it.’

  ‘Ha. Come on, Skye. Really. The thing that you most want, ever.’ He bounced around a bit. At least, I think he was bouncing; I still had my eyes closed, but the furniture was clunking and ornaments kept falling over.

  �
��Still you, to go away.’ I humphed myself around in the bed and winched open my eyes. ‘You are contravening the Geneva Convention, you know, breaking into my house and waking me up.’

  ‘Darling, you are no fun.’ He sat on the edge of the bed, which made me feel like a hospital patient, and a rattling sound told me he’d picked up the little brown bottle from my cabinet. ‘I’ve told you about these sleepers – emergencies only.’

  ‘I had bad dreams,’ I muttered.

  ‘The doctor said occasional use only.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’ve got an occasional table and I use that pretty much all the time.’

  Felix gave me a hard stare. ‘But still … Anyway, why aren’t you working? I thought you’d got a load of people wanting your –’ he coughed pointedly – ‘research skills.’

  ‘Research is a real job you know. It’s not like I’m running some kind of porn hotline, anyway my Internet is still down. Five days and counting, I’m going to ring them today and …’

  ‘And what? Be ineffectual at them? Skye, you need to …’

  ‘You know about those people who suddenly turn on their best friends?’

  A pause. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I was being subtle. I’m sort of waiting for you to take the hint. Look, just say what you came to say, Fe, then go, all right?’ I was beginning to regret giving him a key now. It was supposed to be on the understanding that he only used it if it was absolutely vital, but he’d developed a very loose interpretation of absolutely vital lately. It had apparently been absolutely vital that he came in last week while I was hanging out the washing; when I got in from the garden he’d been half-way through my toast and marmalade and had made me jump so hard I’d nearly wet myself.

  ‘Here goes then …’ I couldn’t see him past the shoulder of duvet, but the mattress wobbled as he breathed heavily in a useless attempt at suspense. ‘I’ve got tickets to the Fallen Skies convention.’

  I’d been so sure he was going to tell me that he’d finally, finally got a long-term part in one of the soap operas he was continually auditioning for, that I’d got the words ‘That’s terrific’ already lined up on my tongue. ‘That’s terrific,’ I said, so as not to waste them, and then, ‘what?’ I sat up so suddenly that my head sang, and was confronted by Felix in a bright red velvet jacket and luminous green trousers. ‘Ow. Can you not have some sort of warning device for when you’re being trendy? You look like someone cut the middle out of a set of traffic lights.’

  ‘Is that all you can say?’ Felix huffed. He leaned forward and stared at me, his hazel eyes a bit wild in his boyish face. Combined with his punky haircut and unshaved cheeks he looked like a Botticelli angel after an all-night party and a lost hairdressing bet. ‘‘‘That’s terrific?” I’m telling you that I’ve got,’ and he pulled two cardboard oblongs from his overly tight pocket, ‘tickets to the convention for your favourite TV programme in the world, which features the deliciously bad Gethryn Tudor-Morgan and, by the way, this outfit is designer, totally on-trend, and you just tell me it’s terrific?’

  My heart was pounding, not just from the exertion of disentangling myself from the bedcovers, and my lips were stuck to my teeth. Was he suggesting what I thought he was suggesting? But he knew, he of all people understood how it was for me … ‘You smell of perfume,’ was all I could come out with, nearly non-sequituring myself to death. ‘Into girls again, are we?’

  Felix stood up, the dimness of the room making his skinny shape appear to loom over me. ‘Oh, come on.’ He tapped the tickets against one long leg. ‘Just think, if my metronome stuck at hetero fifty per cent of the gorgeous people out there would be disappointed.’

  ‘More relieved I’d have thought,’ I muttered. He was acting normally. Well, as normally as was normal for Felix, which wasn’t very. I must have misread his intentions. He was … boasting. Yes, just boasting. My eyes followed the tickets, which unfortunately meant staring at Felix’s thigh. I was afraid if I looked away the tickets might vanish, disappear back into his pocket never to be seen again. ‘Where did you get those from? I thought all convention tickets sold out the day after release? I know Fallen Skies isn’t exactly Doctor Who, but, even so Fe …’

  Felix grinned a Machiavellian grin and tapped the side of his nose. ‘Aha. Ask no questions. Suffice it to say, I met a man who knows a man.’

  ‘You meet lots of men,’ I said sarcastically. Not really believing, I held out a hand. Slowly, obviously relishing the moment, Felix laid one of the tickets on my palm. ‘Bloody hell. Fe.’ The blue-tinted card bore the Fallen Skies logo of a single jagged peak and a low horizon and looked genuine. I rubbed my thumb over the embossing which didn’t, as had memorably once been the case with tickets Fe had ‘obtained’, smear off onto my skin.

  ‘It’s in October. Three months to prep yourself if you want to go?’

  My heart skipped and then double-timed like an overwound clock. Did I? Well, of course I wanted to, but, you know, I wanted to win the lottery and paint the kitchen and maybe, finally, do something about my terrible hair but … ‘I can’t. You know I can’t. I mean, I would … if I could, but …’ Was he doing this to taunt me? To try to force some kind of reaction from a body only recently weaned off so many anti-depressants that it had been a wonder I could even cry at Bambi? I’d watched it with Fe last week, just to check. ‘Anyway, it’s a long way away, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s only in America, Skye. They won’t let them hold it on Mars. Health and Safety or something. It’s five days of Fallen Skies – just think about that. Five days. Total immersion.’

  I thought about it. About leaving my lovely little Edwardian terraced house, with its view over the ridged mound of grassy earth which led to the base of York’s city wall. Where, from my bedroom window, I could see all the various strata of building, starting with the Roman and passing through the Anglo-Saxon and fourteenth century to a block of Victorian repair work squidged on the top like a bit of incompetent icing. Comforting. Permanent.

  And then I thought about Gethryn Tudor-Morgan. Captain Lucas James of the Galactic Fleet, the best pilot in the B’Ha sector, hero of the recent Shadow War, and wearer of the least number of clothes in any given episode. Tall, golden-blond, rangy and sinfully good looking. I’d fallen for him before the first ad break of the series, and had remained faithful ever since. But. Even so …

  I looked over at the poster on my bedroom wall where Captain Lucas James stood, one hand shading his eyes from the glare of a CGI double sun, the other hand clasped around the grip of a blaster rifle. His hair rippled behind him in the wake of a fixed-wing jet blasting up into the star-strewn sky, his mouth half-curved into a grin of happy anarchy and all visible muscles bulging. My insides, as ever, liquidised.

  Felix watched me with his eyes narrowed. This made his cheeks even pudgier; now he looked like a choirboy having impure thoughts. ‘He is gorgeous,’ he said, as if noticing the poster for the first time.

  ‘Yeah, well.’ I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, my oversized nightshirt flapping around me. ‘I know my limitations, Fe.’ Ugly, ugly Skye …

  ‘Ah, Skye.’ Felix put his hands on my shoulders. ‘You’re not that bad, y’know. I’d do you. If you weren’t my friend, obviously,’ he added quickly, as I glared.

  ‘Fe, you’d do toads if they didn’t keep getting away.’ I raked a hand through my hair. It too was suffering this morning, scrubby and tousled at the back and lank at the front and yet it was the least of my appearance-related worries. ‘Oh. And you’re still here. I’m going to call the UN. Have you crated up and locked away.’ The smell of drugged sleep hung heavy around me, sweet and fuggy. I rubbed at my face with numb fingers and felt the creases and folds of my skin. ‘I might even make that NATO, if you’re not gone in ten seconds.’

  ‘Mmmm, men in uniform.’

  ‘Bugger off.’

&nbs
p; ‘Okay, well, I’m not hanging around to be insulted, not at,’ Felix glanced at the luminous bedside clock, ‘eight o’clock on a Wednesday morning.’ He looked around at the walls of my little room, where they could be seen between my grandmother’s amateur watercolours of bluebell woods and strained-looking kittens. ‘Suppose you’re going to need room for another poster, once the new guy starts. Where are you going to put it? Or, you could take down some of those godawful paintings, although, knowing your grandmother, she probably glued them to the walls.’

  I looked around as well. None of my late relative’s paintings were that terrible, but I had to confess that I’d stopped noticing them years ago. ‘What do you mean, the new guy?’ I stretched and made to lift my nightshirt over my head in the hope that my imminent nakedness would scare Felix from the room.

  ‘When the T-M leaves. They’re replacing him with some Yank, used to be in one of those American soaps where everyone’s banging their sister.’

  My head went suddenly fuzzy. ‘What?’ I let the hem drop and sat suddenly on the bed. The brass frame creaked in sympathy. ‘Why? How? I mean … the whole show revolves around him.’ And what would I do without my weekly glimpse of the man who’d helped save my sanity?

  ‘Yeah, he’s quitting his contract at the end of the current series. So I guess they’ll be writing him out.’

  Carefully I breathed. In, out. Remember what they told you, manage the panic, don’t let it get away from you. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Read it online. You’ve really got to get that Internet connection sorted, you know. You’re missing all kinds of interesting gossip, the Beckhams have … oh, never mind, guess you’re not interested enough.’

  ‘I am. I mean in the other stuff, not the Victoria and David thing. It’s just … yes, I miss my Internet, but … all that dealing with people … I’m not so good these days, Felix, you know that. You understand.’ I’d half-hoped that he’d offer to make the calls for me, but he’d insisted that it was better for me to do it, that it would be a step towards recovery for me. Yeah, right, and I could have signed up for Come Dine with Me while I was at it, a TV appearance and my inadequate cooking would get me the full set of humiliating experiences in one go. ‘And it’s all confirmed? Gethryn’s really leaving? You know what Fallen Skies is like for rumours.’