pushed his way past the two of them, knocking Jenny off the edge of her seat and into me as he left. The weight of the Lopez wasn’t ever going to cause me trouble but the vodka soda she spilled all down my dress wasn’t exactly ideal.
‘Oh, shit,’ I said, leaping up, right into James’s waiting arms.
‘We have to get out of here,’ Blake said, pulling at James’s shoulder. I froze for a second, pressed against James’s chest, my wet dress soaking through against his shirt, until it was warmed by the heat of his skin. It wasn’t until he’d scooped me up, as if I weighed nothing, as if I was half an Olsen, let alone three strapped together, that I realized we were moving out of the club.
‘Angie?’ Jenny yelled over the music, still on the floor beside the wreckage of our table. ‘Wait!’
‘Jenny,’ I protested, preferring the view of James’s dark brown curls to the stares and whispers all around us. And, oh dear God, the camera flashes.
‘Blake, go back for her,’ James commanded, striding into the lift, leaving an incensed Blake standing stock-still. ‘Now I remember why I stopped going out.’
I didn’t know what to say. On one hand I felt awful about leaving Jenny—sick, actually—but on the other, I knew that the second James put me down, the interview, my job, possibly my visa and then more or less my entire life was over. I had to try and get this back on track somehow, otherwise Jenny wouldn’t have a roommate to be mad at.
‘James, I am so incredibly sorry,’ I said as we scrambled into the limo and tore off up Hollywood Boulevard. ‘I-I should just go back to my hotel and—’
‘That’s not a good idea,’ James said quietly. ‘Have a look out of the back window.’
Twisting against my seatbelt, I turned to look back, trying not to get dizzy at the speeds we were travelling. I don’t know what I was expecting to see but, whatever it was, the sea of bright lights and industrial-strength flashes was not it. True, I still had an issue with what side of the road we were supposed to be driving on, but these cars were literally all over the road. The honking, the screeching, even the screaming was so loud, so intense. It made a wander down our block in New York sound like an episode of Songs of Praise.
‘What’s happening?’ I asked, slightly dazed and very nauseous.
‘Paparazzi,’ James sighed. ‘My good friends, the paparazzi.’
‘How did they know where you were?’
‘Who knows? Maybe someone overheard us this afternoon and tipped them off. Maybe they were already outside Teddy’s on the off-chance someone would show up. Maybe someone called them when we arrived.’
‘But we were only there for half an hour?’ I couldn’t believe it, no matter how fast we went, they came at us faster until they were swarming all around the car.
‘Get away from the window.’ James pulled me into the centre of the limo, on the floor between the seats. ‘Some of the flashes are bright enough to see you through the tinted glass.’
‘Wow, this is glamorous,’ I said, trying to shuffle my dress around my thighs to avoid any further pant revelation.
‘Yes, the rock-and-roll life of a movie star.’ He held out an arm to steady me as we skidded around a tight corner. ‘But you’re all-over rock and roll, surely?’
‘Me?’ I squirmed across the floor of the car, trying not to nestle against his broad, warm and still slightly damp chest.
‘Your boyfriend, the rock star? Alan?’
Oh. ‘Alex. His name is Alex. He’s so not a rock star. There’s a pretty big difference between him and Bono.’ I fumbled around on the floor of the car looking for my bag. ‘What time is it?’
‘Not even twelve, what’s up?’
‘Just wondered.’ I pulled out my phone. Twelve here, three in New York. And a missed call from Alex. Just one. Twenty minutes earlier and no message. ‘Bugger.’ Just as I was about to redial, James snatched the phone out of my hand.
‘If you throw that out of the window, I will freak out.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, turning the phone off. ‘They’ll hack it.’
‘They’ll what?’ Could this get any more bizarre?
James nodded slowly. ‘They can hack your phone if you use it near enough. I don’t know how.’
‘But how do you call anyone, ever?’ I asked.
‘I don’t. It’s like living in Nineteen ninety-five.’ He shrugged. ‘If I really need to get hold of someone, Blake goes out and calls them for me.’
‘So you can’t text your friend to see what flavour muffin they want?’
‘Can’t go out and buy muffins. Can’t really eat muffins.’
‘And you can’t call a taxi when you’re hammered?’
‘To be fair I have a driver.’
‘What if you need to extend your credit limit to buy something amazing?’
‘Yeah, that’s not really a massive problem right now. Unless that something is a Bentley.’
‘I might be able to live with not having a mobile phone if I was you,’ I said, feeling less sympathetic by the second.
James nodded. ‘But if I wasn’t me, we wouldn’t be running away from the club now. The paparazzi wouldn’t be chasing us. And you wouldn’t be sitting on the floor of a car ruining your beautiful dress, not able to call your boyfriend.’
‘But if you weren’t you, I wouldn’t be in LA at all, I wouldn’t have met you and, well, I wouldn’t have been able to wear my beautiful dress in March anyway.’ I shuffled back up onto the seat as the limo twisted around some invisible corners and then slowed to a stop. The din from the paparazzi got quieter and quieter until I couldn’t hear anything but the ticking of the cooling engine as we climbed out.
James ran his hands down my sides, smoothing down the creased-up skirt. I breathed in sharply as they ran back up my bare arms. ‘It’s a great dress, did I tell you that already?’ he asked, towering above me. He was awfully tall. I hadn’t noticed how awfully tall. ‘Phillip Lim, right?’
‘Every so often, you throw me off completely, you know?’ I said, cricking my neck to get a better look at him. ‘If you weren’t all Hollywood, I’d think you were gay. Which would just about break Jenny’s heart.’
‘Good to know,’ he said, fumbling for keys in his jeans pocket. I was right, his backside did look great. ‘We should have just stayed here. You know what they say, if you’re going to get into trouble, do it at the Chateau.’
He wanted to get into trouble? Meep. ‘I really should go back to my hotel,’ I choked. ‘It’s late and I was supposed to be conducting an interview with someone tomorrow.’
‘I heard he’s a delusional egotist who likes to prance around in tights,’ James
