Wicked Ambition

So now he was playing the hero? If she weren’t so livid she’d have laughed.

‘Get used to it, man,’ taunted Jax. ‘You’re a second-rate citizen around here.’

‘Funny, I thought I almost beat you.’

‘In your dreams, punk—that ain’t never gonna happen. You hear me? Never.’

‘You keep telling yourself that.’

‘Don’t need to. Facts speak for themselves.’ Jax shoved him again. Leon returned it, harder. Jax lost his footing and flailed embarrassingly against the bar. Disgraced, he took a wild swing at his rival, swiping at air as Leon evaded the impact and delivered in return a clean punch on the jaw. Jax fell backwards into his assistant’s arms.

The assistant stooped to gather his ward, securing Jax under the armpits. Jax staggered upright and shrugged himself free, mouth curled, jabbing a finger in Leon’s direction. ‘I’ve got your number, asshole,’ he hissed, trembling with fury. ‘I’m comin’ for you. Know your place. The man Jackson don’t forget, you got that?’

Leon looked blank. ‘I’m terrified.’

‘You should be.’

‘Good of you to intervene,’ snapped Robin when Jax had been steered away, ‘but I was handling that myself.’

Leon drank from his bottle of beer. ‘Thought you could use a little help, that’s all.’

‘I don’t need your help.’

‘Then should I get you a drink?’

She laughed. ‘Good one.’

‘What’s funny?’

‘What’s funny,’ she explained, ‘is that your messed-up idea of a pick-up is running my name into the ground in front of the entire nation—on prime-time TV.’

He held his hands up. ‘I’m sorry about that. Really. I was just messing.’

‘Just messing?’ She couldn’t believe his audacity. ‘D’you know how much stick I got? And out of interest, what the hell has it got to do with you who I hook up with?’

Leon grinned. ‘I didn’t exactly ask to walk in on you…’

Embarrassment soaked her. ‘Yeah, well, try knocking next time.’

‘Sorry. I know I should have left it. It’s just it was kind of irresistible.’ There was that maddening smile again. ‘You’re kind of irresistible.’

She was momentarily thrown. ‘I bet you reckon anyone can jump on, right?’ she blustered. ‘Well if you think I’m going anywhere near you, you are seriously mistaken.’

Leon regarded her, amused by some hidden joke, in a way that might have been sexy were he not such a categorical prick. Leon Sway had one of those textbook-perfect faces, the nose straight, the green eyes sparkling; white teeth and smooth skin, the right angle square-sharp where his jaw met his neck. Clean-looking. Way too conventional and boring for her.

‘OK,’ he said eventually, ‘can we start again?’

‘Start what again?’

‘Whatever this is that’s going so spectacularly wrong.’

‘Let me give you a clue. This? It’s nothing. It’s less than nothing.’

‘Hey, cut me some slack. I haven’t had a lot of practice with this fame stuff.’

‘Really? Aren’t you meant to be Sexiest Man in the World or some such bollocks?’

As soon as Robin said it she regretted it. Leon had been awarded the title in a women’s magazine. Bringing it up made her sound as if she had a schoolgirl crush, which she most definitely and emphatically did not.

‘I’ll go for “some such bollocks”,’ he replied. ‘If you get over your problem with me.’

‘I don’t have a problem.’

‘You do, because everything I say you’re hating on. Why’re you so defensive?’

‘Don’t presume to know anything whatsoever about me.’

‘I might make less mistakes if you gave me an easier time.’

‘I’m not easy.’

‘I never said you were.’

‘You might as well have done.’

A muscle twitched by his eye. ‘Let me take you to dinner.’

‘Dream on.’

‘I’m not kidding. I want to make it up to you.’

Robin sighed. With his rumpled T-shirt and steady grin and boyish bravado, Leon was the kind of person she would never in a thousand years be able to relate to. He was probably from some over-achieving American family who baked cookies and sat around a campfire singing and played tennis on a private lawn in summer. He was rich, clearly, and her guess was he always had been. That upbringing, the kind of anchor she herself had always yearned for, was exactly why he was able to make her feel so small.

‘Don’t bother,’ she threw back, moving to go.

‘Look,’ Leon said, less patiently, ‘I’m trying, OK? I’m only being friendly here.’

‘Make friends with someone else,’ she said, and turned and walked away.

5

Kristin loved kissing her boyfriend. Scotty Valentine’s lips were pink as candyfloss and just as sweet, his tongue soft and hesitant as it explored her mouth. She could spend hours simply kissing, running her fingers through his caramel hair and staring into his Pacific Ocean eyes.

They were in her bedroom, making out to a Turquoise ballad. Kristin took Scotty’s hand and guided it to her breast—he never instigated it, he was too gentlemanly—and lifted to meet his touch. She peeled off her T-shirt and the lacy sweetheart bra beneath. Scotty had only seen her topless once before and looked as uncomfortable now as he had the first time.

‘It’s OK,’ she murmured, reaching into his jeans. ‘My mom’s out…’

Dutifully Scotty tended to her nipples, nuzzling and licking till she started to sigh, then he dropped a chain of kisses across her stomach and in doing so reversed his crotch out of reach. She drew his head back up to hers, looping one arm round his neck and the other between his legs. Nothing. That was why, then. She inhaled his scent. It didn’t matter.