All Fired Up

‘But I do. I need to be on the stupid tour bus in about forty seconds.’

‘Forty seconds’ she took as a slight exaggeration. If the tour bus needed to depart that soon, someone would have come to get him. Still, even so. ‘Why’s that a problem? You’ve a bunk, haven’t you, that we can finish this in?’

To her surprise, he started shaking his head. ‘No, we can’t.’ He looked up at her. His cheeks were flushed from their recent exertion, rosy across their ridges. A little of her lipstick was smeared across his jaw, but his brows were furrowed in a way that not even the long fringe of hair that half-covered his face could hide. ‘You can’t come on the bus.’

‘What?’ she said, as the implications of that sentence sank in. ‘Why not?’ OK, Ash had never specifically told her that she could join him on the tour, but neither had he given the impression she wasn’t invited. ‘If you’re joking, or you’re going to state some poxy rule about no one but the band being allowed on the bus, then I’m not going to be impressed. And it’s bollocks anyway. I know perfectly well that Dani’s accompanying Xane.’

‘That’s different,’ he mumbled, his gaze sliding away from her face to a point someway down her body.

‘How so? Dani’s Xane’s girlfriend, and I’m yours.’

‘People know about them. They don’t know about us, and that’s how I want to keep it.’

‘S’cuse me!’ Ginny scuttled out of his lap and stood looking down at him, hurt and confused. ‘I don’t understand. Do you mean the rest of the band aren’t aware that we’re an item?’

He covered his face with one hand as he shook his head.

‘Ash, how can they not know? They’re your friends.’

‘Because I haven’t told them. He scraped one hand through his hair, so that he held the strands away from his face, and looked at her. ‘And I don’t intend to.’

All she could do was gape at him, while attempting to make her vocal cords work. ‘But … but … are you embarrassed by me?’

‘No.’

‘Am I OK to shag, but not good enough to be seen with in public?’

‘No.’

‘Then why?’

He shook his head slowly, making his black hair swish. ‘I’m sorry.’ He rose to his feet and tried to embrace her, but Ginny shifted backwards out of his reach.

‘Don’t just try to kiss me, as if it’ll make everything better. You need to give me a proper explanation. Why doesn’t anyone know about us, Ash?’

‘Because it’s none of their damn business,’ he snapped. He wrenched up his jeans and buckled the belt. ‘What we have is between us. Nobody else needs to have anything to do with it.’

‘So I can’t come on tour with you, because you don’t want to admit you’re in a relationship?’ She was flabbergasted, shocked down to her toes. She knew he’d kept things quiet, and she’d thought it odd earlier when she’d been left to hang with the band’s groupies, while Dani had been given direct access to the dressing rooms. Maybe the truth was that he wasn’t quite as attached to her as she’d let herself think.

‘Spook, does he know?’

‘Yes.’

That was something. ‘But not the rest of the band.’

He shook his head again.

‘I don’t get it, Ash. I don’t understand. You’re saying I can’t come with you because they don’t know. Can’t we just tell them?’

‘No.’

The threat of tears started to prick the corners of her eyes. Ginny blinked, refusing to cry. ‘Why not? Explain it to me, because things aren’t really adding up for me. We just …’ She glanced at the floor and the sofa. ‘And you said …’ She let the accusation peter out. She ought to know better than to trust anything anybody said in the throes of passion.

‘Ginny, I do. I do love you. And I value what we’ve got, which is why you can’t come on the tour with me. I love being with you, but I don’t want to share you with the rest of the world. I don’t want us to be a string of headlines and dodgy internet videos. That’s what’ll happen if we’re seen together. It’ll be our lives in the spotlight, every tiny detail analysed, exposed and dissected. Christ, you’ve seen what they’ve printed about Xane and Dani. Is that what you want for us? I want time for us to get to know one another on our terms.’

‘You mean your terms. Why would anyone pay attention to us? The only reason they paid attention to Dani and Xane is that he’d just walked off stage and split the band up. Otherwise, I doubt they’d even have made the side column of the Sunday edition.’

‘If you honestly think that then you’re a fool.’

Yeah, she apparently was, a really fucking enormous fool.

‘Seriously, Ginny, have you ever had the press camped out on your doorstep? Have you been mobbed in the street? They’ll splash every detail of your life across the tabloids. Call up every man you’ve ever so much as kissed and have him tell his story. There’ll be no privacy, and no opportunity to just relax together and enjoy ourselves. Why do you think I didn’t draw attention to us when I came off stage?’

His fear of all those things happening seemed real, she accepted that. And no, of course she didn’t want her past relationships to be headline news, but that didn’t take the sting out of him not wanting her around.

‘What am I supposed to do then, Ash? Sit at home while you shag your way around Europe. ’Cause that’s not going to happen.’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to. And stop making this into a fight. I’m not going to shag anyone, Ginny. The only person I want is you.’

‘You say that now, but once you get on the road –’

‘– it won’t change anything. It’s not like I can just substitute you. You know you’re the only one who makes me come.’

That wasn’t strictly true, but the statement did provoke a smile from her.

‘And I’ve told my mum about you, so it’s not as if I haven’t told anyone, just the important people.’

Ginny paused, her mouth open, as whatever it was she’d been about to say escaped her thoughts. Ash was devoted to his family. He spent hours on the phone to them. The fact that he’d spoken to them about her was more commitment than she’d ever expected from him. It was certainly a bigger deal than him opening up to his bandmates.

‘You told your mum about us?’

‘Yeah.’ He gave her an ever so slightly goofy grin. ‘Think I made her day. She’s been praying I’d find myself a nice girl to settle down with since I was old enough to date. She wants you to come for Christmas. I said yes, as long as she swore not to mention babies.’

‘Christmas is six … seven months away.’

He bit his lip. ‘I know. It’s going to be majorly awkward if things happen that mean we can’t make it.’

‘Babies?’

He grimaced.

Ginny steepled her fingers and then covered her face. ‘Could you please start making sense? How can you agree to us attending the family Christmas and have a discussion about babies, yet get weird about me coming on tour with you and the band? You do realise that people normally do things the other way round? Friends first, then the family?’

Ash scratched his chin. ‘My family aren’t going to sell us out. And I didn’t say you couldn’t come on the tour, or that we couldn’t see one another. I just said you couldn’t ride on the bus.’

‘What?’

‘Honestly, woman, how long do you think I’m going to last without seeing you, considering what you reduce me to?’ He claimed her hand and tugged her into his embrace. ‘You make me demented.’ He brushed a stray wisp of hair from her face, then kissed her brow and her lips. ‘Ginny, I’ll be lucky if I last more than a few hours without you before I’m ready to crawl up the walls. I have to share a bunk room with Xane and Dani, you know, and you can be damn sure he won’t be keeping his hands off her, or even attempting to be circumspect about it. He’s a complete shag monster. My antics are nothing next to his.’ He leaned close so that his warm breath tickled the shell of her ear. ‘I’m going to be horny as hell, and desperate for you.’