“Yes, her. You were flirting with her. Right in front of me.”
Realisation dawns on me like the warm sun rising on a summer morning. “You’re jealous,” I state as I cross my arms.
“I am not.” She mirrors my pose.
“You are!”
“I’m … Fine. Maybe I am. So what? You still have my arousal in your mouth, my teeth marks all over your breasts. Aren’t I allowed to be a little pissed when I see you flirting with another woman right in front of me?”
“I was not flirting,” I say, hoping she doesn’t see how her wicked words and the mental images they vividly create have made my nipples very hard. I lean in a little closer. “I was … I was laughing because I was thinking about how much you’ve changed me. You’ve made me … fucking feral. Sex is all I can think about right now. Sex with you.”
This has her scowl melting away. She loosens her arms, and I see them lift but then lower again. We’re not completely in view of everyone in the other room, but we’re also not invisible either.
“You want more sex with me?” There’s something about the lift in her tone that has me able to immediately imagine what she looked like as a child: big brown eyes that glow with flecks of gold in the right light, lips that turn upward at the corner, thick eyelashes that flutter with excitement.
I smile at her, and surely she must see it too. How much I want this. But then one of the sound techs walks in and I step back.
“I want us to be careful,” I tell her in a low whisper after I see him busying himself with equipment on the other side of the room. “You can’t keep dropping all those hints. You can’t play around like that so … blatantly. Let the song do the talking. Remember? The song is for us and all the women like us.”
Pia stares at me for a long time. Her playful smile blends into a more searching and then confused expression, and then something shutters behind her eyes and she’s back to the scowling woman who dragged me into this room.
“Well, let’s get this song recorded then,” she finally says, and she reaches the headphones hanging on their hook.
“Yes, let’s record the song,” I repeat, wondering why I don’t feel pleased that we’re on the same page about this.
CHAPTER 11
PIA
Fine, so maybe I overreacted earlier. Maybe Cassie wasn’t flirting with Ramona. And Ramona certainly wasn’t flirting with her because fifteen minutes into this dull interview, and she has asked far too many questions about Stephan fucking Greene and the rumours that they’ve broken up andblah blah blah. Only a very heterosexual person would be that interested in such a clearly doomed relationship.
“And how about you?” Ramona turns to me. “Several publications over the years have linked you romantically to most, if not all, of your band members. Any truth in those rumours?”
I flinch, managing to avoid the deep scowl my face wants to mould into instinctively. I cannot imagine she would ever ask any of my bandmates about these rumours–or indeed any male musician. However, if I play nice, this will be over far quicker than if I cause trouble. “There were also rumours that I sucked Ronald Reagan off during the Oscars last year while Nancy watched. What do you think?”
Ramona’s cheeks flush instantly, and it reminds me of the way I made Cassie blush. How can rosy-pink cheeks be so fucking tantalising on one woman and so pathetic on another.
“Well, moving on to the song.” Ramona clears her throat. “It sounds great! And I understand that you wrote some of the lyrics yourself. How was it writing a song together?”
I yawn, not giving a shit how rude that makes me look. I know my reputation precedes me, and at least I’m being consistent. But then I feel the softest nudge of Cassie’s knee against mine from where she sits next to me on the couch, and I look her way. She’s not lookingat me. She’s responding to Ramona’s question with a lifted chin and an earnest expression on her face.
“It was actually a very easy process,” she says in her cheeriest voice. “There’s a lot of press about how we’re rivals, or even enemies, but that’s not the case. We’ve actually just never spent much time together before this, and once we were in the same room together, well, we realised we had more in common than we thought. And working together was … a lot of fun.”
I smother my laugh at the last moment, and it makes me sound like a strangled cat. Both Cassie and Ramona shoot looks my way.
“Sorry, just a hiccup.” I busy myself, lighting another cigarette.
“Can you talk a bit more about it? About writing the lyrics together?”
There’s a beat of silence, and I know Ramona directed the question at me, and Cassie expects me to respond, as it is technically my turn, but I frankly can’t be bothered. This whole interview is bullshit. It was enough of a struggle to sing the song with Cassie in the next-door booth, hearing her angelic voice singing words that I could pretend were directed at me.
Every time I felt a warmth bloom in my stomach or my chest, I had to remind myself that this is all a performance. Even when we harmonised together – her melodic birdsong and my gravelly alto blending surprisingly well – I felt a physical ache from knowing that this was all going to be over soon.
Cassie Everard may think she wants to keep having these … dalliances with me, but after a few days back in her Hollywood Hills house, she’ll realise how foolish that is. A few days with those toxic Greene boys and bossy Kevin Briggs, and she’ll have remembered how much easier life is when she plays it safe.
I admit, I felt chastised when she warned me about dropping hints. I felt abandoned when she didn’t play along. I felt rejected when she didn’t –wouldn’t– touch me, not once since we left the hotel. But that’s because Cassie is not ready for this. Cassie is not ready for me.
No one is.