But she’d ruined that chance. Blown up at him and run away. She’d managed to screw up her golden opportunity so badly it made her wince. Furious, she scrubbed at her thighs with her body brush, wishing she could scour away the day, her temper, her mistakes and, most of all, the raging horniness that got her into situations like this.
Damn, she thought as the tingle spread over her body. Vigorous exfoliation wasn’t helping. The more worked up she got, the more she wanted to fuck someone, and the more horny she got the more she thought of Mike. His dry smile irritated her, but it made that pulse boom between her legs. It was dangerous, what he did to her. Kara didn’t want to be that hooked on anyone. She needed to stay away from him.
Luckily they were unlikely to bump into each other – though the music scene in Glasgow was small, they moved in different circles. Very different circles. Not much chance of running into Mike in the spit-and-sawdust joints that Kara was used to. He spent his time sipping overpriced drinks with the glitterati.
Kara remembered the feel of his tongue on her nipple and felt a pang of arousal, the slightest trace of regret as she poured lavender shower gel into the palm of her hand. She soaped herself slowly, noticing a couple of bruises as she did so. Noticing, too, that her nipples had puckered at the thought of Mike licking her. She thought about giving herself a quick orgasm to burn off the horniness, but her clit stung at the thought.
‘You need to learn to control yourself,’ she muttered, yanking the shower firmly off and stepping onto the cold tiles of the bathroom floor. She rubbed the steam off the mirror above the sink and stared at herself. Her reflection was wired; cheeks pink and eyes tired but with a curious spark to them, like she’d drunk too much coffee. She combed the tangles out of her wet hair with one hand and steered her thoughts towards work.
Kara paid her rent by doing a few shifts in a pub every week. Her shift started at seven – five hours in a West End bar serving hair of the dog to red-eyed punters, with the music on low and nobody speaking too loud. Sunday was an easy ride. At least for one night, she’d be saved from dealing with all the people she’d pissed off. She might even get time to work things out in her head, write a song – something about sex and tangled desire.
Yes, she thought, that could work. Something dark, something angry. The one thing that might keep her sane was getting down some lyrics and making music out of the whole sorry mess. As she reached for her eyeliner, Kara was already writing the first lines in her head.
Cobalt was one of the new wave of Glasgow bars, with large glass windows, black leather sofas and potted palms. So hip it hurt. Which meant Kara didn’t have to be overly worried about pleasing the clientele. She could scowl, sulk and generally take the mickey, so long as she looked good and knew how to mix a Screwdriver.
As she’d expected, the place was dead when she arrived – half-a-dozen guys in crumpled shirts nursing pints of lager, and a group of dressed-down city types by the big fake marble fireplace trying their hardest to look like people out of a magazine style supplement. Besides making a few Bloody Marys, it was looking like an easy run till midnight. Kara nodded at Bernie, the carefully laid-back bar manager. He grinned at her and rolled his eyes, which were bloodshot as usual.
‘Good night last night?’ Kara asked, knowing that Bernie very likely hadn’t been to sleep yet.
She listened to his jumbled account of an illegal party under the railway arches, nodding every so often to show she was listening. In fact, her attention was fixed on the song taking shape in her imagination.
She’d had the first line going round in her head for an hour, with the melody repeating in a loop. If she got it down on paper quick enough, she might end up with something more to show for the evening than smoky hair and sore feet. When Bernie wandered off to chat to one of his clubbing cronies at the end of the bar, Kara pulled an order book out of the drawer under the till. ‘CORRUPTED’, she wrote along the top of the sheet.
‘I don’t want you tame.’ Kara bit her lip. ‘Slide guitar?’ she added, and closed her eyes to replay the melody in her head.
* * *
Kara was bent over the bar working on her song an hour later, tapping out a rhythm on the wood with the end of a biro. Her hair fell over her face so that potential customers were conveniently invisible, and so she didn’t see the deliveryman come in.
Although she’d been pretty oblivious, the sudden wave of scent pulled her out of her reverie. Kara looked up to see a bouquet about as big as the man carrying it advancing towards the bar; white lilies dusted with rusty pollen and those ludicrous spiky orange flowers called paradise-somethings. They were showy as hell, but pretty impressive, she had to admit. Orchids trailed from the bottom of the bouquet. Kara grinned. One of the yuppies on the sofa by the fireplace must be making some kind of grand statement.
But the guy stopped at the bar. ‘Kara?’
She raised her eyebrows, the smile dropping off her face.
‘I’ll put them here, love, shall I?’
Before Kara could say anything, the deliveryman had dropped the flowers on the end of the bar and hurried away again. Aware that Bernie was watching her with a bloody great smirk on his face, Kara approached and sniffed gingerly at the lilies. A small white envelope was tucked into the spray, but she hardly needed to open it to guess who’d make a gesture this ostentatious.
The message was handwritten – Mike’s elegant signature looping across the card under the few words he’d put: ‘Let me make it up. Call me.’
‘That’s some posy,’ Bernie said, sneaking up behind her and trying to read the card over her shoulder. ‘Whoever he is, he’s after something.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Gonna call him?’
‘Not sure.’ Kara chewed the end of her biro grimly.
Bernie laughed, flicked a dishtowel at Kara and shook his head. ‘Don’t tell me the wee diva is turning shy?’
He swaggered away before Kara could smack him. She watched his ass as he walked down the length of the bar, the way his jeans clung to it and the top of his boxers peeked out from the waistband. Under Bernie’s close-shaved hair, the indigo spikes of his tattoo curled over the nape of his neck. Yes, Kara thought, he was foxy enough. Surely if she needed someone to burn off her jittery frustration with she could tumble him, instead of getting into something complicated with Mike? A nice straightforward fuck, a boy-man with smooth olive skin and a smile full of white teeth. No strings. No angst.
She watched Bernie as he flicked through the sports pages of the newspaper. He scratched his neck and whistled ‘The Lady is a Tramp’ – tunelessly.
No strings. But no butterflies, no tension and no chemistry, either, Kara thought wryly. She slid the envelope into her back pocket and looked at the flowers again. For a moment she thought about binning them, but then she shrugged. They weren’t doing any harm sitting on the bar smelling gorgeous. And she had to admit, Mike knew how to make a statement.
By the time the clock hit twelve she was tired and jumpy. As the bar cleared out and she wiped down tables, turned chairs over and emptied ashtrays, she forced herself to stop thinking about Mike. The idea for the song had dissolved since the flowers turned up, like the scent of them had forced all her thoughts out of her head. She tried to remember how the hook had gone, sung it over quietly under her breath.
‘Kara.’
At the sound of her name, she dropped the glass ashtray she was holding. It hit the floor with a loud crack and she swore as she looked up. Tam stood by the door, his clothes crumpled and his hair looking like he’d just rolled out of bed. He gave her one of his dark grins, sweeping his sleepy eyes over her black shirt and wide-legged trousers.
‘Got to love a girl in uniform,’ he said, leaning against the door frame. ‘You finished?’ He was carrying a leather holdall in one hand, the battered bag that he usually dragged his guitar round in. ‘Thought you might like come back to mine for a jam.’
Kara searched his eyes, suspicious, but there wa
s no trace of the bitterness she’d seen in them earlier that day.
‘No tricks,’ Tam said. ‘Ruby and Jon’ll be there too.’
Kara nodded. ‘OK,’ she said, slowly. ‘Good. There’s a few things we need to talk about anyway.’
‘You did what?’ Ruby shouted. ‘Kara, that was the best fucking chance we’ve ever had!’
‘Steady,’ Tam said. ‘Blue Star isn’t the only record company in the world.’
‘No, but it’s the only one who’s offered us a deal on a plate,’ Jon said. He paced across Tam’s living room, stepping over the tangle of cables that stretched across the carpet. ‘Could you not have kept a lid on your temper for a week or two, Kara?’
Kara sat slumped in a chair, chewing her thumbnail. ‘I wouldn’t work with that bitch if my life depended on it,’ she said. ‘Besides, I’m the one who put in the effort to get us the contract in the first place. I don’t see anybody else taking the initiative.’
‘Must have been a lot of hard work,’ Tam muttered.
Ruby sighed. ‘Maybe if you could go back and apologise –’
Kara cut her dead with a look. ‘I don’t do apologies,’ she said, flatly. ‘So let’s just drop it, OK? I’ve got a few lyrics I was working on.’ She pulled the crumpled order pad out of her pocket, tore off the top sheet and passed it to Jon. ‘Think you can work this into something?’ she said.
He took the paper reluctantly and glared at Kara’s scribbled notes. ‘I’m sure I could,’ he said, ‘but is it worth it?’
Kara pressed her lips together. She’d had a long day, her head was fizzing, and she wanted to lose herself in the song. She knew it was the only way she’d be able to unwind. Take what was bugging her and twist it into music, make it new.
‘Jon,’ she said quietly, fixing her gaze on him, ‘please?’
He sighed. ‘You singing?’
‘Yep.’
‘Key?’
‘B flat.’
Jon walked over to the keyboard that was set up under the window and played a few chords. Tam swung his guitar onto his lap and followed the tune, while Kara listened, waiting for the right moment. She could make this good, she knew she could.
They played into the small hours, forgetting their arguments for the time being. Kara took all her anger and horniness and poured it into the song, letting the sound carry her elsewhere. It was only after Jon and Ruby had left, when she put on her coat and got ready to leave that she noticed the rust-orange pollen spilt all over her sleeve. She caught the scent of lilies and remembered the flowers, still sitting on the end of the bar, filling the place with their sweet heavy scent.
Tam noticed her frown and took her arm.
‘What’s that?’
‘Just a stain,’ Kara said, brushing at the pollen.
‘Want to stay over?’ he asked, catching her hand.
Kara raised her eyes to his. ‘You said no tricks.’
Tam gripped her wrist. ‘No tricks.’ He smiled. ‘Thought you might want a little comfort, that’s all.’
His thumb stroked the inside of her wrist. Kara fought the urge to pull away. She liked fucking Tam, but when he touched her like this, so gently, it made her jittery. She could feel him watching her too, with a look that was more compassion than lust. She couldn’t stand his sympathy. She preferred Tam when he was dark and smouldering, gripping her because he wanted her not because he thought she needed comfort.
‘It doesn’t matter, you know,’ Tam said.
‘What doesn’t matter?’
‘That Mike Greene blew you off.’
‘He didn’t blow me off,’ she snapped. ‘I told him to stuff his contract.’
Tam shrugged. ‘Whatever. I’m just glad you’re not –’ He broke off.
‘Not what?’
A chasm opened up suddenly, yawning with possibilities that Kara didn’t want to look at. Tam’s hand circled her wrist as tightly as handcuffs and she felt as though she couldn’t breathe. She pulled away, bumped her way towards the door. ‘I need to get home,’ she said. It was freezing outside, but she wanted to feel the cold air on her face. All the dangerous emotions were struggling inside her, making her feel like she was walking a tightrope over a deep drop, pushing forwards because she was too scared to look either side of her.
‘Kara,’ Tam said as she reached the door. ‘Stay a while. Please.’
The fight went out of her when he used the word ‘please’. It fell into her heart like cool water, and she found herself staring at him. He stood in the doorway in a T-shirt with the ragged hem, with his hair all mussed up and hanging into his eyes so that his fringe twitched when he blinked. Even with his broad shoulders and sulky mouth, his well-hidden sweet side was showing.
Kara looked at the mattress on his living-room floor. The ticking was bare, and it was covered with a zipped-out sleeping bag. Sheets of song notes and magazines were strewn over the blue nylon. Tam didn’t give much thought to anything besides music and fucking – in that order.
‘Perhaps I just want more, Tam,’ Kara said quietly.
‘More what?’ He approached her, moving carefully in his bare feet. His jeans were hanging off his hip bones and she could see the pale white line of the scar on his lip, drawing her eyes to his full luscious mouth. When he reached up to tuck her hair behind her ear, Kara was startled. His hand was shaking. What could he possibly be afraid of? They’d fucked, fought, made up and forgotten about it a dozen times. Why would this time be different?
But as he stroked the nape of her neck, working at her muscles with his fingertips, Kara felt a little flip in her stomach. Tam’s eyes were wide and dark and she couldn’t escape their depth. This wasn’t the prelude to a seduction, she realised. His jaw was working and his breath was ragged, as though he was working up the confidence to speak. When it came, his voice sounded forced and unnatural.
‘He’s no good for you, Kara. You can’t trust a man like that.’
She pulled back and opened her mouth to answer, but Tam raised his voice and kept going: ‘I know you like to think you know how to play him, but he’ll chew you up and spit you out. It’s not worth it, honey.’
‘Honey? Since when was I your bloody honey?’ Kara couldn’t keep the anger out of her voice.
‘Don’t get like that. I just want to …’
‘Tam.’ Kara folded her arms and nodded at him. ‘I’ll see who I like, when I like, as often as I like. The last thing I need is advice from a wannabe muso whose career high is getting an email from Keith Richards.’ Kara turned and made for the door, not waiting to see how Tam would react.
She gave it a good slam behind her and ran down the steps into the still winter night. There was frost in the air and it stung her lips as she breathed in but she was glad for the sudden shock, the physical sensation that seemed to help clear her thoughts. She walked fast through the dark streets, her footsteps echoing in the early-morning silence. Twice that day she’d run away from a nasty situation. Now she was going home to an empty flat – by the end of the late-night session she and Ruby still hadn’t been on friendly terms. She was alone, pissed off and confused.
In fact, the only glimmer of pleasure she could think of as she tramped up the hill to her flat was that ludicrous, extravagant bunch of flowers and Mike’s handwritten message – short, but full of promise.
Just how would he ‘make it up’ to her? she wondered. She pictured Mike’s wry smile and the way his eyes flickered over her. Something about him conjured up images of grand and glittering horizons – sleek cars and endless glamorous parties. Kara let herself imagine a succession of five-star hotel rooms. Silk sheets, camera flashes, champagne and oysters and Mike’s cool hands sliding over her thighs.
By the time she’d reached home, the lit up dreams in Kara’s head were more vivid than the dark rooms of her flat. She dropped her coat on the sofa and saw the pollen on her sleeve again. For the first time in hours, she allowed herself a smile.
6
‘SO, WE H
AVE a deal?’ Mike held the bottle tilted over her glass.
Kara smiled. ‘Sure. Just as long as it’s clear.’
‘Crystal clear.’ Mike poured until the champagne frothed over the rim and spilled down the stem.
‘The contract has nothing to do with you and me. Whatever else we choose to do –’ Mike drew his finger through the condensation on the side of the glass ‘– is a private arrangement. And I can be as discreet as you need me to be.’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Kara said. She had painted her eyes smoky and now she gave Mike the full-beam effect from under sooty lashes. In the dim candlelight of the club, everything glowed with understated elegance. Kara felt as though the glamour had rubbed off on her somehow. From the moment he’d picked her up outside her flat, Mike had been treating her differently – no edge of mocking amusement in his eyes, no condescending tone in his voice. He was as sincere and humble as a Benedictine monk. Only Kara was pretty sure monks didn’t take every opportunity to stroke a girl’s hand or glance at her cleavage.
He’d brought her to his private club – marble floors, silent staff, mysterious doorways – and in the ‘quiet lounge’, presented her with a contract. Kara had barely skimmed it, but she caught sight of enough phrases like ‘video production’, ‘marketing’ and ‘airplay’ to make her mouth water. She tucked the envelope carefully into her leather satchel and smiled.
‘And now we’ve dealt with business,’ Mike said, giving the cuffs of his shirt a little tug, ‘we’re free to amuse ourselves.’
‘In any private way we please,’ Kara said.
‘Quite.’
At that moment, a waiter arrived and refilled their drinks, tilting his head at Mike in deference. Kara smirked. She didn’t doubt that if the man had had a forelock, he would have tugged it. Mike seemed to have that effect on people.
Mike rubbed his chin and gazed at Kara across the table. He’d shaved – whether for the sake of Windigo’s dress code or to try to impress her, she couldn’t tell. He wore a freshly pressed shirt with silver cufflinks and a silk-lined suit that fell in softly tailored lines from his shoulders. Kara felt her spine straighten as she looked at him. Mike was perfectly at ease being waited on. He wore his power lightly, as though the world naturally revolved around him. It gave him a cool magnetism that sent ripples through Kara, more used to the rough-and-ready attitudes of twenty-something boys. Mike was, without doubt, a whole hell of a lot more. And he was completely focused on her.
The New Rakes Page 5