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  We stepped out of the lift. Robbie produced a key and opened a door with a large number six hanging on the white wood. “In you go,” he said, pushing it with the flat of his palm.

  I stepped into the dark apartment and waited as Robbie bolted the door behind us.

  “This way,” he said, flicking on a dim light and walking into the living room.

  My eyes widened as I looked at the London skyline twinkling through a vast expanse of windows. The raindrops streaking down the glass multiplied the soft orange lights like a spectacular kaleidoscope. “Wow,” I said. “Great view.”

  “Yeah, it’s cool isn’t it?” He walked to a door and pulled it open. “Make yourself at home, I’m gonna take a quick shower. All that dancin’ around and that.” He flashed a cheeky grin my way.

  “Okay,” I said nonchalantly, walking past a low L-shaped couch to the dark windows that stretched from the ceiling to the floor. I looked down at the road below. Cars and taxis whizzed along, making the most of the lighter traffic. I couldn’t hear them, the road noise didn’t penetrate the glass.

  A shower clicked on and I spotted a short corridor to my right. The wall was covered in photos and platinum discs. Stepping up, I peered at a large glossy image of Robbie’s ecstatic face as he held up a long silver award. His bandmates were around him, their arms thrown over one another’s shoulders, all equally gleeful. I touched the frame, I had so many photos of him ranging from him in his football outfit, sweaty and muddy, to looking smart in his first suit and with a radiant smile. I shook my head to rid the image of him as a reckless teenager. That wasn’t who he was anymore. He was Robbie Harding, lead singer of the Manic Machines. Photos of him were adored by thousands of fans now, blown up into life-size posters and spread across magazine covers and teenage girls’ bedrooms.

  Peachy light from the room Robbie had disappeared into spilled onto the wooden living room floor. Like a moth drawn to light I stepped inside. It was a bedroom. But a bedroom like none other I’d ever seen. My heart rate picked up a notch. The peach light bounced around the walls and ceiling, all of which were completely covered by mirrors—huge, smooth, seamless mirrors that were just the tiniest bit smoky. Even the door to what I presumed was the en-suite—since it was open a crack and I could hear water splashing—was mirrored.

  I blew out a breath and walked farther in, creating a never-ending image of myself in all four walls. The bed was enormous, bigger than a king or queen and certainly designed for more than two people. It was covered in a silky silver duvet and a huge pile of pillows were stacked against the mirrored headboard. The bedside table was mirrored as was a large chest of drawers, although these weren’t smoky. I ran my finger over the corner of a gray cushion on the bed, it was crushed velvet and soft beneath my fingertips.

  “I guess Ian’s a bit kinky and we never even knew it,” Robbie said from behind me, a smile lacing his voice.

  I spun and felt my chest get tight and achy. Robbie stood before me in nothing but a white towel hanging low on his lean hips, his reflection stretching out behind him. I forced my eyes upward over his flat stomach and the thin line of dark hair that trailed from below his navel right up to his chest. I recalled perfectly what his skin felt like beneath my palms—on my mouth, in my mouth.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I managed, settling my gaze on his face—so much safer than the outlines of his delectable torso that sparkled all around me.

  His eyes twinkled as though he could read my mind, as if he knew I was remembering how I used to jump him in the shower, get down on my knees and show him just how dirty I could get with my mouth.

  “I wrote you this one too,” he said, moving toward the tall dresser. “Last year.”

  I studied the way he walked, confident and self-assured. He’d always moved with purpose, didn’t waste energy, but now it was even more noticeable. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was more mature or if it was his off-the-scale success that made him that way.

  He plucked a remote from the top drawer and aimed it at a small black box hanging in the corner of the room. The intro to a beating tune rang out and he turned to me and grinned. I noticed how the light refracting around the room shone on his dark hair and picked out strands the color of hazelnut.

  If you’re searching for love, scouting for the one

  All you gotta do is look right next door

  Yeah, yeah, yeah

  All you gotta do is look right next door

  ’Cause she’s there, always been there

  Yeah, yeah, yeah

  I tilted my head as his chocolaty voice filled the room.

  “You didn’t hear it, did you,” he said as more of a statement than a question.

  “No, sorry.”

  He shrugged wide shoulders. “I thought it was a bit subtle, it was on the album but never released as a single.”

  I swallowed tightly. “I didn’t buy your last album.”

  “You didn’t?” A mixture of surprise and maybe even hurt crossed his eyes.

  “No.”

  His tongue swept across his bottom lip.

  “You’re out of my life, Robbie. Or at least you were. Why would I want to hear your voice, hear about your conquests?” I folded my arms and sighed. “Didn’t you think it might hurt me?”

  “But that song was about you, how much I regretted letting you walk out of my life.”

  “Yeah, but Strawberries and Screams, come on, I don’t know how you got away with some of those lyrics.”

  He tipped his head back and laughed, a real meaty guffaw that echoed over the music.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “That’s not about one of my conquests,” he said, still grinning broadly.

  “So who is it about?”

  “Nina, Ian’s wife. He wrote it here, in this apartment, just after they met.”

  “Oh.” Now I felt silly. I’d flicked that damn song off every time it had come on the radio for so long I didn’t know how I was ever going to get out of the habit.

  “Have you never seen a picture of her?” he asked.

  I shook my head, tried to avert my gaze but instead looked at the reflection of his beautiful, golden back in the mirror behind him. Wide and tanned with the deep gutter of his spine perfectly outlined by long strips of tendon.

  “She’s got this shock of strawberry-red curly hair and the palest skin I’ve ever seen,” Robbie said as I salivated at the memory of scratching nails down his taut flesh. “Ian was inspired by his wife to write that, it has nothing to do with me. I just sing the words while he bashes it out on his strings.”

  “Oh.” I curled my fingers into my palms.

  “So you don’t need to get jealous, pumpkin.”

  My lips flattened. “I’m not pumpkin, for your information, I’m Dr. Calahan.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he stepped closer, real close, and the scent of his freshly showered skin filled my nostrils. “You’re important and respected in the medical world, but,” he said with a naughty glint in his eye, “you’ll always be my little pumpkin.”

  The song about the girl next door finished and in its place Party Animal began with its trippy tones and Robbie’s excitable voice.

  I looked at the hollow of his throat—his smile was just too devastating—but then all I could think of was the taste of his skin on my tongue. “Then I guess I should be glad you didn’t write a song about pumpkins and squeals,” I managed through a suddenly dry mouth.

  “Mmm, not a bad idea, I’ll see what the guys think.” He paused. “Pumpkins and squeals, she tastes like a meal,” he sang throatily.

  “Don’t you dare,” I said, shocked that he might take my stupid idea seriously.

  His grin dropped and he reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “You look amazing,” he said in a soft voice. “Even better than I remembered.”

  My skin tingled where his fingertip had brushed the small patch behind my ear. “You don’t look any different,” I said, although that wasn’t stri
ctly true. He looked more handsome, if that was possible. His jaw a little squarer, his eyes greener and he’d taken to sporting a dense layer of stubble. “And I don’t understand,” I carried on in as stern a voice as I could muster, “why you were so desperate to see me after all this time.”

  “I’ve always been desperate to see you. I just got caught up in the roller-coaster ride the band has taken us on over the last few years. It’s only now we’ve managed to catch our breath and get used to what happened when we were first catapulted into the limelight.” His gaze captured mine. “It’s only now I’ve had the chance to sit and figure out what’s really important to me outside the insane world of the music industry.”

  He dipped his head and his lips hovered over my mouth. “And it’s you, pumpkin, you’re what’s important to me, it’s always been you.” His lips settled on mine again, the tip of his tongue searching and caressing.

  I kissed him back. I couldn’t help it, it was instinctual, my body was taking what it needed with no consideration for my vulnerable heart.

  “And you still taste so good too,” he murmured. “So damn good.” He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. My hands rested on the muscles of his chest, absorbing the heat of him and feeling his small, tight nipples beneath my palms. His embrace was calmer now, steadied, as if our frantic union in the car had allowed him to regain some kind of control. It felt so right to be in his arms. Loved, protected. I melted into him, and through the towel his steely erection prodded my stomach.

  “Robbie, no.” I pushed at him and took a step back. “What’s going on? We can’t do this. We can’t just meet up and have sex. I can’t get my head around it.” Or my heart.

  His arms fell to his sides, his mouth damp and shiny from our kiss. “But I want you back,” he said simply. “For good.”

  “We’ve been there, done that. It didn’t work, remember?”

  “But we loved each other so much and there’s still something there, a lot there. Hell, I think we just proved that.” He dragged in a deep breath and his brows pulled together. “Jenny, you’re the first thing on my mind when I wake up and the last thing on my mind when I go to sleep at night.”

  I shook my head, hardly daring to believe his words. He was describing my first and last thoughts of each and every day.

  “It will work this time, it has to,” he said softly.

  I rubbed my hand over my forehead. I was hot, hot and bothered. My clothes felt damp on my back. “But you’ll still accuse me of seeing other guys even when I’m not. Still want to check up on me. And I can’t stand that, you know I can’t, it’s what destroyed us last time.”

  “I’m different, I’ve grown up.” His forehead creased. “It was hard for me then. You’d gone off to uni in Edinburgh and left me in suburbia. Everything was new and exciting for you, you were a student, working hard and playing hard in a big new city.” His voice lowered and a muscle flexed in his cheek. “You were playing without me. I got the dregs of you when you came home, tired and with piles of study to do over the holidays.”

  “But that’s how it was at uni, I had to study during the holidays to get top grades, you knew that.”

  “You were supposed to study there, while you were away. The holidays were my time with you. I couldn’t understand why you hadn’t got the work done in term time. The same old thought kept coming back to my head—you hadn’t done it because you were seeing someone there, someone who took up all your time and energy.”

  I sighed. We’d had this conversation too many times. It was like picking at an old scab until it oozed blood. “You know I’m not the sort of girl who’d cheat and lie, I couldn’t even fake it to Mrs. Baker that time she accused me of hanging out behind the bike shed with you. I got us both a week of detention because I blushed and stammered so much she knew full well where I’d been and what I’d been doing.”

  He half smiled at the memory of me letting him touch my breasts over the top of my school shirt that day. “I know that now.” He stepped closer again. “Because I’ve been there, been immersed in a career, going after what I wanted with such single-minded focus that it consumed my every waking moment.” He reached for my hand and rubbed his thumb over my knuckles. “I understand what you were going through, what your studies meant to you and how time-consuming it was.”

  I looked at his anxious face, at the way his eyes had narrowed and his brow had furrowed. It was older than the face I’d last gazed at in the flesh. There was nothing boyish about his features anymore. Robbie was all man.

  “You have to believe me,” he said.

  My heart churned. What should I think? Four years ago I’d walked away from him. Shut the door and left him alone and devastated. It wasn’t because I hadn’t loved him, it was because I couldn’t cope with the way he loved me. The way he couldn’t let me chase my dreams without him.

  “We’ve both achieved what we dreamed of,” he said, tilting my chin with his finger. “We’re where we want to be and,” he set his jaw determinedly, “it’s time for us to be together again.”

  A bolt sealing the doors to my heart slid open.

  “Turn around,” he said, pressing on my shoulders. “Look in the mirror.”

  I allowed him to twist me until I stared at the mirror behind the bed. I was more disheveled than I thought, my blonde hair tangled and tufty and my hoody damp and drab.

  “We were meant to be,” he whispered in my ear, the stubble on his cheek brushing my temple. “Look at us, even after time apart we look so right.” He caught my gaze in the reflection. “We feel so right. It’s always been Robbie and Jenny, Jenny and Robbie, always, it’s our destiny. All you have to do is say the word, just say yes to us.”

  I swallowed and leaned back into his hard chest, my body light and small next to his.

  “I just don’t know how else to be,” he murmured, “without you. Without the one person in the world who truly knows me. ”

  The doors to my heart began to creep open. He was getting to me. Big-time.

  “When I sit alone thinking of all Manic Machines has achieved it just doesn’t feel real,” he went on.

  “But it is real, you just have to look at the wall of awards and discs and photos.”

  “It’s not real,” he said, curling his forearm around my waist and pulling me back against him tighter. “Because I haven’t told you. I haven’t shared it with you.” His other hand smoothed my hair over my shoulder. I tilted my head and he pressed his lips to the side of my neck. I was glad he was holding me, as his delicate touch made my legs feeble. “That’s got to change,” he whispered. “I’ve got to have you back in my life, sharing this with me. Everyone else has just been treading water until you were back in my arms again.” He paused to drag in a breath. ”You’re the one thing missing, Jenny, and you’re the one thing I want and need the most. Please, let’s try again, let’s make it work this time.”

  Those doors protecting my heart flew wide open. I’d spent so long shutting them tight, saving myself from him, but the touch of his lips and the heat of his words had blown them off their hinges. There was only one answer I could give him if I was going to be true to myself. “Yes,” I said, “we can try again.”

  “Really?” He lifted his head to look at me in the mirror.

  I smiled at the apprehension on his face. “Yes, really. And I want you back too. I miss Jenny and Robbie.”

  He slid his other arm around my waist. “Thank god for that,” he said on a sigh.

  “But it has to be a new us,” I said as he nuzzled his face into my neck again. I squirmed at the delicious fluttering trailing over my hypersensitive flesh as he kissed my ticklish spot. I had to lay down rules. Be strong for both our sakes. “We have to start afresh, get to know one another all over again. What just happened in the car, that was the old Robbie and Jenny, lust-crazed. We have to take it slow and steady, like adults.”

  “Suits me.” His fingers curled beneath the base of my hoody. “I’m keen to get to k
now every single bit of you all over again as slowly or as quickly as you want me to.” He lifted upward and I raised my hands and let the heavy material slip over my head. “I’ve thought of nothing else for more months than I care to admit, it’s been quite obsessional.”

  He’d obsessed about me. The way I had him.

  “And,” I said, watching as my hoody landed on top of the black jeans and t-shirt he’d worn on stage—now in a heap in the corner. “You have to promise to trust me. I am where I say I am, doing what I say I’m doing.”

  “I get all that now, I’m not twenty and ridiculously insecure anymore. I won’t fuck up over something so stupid.” He lifted the butterfly necklace sitting in the hollow of my throat. “You still wear this?”

  “Sometimes.” I watched his reflection turn it over in his big fingers and felt the chain tug the base of my neck. “When it’s your birthday, Christmas, anniversaries, you know, when I’ve felt the need to be close to you.”

  His lips tilted. “Anniversaries of what?” he said, laying it gently back on my skin.

  I swallowed as he smoothed his hands into the dips of my waist, tracing the outline of my body. “You know…firsts.”

  “Firsts?”

  “First kiss, July 8, first cinema trip March 4, first time we…” I sighed.

  “First time we…?” He began to pull my thin t-shirt upward the way he had my hoody.

  “The first time we made love.”

  He paused and his eyes sparkled in the mirror. “In the tent, at the bottom of my garden.”

  “You remember?”

  He slipped the top over my head and tossed it aside. My hair fell around my shoulders, a couple of tendrils landing over my white bra. I hadn’t planned on putting my underwear on show tonight so it was nothing special, but it was clean and neat.

  “How could I ever forget?” He gave a small groan. “I performed terribly.”

  “It was both our first time and it wasn’t that bad.”