‘Don’t. Don’t twenty years mean anything to you?’
She stood up, almost spilling champagne all over the luxurious cream leather.
‘How …’ She stood, her mouth open but speech failing her for a moment before she was able to continue. ‘How dare you?’ she finally managed, almost hyperventilating. ‘As if it was me who flaunted my bits on the side all over town? As if it was me who disappeared into a blizzard of cocaine? As if I was the one who started believing my own hype and behaving like a prize twat because “it’s what people want from a rock star”. Your words, wanker, not mine.’
Her air-quoting fingers turned into furious flapping hands.
‘OK.’ Deano got up, holding his palms towards her in surrender. ‘I know. I’ve got a lot to make up. But, Jen, I’m serious. I want you back. I’m going to do what I have to do to prove myself to you. Watch me.’
With that, he glided from the room in that particular feline, slinking way that had once made the pit of her stomach turn watery. Did it even now, just a little?
No.
She turned her face away and slammed her hand down on the leather seat cushion.
Just who the hell did he think he was?
Once everyone was out of the house, and Tabitha had given Kayley and Linda a lift home on the way to Bledburn’s only half-decent hotel, Jenna realised that Jason was missing.
She looked around the ground floor of the house for a few moments before the mewing of Bowyer, his cat, gave her the clue she was looking for.
She followed the plaintive sound upwards until she found the animal standing by the shut attic door, crying for his master’s attention.
‘Is he in there, Bo?’ she whispered, crouching to ruffle the cat’s neck fur.
She opened the door quietly. The cat streaked ahead of her. By the time she found Jason, lying on his stomach on the wooden boards, slashing them with paint, Bowyer was sitting in the crook of Jason’s neck and shoulder, nuzzling him.
‘Don’t try and stop me,’ said Jason, without looking over at her. ‘I need to let it out. Leave me be, yeah? I’ll be down when I’m done.’
‘Right.’
As she turned to leave, her eye caught a flash of the portrait he’d been sketching earlier in the day. The portrait of her. He’d scribbled a crown across her head and added a necklace made of pound signs. Across the top was scrawled in black paint, ‘Her Royal Fucking Highness’.
She knew he was just working out his feelings at the way the whole celebrity culture thing had hijacked his night, but all the same, she felt so hurt that tears came to her eyes, blurring her passage back to their bedroom.
Exhaustion washed over her as she brushed her teeth and undressed for bed. She remembered, as if it were distant history, their original plans for this night. She had been going to give him her anal virginity. She remembered the conversations they had had about it and how she had overcome her initial reluctance in the stronger desire to give him something of herself that nobody else could lay claim to. The intensity, the secrecy, the thrill of it had been on her mind whenever she took a break from the show preparations. Giving him permission to do this to her was the ultimate gesture of trust, and a token of how seriously she now took their relationship. But Lawrence Harville, his mother’s bizarre revelations, and the return of Deano Diamond had all interposed themselves between that.
Anal virginity would have to stay on for a while.
She was dozing off, despite her highly wrought feelings, by the time Jason came to her. Was it three, four in the morning? She couldn’t tell, but it was ridiculously late.
He sat silently on the bed, removing his shoes and socks, then he stood to divest himself of the expensive suit she’d bought for him in London.
It was covered in paint.
‘Jason,’ she said, sitting up, suddenly wide awake. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Why?’ He threw the clothes into the laundry basket. ‘Not your fault, is it?’
He disappeared into the bathroom for a while. She sat with her hands clasped around her knees, trying to imagine a life without this man. What if he decided it was too much and he wanted out? What if …?
She rested her forehead on her knees. It was too painful to contemplate.
He climbed into bed beside her and put his arm around her shoulders. She almost melted with gratitude and reli
ef at his touch.
‘I love you,’ she whispered.