slightly sick, reminded her that whatever they might say to his band, whatever story they might spin for the papers, when it came down to it, this really was just a publicity stunt, or a business arrangement or...whatever. Whatever it was, she knew what it wasn’t. It hadn’t been love at first sight. It wasn’t a grand romance. It wasn’t a fairy tale, and there was going to be no happy ending for her. Well, fine, it wasn’t like she deserved one anyway.
But now that they were married, they had to make it work. They had to appear to be intoxicated with one another. Luckily, intoxicated was one of her fortes. She forced herself to unfold her arms and smile. ‘Of course I’m all right.’
Taking a deep breath, she stepped towards him, and with a questioning look in her eye snaked her arms around those tense shoulders. She placed another chaste peck on his lips, and smiled as she drew away. ‘See? Picture perfect. Everything’s as we agreed. Let’s go say hi to everyone.’
Under the pressure of her arms, she felt his shoulders relax and his face melted into a smile. ‘Well, we could give them something to talk about first.’
His arms wrapped around her waist, and she was reminded of the rush of adrenaline and hormones that she had felt outside when he had kissed her in front of the cameras. Her breath caught as her body softened into his hold. This time when his lips met hers, there was nothing chaste about it. Her arms tightened around him as he lifted her just ever so slightly, rubbing her hips against his as she slid up his body. His arms wrapped her completely, so that her ribs were bracketed with muscular forearms, and his hands met the indents of her waist. She was surrounded by him. Overwhelmed by the dominance of his body over hers.
His mouth dominated her too, demanding everything that she could give, and it was only with the touch of his tongue that she remembered where they were. She pushed both hands on his chest, forcing him to give her space, to unwind his arms from around her waist.
She smiled as she looked at him, both of them still dazed from the effect of the kiss. ‘Do you think they bought it?’ she asked, remembering that just a few moments ago they had been discussing the fact that this relationship was just a business deal—that the purpose of the kiss had been to keep up appearances. But Joe’s face fell, and she knew that she had said the wrong thing.
‘I think they bought it fine,’ he said. ‘It was a winning performance.’
Through the bite of his teeth, she knew that it wasn’t a compliment.
She shook her head, then reached up and pecked him one last time on the cheek. ‘Whatever it was, it blew my mind.’ She met his eyes, and she knew that he saw that she was genuine. Whatever else might be going on, there was no denying the chemistry between them. It would be stupid to even try.
But beyond that, beyond the crazy hormones that made her body ache to be near his, was there something else too? A reason that the disappointment in his eyes made some part of her body hurt? She slipped her fingers between his and they walked over to where Ricky was holding court with a woman that she recognised from another record label, her competition, and a music journalist.
‘So here’s the happy couple,’ the hack said with a smile, raising her glass to toast them. Charlie spotted a waiter passing with a tray of champagne and grabbed a flute for herself and one for Joe. She saw off half the glass with her first sip, until she felt she could stare down the journalist with impunity.
She watched Joe as they chatted, her hand trapped within his, and tried not to think about whether the warm glow of possessiveness she felt was because she’d bagged him as an artist, or a husband.
* * *
As they walked through Arrivals at Heathrow Airport, Joe felt suddenly hesitant at the thought of taking Charlie back to his apartment, definitely not something he was used to. It wasn’t as if he were a stranger to taking girls home. Though in fairness home was more usually a hotel room or their place. But now that he and Charlie were back on British soil, he realised how little they’d talked about how this was going to work.
‘So we said we’d stay at my place,’ he reminded her as they headed towards the end of another endlessly long corridor.
‘We did,’ she agreed, and he looked at her closely, trying to see if there was more he could glean from these two words. But he had forgotten that his new wife was a pro at hiding her feelings—she’d had a lifetime of practice. Charlie offered nothing else, so he pushed, wanting the matter settled before they had to face the press, who were no doubt waiting for them again at the exit of the airport. Airport security did what they could to push them back, but couldn’t keep them away completely. Not that he should want that, he reminded himself. They wanted the publicity. It was good for the band. It was the whole reason they were still married.
But even good publicity wasn’t as important as finishing a new album would be—that thought hadn’t been far from his mind the last few days. He couldn’t understand how he had thought that it was nearly finished. He’d played the demo tracks over and over on the plane, and somehow the songs that he’d fine-tuned and polished so carefully no longer worked when he listened to them. They didn’t make him feel. They had a veneer of artifice that seemed to get worse, rather than better, the more that he heard them.
His first album had come from the heart. He shuddered inwardly at the cliché. It was years’ worth of pent-up emotion and truths not said, filtered through his guitar and piano. It was honest. It was him. This latest attempt... It was okay. A half-dozen of the tracks he would happily listen to in the background of a bar. But it was clean and safe and careful, and lacking the winners. The grandstanding, show-stopping singles that took an album from good to legendary.
He was still writing. Still trying. But he was out of material and out of inspiration. His adolescent experiences, his adult life of running from them had fed his imagination and his muse for one bestselling album. But he couldn’t mine the same stuff for a second. It needed something new. So what was he meant to write about—how ten years on the road made relationships impossible? How his parents kept up with his news by reading whatever the tabloids had made up that week? That his only good friends had spent most of that time trapped with him in some mode of transport or another for the last decade? It was hardly rousing stuff.
‘Do you want to go back there now, then?’ he asked Charlie.
How was this so difficult? Was she making it that way on purpose?
She looked down at her carry-on bag. ‘This is all I have with me.’
‘We can send someone for your stuff.’
‘No.’ She didn’t want anyone riffling through her things. Occasionally she missed the discreet staff from her childhood home in the private apartments of the palace, who had disappeared the dirty clothes from her bedroom floor before it had had a chance to become a proper teenage dive, but she loved the freedom of her home being truly private. That the leather jacket that she dropped by the door when she got home would still be right there when she was heading out the next morning.
She stopped walking and looked up at him. ‘Okay, so we go back to yours tonight. Tomorrow we go to my place and pack some stuff. Does that work for you? Or I could go back to my place tonight. Sleep there, if we don’t want to rush into—’
‘You sleep with me.’
He couldn’t explain the shot of old-fashioned possessiveness that he had felt when she suggested that they sleep apart. Except... The bed share of the previous night. That was a one-off, wasn’t it? He supposed they’d find out later, when she realised that his apartment’s second
