How to Hide a Hollywood Star

by Avoca Gardener

  As the music moved from a dramatic classical overture to dance music, Arch threw his arm around me, and kissed me softly on the forehead, “Best New Year in a long time. Thank you, Andi.” Rush stepped forward and kissed my cheek softly, “Happy New Year, Andi.” Oh my God, now I couldn’t wash my face either.

  Then Shane was in front of me. He manoeuvred his hips between my linen trousered knees, tipped his hat back, wrapped his arms around my waist and said, “Pucker up beautiful, I’m comin’ in for the kill,” then he pulled me off the barricade, clasped me against his body and kissed me hard.

  And Lord help me. I kissed him back. I melted into his tight embrace and kissed him back. It was New Year, he was an amazingly beautiful man and I was in sensory overload and well, he started it.

  I knew the fireworks had stopped, but behind my closed eyes there were still bolts of colour streaking the sky.

  12: Dial Tone

  “Whohooo! Sweet as!” yelled Shane when he finally released me. He gave me a wicked grin, leaving me to wobble on unsteady legs, catch my breath and wonder how badly I’d just damaged my professional reputation.

  He grabbed Arch and Rush in a hug and then in a deep, gravelly voice, he sang the first word of the Banana Boat Song. He was Harry Belafonte by way of Jason Derulo. Arch joined him on the second ‘day-oh’ and then the three of them sang the line about daylight coming and not wanting to go home.

  By the time they got to the next line the crowd was singing with them. It was karaoke harbour side. And I was worried they draw attention to themselves. Silly me. They could hardly have been more obvious if they’d stripped naked, but they managed to blend in so well and keep their faces covered, so no one suspected a thing. The sheer unexpected nature of it and the amount of alcohol being consumed around us probably helped.

  Song finished with rowdy cheering, Shane threw his arms around the shoulders of his two buddies and said the ominous words, “Now, we party.”

  “But not you, Andi,” said Arch. “You need to get home before your leg turns into a pumpkin. Being out in this crowd is not good for you.”

  “And yes, we can look after ourselves, and no we won’t make tomorrow’s news, I promise,” said Shane, with such a rakish grin it was impossible to trust him.

  I couldn’t simply go home and leave them. “Now why would I believe that?”

  “Because we’ve been careful, haven’t we?” said Rush. Joke! Surely that was a joke, though Rush had certainly been more careful than the other two apart from the yelled phone call. “We really don’t want all the hassles of being recognised.”

  “We don’t,” added Arch.

  I sighed. This didn’t feel right, but they were big boys. This was a private trip. If I was being sent home against my better judgement, there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  There I was, relieved of duty and deposited on the end of a long taxi rank queue. It was going to be a lengthy wait, more than enough time to respond to New Year text messages and voicemails and send one to Mum and Dad.

  There was a sweet text from Brick and another from Matt and a missed call from Bert who could never get comfortable with leaving a message. I was about to hit send on a response to Matt when my phone rang. It was noisy on the street and I had trouble hearing at first but then I made out a woman’s voice laughing and saying “Don’t! Don’t, that tickles, stop it, you’ve made me drop everything. Don’t!” and laughing again before the call disconnected. I knew that laugh, that was Lainey, she must have pocket dialled my number while being ‘tickled’ to death.

  Well, well, Lainey was having an interesting start to the New Year. Good for her. Hopefully whatever she was up to was more meaningful than my shameful public teenage pash with a Hollywood hunk. Couldn’t wait to see her after the break and share the full story and all the tantalising details. Hers not mine. Mine were in lock up. With the key tossed in Sydney harbour.

  I was smiling to myself until I looked down at my phone and saw the last number received wasn’t Lainey’s number at all. It was Michael’s. How could that be? Had I read that right? I studied the call log again. The last call received on my phone was from Michael. But I was sure that was Lainey’s laughing voice I’d heard.

  Lainey with Michael? No, couldn’t be. I must be wrong. It must be someone who just sounds like Lainey. That had to be it. Made sense. Michael had found a new friend to ring in the New Year with, well good luck to him, more than I could say for myself despite my hunky house guests, I was still very much on my own this New Year.

  I was pondering the unfairness of the situation as the taxi queue slowly inched forward and out of nowhere Rush appeared beside me.

  ‘Oi, no queue jumpin’, mate,” said the bloke behind me.

  “It’s okay, he’s with me,” I responded, and Rush playing along, snaked his arm around my waist, pulled me close and said in a perfect strine, “Thanks love.” Then he ran the tip of his nose against my cheek and I’m ashamed to admit I leaned in to him for a second before I remembered he was acting and I was an extra.

  But the kiss and now a dead sexy hug, even if it was just for show, I think my New Year, oh seriously, my whole year was made. “What happened?” I asked when he released me and point to me my voice sounded normal, not lust drugged.

  “I’ve had enough, I’m happy to call it quits. Those two will go on till dawn. This is the sort of thing they train for.”

  “Should I be worried?”

  “It’s nothing worry will help, Andi,” he said, helping me into the back seat of the taxi. He slipped in beside me and was quiet all the way home, thumbing through messages on his phone.

  In the house, Simon had left yummy snacks and a coffee pot all ready to be brewed. I could get used to having Simon around, but coffee might keep me awake and it was sleep I needed now and since Rush had disappeared to his room I was free to have a quick shower and get to bed.

  I was almost in the land of nod when I heard a raised voice. Was that Shane or Arch, it would be nice to know they were safely home? I hobbled over to the bedroom door and opened it a crack. It was Rush and he was angry with someone. I could only hear the occasional word, but his forceful tone told me he was in a temper. I felt momentarily sorry for the person on the other end of his call.

  Now I was well and truly awake again and I lay in bed and looked at the freshly painted, patterned plaster ceiling. If you discounted the fact I couldn’t be sure the morning’s media wouldn’t display photos of Shane or Arch dancing on tables or throwing up in gutters we’d done all right so far. Good Lord, we’d done incredibly well.

  We’d survived the airport pickup, the introduction to Bert, Harvey and even Chook, and the completely oddball idea of staying at the house had turned out to genuinely enchant Hollywood. We’d been from one end of George Street, to the other, taken to the stage at Jack’s and called more attention to ourselves at Circular Quay, but so far we’d managed to escape obvious recognition.

  This had been a long, stressful day with a lot packed in, but with the advantage of having had the chance to see Shane, Arch and Rush as real people instead of manufactured cut-outs from the gossip mags and media headline machine. If they remained this easy to get along with, and I didn’t think too much about not having a solution for Shane’s desire to get out of the city, I might be able to pull this whole thing off. I lay there and smiled at the ceiling. Happy New Year.

  Going in to this part of me had braced for the type of star who believed deeply in his own hype, had odd ways, likes and dislikes and would be near impossible to please. I’d met that type before. They lived in another dimension. They were impossible to please, the best you could do was survive them.

  Thank goodness the other part of me had been in charge. The part that chose to trust Tobias when he said I wouldn’t be dealing with C-grade try-hards, but genuine Hollywood royalty, who knew how to behave themselves, despite what I might read in the press.

  What did I think of them so far, away from their media manufactured
images? Shane was a complete character, a rake, a scoundrel, brimming with confidence and self-assurance with an eye for a lark. He was a ‘what you see is what you get’ guy and I did like him for that and, no escaping it, for that kiss. I felt more relaxed about the kiss now. I figured it was so ‘of the moment’ that it almost had nothing to do with me and everything to do with his natural exuberance. But heck it was fun, a story to tell the grandkids.

  And Arch. He’d been watching out for me since the airport when he’d helped me into the front seat of the bus, he’d cleared a space for me at the pub and he’d protected me in the crowd at the foreshore. He looked like an action hero and he acted like one too. He was sweet, considerate and a true gentleman.

  The one I was wary of was Rush. In the flesh, outside the fantasy state, he had a strange effect on me. I felt completely star stuck stupid when he was close, like I was sixteen years old again with a crush on the most handsome boy in class. How embarrassing, let alone unprofessional. And not like me at all. I was usually sensible Sally, but Rush had me rattled.

  There was also the matter of his temper: sudden, sharp and very black. He’d been fine earlier in the day, joining in the jokes, smoothing the rough patches, making a fuss over Bert, and being nice to me, but there was obviously another side to him. He’d had a rumbling storm cloud raging above his head tonight and I hoped I wouldn’t be the one hit by lightning.

  My last thought for the night was about Michael. I wondered who he was with and how serious it might be. He’d not been in a relationship for a long time and was determined to stay unattached while we were in business start-up mode. He’d sent me a cute text message with a photo of the massive hotel pool and a single towel on a deckchair. The message said simply, ‘Mine’. I knew he meant the deckchair, the one he’d aspired to when I’d first raised taking a holiday, but if I was truthful, I wished he’d been talking about me.

  For a very long time now I’d wanted Michael to be more than business, to be mine in as many ways as possible. I knew he felt a kind of love for me, but was I just his mate, his buddy, his business partner? What did we really mean to each other? I was long overdue to find out and it was just the right time of year to make it a resolution.

  13: A New Day-Oh

  I’d set my alarm to wake me at 8.00am. Not too early, not too late, and I lay a while contemplating getting up. The house was quiet, but still no telling what I might find outside my bedroom. I slipped on a sleeveless cotton sundress and barefoot and bootless went to investigate.

  There was a lovely breakfast spread in the kitchen with summer porridge, fresh fruits and pastries.

  “Happy New Year!” said Simon. “Do you think anyone will want breakfast?”

  “You mean other than me? Are they back do you know?”

  “The gorgeous one is. He’s on the deck.”

  I laughed. “Which is the gorgeous one?”

  Simon fanned himself as if to starve off an attack of the vapours. “Yes, they’re all gorgeous. It’s too much. And to think I could have been cooking Five Spice Duck and Saigon Crispy Chicken all week instead.”

  I took a cup of coffee and went through to the back deck and there, quite possibly comatose, was Arch, lying shirtless in a pair of shorts in the sun. He had one arm thrown across his eyes and headphones in his ears. There was nothing about him that wasn’t nice to look at. He was like my own personal unconscious centrefold. Simon who’d followed me out was also studying him and biting his bottom lip. Ah, happy, happy New Year!

  “Mmm is that coffee?” the centrefold spoke in a gravelly voice.

  “Would you like some?” I suspect I squeaked that out.

  “Kill for a cup,” he said, sitting up and blinking in the sun. “Hey, no boot?”

  “From today I’m allowed to spend time with it off.” I turned back to the kitchen to pour him a coffee. He padded in behind me.

  “Andi, I want to do something for you.”

  “For me?”

  “Yep.”

  “You know I’m being paid to be here for you.”

  Arch studied me with slightly bloodshot eyes. “Yeah, yeah, but I look at you and I see tight muscles.”

  “Oh.” I handed him a black coffee.

  “Tight muscles, a really fit bod, but mostly tight muscles. You need a massage. Not the leg itself, I’ll leave that to your physio.” He sipped, closing his eyes as the caffeine hit his throat. Too late though, he’d already made me go the colour of extreme embarrassment. It was getting to be my thing lately. He wasn’t supposed to be eyeing me up close enough to notice what I looked like.

  And now he was looking again. “With the boot and the crutches you’ve had to use the rest of your body differently to get around. I can see by the way you’re moving that you’re sore. I can fix that.” Arch confidently sipped his coffee while I quietly lost any sense of poise I’d woken up with.

  “Oh,” was all I could think of saying, and I ate a strawberry to cover my embarrassment. I looked around for Simon to deflect to. There were menus to talk about. The rat had found a drainpipe to shimmy up.

  “You’re really tight here.” Arch poked me in the thigh of my good leg and before I could do more than huff air he’d circled me and prodded a finger at my butt. I jumped like Harvey when he saw that demon orange cat and Arch laughed. “Andi, I’m not trying anything on. I know what I’m doing and I can help you feel better.”

  Before I could make an excuse about needing to do something, anything, he was issuing instructions and buzzing around. “We can use the dining room table, not ideal but not too bad. I need a mat, towels, oil and you need to strip off.”

  “Strip off?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You... you’re kidding, right?”

  “Nope, down to your underwear, girl.”

  “My underwear.” Oh crap! “Look, I really don’t think this is necessary, I mean it’s not something you need to do and really I—”

  “Andi.”

  “Yes.”

  “Strip.”

  He handed me one of the new big white fluffy towels. What’s the right response when a drop dead gorgeous, half dressed man tells you to strip?

  I’m nothing if not amenable.

  I stripped.

  I’d had massages before but never on my own dining room table, never from a client and never ever from someone who looked like Arch. But he was right, I was sore and he was standing over me with a ‘brook no nonsense’ look on his face. How bad could it be?

  I didn’t think he was going to hurt me or molest me. Simon’s drainpipe was within shouting distance and I was sore, and what the heck, I could think of half a dozen friends, including my own mother, who’d have stabbed me into rigor mortis without so much as a ‘sorry’ to take my place.

  When I got back to the dining room, Arch had put on a fitted white t-shirt and lit a scented candle. He had music playing, John Mayer. He had me climb on the old wooden table and lay face down with my forehead resting on a rolled-up towel. Getting me to loosen my own towel was another challenge. I planned to keep it firmly wrapped around me. It was so long it virtually covered me from underarm to ankle. He’d need to be Edward Scissorhands to get through the folds.

  “Let the towel go, Andi.”

  “Ah—do I have to,” I said, face down, voice muffled, burning cheeks.

  “I want it across you, not wrapped around you. I need to be able to get to your body.”

  Four letters. First letter F. “Ah...”

  “Either you lose the towel or I’ll lose it for you.”

  Yes, that was a threat to the last thread of control I had on being semi-naked, laid out like a sacrifice on my own dining room table with rescue hunk guy standing over me. I made Arch turn around while I wriggled out of the knot of towel beneath my arm and spread it over my back. I was still perfectly covered and wearing underwear but feeling much more vulnerable. This was one of those ideas that sounded like ‘hell, yeah’ at the concept stage, but in reality, was more like �
�take that pin and stick it in my eye’.

  Arch started at my feet working his thumbs into my insteps and under my toes. Then he left off the damaged leg and worked the calf muscle of my good leg, feeling across the long muscles finding places to prod and tease at soreness.

  Without warning he flipped the towel to expose my thigh and despite the heat I shivered. He worked strong fingers into the back and side of my leg circling higher and higher. His hands were warm and fluid and fully in control of my body. He moved to the other leg and did the same, finding places I hadn’t known were sore, making me bite back groans that would make mortification so embarrassed it would demand its own postcode.

  “Andi, I’m going to do your glutes now and it’s gonna hurt. Just keep breathing.” With that Arch used his elbow to set my gluteus maximus muscle alive with fire and possibly brimstone. My head shot up and I gasped and his only response was to say, “Breathe.”

  When he moved to the other leg I rasped, “Mercy.” But he gave no quarter and kept up the pressure. This wasn’t mortification; it was suburban torture with scented oil. Someone call the UN.

  Glutes elbowed into submission, he moved the towel again, covering my legs but exposing my back from the waist up. He dribbled cool oil on my shoulders, and then with the heel of his hand he worked the muscles that attach to the spinal column and drew his palms around the side of my ribs. At each point he worked, I felt sensitised, I felt my spine release and lengthen under the attention of his hands. When he got to my bra strap he flicked it open in one easy movement. I sucked in a breath and flinched. I should’ve known that was coming and he’d been nothing but clinical in the way he touched me but it made me tense up all over.

  “Okay?” He stopped and flattened his hand on my mid-back, holding still.

  “Okay,” I murmured and it was. I could tell Arch knew exactly what he was doing and it was all business. He was treating my body as a therapist would, focussed on me not as a women, but as a collection of muscle, tendon, sinew and fibre. The only sensual part of this massage was in my head, but boy was my head in the boudoir.