Angel Dares (18 page)

I scrunched the tissues in my hand, remembering how he had made me feel. ‘I’m not easy. I don’t sleep around.’

‘No, you’re definitely not easy. You’re about the most difficult puzzle of a girl I’ve ever met. But you’re one hell of a musician, so even if you don’t want to try the other stuff with me, then let’s work on what we can share, OK?’

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to try anything and everything with him—it was the basis on which he had proposed we went ahead. But how could I tell him that? Words failing, I settled for a nod.

‘Great. So before Kurt gets bored of waiting for us to sort things out, let’s kiss and make up.’

Good idea.

Baaaad idea. His lips touched mine and, as before, it turned from simple kiss to full-on embrace. His hand held me steady in the centre of my back, the other cruising my neck looking for spots to make me shiver. I could feel all the textures of his mouth as he explored mine. Barriers between us shuddered and fell. For one magical moment we were sharing the same space, the same mind.

‘OMG’ Cohen
. I whispered my private name for him into his mind.

I could feel his lips curve into a smile. ‘AC/DC—kissing you is like sticking a finger in a live electric socket—in a good way.’

Kurt coughed. ‘If you guys have quite finished with making up, can we get on with making music please?’

Flustered, I smoothed my clothes down. It was a gauge of just how powerful was the tug between Marcus and me that I could forget I was in the presence of my rock hero. ‘Oh, um, I’ll just get Freddie and show you my idea.’

Marcus and Kurt both looked to the door. ‘Who’s Freddie?’ asked Marcus.

‘My violin.’ I picked up the fiddle. Damn, my sophisticated Angel phase hadn’t long survived the kiss. ‘Moving swiftly on, shall I play the theme I’ve thought of? I was wondering if the violin could be like the woman’s voice, answering in counterpoint to the confused lover in the song.’

Kurt grinned at Marcus. ‘Told you she was worth calling in on this. My instinct is never wrong. Marcus, why don’t you get your Dylan while I pick up Bruce here.’ With a wink at me he took up his guitar. ‘All the best players name their instruments,’ he confided.

After working out the violin part and running it through a couple of times, Kurt shooed Marcus and I away as he had a meeting with his record producer. Marcus was eager to depart before the guy arrived.

Marcus held the door for me. ‘Can’t stand him. Barry Hungerford is the industry’s biggest pain in the ass.’

I remembered the guy Joey had dissed on the first afternoon. ‘I don’t think he likes me very much.’

Marcus chuckled. ‘Yeah, dancing on the table. That really got up his nose. If I hadn’t been so insanely jealous after hearing Jay go on about his hot little girlfriend, I’d’ve joined you just to show him. Here, do you want to leave your violin in my trailer?’

Insanely jealous—so that was why! ‘And do what after?’

Marcus looked over my head in the direction of the festival field. ‘I’ve not been round the site yet. You offered to show me.’

I grinned. ‘I offered to show your band mates as you were too uptight to accept my offer.’

He tried his big-eyes-imploring look on me and I was instantly putty in his hands. ‘But you’ll take pity on me now, won’t you?’

‘Only if we don’t get mobbed by your fans.’

‘And what about your fans?’

It wasn’t fans I had to worry about but savant-hunting journalist types. I didn’t think the Benedicts would approve of me wandering around the grounds; that was asking for trouble. ‘We should go in disguise.’

He opened his trailer. ‘I’ve got just the thing for you.’

I put Freddie next to his Dylan. They looked good sitting side by side, like they were meant to be there.

Get a grip, Angel: stop mooning over musical instruments, for heaven’s sake!

A baseball cap frisbeed across the room and hit me in the chest. ‘Try that.’ He had given me a Black Belt hat. I tugged it on and looked at myself in the mirror. Hair covered, it made my eyes look huge.

‘Sunglasses.’ Marcus offered me a pair of mirror lenses. I slipped them on and immediately felt like someone the paparazzi should be interested in.

‘I look
bad
,’ I said appreciatively.

‘Yeah, my bad girl.’ He laughed. ‘Every rock star should have one.’

‘So, Mr Wanna-be-a-rock-star, what’s your disguise going to be? How’s Superman going to become Clark Kent?’

‘With more than a pair of black-framed glasses.’ He dug through a drawer.

‘Not the beanie—you’re too recognizable in that to your adoring fans.’

He threw it aside regretfully.

I saw something go by in his search and hooked it out. ‘What’s this?’

‘That? Oh, that’s a hippie wig I wore when I went as late-period John Lennon to the New Year’s Eve party.’

‘Put it on!’ I crowed.

He pulled the long dark wig over his fair hair. It even had a headband. He smiled at his reflection and started to take it off.

‘No, don’t.’

‘You can’t be serious.’

‘Marcus, look at yourself: no one is going to recognize you—not even your mother. Do you have glasses?’

He took out a pair of Lennon specs with dark pink lenses. ‘To see the world through rose-coloured glasses.’

‘That’s amazing: you’ve managed to make yourself look almost unattractive.’

He tackled me to the sofa to retaliate for my giggles. ‘Almost?’

‘Well, it’s impossible to hide so much gorgeousness even under such a loser’s wig.’

He tickled me until I squealed for mercy. ‘Do you surrender?’

‘Yes!’ I pulled the wig off his head. ‘Just kidding: I won’t make you go out in public in that.’

‘Thank you.’ He kissed the tip of my nose, and then somehow got diverted to my lips. Things were getting a little bit too out of control when we tumbled off the narrow sofa. Being dumped on my butt knocked some sense into me. I’d drawn a line with him and had to keep to it or lose my self-respect. He reached for me but I got up and returned to his closet, acting as if nothing had happened.

‘How about this?’ I threw him a cowboy hat.

Marcus sighed and bowed to my decision. ‘That’s good. With shades, no one will know me.’

I wasn’t so sure—I’d know him anywhere now—but it would fool most people. ‘So are you ready to rumble?’

‘Let’s go.’ He took my hand. ‘Show me what I’ve been missing.’

First, we explored what the food vans had to offer. You could get everything from traditional English and fast food to gourmet vegetarian and international cuisine. Marcus bought us French pastries and coffee which we ate sitting on hay bales in the sunshine. There were a few rides running already as the camp woke up, mainly of the turn-you-upside-down-and-make-you-shriek sort, which I didn’t fancy so soon after breakfast, but we decided the dodgems would be fun. I tried to pay but Marcus insisted, muttering something about me still being at school and him having a worldwide hit. I elbowed him in the stomach to keep him humble. I expected him to demand to drive but he surprised me by paying for two. I soon found out why. For Marcus, the point of dodgems wasn’t to dodge but to chase his partner around the rink and bump her into a corner.

‘Playing nasty, are we, cowboy?’ I called, rising to the challenge. ‘Prepare to meet your match!’ I directed my car to scoot off between other customers.

‘Ye-ha!’ shouted Marcus, getting into the rodeo rider vibe. He set off in pursuit as I anticipated.

He was expecting me to try to get my revenge by bumping him back; little did he know that I was far more devious than that. I teased him by skimming several times around the rink then saw my opportunity. My car shot between two converging dodgems, just squeaking through. Coming up too fast to swerve, Marcus bumped into both, and was left having to explain to complete strangers—one of whom was a butch guy with a thick bull neck—quite why he was being so aggressive. The klaxon sounded and I shimmied out of my dodgem and did a little air punch. Marcus scowled at me, then saw the funny side and laughed. Saying something about crazy girlfriends, he shook hands with the bull-necked man and high-tailed it over to me.

Girlfriend? When had that happened?

He put his arm around my waist and squeezed. ‘You’ll pay for that.’

‘That, Marcus, was called angelic revenge. Did you really just tell that guy I’m your girlfriend?’

He looked away. ‘Well, yeah, it seemed too complicated to say that girl over there who thinks we’re soulmates but won’t—’ He thought twice and bit back the rest of the sentence. It was just as well he didn’t finish or he would be singing soprano for the rest of the day. No joke when he had a televised gig that evening.

‘I’ve told you what I want to happen. If you’d just try telepathy once. One or two teeny weeny little words would do, like “howdy, pardner”.’ I tried to make a joke of it by tugging his cowboy hat over his eyes.

‘And we were having such a nice morning.’

‘OK, OK, I’ll drop the subject. Sorry. Where next?’

‘You tell me.’

‘I’ve not been down to the beach yet.’ I took a leaflet from a man in a blue T-shirt advertising an organization that provided clean water in poor countries. ‘Look: they’re doing a charity sandcastle build now.’

‘You want to make a sandcastle?’

‘And you don’t?’ I stopped and got up on one of the bales so we were more on a level. ‘Marcus, don’t you ever just mess around: you know, play?’

A little notch appeared between his brows. ‘I play. I make music.’

‘That’s your profession. I mean just have fun because it’s … well … fun.’

He put his hands round my waist then slid them down a little lower. ‘I can think of plenty of ways of having fun with you.’

‘Geez, get your head out of the gutter, Marcus.’ Not that my mind didn’t spend most of the time down there with him. ‘I’m talking innocent fooling around.’

He looked puzzled.

‘OK, that settles it. You, Marcus, are too serious so you need a serious dose of silly.’

‘A serious dose of silly? Angel, you’re—’

‘I know: crazy, infuriating, et cetera, et cetera. But you and Kurt told me to be myself and this is me being me. I like the idea of building a sandcastle because it’s for a good cause and I haven’t made one for years. Are you coming?’

‘As long as no one recognizes me. If this gets on YouTube, I’m gonna kill you.’ He made a pretence of foot-dragging.

‘Don’t be stupid—it’d do your image wonders: the human side to mysterious Marcus Cohen; the guy who’s rocking the world of rock gets down among the rocks at Rockport.’

‘Enough of the rocks already.’ He snorted at my idiotic headline. ‘I’ll supervise.’

I tugged him in the direction of the gate leading onto the beach. ‘Uh-uh. I’m the expert on fun so I get to supervise. You are here strictly in your capacity as my minion.’

This time I didn’t take ‘I’m the rich rock star’ as an excuse and insisted on paying our entry to the sandcastle competition.

‘OK boss, where do we start?’ Marcus asked. There were already several completed sandcastles and many under construction.

I looked over my shoulder to check we weren’t being watched. Everyone was busy on their own projects. ‘By the water.’ I led him to a smooth spot of sand that would remain above the tide for a few hours yet, shielded by two large rocks. ‘You get digging. I’ll collect some shells.’

‘Digging with what?’

‘Your hands, duh.’

Playing his part as reluctant minion, he grumbled about getting his hands dirty and jeans sandy, but sank down on his knees to begin the excavation. ‘What shape do you want this?’

‘Your choice, babe: improvise.’ Humming happily, I went to the water’s edge. The beach had already been scavenged for the best bits of seaweed and shells so I would have to do some improvisation of my own. Closing my eyes I buried my hands in the damp sand, waiting for the waves to come in and lap at my wrists. Connected to the water, I felt the unrolling of my gift like an answering wave pouring from inside. Being by the ocean is heaven for me but also a little dangerous. At times I forget where I begin and the sea ends. Fortunately this time I never quite lost consciousness of Marcus beavering away behind me, my anchor to stop me drifting off on the tide. When I opened my eyes again, the sea’s gifts were neatly stacked at my side: fresh kelp, complete shells, shiny stones, one with a hole through the centre, a piece of gnarled driftwood in the shape of a masted ship. I gathered them in my tunic dress and carried them back to Marcus.

‘Here.’ I dropped them by his motte.

In my absence, his imagination had been caught by the engineering challenge. He was intent on making a bridge over the moat around his hillock, swearing each time it collapsed. Muttering thanks, he grabbed a scallop shell and used it to scoop out the correct amount of sand.

‘I could help.’

‘I’ve almost got it.’ Marcus grinned as the bridge stayed up this time. ‘There!’

Compared to other constructions ours was on the modest side. ‘I could hurry things up a little.’

‘You can do that bit over there,’ Marcus said generously. ‘I’ll do the castle.’

‘That bit?’

‘The town around the castle.’

Leaving him to pat his building into shape, I summoned a wave higher up the beach. With a few suggestions and nudges from my gift, the sea did the work for me, swirling, burrowing, building.

‘Aren’t you going to do your part?’ asked Marcus a little testily as I remained seated.

‘I have.’

‘You won’t get anything done sitting on that very excellent butt of yours.’

‘Oh Marcus?’ I said in a singsong voice.

‘Yes? Dammit: it’s fallen in again.’

‘I think you should take a look around you.’

He raised his eyes to my effort. Between the sea and me, we had built a very fair approximation of a town: market square, church, lighthouse and port for my driftwood ship. As Marcus sat up, his bridge collapsed.

‘You cheated.’

‘Did not. I played—with my gift.’ I called a wave closer to repair his bridge for him, bolstering the structure with some well-placed pebbles.

‘Show me again.’

He sat behind me and pulled me into the space between his legs. I summoned the next wave and made it curl into an M. As each wave came, I added another letter to his name.