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Chapter Twenty-seven
Tori
Since Britney’s birthday party is no longer to be a surprise, she decides to hold it a week later. Right after Alkaline’s concert in Milan, in fact. The concert is on a Friday and the party will be that Saturday night at the Hunter residence. The plan is for everybody to fly back for it.
The days leading up to the concert are a busy time for Cash. He is at the recording studio a lot working on their new album. He works from mid-morning to late at night or even the early hours of the morning, so he sends a car around to take me to his apartment to make sure that I am already there by the time he comes in.
Even though he would have been working all day and sometimes looks dead on his feet, he will still be full of pent up energy. Most nights he falls on me like a starving animal. After that he is always hungry.
‘Feel like some Chinese food?’ he asks that day.
‘It’s already one o’clock. I’m going to get fat eating so late every night,’ I grumble.
‘No way. You eat barely enough to exist.’
‘I eat a lot during the day, thank you. It’s all right for you. You’re practicing dance moves all day long and burning up energy performing at concerts, but eating at this time of the morning is bad news for someone whose idea of exercise is dipping a couple of chicken nuggets into barbeque sauce.’
He grins and hands me the leaflet menu from Green Jade Royal Cuisine. In the front it bears the caption in red letters.
‘Eat more! The heavier you are the harder it will be to kidnap you.’
‘Thanks for the suggestion Green Jade Royal Cuisine, but I have absolutely no intention of foiling my kidnappers by letting myself get fat.’
Cash laughs. ‘Fine. You can watch me eat.’
He calls them on his mobile and puts through an order that would feed a football team. After he ends the call, he drops his mobile on the table, and walks over to me. ‘The food will be thirty minutes. Want to have a shower with me?’
‘Midnight feasts and showers. All dangerously tempting offers, but I think I’ll pass.’
He cocks his head. ‘Strange how that came out as a question. It was meant to be an order.’
I giggle. ‘I don’t know what kind of girls you have been hanging out with, but all this macho caveman shit doesn’t work with me.’
‘No?’ he asks as if giving serious consideration to my statement.
‘No,’ I say firmly.
He nods, bends down, and scoops me up still laughing and protesting.
Yes, we have a shower, a very interesting one. One that actually gives me an appetite. Flushed red and wrapped up in one of Cash’s big toweling robes, I sit in the living room next to him with all the food spread out on the low coffee table.
I watch his large, wonderfully masculine hands peel a pancake, spread a thin layer of plum sauce on it and load it up with shredded duck meat. Then he lays julienned cucumber and spring onion on top of the meat, rolls it up, and takes a healthy bite.
‘So what did you do at work today?’ I ask.
‘You seriously want to know?’
I pick up a prawn cracker. ‘Uh huh.’
‘We were laying down vocals for the new tracks.’
I bite into the cracker and let it melt on my tongue. ‘How’s it sounding?’
‘They have to mix it further of course, and the finished product will sound totally different, but so far, it’s not bad.’
‘Good,’ I say and casually pick up a crab claw and dip it into a container of sweet chili sauce. ‘So … was Octavia there?’
He starts building another pancake. ‘She popped in for a bit, yeah.’
I drag the claw in the dip. ‘She didn’t stay?’
He stops chewing. ‘Octavia in the studio? No. She just books the studio times for us.’
‘Doesn’t she stay to make sure that everything works and stuff?’
‘Octavia has many talents, but she’s no sound engineer or music producer.’
‘But she is a good manager, isn’t she?’
He picks up a pair of chopsticks. ‘She’s a formidable PR agent. She can make the public think black is white and white is you.’
I let my finger trace the edge of the table. ‘Cash, have you ever, I mean, have you …um.’
He uses his chopsticks to pick up a piece of chicken. ‘What? Spit it out.’
‘You know, have you ever, well, slept with Octavia?’
He gives me a narrowed look. ‘Fuck, Tori. What do you think I am? The woman’s my manager.’
‘It’s just the way she talks to you. Like she owns you, or has some kind of hold on you.’
He looks at me incredulously. ‘So you think I fucked her?’
‘I’m just asking.’
‘Well, the answer to your original question is a big, fat never. She’s the last person you have to worry or be jealous about. She has nothing I want.’
I nod, relieved but trying not to show it. ‘I’m not jealous or anything like that,’ I deny primly.
He grins suddenly. ‘You’re not jealous? You’re totally jealous.’
‘I’m not.’
‘So why all the questions then?’ he challenges.
I shrug. ‘I just wanted to know where I fit into the scheme of things.’
He puts his chopsticks down, moves back on the seat, then curls his hand around my wrists and tugs me so I fall into his lap. Slightly breathless I look up at his face. ‘Where you fit in? You fit in because I kind of like fucking my sister’s little PA.’
I slide my hand underneath his shirt and lightly scratch the skin of his bare chest. ‘Kind of?’
‘Erase that. I fucking cannot get enough of my sister’s little PA.’
I giggle. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah, she’s got me all knotted up and twisted around her little finger.’
‘Right. I’ll just file that under Fiction, shall I?’
His eyes are suddenly serious. ‘Why? Does it not seem like that to you?’
I stare into his eyes. ‘You want to know what it really seems like to me. The real truth?’
He nods slowly.
‘You have so many choices. You’ll play with me for a while then you’ll drop me. If I think it’s just sex then I’ll be OK when that day comes. If I think it is anything else I’ll be hurt.’
He strokes my hair. ‘I don’t know what the future holds, Tori, but I know this. I never felt this way about any girl before you. I can’t even bear it when you talk to other men. I feel like ripping their fucking heads off.’
I feel a rush of pure joy fill my heart. My lips widen and I can’t stop grinning like an idiot. ‘Really?’
‘God’s honest truth.’
At that moment I really want to confess about my childhood crush, why I got the PA job to his sister, basically everything, but he takes a prawn and puts it in my mouth. ‘No more talking. I have other things planned for that mouth of yours.’
