‘Traffic is category nine, sir,’ Jac said in a manner more suited to a military scenario. ‘But if we take the back streets, we might just make it.’
The car weaved through traffic, finding hidden back streets and secret routes that Netta had never seen before. As she stared out the window at London whizzing by, it hit her that she actually missed it. She missed this place.She’d loved living here, breathing its energy and culture and history. She’d felt so at home—until everything exploded.
‘You’re quiet,’ said Mo. ‘You okay?’
‘Yeah.’ Netta turned to look at him. ‘I was just thinking how much I’ve missed London.’
‘It is cool. I couldn’t live here, though. I need quiet and space or my head gets a bit hectic. My internals tend to start matching my environment, if you get what I mean. I’ve got a place in a little village about an hour away. It’s great. My brother, Mav, lives with me.’ He smiled sadly. ‘He’ll be moving out soon, I think.’
‘You don’t want him to?’
‘No. I really don’t. But he’s thirty-four. He’s his own man. It’s probably time I set him free.’
‘You sure he’s not a bit young to be out in the big bad world by himself? Is he even toilet trained yet?’
Mo laughed. ‘He’ll be alright. He’s a good kid. Just had a bit of a rough start, I guess. But he’s finding his feet now—doing a great job at Play On. It’s good that he’s spreading his wings.’ Mo sounded like he was trying to console himself.
‘We’ll be arriving soon, Mr Maplestone.’ Jac tapped an earpiece sitting in her left ear. ‘I’ve been instructed to drop you at the stage door. There’s security and a tented entrance. You’ll be able to get out of the car and into the venue without any bother, I’d expect.’
Netta’s body stiffened.
‘Oh, God. I should’ve thought,’ Mo said, realisation dawning on his face. ‘You don’t have to come.’
Netta took a deep, I-can-do-this breath. ‘No, it’s okay. Might as well build up the armour before the gala, hey?’
Mo gave her hand a quick squeeze, the heat of his fingers once again sending ripples through her body. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But just in case …’ He slid off his jacket and passed it to her. ‘You can put this over your head if you like.’
Netta wrapped Mo’s jacket around her shoulders as the car pulled up to the cloaked entry. The scent of his cologne mingled with his warmth, cocooning her in an unexpected feeling of safety. Jac opened the door and, as Netta pulled the jacket up to cover her face and felt Mo’s reassuring hand on the small of her back, she realised she felt dangerously bulletproof.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
NETTA
Netta sat in the cavernous circular auditorium of The Royal Albert Hall and tipped her head back to marvel at its intricately decorated domed ceiling. The acoustic discs hanging from it looked like whimsical mushrooms and added a sense of other-worldliness. An opulent sea of red velvet and gilt sprawled out beneath, where thousands of seats curved around to meet the stage and rose up five levels behind her. At the rear of the stage stood a huge organ, with pipes of varying lengths arranged to look like a giant crown. The whole theatre was a buzzing hive of activity. Guys navigated rigging to get the angle of the lights just so. Sound technicians pored over a giant mixing desk. Musicians climbed in and out of the orchestra pit.
Netta’s skin tingled with awestruck goosebumps. The very air she was breathing seemed to be charged with magic. She rubbed her hands along her seat and wondered how many people had sat in it before her, released from reality for a while by a fantasy played out on the stage. The Royal Albert Hall had hosted some of the greatest artists in history, and Mo was about to become one of them. His jacket lay across her lap, and when Netta was sure nobody was watching, she slid down in her seat and lifted it to her nose, drawing in the scent of him. It wasn’t just his cologne she could smell, it was the day they’d had together. It was justhim.It was probably also the distinct smell of trouble. She folded the jacket and laid it on the seat next to her, far enough away for her treacherous olfactory senses to calm the hell down.
A flash of sequins at the stage entrance caught Netta’s eye. She leaned out of her seat a bit to get a better look at the tall, lithe woman whose butt her sparkly dress was barely concealing. Long, tanned legs appeared, totally unselfconsciously, from the hemline and disappeared into stilettoed ankle boots. A waterfall of dark hair swished across her back as she swung her hips subtly from side to side, her arms hidden from view in front of her body. A hand appeared on her waist and as the woman moved her body to face the stage, Netta saw that the hand in question belonged to Mo. He was smiling and shaking his head at something the woman was saying, trying to move towards the stage but halted by her playful persistence. She pressed herself into him, wrapping her arms tighter around his neck as he removed his hand and pulled out of her embrace.
As Mo strode from the darkness of the tunnel onto the stage, the woman moved into the light for just long enough for Netta to see who it was. Lorena Long. Christ.She’d been the lead singer of a huge girl band a few years back. And she was so freaking beautiful. Netta groaned, recoiling as humiliation flamed in her chest. She hadn’t wanted to admit it, but a tiny, private part of her had started to believe that maybe Mo was attracted to her, too. There had been signs, she’d been sure of it. The little touches here and there. Their easy banter. The way he’d worked so hard to get her out of the escape room when she’d melted down. She had—so stupidly she coulddiefrom the embarrassment of it—talked herself into thinking that maybe she was the one who was holding back. Ha! Little had she known that he’d had Lorena Long waiting in the wings the whole time. Literally.Netta was merely a means to an end for Mo. A publicity tool.
Mo made his way to the front and centre of the stage, one hand gripping the mic stand and the other resting casually on top of the microphone. He looked so at ease. So at home in the spotlight. The drummer began counting them in and Lorena blew him a kiss, taking a step back into the shadows to watch.
Netta trudged through her memories as the opening bars of the song rolled out from the stage, inspecting each one for evidence that she was right to feel led on. But, under a microscope, there wasn’t much to see. Her imagination had just conned her into thinking there was more to Mo’s kindness and their growing ease in each other’s company, and she’d fallen for it like a cartoon anvil. She writhed with mortification. None of it had been real life. In real life, she was wading through the wreckage of her break-up with Pete. She was drowning in her job. And she was almost forty, still childless, and could only afford to live in her own apartment because Mo had paid her to deliver the diary.
Mo’s voice cruised through the sound system, crooning the first verse of ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’, teasing and raw, flooding the hall with his unmistakable timbre. Netta was instantly transfixed. Only Mo could make that song sound like foreplay. His moves were easy and graceful, the lights bouncing off his forearms as he gripped the mic stand and made the song his own. As he launched into the second verse with growing intensity, Netta gathered her bag and his jacket onto her lap, contemplating her options.
His quick glance over his shoulder to Lorena as he sang the chorus was a harpoon plunging straight through Netta’s fantasy, leaving it bleeding and mangled in her chest.
She stood, ready to take her burning cheeks and leave, but stopped herself. She wasn’t in this for Mo’s affection. She was in it because she wanted a baby, and going to the gala with him was her ticket to trying. She sat down and endured the rest of the song, attempting (and failing) not to laser focus on Lorena’s dance moves behind the stage.
The song finished and the people dotted around the auditorium all stopped what they were doing to clap. Mo had been great. He held up a thumb in thanks to the sound guys and vanished from the stage, the darkness enveloping him a moment too late for Netta to miss Lorena throwing her toned arms around his neck.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
MO
Mo searched for Netta in the theatre, eyes tracking over the arena of empty seats, a red velvet haystack and a needle he couldn’t find. Fucking Lorena had bailed him up for ages after they’d finished rehearsing. She was persistent, he’d give her that, but he wasn’t interested. She was the razzle and dazzle of show business, and he was the reluctant underbelly of it. She was coke and cocktails and endless after-parties. He was a neat whiskey and a swift exit. He swept his eyes along another row. Maybe Netta had gotten tired of waiting and had just gone back to the hotel. His phone buzzed a message alert in his back pocket. Rhona. He furrowed his brow at the screen.
