Dazzled (37 page)

Seeing Miles getting all protective and territorial had a strange effect on me. Well, obviously it was a huge turn on, but it made me feel delicate and girly, like I should take up embroidery or flower arranging. And it made me feel loved. No guy had ever made me feel that way before.

The look on their faces was priceless. Paul actually seemed slightly scared. Nazzer looked like he was having trouble understanding the English language.

“Um, happy New Year?” I said.

It was tense and uncomfortable for a few minutes, but then we started talking like old times. Almost like old times, because that night Miles kept a hold of my hand the whole time, his thumb rubbing small circles over my palm.

Miles

I hadn’t seen Nazzer and Paul in nearly eight months, but my first reaction to Paul’s dumbass comment was to beat the living shit out of him for talking about Clare like that.

She must have felt me tense up, because she was clinging onto my arm with both hands.

After she pulled me onto the seat next to her and we got some drinks in, I started to calm down a bit. I don’t even know why I was surprised that Paul was such a prick – I’d always known his brains were in his backside, especially when it came to women.

Not that I thought of myself as an expert or anything – hell, no! But when a guy’s best chat-up line is,
“
Oi, love, do you want to feel my shirt? ‘Cause it’s boyfriend material,” you see the problem.

Yep, he actually said that. Of course, he got his ass handed to him because the woman’s reply was something like, “What? Go with you while there are dogs in the street?”

I guess I was just feeling sort of protective, and things that I would have laughed at a year ago, now just irritated me.

Despite that initial hiccup, it was good to see the guys. They didn’t give a shit about what I’d been doing, except to ask if Lilia was as hot in bed as she looked.

Clare answered that one for me.

“What difference would it make to you? You couldn’t even find your dick with a map.”

I was still slightly taken aback when Nazzer told me that they’d found a replacement sax player for the trio. I’ve got to say that stung. I don’t know why really, it wasn’t like I was expecting them to wait around – they had lives, too. I suppose it was just the reality of knowing that the old part of my life was over.

Of course, they totally loved it when this woman came over to get my autograph. They asked if she wanted me to sign her tits. I told them to shut the fuck up and had to buy her a drink to apologize.

As it happened, she
did
want me to sign her tits, but Clare vetoed that one.

In fact, I thought she was going to toss the woman out onto the street by her hair extensions, especially when she said her vajazzle was inspired by the angel imagery from
Dazzled
.

We all laughed – well, I cringed – then Paul took me to one side and asked what a vajazzle was. I told him to Google it, but he probably thought that Googling was something porn actors did. And now I think about it, he did suggest I got into making porn films because, “That’s where the big bucks are – and big bazookas!” And he could watch them being made.

So, all in all, it was kind of a fun evening, but it felt like I was saying goodbye.

I suppose that’s exactly what it was.

We left the pub well after midnight, but it was impossible to get a cab. We tried waiting for a bus, but some drunk guys started giving me hassle, and Clare mouthed off to them, so we had to leg it. I was soooo glad that Clare wasn’t the kind of girl who wore high heels when she went out. Now if she wore them in bed, yeah, I could totally get into that.

But we didn’t want to wait for any more buses after that – I was kind of afraid of the trouble Clare’s mouth would get me into if we stood at a bus stop. And I really didn’t want to find out if training for a fake fight with a Hollywood stuntman would make a difference when four bricklayers from
Essex threatened to rearrange my face.

So we walked. Well, I walked – Clare rode piggyback most of the way.

We finally crawled into the hotel and had about two hours’ sleep before getting up for the flight to New York – 8
AM
on New Year’s Day. That was
brutal
. I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye to mum. I called her from the airport to wish her a happy New Year. I couldn’t even say when I’d see her again.

On the plus side, the plane was nearly empty and we slept most of the way.

We were staying at the Bowery Hotel on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Honey had liaised with the studio to book me a room, but I didn’t know where they’d stashed Lilia. I didn’t care much either, I just didn’t want to run into her by accident.

Clare laughed.

“Are you kidding me? I’d
love
to run into her by accident!” and she flexed her biceps. At least, I think that’s what she was doing.

Yeah, even though Clare was a Literature student, I don’t think she understood the whole concept of ‘accident’ and ‘deliberate’. I guess it was kind of easy to get them confused.

But when we turned up for the press junket the next day, Clare got her wish.

I was standing backstage, I mean, in another room, waiting for everything to kick off, when Lilia swept in looking like she owned the damn place.

I had to hand it to her, she had style.

“Happy New Year, darling!” she said, a beaming smile lighting up her face.

She really was beautiful.

I didn’t mean to be rude, but when she tried to kiss my cheek, I craned my head away from her.

She looked angry, but then covered it up with a playful pout. Instead, she linked her arm through mine and smiled up at me.

“Did you have a wonderful New Year? Mine was fun, but I missed you. What did you do?”

“He went out with his girlfriend!” came an icy voice from behind me.

Who needed the cavalry when Clare was around?

Clare

Lilia practically growled at me. Enough barbs were shooting from her eyes to have ventilated me severely.

“What are you doing here?” she snarled.

“I invited her,” said Miles, calmly. “Like she said, we’re together now. Clare’s my girlfriend.”

Lilia tore her arm free and marched off without a word.

“Wow,” said Miles, an amused smile lifting the corners of his mouth, “you pissed her off in less than three seconds. I think that’s a record.”

I rolled my eyes. “I piss her off by breathing.
You’re
the one who pissed her off in less than three seconds.”

He leaned down to kiss me. “Yeah, we make a great team.”

At that moment, they were all called onto the platform in the conference room. Jo-Anne led the way, followed by Lilia, Miles and Donald Hyde.

I was getting sick of seeing his shiny, botoxed face, and I think it was mutual because his lip always curled when he looked at me. Although that might have been from the plastic surgery. I hadn’t said anything to Miles about how Hyde behaved around me, because I didn’t want him to get arrested for thumping someone again.

Rhonda was there, too, and gave me a quick head nod. Wow, that was the most effusive she’d been with me – progress. Well, to be fair, we’d sort of reached an entente when the scandal about Lilia first broke and after the interview debacle. Whatever, she seemed to be coming around to my presence.
Yeah, well, she’d bloody have to!

The journalists’ questions were fairly benign and straightforward, asking about the possibility of a sequel, asking about how it felt to be in a hit movie, and so on and so on.

Miles was funny and charming; Lilia smiled a lot, but managed to say absolutely nothing when she spoke; and Jo-Anne was warm and thoughtful in her answers. Hyde just sounded like a prick in a good suit.

I may have been biased.

I was kind of zoning out for most of the interview, the late nights and five hour time difference getting to me, when one question to Miles had me pinning my ears back and listening intently.

“Bearing in mind Nuriel is an angel, is there any part of the character that you identified with?”

Miles looked uncharacteristically serious as he answered.

“Yeah, I really liked his capacity to learn.” He shook his head slightly. “I don’t mean because he was smart and had been God’s go-to guy,” a ripple of laughter drifted around the room, “the opposite in fact. He thought he knew everything, but when he fell to Earth, when he fell in love, nothing made sense any more – it’s then he’s at his most honest. Love doesn’t make sense – until it does. When he finally realizes that he knows
nothing
, he can finally start to learn.” He paused again. “Kind of levels the playing field for us mortals.”

Again, the massed reporters chuckled. The questioner gave Miles a shrewd look.

“Is that your experience of love, that nothing makes sense?”

There was a collective intake of breath, and Rhonda looked irritated. I wondered if she was going to pull the plug.

Miles just smiled.

“I think that’s every guy’s experience of love,” he said, looking toward me, a small smile threatening to break out. “It doesn’t make sense, until it does.”

I didn’t think it was possible to love him any more than I already did. Turned out I was wrong.

My biggest mistake of the afternoon was to go to the bathroom.

Now, generally speaking, going to the bathroom is usually viewed as a good thing – you know, saves you from having an embarrassing incident in public. In this case, it meant having an embarrassing incident in private.

I’d just availed myself of the facilities and was washing my hands, when Lilia slunk through the door.

I couldn’t help wondering if she made a habit of skulking in bathrooms just waiting to piss me off. Maybe it was one of her many talents – that and being able to blow a guy while being photographed for
People
magazine.

“I know why you’re here,” she said. “I know why you’re with Miles.”

“Is it a multiple choice answer, or were you hoping your hot air would help with global cooling?”

“You’re just with him now because he’s famous – and he’s got money.”

The accusation stung, but I was determined not to let
her
see that.