“Don’t judge Lauren on how she looks,” Dean snapped back. “People like you have been doing that to her all her life: she’s blonde, leggy and beautiful so she must be dumb and easy.”
“She went to the Maldives with you after having known you and slept with you for less than a day. I’m sorry mate, but she’s clearly a little dumb.”
I was kidding, and he knew it, but we always liked to screw around with each other in a teasing, brotherly way.
“Who says we’ve slept together?” Dean countered.
“Haven’t you?”
“That’s not the point. The point is you’re making judgements based on how she looks. And can I remind you, those girls you’re talking about always make a beeline for you because you’re famous and rich. Lauren was supposed to be seducing you into an interview but she still spent the evening with me instead. She’s different. She’s special.”
The grin faded from my face, and it was my turn to take a pause for thought. Forty-eight hours ago the argument about a girl being different or special would have held very little water for me—now I wasn’t so sure. “It’s just a little sudden for you,” I said, less jokey now and more ‘concerned little brother’. “I just don’t want you doing something you’ll regret.”
“I don’t think I’m going to regret this.”
I smiled. “Well, in that case, I’m happy for you.”
“Thanks.” Dean changed the subject. “Given your overnight antics I guess I can assume that there remains no one interesting or special in your life. I suppose it’s too much to hope that you were with Allison.”
“As a matter of fact,” I said, not without a degree of smugness in my voice. “I just might’ve been with her...”
“What?” Though I couldn’t be sure, I thought it possible that my brother had just spat out one of those brightly colored cocktails with a little umbrella in it. “That nice girl from the other night? You got her to have sex with you in a football stadium with the Tannoy on? What have you done? You can’t treat a nice girl like that.”
I shook my head. “It’s not like that. I think she’s special.”
“I see.” Dean paused to take in this unlikely news. “You know, you really shouldn’t be having semi-public sex with the ones who are special. Save that for your usual picks.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I insisted. “It was kinda like an adventure we shared.”
Again there was a pause as Dean took this in, seeming to recognize something in my voice that he’d never heard before.
“Bloody hell,” he finally said. “Liam?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t fuck this up.”
“You think I’m going to?”
“I don’t know. I guess…I’m just saying that a girl like that doesn’t come along every day. A girl you can talk to; there’s a few of those. A girl you can do the nasty with in an announcer’s booth or in the toilet of an airplane; there’s a few of those. But a girl who you’re equally happy with doing both, or neither, or just sitting in quiet peace together because there’s nothing better in the world than just being with her; those girls are one in a million. If that. Don’t screw this up if that’s what she is to you, Liam.”
I took in my brother’s wise words with quiet solemnity before responding. “You and Lauren had sex in the airplane toilet, didn’t you?”
He chuckled. “You got me. Yes, we did.”
***
The call from Dean had really made me think. I wasn’t accustomed to thinking about women—I’d never really had to, they were just always there when I wanted them. Part of the reason for that of course was that I’d never wanted a specific one. As my brother had pointed out at breakfast two days ago (although it felt like a lifetime ago already), I was always talking about ‘girls’ or ‘women’; always plural.
I’d never thought about a person—an individual. But I was doing it now, and I found it to be nice, but also rather worrying. If you didn’t give a fuck which girl you were going to hook up with—and if you were a famous football star—then why worry? There would be another one along in a minute. And if you screwed it up with her or her boyfriend took offence, then there’d be another one along soon after that. It was easy. But if you were thinking about one woman, then…if you screwed it up, that was it.
Devastation.
Suddenly I was open to making all the other mistakes that ordinary men made. The thought horrified me. I was like Superman without his powers, Samson without his hair, and Popeye without his spinach. Allison didn’t seem particularly interested in my money or my fame, she seemed interested in me, which almost didn’t bear thinking about. What could she possibly see in me once you took away all the trappings of my success? The girl had to be out of her bloody mind. What could I do to stop her from finding out that beneath the gilt of fame, I was probably just an annoying asshole like almost every other young guy? For the first time in my life, I was worrying about how to keep a girl, and I had to say, it was a damned sobering thought.
For our first date (presumably she would now be happy to accept that it had been a ‘date’) I’d allowed her to score a goal on a Premiership football pitch, and in doing so, I had apparently made one of her childhood dreams come true.
How the hell was I meant to top that?
The phone rang and I found that I was simultaneously worried that this might be Allison wanting to know what we were doing for our second date, and, at the same time, worried that it might not be her, and that she’d forgotten altogether. Caring about a woman was exhausting…but it was worth it.
I picked up the phone and was relieved and disappointed to hear that it was my manager. “Hey, Brian.”
“Hey kid,” he said. “What are you doing tonight? No, don’t answer—you don’t know. You’re going to the grand unveiling of a new luxury sports car. And you’re going to be the one to unveil it! They asked for you. Anyway, it’s fast, sporty and has a huge engine. They figured that was you all over. Am I right? Am I right? You know I am.”
“What type of car?” I asked. I wasn’t exactly a petrol-head like some guys, but a fast, showy car was practically part of the uniform for most footballers, and certainly for me.
“What am I, a bloody mechanic?” Brian replied. Cars were yet another thing in which he was proudly ignorant. “Four wheels, an engine and a price tag that’d make your eyes water.”
“Can I bring Allison along?” I asked.
That would be a pretty good second date, wouldn’t it? Maybe not as personal as the first, but still pretty cool and unique compared to the usual dinner and a movie.
“Allison?” Brian grunted the question. “Look, it’s a car show, there’ll be plenty of girls there, models mostly. And they’ll all have been starving themselves for days so the alcohol will go right to their heads. Cut yourself a slice off one of them.”
“I meant Allison Flores. The reporter.”
“I thought her name was Lauren something,” Brian said. “Can’t remember the last name. But her first name was definitely Lauren.”
“That was the other girl.”
“I thought Lauren was the BBC one?”
I took a deep breath and reminded myself that Brian worked for me and not vice versa. “Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t choose her. I told you I was gonna pick for myself.”
“You didn’t choose the BBC girl?” Brian roared down the phone. “Do you have rocks in your head? Do you know how much you’ve cost me…I mean, us? I told you to pick the fucking BBC girl. Jesus, how is this the first I’m hearing about this?”
“You asked me to choose—”
“I wouldn’t rely on one of you sporting idiots to choose me a brand of bog roll!” Brian cut in. “There’s a reason that I told you which one to choose. It’s because I didn’t want you to actually choose! Is that a complicated concept? Do I have to explain that to you as well?”
“I know you didn’t want me to choose. But if you really didn’t want me to, then you shouldn�
�t have asked me to in the first place. That’s common sense.”
“Don’t try to be clever with me!” Brian snapped. “You’re woefully ill-equipped for the task.”
“Look,” I said, adopting a remonstrative tone of voice—I did still need this man for my career. “I don’t think it would’ve mattered anyway. Lauren ended up hooking up with…with someone. Someone she met in the club. You can’t fight love.”
“She went off with someone else?” Brian snorted, starting to calm down a bit but clearly still angry. “You must be losing your touch.”
“Maybe.” Despite the circumstances, the suggestion still cut me. “So can I bring Allison?”
“She’s still writing this article, is she? I thought she just wanted the interview.”
“No, I…” I trailed off for a moment. I’d opened my mouth with the intention of explaining to my manager that Allison and I were…well, it was early days yet to be using the ‘L’ word, but there was definitely something there. However, something suddenly told me that sharing this with Brian wouldn’t be a good idea. “Yes, I think so. She wanted some day-to-day stuff on what it’s like to be Liam Croft.”
“All right,” Brian said, somewhat grudgingly. “That actually sounds like a good idea. Your superstar lifestyle should really sell the article. I trust you dug deep for the interview, made your life sound enviable yet somehow relatable?”
I realized that Brian was going to hate the actual article, which focused far more on my humble beginnings than any ‘superstar lifestyle’. Then again, he’d bloody well asked me to dig deep and be ‘real’ in the interview in order to attract fans who were after something more than the shallow party boy they were used to. It wasn’t my fault I hadn’t been raised in a wealthy, privileged manner that made for a less gritty interview.
“But I don’t want anyone thinking that she’s anything other than a reporter,” Brian added a second later, an edge of suspicion in his voice.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that you’re popular right now because you’re single and hot. Women love you because you’re available and, given how much you put yourself about, they all think their chance will come. Men love you because you’re living their dream, and that dream involves a lot of sex with no strings, no commitments and no dumpy brunettes getting in the way of the statuesque blondes. If I get even a hint that you and this Allison bird are more than reporter and subject, then I’m having her thrown out, and I’ll call her boss in America and tell him why. Is that clear?”
“I don’t know why you’d even think that…”
“Is that clear?” Brian spoke with a dark finality.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s clear.”
“Good.” Brian’s voice was happy again. “There’s nothing between you two, then?”
I tried to scoff in a hearty, laddish way. “You know me, you know what I like. Even if I had banged her, it’d be a one night thing.”
That was bullshit, but I didn’t want to risk getting Allison in trouble with her boss, and Brian had made it pretty clear that he had no issue with making that happen if he chose to.
“That’s what I like to hear,” he said.
“Too many great-looking women out there to be tied down to one.”
“That’s the Liam Croft I know,” said Brian, but I thought there was a slight edge to his voice. “Better off for the girl as well.”
“Definitely,” I said, hating myself every second. “She’d only end up getting her heart broken.”
“Well, that too,” Brian conceded. “But I meant it’d be the end of her career.”
“What?” A cold sensation had claimed my stomach.
“Well, think about it,” Brian went on, a pleasant tone veiling the steel beneath. “I wouldn’t just call her boss to tell him to give her a little slap on the wrist if I knew she was seeing you. How unprofessional would it be to sleep with the guy she’s supposed to be interviewing? If I told her boss…well, that’d be the end of her at that magazine. And I wouldn’t mind betting that it’d burn her at any other place she tried to get a job. Bad deal for her all round, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
When Brian had said he’d call her boss, I’d known it could get her in trouble, but it hadn’t occurred to me that it could spell the end of her career. I couldn’t let that happen. No fucking way.
“Anyway, bring her along,” Brian said, keeping up his chummy act to the end. “I’m sure it’ll be fun for her to see you with all those models. And it’ll make a great section for this article she’s still writing. Bloody slowpoke Americans.”
***
When I’d finally hung up on Brian, I made myself a drink and sat down to think. Bringing Allison along to the car show now seemed like a lot less fun, but I hadn’t left myself a lot of choice. If I didn’t bring her, Brian would ask why, and then more lying would be necessary, which could land Allison in yet more trouble. Worse still, if I didn’t take Allison along and then she saw my picture in the news with models draped all over me, then she was bound to think that I had deliberately kept her away so I could have fun with other women.
No, I would have to bring her along, and I would have to be honest with her about what had happened and about how I had screwed things up by making Brian suspicious, which could in turn cost her her job.
I thought about that for a moment longer.
On reflection, the truth suddenly didn’t seem like such a great option. The first date had gone so well, so spending the second explaining why she could possibly be out of a job if we made one wrong move was not ideal, and I didn’t want to drive her away from me before we’d really had a chance.
So I came up with a new plan instead. I’d ask her along to the event—I didn’t have any choice about that now—and I’d try to avoid being touched, stroked or otherwise flirted with by any of the models while the only girl I wanted to touch, stroke and flirt with was watching. And at the same time I would have to avoid any touching, stroking or flirting with that girl whenever Brian was watching.
How fun.
That of course raised another question: could I even keep my hands off Allison for a whole evening? It wouldn’t be easy, not if last night was anything to go by. When we were together all I wanted to do was touch her, kiss her…and a whole host of other things that I was never going to be able to do with her at a car show. And, on top of that, I wouldn’t be able to tell her the reason for my sudden distance. In fact, I couldn’t even tell her that she wasn’t allowed to touch me, which was going to be a very difficult thing to pull off without it looking as if I was rejecting her.
I sighed as I picked up the phone. All things being considered, this was going to be a pretty fucking lousy second date, but at least we would be there together…sort of.
Shit. It was going to be a long and frustrating night.
Chapter 11
Allison
I didn’t want Liam to think that I’d been waiting by the phone for him to call, and so I’d let it ring a few times before throwing patience to the wind and finally answering when he’d called me earlier. He’d invited me to a luxury car unveiling that he was helping to host, and while a fancy car show wasn’t as much my idea of a good time as last night had been, it was flattering and touching that he wanted me there. It was an event that he couldn’t get out of; part of the ugly media side of his job, but he’d said he couldn’t bear to spend an evening without me, and so he’d asked me to come along. After he’d said that, I’d been delighted to accept.
Once I’d agreed to go, I started to look forward to it all the more. It would be a lavish and glamorous evening, and there would be other sports stars there…maybe even movie stars too! Most importantly, I’d be with Liam on our first public outing.
When he picked me up outside my hotel room, Liam was obviously glad to see me and kissed me as passionately as he had the night before. Despite that, I felt as if I could detect some slight tension in him; some nervousness.
Could he be anxious about how I might behave at this big, flashy event, seeing as I wasn’t accustomed to these things? That didn’t seem like the Liam I knew, but I was stuck for other explanations.
I brushed the thought aside as we drove to the venue, putting it down to silly insecurities. Once we arrived at the event, however, things became swiftly stranger and I really started to worry. Last night Liam had barely been able to keep his hands off me, but tonight it was like he was a different person. He seemed strangely cold and unaffectionate. He didn’t kiss me, didn’t even touch me, and, most curiously of all, when I tried to take his hand, he hastily pulled it away.
“Sorry. Cold hands,” he said, as if that was an adequate explanation for how he was acting.
He didn’t even seem to want to stand next to me, and he kept moving away every time I got close. My heart sank, and I racked my brains for something I might have done to deserve this, but right now all I could think was that at some point between the hotel and here, Liam had turned into a first class jerk, which was worrying, because it could mean my initial impressions of him had been correct. After all, I didn’t exactly have to look hard into his history to find a whole bunch of incidents of jerkish behavior. All it took was a quick Google search.
So had last night been an act? Was that simply how he got women into bed?
If so, why on earth had he invited me as his date to this car show?
I shook my head to dismiss the negative thoughts; surely Liam wasn’t that good of an actor, and like I just said, there was no reason for him to invite me tonight if he was done with me. None that I could currently think of, anyway. Tonight he was here on business, and I had to accept that that meant he had to behave differently. Besides, we’d only just started dating. I couldn’t expect him to be all over me at all times.
I was just being paranoid, that was all.
“I’ve got to go unveil this car,” Liam said as the evening neared its climax. He glanced around like a hunted man, as if he feared that people might be listening in, although I couldn’t have imagined why. “When we’re done here we can go back to mine, and I’ll make you a proper dinner,” he said with a wink. “Those little canapés they’re serving here are bullshit. I’ll make whatever you feel like.”
Bad Boy Brit (A British Bad Boy Romance) Page 10