Rumour - CHAPTER 1-3

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CHAPTER 1

Rachel Adams didn’t get good things.

That was why she was in in the industrial-sized kitchen of a five-star French restaurant in a five-star Mayfair hotel, in the bitter London cold. More specifically, she was gritting her teeth, barely resisting the urge to throttle a Frenchman’s conceited, moustachioed face – and honestly, who would even blame her? The man’s utterly condescending behaviour was testing her patience to its, limit, and she didn’t exactly have that much to begin with.

She definitely wished she wasn’t there. However, her bank balance, or rather lack thereof, along with her landlord's rental lease, most assuredly, thought otherwise. It was because she had walked — stormed — out of her old job, in a back-alley bar, with an Evil Witch as a boss, leaving her with very few options about making more money.

Hence, the new job.

The new job that was making her want to find a hole and live in that, instead of her current miniscule studio apartment, so she didn’t have to pay rent or need this job anymore. The level of screaming in her head was rising, and someone was probably going to end up being punched before the day was out. Granted, it probably wouldn’t be the best way to start said new job, by punching the Mâitre d’ of a posh restaurant – aka, your new boss – no matter how annoying he was. And yet, that seemed to be the only course of action that made any sense to her, at that very moment.

 “And you are sure you have done this before?” the annoying boss drawled on, repeating a question from not even three minutes before. Again. Rachel was well aware that he was being passively-aggressively insulting.

She took a deep breath and decided to answer him, instead of pushing him into the nearest vat of soup. 

“Yes, but not quite like this,” she muttered. Monsieur Jean-Pierre Dupont, Mâitre d’ of London’s newest super-posh restaurant, L’hôtel D’amour, rolled his eyes and clicked his tongue.

“Mon Dieu,” he muttered. “Here we go again.”   

Rachel gawked at him mutely. What the hell that was supposed to mean?

“Right. This way!” Jean-Pierre clapped his hands together at her like she was an unruly puppy, sending Rachel’s patience from the gutter straight into the Earth’s Core. “I will be showing you what you are to do, and you must listen - carefully! It is a very fine skill to serve guests with flair and not to spill anything on this. And you must not ever spill anything on them. Ever! Which is why I am going to be teaching you how, maintenont.”

Well.

This was what she got for starting a new job in a new French restaurant, when the closest she had come to the actual country was to whiz through her French A-level exams and work hard at becoming fluent in it – just for fun. Also, not to mention, that as a staunch vegetarian, she had also never felt the urge to stuff dead snails and frogs’ legs into her mouth – and now that she had seen them, she definitely wasn’t going to be starting anytime soon.

Rachel quietly followed in the wake of the infuriating man, feeling particularly overwhelmed. She already could barely breathe from breakneck speed the Mâitre d’ took her through everything she would need to know, pilling more and more information onto her, which she literally

 This was now going to be her prison for at least eight hours a day, most days of the week... with this incessantly rude overly conceited, overbearing man barely taking a breath as he flounced on. She vaguely wondered how long it would take before she actually drowned in all the condensation pouring out of his mouth. He hadn’t seemed to have taken a single breath since she’d arrived, looking down his nose at her – not that she wasn’t used to that from, well, almost everyone – and immediately launching into his lengthy, lecturing tirade about their own unique levels of Service that she would have to learn and perfect.

All she’d wanted was some money and a way to earn it – not a monster of a migraine and a hefty dose of major information overload.

Inwardly, Rachel sighed and tried, again, to convince herself she was doing the only thing she could do – keep trying to survive whilst paying her dues for giving up on the career she was trained and qualified for, that she had worked most of her young life for. The one that she had given up, without any consideration to the fact she had absolutely nothing else to fall back on. Her skillset, her training, and her entire life, her soul, and her very existence, had always been dedicated to Music and Performing – up to the point where that was all she had ever “qualified” in. Except for one A-Level, in French.

It had never occurred to her she’d might actually need a backup plan, and this is what she got for not having one.

Serving pretentious prats with far too much money – and way more of it then sense – overpriced tiny food for almost nothing.

Granted, waiting tables was a thankless, mind-numbing job; but someone had to do it, right? It might as well be her. It was hardly great money, but it was some money, at least, and it kept a roof over her head. Just. Why the art of presenting pretentious food to pretentious people was so complicated, and yet came with a wage of barely above minimum wage, was utterly beyond her, though. The Evil Witch hadn’t paid a penny over minimum wage, but it was a dark and cheap bar that stank of beer and sweat. Working in this palace of a place where food prices were so eye-watering only the seriously well-off could afford it, you’d expect the pay to reflect it. Sadly, it really did not.

Rachel half-despaired the fact everything in her life had somehow come to this point. Her childhood dreams were up in smoke, and she had entirely given up hope of a singing career somehow magically materialising in front of her a long time ago. Now, it was just about pretending to be an adult, paying rent and bills, and essentially just surviving. It was something unprecedented to a younger Rachel, years ago, who saw herself as a success on stage, in some capacity, by the time was twenty-five. Yet, here she was, in training to be a super-silver-service penguin, for a couple of quid over minimum pay. Absolutely not living the dream.

London had been a do-or-die situation when it came to both her music and her own sanity, after making the heart-wrenching decision to give up on her theatrical aspirations. She had wanted to chance her arm at getting into the recording industry, instead of the theatrical one, and focused on getting to the one place that anyone could be anything they wanted to be and focus on becoming a musician and better songwriter. Most of all, though, she had wanted to get away from the mindless, tiny town that believed no one should do anything different, or “rock the boat” of basic existence. Even if she couldn’t do what she had once wanted to do the most – perform in Musicals – she might at least be able to be a singer in some capacity, then.

So, she had packed her bags and every ounce of courage she had and headed for London, with at least some kind of hope of some kind of a future.

It was naïve but hopeful, because it was all she had ever known, all she had wanted to do. From as far back as she could remember, singing and performing had been more natural than breathing, more fluid than blinking. Music had been in her very soul since Minute One of her very existence, and more than anything had been inspired by watching too many Disney films to be in Musical Theatre. Failing that, a singer-songwriter.

Other people, though, they simply cared more for their small-minded Social Norms than what she wanted, and eventually just wore the child she was right down to breaking point. The people around her always belittled or dismissed her ideas, and made it clear there was no way in all everything that little Rachel Adams was undoubtedly in no way fit to be in Musicals or be a singer. It went on until their ridiculing had become too much, hearing one too many times that the gawking girl with the frizzy red hair and glasses was in no position to go and become some “pop star” (say it with immense disdain and derision to get the full effect).

Therefore, when her best friend and Performing Arts classmate, Kirk Branson, moved to London to go to a prestigious Theatre School after college, she packed up and followed him there faster than you can say Les Misérables.

But right now, Rachel was thinking maybe she really shouldn’t have. There was only so much condescending Mâitre d’ one could take in a lifetime... And she was starting to edge beyond her limit already.

The only thing even keeping her there was the fact she really needed the money, because she’d effectively made herself unemployed from the last one, where she had been working for the afore-mentioned Evil Witch. It really had been a nightmare of a backstreet bar in Camden, so the step-up in employment made it… almost worth it. That Camden job had been one she was forced to take to make rent and eat upon first stepping foot in the city – and made all the more imperative because the only way she had been able to move to London and into somewhere to live, was to pretend to be Kirk’s girlfriend and stay with him at the flatshare he’d found on first moving out there. Needless to say, she wanted that façade to be over and done with in the quickest possible way that was relatively believable.

Both the accommodation and the job had been endured with gritted teeth and Rachel bore with it for a good while, but in the end, she’d had to go. Leaving had been overwhelmingly terrifying, but it was either that or one day find said Evil Witch buried in, or under, her own kegs.

In comparison, The L’hôtel D’amour was like being in a palace. It was huge, spacious, and sat somewhere between pretentious, and quietly sophisticated and glamorous. It looked more like what she imagined a First-Class dining room on Titanic might have looked like, had it been built in the twenty-first century, rather than a restaurant.

There were the slightly overstuffed minimalist armchairs and tablecloths in a muted cream, and tables with high backed plush sofas with the deep buttoning on the back, making them look even more pretentious. The walls looked like they were made of grey-speckled marble and there were even white pillars scattered throughout. The ceiling was high and moulded, except for the centre where there was an honest-to-goodness fresco in a large oval space in the centre. There was also rather annoying art-deco-style drop chandeliers, where a cluster of long white lights hung down low and you needed to circumvent those as well as the pillars, when swanning about the place. There even was an honest-to-actual ivory-coloured baby grand piano – of all things – in a nook.

The entire design exuded class, old-style glamorous fashion, and she felt so out of place it almost made her squirm. She even had a posh tuxedo-style uniform (even if it did make her look like a penguin in makeup), made up of tailored pants, pristine white shirt buttoned up to her ears, and a black dickie-bow, of all things.

It was a surreal turnabout from her dreams of her future, or even her smaller hope of moving to London music career, performing as a singer and songwriter. She had studied Performing Arts, taken professional singing lessons, and applied for a place at a highly prestigious music school to further study singing. At one time, she had been ambitious and really serious about it. But that had been a long time ago, now. Before The Evil Witch, before the rejections, and before her already non-existent confidence took a nosedive into somewhere by the Earth’s Core.

As she tried to balance plates, cups and crystal glasses on silver trays, something told Rachel that not only did she look like an idiot in her penguin suit, but also maybe she was in way over her head with her waitressing skills here. After all, the only reason she was here was because they really wanted her for her language skills, and there apparently weren’t many people willing to work in waitressing who could also speak fluent French.       

And was quickly becoming clear to Rachel that she seemed to have drastically overestimated her skills as a waitress for this job.

“No, no, no! NO! Not like that, vous imbecile! Regarde-moi, maintenant!”

He wanted her to watch him? So, as directed, she watched him. And kept on watching, whilst the temperamental French diva kept on ranting, and then would repeat it, expecting her do everything again.

“Non! With flair and grace. Head up, shoulders back, smile. Non, I said smile, not look like you just sat on the wrong end of l’ épingler. Now float, be graceful and trés charming… If you possibly can.”

No, no she definitely couldn’t help but look like she sat on the wrong side of a pin.

At the end of a very long day, Rachel even shocked herself to be finally really getting the hang of it. Head up, shoulders back, smile, float. She didn’t drop anything, she could carry away the plates without them falling off the tray, and she could pour wine without spilling it all over herself and everywhere else. She could actually do it - call the Guinness Book of Records. Her best friend Stevie (real name Stephanie, but you ran the risk of being fed to piranhas if you ever called her that to her face) would never believe it when she told her.

“Well, I admit you are not the clumsiest person I have ever taught,” Jean-Pierre said in some kind of grudging compliment to himself. “But still took lots of work. I sink you are now ready to face the guests. How is your Française?”

This time Rachel really did feel at ease. It was the only thing she knew she could do, and well. Jean-Pierre hadn’t hired her himself, so he had no idea that French was about as natural to her as speaking English.

“It’s not bad,” she answered mildly, and in perfect, fluent French. “I know more about it than this. And I know what you kept saying to me.”

And it definitely hadn’t been complimentary.

“Ah. Then we do not need to go through the menu,” Jean-Pierre remarked, also in French He kept to his native language and finally made a lot more sense to listen to. “Now, tomorrow, you will do as I tell you, as I have taught you today, and you will learn to be a real waitress, and not some pretty bar girl in an abominable English place. I have heard of the bar you’ve mentioned, for all the wrong reasons. Here, you will not be subjected to such… atrocious things.”

Rachel took the sentiment, for what it was worth, appreciative of the reassurance he wanted to give. However, she also felt a twist in her gut to be reminded about what she had out up with there, for so long. She was and even more surprised the sophisticated and snooty older man had even heard of it, let alone knew its reputation or how it was run. But there was no way she was ever going to ask how, because there were some things she was definitely better off not knowing.

Finally released to flee, after surviving many gruelling hours of her nightmarish first day, Rachel flew out the tall glass doors of the hotel restaurant and looked back through them at her new workplace. If nothing else, working at a place that was that so very pretty and shiny would cheer her up. Well, for now. At least it didn’t smell of stale beer and dodgy old men too inebriated to know how to use the toilet facilities properly.

As she hopped down the steps leading down the pavement, she noticed someone walking towards her, head down with a baseball cap and dark glasses on. Immediately thinking she was going to get mugged, as she always did with all the horror stories of living in London, she retreated back towards the doors again and clutched onto her bag for dear life, waiting for the man to attack her, ready to scream the building down if he did.

It was as take came up to the building, though, that he pulled off his hat and glasses and looked right at the odd expression on her face, which suddenly changed when she realised actually recognised him. And he was no mugger.

Or at least he needn’t to be.

What the — Luke Heartlett? Really? her brain rattled at her dumbly.

The moment – if you could even call it that – was over as quickly as it had begun. The man quicky turned back towards the door he’d been heading to and shot into the hotel, leaving her there, alone, like it had never happened. Nevertheless, it sent a ripple of buzzing energy through her to have experienced it. Her jaw remained dropped as she stared after him, unable to believe just who had just walked into the restaurant she was working at.

Luke Heartlett.

The Luke Heartlett – of all people.

Rachel would be the first to admit she wasn’t up on her latest celebrities or Entertainment News gossip rubbish, but even she knew who Luke Heartlett was. Despite still being relatively young, the man was a legend of the music industry – a bone-fide worldwide music icon.

Luke Heartlett was an online and media obsession, an industry veteran, and an artist who had rocked and ruled the music world for the last decade. From having gone from teenage “heartthrob”-status pop sensation in his superbly-uber-famous American super-group “boy-band”, All-In – who won accolades, awards, and international godhood status amongst the world’s teenage population, all whilst breaking longstanding industry records – to respected grown-up superstar icon, he’d lived his life in the media spotlight for what felt like forever.

Certainly, it seemed like that to Rachel, who had grown up with that media glare aimed directly at her generation of googly-eyed super-fans. So, any of her school and college peers losing their heads over every smile, wink, hairstyle, topless photo (oh, so many topless photos, enough to make her never open anything with the band or his name on it, ever again), and every damned song sung loudly every break time between classes.

So, yes. It could be said they Rachel was quite aware of who he was.

The American musician had been infamously dubbed by his fans – and subsequently all media – as “The Heart Man”, for his over-zealously sweet manner to fans, and somehow even being utterly charming the Mass Media journalists. He  also couldn’t seem to help but get himself at least mentioned every day in every tabloid newspaper, magazine, celebrity-gossip blog and online social media medium – although Rachel suspected that perhaps he gave them a lot of help in getting himself there. If he wasn’t excessively photographed and over-analysed by just about every given any opportunity, he was being continuously mentioned in the famous online celebrity gossip blogs, and always made the front-page of the tabloid press if he did anything more exciting than simply breathe.

He was gorgeous, she’d give him that, having just seeing him in the flesh. And he even had a typically stunning girlfriend that was one of the most famous and controversially skinny supermodels in the world, and he always had a guaranteed hit every time he released a new song or album, because almost all new teenage fans, as well as the veteran fans who grew up listening to him and his band, couldn’t wait to have him plastered all over their walls and clogging up their playlists. He had managed to win every music award known to the worldwide industry at least three times, and had, himself, broken even more industry records as a soloist.

Rachel at least had the awareness to feel rather ashamed that, at the grand old age of twenty-five, she still knew any of this, and was even able to recognise him at all. But then again, her blind great aunt would recognise that face, it had been in the media so often.

“Bloody hell,” she couldn’t help but exclaim under her breath, grinning excitedly – and despite knowing a lot better than to behave like a ten-year-old at DisneyWorld. She told herself she was simply just excited that she had just seen her first celebrity in the city – otherwise, she was being really sad. Really, really, really sad. But just wait until she told Stevie!

Of course, naturally, Stevie the cynic didn’t care at all. When Rachel trotted over to her best friend’s house, she barely got a blink out of her. Stevie hadn’t even given much attention to teen music sensations when she actually was a teenager, and so now she was an adult she absolutely had no intention of caring one iota about idiots who took all their clothes off for extortionate amounts of money and couldn’t sing. She also didn’t think he was even remotely cute and had never bought into the celebrity-obsessed culture that most people always seemed buy into. To her it was shallow, and she hated anything shallow. Something which often made Rachel beg the question - why Stevie was friends with her?

“But it is quite cool,” Rachel tried to argue when she told her. “And he looked straight at me.”

“Yes, but that was probably because you first thought he was a mugger and nearly screamed at him. Then you probably stared at him with your jaw hanging on the floor. By the way, how do the steps of the L’hôtel D’amour taste?”

Rachel narrowed her eyes and threw her a cold look.

“My jaw was not on the floor and my tongue wasn’t hanging out,” she informed Stevie defensively, lying through her teeth. If she had kept a bottle of Pledge in her mouth the steps would have been gleaming. “But when you see them on TV all the time you don’t really think of that.”

“Yes, whatever you say dear,” Stevie answered patronisingly, giving her attention back to the food she was making in her kitchen. “Now are you going to let me cook my dinner or not?”

“I am letting you,” Rachel sulked. “I’m just sitting here and talking.”

“Well, if you keep on, I’ll put you in the oven instead, and you can sit and talk in there, if you like.”

Sometimes it could be asked why Rachel and Stevie (“don’t call me Stephanie!”) Hale were friends at all, but the dry jibes and mild bickering was their way of being friends, and it worked. Stevie was Rachel’s opposite in many ways, and because of that, they worked well together, being the balancing antithesis of each other.

Rachel had met Stevie in the back-alley pub when she had been their longest-suffering bar staff member, and Rachel was new to the city. Stevie was already world-weary, despite being just twenty-six at the time, with a cynical worldview and little time for a “greenhorn” – as she’d called Rachel many a time there. But when a very tired Rachel had started snarking back, Stevie started to like the feisty redhead, and over the years Rachel was there, they somehow became best friends.

Even when Stevie left Rachel still working at the bar to have another go at using her long-ignored Computer Science university degree to get some kind of a job in corporate IT, they still remained in each other’s pockets. Stevie even let Rachel camp out at her place for a while when Rachel couldn’t find anywhere to live, though they came to blows more than a few times about just about everything, they were so different.

By now, they had no barriers, no secrets, and supported each other like warring sisters, and with Stevie finally free of the bar and The Evil Witch, she kept push Rachel to do the same, just to find anything and get away from that place before it killed off what was left of her soul.

To her credit, Stevie gritted her teeth and put up with being in “posh clothing” (designated as anything not purchased from a Goth store, Camden Market or included huge platform boots) that she had to wear for her job – about as abhorrent to punkish-cybergoth Stevie as wearing straight-jacket – and thrived in her new line of work. Her employer, fortunately, hadn’t cared so much about the long sheet of jet-black and red-streaked hair she sported, or the odd tattoos she had, and instead was quite happy have her weave her coding magic on their systems to make them work better. Or something. Rachel didn’t really understand or care, really, as long as Stevie was happy…ish. “Posh Clothes” notwithstanding.

Seeing Stevie become an even better version of herself after leaving, prompted her to do the same, but it was a lot harder to find work when your only post high school qualifications she had involved Musical Theatre and prancing around a stage. But she’d done it now, and Rachel had hoped she could now be a lot happier than she had been before.

After today, though… That seemed questionable.

Pouting at Stevie’s lack of excitement over her Celebrity “Experience”, Rachel huffed and hopped off the countertop in the kitchen and went back through the little archway that separated it from the lounge and sat herself down on the couch. Just as she sat down, though, she heard the buzzer go for the main door to the apartment building, and she got up and clicked the intercom to find out who it was. They definitely weren’t expecting anyone.

 “Hey, it’s me,” announced the answer when she inquired as to whom it was.

Rolling her eyes, Rachel pressed the button to open the door for her old friend Kirk Branson, and then waited patiently for him to walk up the stairs and appear at the apartment door.

She had known him since primary school, but they had only become actual friends while in college when they both took all the same classes by some freak accident. They had somehow managed to become adoring best friends, and he somehow muscled himself into the role of her surrogate big brother, which she loathed and loved in equal measure. It also was his moving to London to pursue his acting career which had made her contemplate leaving the ramshackle ruins of their tiny little town. So, her depressing existence in this city was all his fault, really, if you thought about it that way.

When he appeared at the door of the flat, Kirk near-suffocated her in his usual bear-hug greeting and dumped himself on the couch and smiled up at Rachel and Stevie.

Kirk had been another concession of being friends with Rachel – Stevie had tentatively agreed to semi-adopt Kirk as well but had insisted on “the record showing it was with great reservations”. Rachel was more than happy to accept those terms, because it was a lot more than she thought she was going to get on accepting her annoying, but loving, oldest best friend.

Stevie eyed him with half-exasperated expectation when she found him on her couch, uninvited, and couldn’t help taking a poke at him.

 “And what do you want, trouble?” she greeted mildly as he grinned at them both, looking far too innocent for her liking. “Bored of your famous friends already?”

This was the tormenting he had to endure for appearing in West End shows with a toilet-roll list of celebrity headliners and several extra parts in TV programmes and a handful of films. Not to mention his fabulous West End debut in Phantom of the Opera, which he got the moment he graduated from drama school – until he got bored of playing a strait-laced love-interest and headed for more interesting roles.

 “No,” Kirk answered Stevie, rolling his eyes at her. “You know there are no performances on Sundays. I’m free till tomorrow.”

 “God help us,” Stevie muttered. “I’m surprised your big fat ego can fit in this tiny place.”

 “I’m surprised your big fat arse can.”

Since Stevie was a size eight only if she put on weight, they both stared blankly at him for that one for a second.

“All right! Enough, people,” Rachel then ordered, before Stevie made him internally explode with her blazer death glare. “Behave, you two.”

 “So why are you here then?” Stevie asked him pointedly.

 “I came here to see my favourite girls.”

 “No, you want something,” Rachel retorted knowingly. Stevie turned on her heel and made her way back to the small “semi-open plan” kitchen through the wide archway.

 “All right, you caught me,” Kirk admitted, grinning wider and holding up his hands. “I’ve got a date and she’s fantastic, and I want to know how to treat her like a real lady. I wanted to get a girl’s opinion, but you’re just going to have to do.”

“So, who is she?” Rachel went and asked the obvious question because Mr Dramatic wouldn’t be offering it voluntarily.

“Holly Webb.” He said her name very smugly, and Rachel and Stevie exchanged very surprised glances.

“Holly Webb? The Holly Webb that’s in that show with you and is apparently so fantastic she gets rave reviews in The Stage?” Rachel actually gaped with surprise. “Doesn’t she know you by now?”

“That’s probably why it took him so long to get a date,” Stevie shot from the kitchen.

“No, it’s not, thank you very much,” Kirk called back. “I just decided to ask her out now.”

“And yet, if we asked her, you can guarantee that’s not what she would say.”

Kirk was infamous in the circles who knew him for being an incorrigible charming flirt and outright womaniser. His own description was that he didn’t “do” relationships – only pretty women – and enjoyed nothing better than a challenge. He could be charming when he wanted to be, but he was only ever interested in one thing, and it certainly wasn’t a girl’s personality. He had been the cute, popular boy in school and now he was the gorgeous West End up-and-coming superstar, and - of course – it had all gone straight to his head. Especially when sweet, female performing arts students clamoured for autographed programmes after the show.

“Anyway,” Kirk said, sidestepping Stevie’s jibes, “I want to know how you can really impress a girl.”

“Don’t you usually?” Rachel stated what she thought was the obvious.

“She’s not exactly the same as the other girls I’ve been out with. I actually like this one.”

Rachel rolled her eyes and sighed. He was unbelievable – quite literally. No one who knew him could believe that.

“Don’t you suck her face off every night anyway?” she asked pointedly. “Why make it more complicated by asking her out?”

“Actually, I don’t,” Kirk grumbled. “That would only happen if the bloke who plays her boyfriend accidentally broke his leg, or maybe his neck. I have a completely different role. Don’t you listen to anything I say?”

“No. Not really.”

“So, are you going to tell me how to really impress this girl?”

“Ask someone else to go in your place?” Rachel offered. She was immediately shot down with a derisive  stare.

“I don’t think you could really impress a girl,” Stevie remarked dryly, poking her head around from the kitchen. “You actually have to be genuinely genuine to the girl and not spew your usual crap. You actually have to mean what you say. I know that’s a completely alien concept to you, but you should try it sometime.”

“I always mean what I say.”

“And you just made my point. Honey, you never mean what you say.”

Kirk pouted for a moment, then looked back at Rachel.

“So?” he asked her, very unexpectedly. “What do girls like?”

“Seriously?” Rachel raised an eyebrow. She received a sincere nod, and she gaped again.

Rachel had always known Kirk was a law unto himself, and when it came to girls, he was a complete douche to them. But she’d had no idea he really didn’t know anything about genuinely trying get one to properly… woo. Was that even a word these days?

“Well, for one you might want to realise you’re twenty-six and need to start calling them women,” Rachel started dryly. “Also, what you also need to remember is that women want to feel special. That you’re interested in them, not just a cold-hearted hookup. If you actually take the time to get to know Holly, she’ll let you know herself what she likes. You’re just too thick to be able to read between the lines,” Rachel pointed out, while Stevie groaned with her head in her hands.

“God, you girls are complicated.”

“That’s only because men are so simple,” Stevie argued sensibly.

“Have you actually managed to get one yet? Or are you still happy in your own little couple?” Kirk retorted sardonically.

“Why on earth would we want men like you to come and shatter our little lives? You guys haven’t a clue how to make a girl happy. You’re so busy thinking of women as objects to get into bed as soon as possible, you forget we’re actually people. With opinions. And you wonder why they don’t hang around for very long.”

“They hang around long enough.” Kirk gave them a wink and a smirk.

Stevie’s expression morphed into a dangerous scowl. “If you don’t get out of this sexist attitude, we’re not going to let you in here again.”    

“Nah. Rachel won’t let you do that, will you darling?”

He looked over at her hopefully. Rachel simply glared back.

“She doesn’t live here,” Stevie retorted pointedly.

Kirk rolled his eyes and changed the subject to Rachel. “So, how was your first day, hun?”

Stevie grumbled under her breath at Kirk as Rachel told him about how her new job in the hotel and bumping into Luke Heartlett on the steps when she thought he was going to mug her.

“Luke who?” Kirk asked blankly, and Rachel rolled her eyes. How was she ever going to manage to convince herself it was normal to know things about him when both her friends had absolutely no idea who he was?

“Heartlett? He’s a singer. I'm surprised you don't know – his face is always all over everything. From what I heard, though, the music is may even be tolerably good.”

“Oh. The Heart guy. Well, if he can genuinely just hold   a tune, he’s ahead of the pack,” Kirk commented mildly. “I tell you, they would get a shock if most of those supposed pop stars went in to real singing we have to do, absolutely live night after night, no miming. Doing our own singing and dancing.”

“Yes, yes, we know all about the singing you musical Thespians have to endure,” Stevie said in a bored tone. “All those musicals you’ve done must be really hard on the ego. Especially when it’s as big as yours.”

“It’s a point though,” Rachel conceded, knowing very well what it was like to put that much effort into it and having to come out being, looking and sounding perfect. Every single time. “It takes a lot of hard work and skill to pull off a show like that, and famous singers and these so-called popstars just get it really easy and don’t have to do anything else except look pretty and smile. Too many don’t    actually sing or perform at all. Though I’ve read All-In, and now Luke Heartlett on his own, actually does.”

“Whatever floats your boat, dear,” Stevie retorted, barely listening to what her friend had to say about the subject. Some random pop-guy was never going to be really high on the agenda of a Cyber-Goth Rock-Metal lover. “When you see him again, don’t forget to tell him that and suck it up for a really fat tip. If you can think of a couple more things along those lines, you can probably get next month’s rent off him.”

“Ha! I’m hardly going to be seeing him again - and if I did, I would be far too embarrassed to stay in the same room as him after this evening. I really humiliated myself. I just hope he didn’t take too much notice of me.” 

“So, you’re actually going to stay in this place?” Kirk asked incredulously.

“I may as we well,” Rachel replied with a sigh. “It’s nice enough. And apparently they have celebrities there. Cute celebrities.”

“Would you like another one?”

Rachel looked at him dubiously. “Like who?”

“Me,” he answered in complete conviction. “And Holly.”

Stevie snorted loudly. “Despite the size of your giant ego, you are not a celebrity, Kirk. You are an actor in a play.”

 “Musical, dear. And I’ll have you know, I even I have my own professional website and a fan club.”

 “Do people actually visit it? And I don’t just mean you and your fellow Thespian friends.”

 “Yes, they do, for your information,” he answered indignantly. ”And, I’ll have you know, I get asked to sign autographs every night at the stage door.”

 “Probably because they mistake you for a genuine celebrity.”

He glared at her coldly and folded his arms in a sulk.

 “Okay, we know you’re brilliant,” Rachel said to Kirk, trying to soothe his damaged ego. “But what were you talking about going to the hotel restaurant for?”

 “I was wondering if it was nice enough to take Holly to.

 Rachel snorted. “How much are they paying you for this show? The L’hotel D’amour is a celebrity hotel for a reason. As in they’re the only ones who can afford it.”

 “I thought it would be a nice place to go… with staff discount?”

 “Forget it, mate,” Rachel laughed wryly. “I am not having you anywhere near my new job, and I am not wangling any discount for you when I’ve only just started there. Even with fifty percent off the bill you still couldn’t afford it. Take her to Pizza Hut or something, where you belong.”

 “Yeh, because that’s going to impress her.”

 “If you really want to impress her, take her on a night-time picnic in the park or something soppy,” Stevie suggested. “It costs nothing and it looks like you’ve put some effort into it. Any idiot can take someone to a hotel restaurant.”

 “Not to that one, apparently,” Kirk pouted.

 “If you can’t figure out what she would like, you’ve got no business going out with anyone that good,” Rachel told him. “I don’t know why you bother anyway. It’s not like you could actually love someone as much as you love yourself.”

 “Hey, you’re getting as bad as her!”

 “Kirk, darling,” Rachel said, sitting down next to him and patting his leg, “just do what you want to do. If there’s any kind of decent bloke in there at all you’ll do something she actually likes. Otherwise, I’ll have to send her a sympathy card.”

 “Right. Well, thank you for the advice – and merciless kicking, girls,” Kirk stated dryly, standing up to leave. “I’m sure I’d have been better off without it.”

 “You sure you can get your big celebrity head out of that door?” Stevie shot as Rachel walked him out of the flat.

 “Yes, thank you,” he answered dryly. “You concern is most not appreciated.”

Rachel said goodbye to him at the door, where he gave her another bear hug and kissed her on the cheek before he left. Then she closed door and walked back to Stevie in the lounge.

 “That poor girl doesn’t know what’s going to hit on her,” she mused, re-joining her friend in the kitchen.

 “She should know by now what she’s letting herself in for,” Stevie retorted with a snort. “He’s been there every day for the last six months.”

“He’s too good at being charming and an actor for girls to actually see through to the shallow depths that he really does hold. The problem is that girls always seem to imagine there are hidden depths to him when there really aren’t any.”

“And don’t I know it, the amount of girls I’ve seen him go through.”

“Well, at least there’s someone out there who’s going to get lucky,” Rachel muttered. “At this rate I’m going to die an old maid.”

“No, you won’t,” Stevie replied. “There’s got to be some idiot out there willing to put up with you. I do.”

“Charming. That makes me feel so much better.”

 

CHAPTER 2

It only took a week of extremely long shifts to burst Rachel’s fairly hopeful little bubble about her new job. Yes, it was better than her old job – and paid somewhat better, too – but she worked long hours in a terrible penguin suit, and got nothing but patronising swipes and biting sarcasm from the pretentious, over-stuffed, elitist guests. It just went to prove that no amount of money could ever buy manners or style.

She didn’t see Luke Heartlett again in the place, though, which was a relief, at least. She could do without that humiliation coming back to haunt her. Things were bad enough as it was. Unfortunately, it was about the only bit of good luck she would have.

After barely sleeping a wink all night Sunday from a long and stressful late shift, Rachel was in no mood to be ready for work by twelve, to get there before two on Monday afternoon. She wasn’t looking forward to a long, late shift that wasn’t finishing until ten, and as she painted her face up ready to look presentable in public, she wondered once again why she was putting herself through such long hours on her feet when there were lots of other kinds of jobs to be had?

The problem was that her bottom line was that she hated all normal jobs. However, she did wonder if there just might be something out there more suitable for her than gruelling eight-hour shifts at a pretentiously snobby restaurant with an equally pretentious boss yelling random obscenities at her every time she even breathed in the wrong direction. The only thing she could say was she was almost competent at her job, her boss liked talking to her in his own language, and she received some good tips from the few customers who weren’t above dipping for the odd pennies in their deep pockets.

Just a shame the aforementioned equally pretentious boss was far above actually being a decent human being and giving her a break on the beleaguering and yelling.

By the end of the day that most miserable of Mondays, Rachel was overwhelmingly exhausted and done. The restaurant had been closed early and hired out for some rich, posh person’s party, and it probably would have been easier managing a room of over-tired toddlers all wanting to go home after a long day, than the affluent, pretentious, inebriated and overly gregarious human disasters of the attending party. The entire experience was a nightmare, and one she really did not care to repeat anytime soon.

Without doubt, the next time she found out she was scheduled to work another such function, she would be accidently catching the Plague, or something. No one paid enough to put up with that kind of behaviour or that amount of waiting-on work.

Everyone who had come in had been absolutely awful, Jean-Pierre had taken up screaming at her as an Olympic sport, and she’d ended up dropping a tray-full of china plates all over the kitchen floor, and herself, with the loudest crash she had ever heard.

Ironically, Jean-Pierre hadn’t screamed about that. In fact, he had been surprisingly and very uncharacteristically philosophical about it, telling her to forget about it and sort-of taking care of her for an entire two minutes. He had even asked if she was all right, which was so surreal it was almost terrifying, leaving her feeling that some kind of parallel universe horror story was unravelling before her very eyes.

By the day’s end, she wished that had been the case, because it still would have been a better outcome and better day that what actually transpired. Now it was finally all over, she was cranky and was so very ready to curl up in a corner somewhere and die.

Ready to run out screaming, she finally left the building, after she had virtually ripped off penguin costume and stuffed herself into bootlegged jeans, a warm roll-neck top, a long cardigan, and sky-high platformed heel boots – all black, because that was easier. The hasty ensemble got covered by a scarf and long, belted trench coat – also black – and she made a hasty escape out the hotel restaurant without a backwards glance at the place… maybe hoping it might have burned down by the next morning, when she had her next shift.

Feeling overwhelmingly nauseated and lightheaded from both stress and relief, Rachel pushed herself through the glass doors of the main entrance and slumped down the glistening, wet steps, filled with anything but joy at the prospect of the bus ride home in the dark. For the record, she hated taking the buses at night even, more so it if was the actual Night Bus, but it wasn’t like she could actually afford the Tube.

At least it still wasn’t raining anymore, but the cold shadow of rain-filled air was all around and heavy, making it dismal, slightly misty, and uncomfortable to walk through. The streetlamp lights shining and reflecting off the wet ground didn’t help, because Rachel preferred to keep her head down, ignore everybody and remain as much as possible in her own solitude, regardless of how many people were around her. The air was chilled and had a slight bite to it, and she couldn’t imagine a better version of Pathetic Fallacy to be walking through right then. Like the best staging around, it absolutely reflected her insides, and wondered if God, or whatever was around or so-called, had added theatre director to his umpteen jobs of things He did for His humans. 

Walking as quickly as she could with what little energy she had, lost in these meandering thoughts, Rachel suddenly found herself careering straight into someone running right in her direction and nearly fell backwards on the ground.

Shocked from her reverie, she let her mouth do the thinking and the talking before she consciously knew what she was doing.

“Hey, watch it dipshit,” she snapped harshly at whoever it was. “Why don’t you look where you’re going?”

Now, normally, she would never, ever react in such a way. But Rachel was feeling so exhausted and at odds with the whole world, right then she just didn’t care. She wasn’t letting someone quite literally try and walk all over her. Not in the mood she was in.

“What? Hey, don’t yell at me,” reacted a loud, brash American, his voice raised in defensive annoyance. “You’re the one who should be looking where you’re going. I’m in a hurry, if you don’t mind.”

“Yep, whatever you say,” Rachel retorted snarkily. “Maybe if you weren’t in such a bloody rush, you wouldn’t go knocking people over.”

“You shouldn’t be in the way!”

“What, you think I’m the one in the way? You’ve got a flipping nerve, haven’t you? What is it with men and their innate inability to apologise and see when they are the ones in the wrong?”

Rachel glared right at him. He was now standing in front of a streetlamp, and she could suddenly see just who she was yelling at, and she quite frankly couldn’t believe her eyes.

Oh, Holy God, Jesus and Mary, she inwardly panicked, as she suddenly found herself staring at him.

Sodding Luke Heartlett.

Actually. The. Luke. Heartlett.

And, well, they weren’t overdoing it even a little bit when everywhere described him as gorgeous and smouldering. Deep and mesmerising dark eyes were locked on hers and definitely smouldering – in anger, granted, but still looked the same. Under the streetlamp, the light showed he had even darker hair that was almost pure black, which gave way to sharp and high cheekbones, a square-jaw, grim features, and a rather irate man who looked more like a billboard underwear model than a music-industry god.

She had seen pictures – let’s face it most people had. But in person? No picture she had seen could ever do him even a reasonable amount of justice. This man was… Something else.

Nevertheless… Here she was, yelling at him, staring straight into his face, and about ready to launch another attack with what rubbish he was sprouting at her now. Gorgeous and famous or not, he wasn’t getting away with that. Oh, no.

Not today.

 “I do apologise when something is actually my fault,” the man went on, as her brain went slightly offline. But then he snorted at her with derision, and that got her out of her stunned reverie.

Returning her focus to the situation again, Rachel got her snarky flow back.

 “But it was your fault,” she insisted stubbornly, knowing he could be God himself, but she wasn’t letting him get away with behaviour like this.

“No, it wasn’t. And then you started yelling at me. Now are you going to let me go or make me freeze here while arguing with you all night?”

“Well, if you just—”

A bright flash suddenly started her and caught her attention. Immediately, they both naturally looked around to where it had come from, and from extensive prior experience, Luke recognised the flash and the retreating shadow of a photographer attempting to make the deadline for tomorrow’s stories, and swore under his breath.

 “Damn paparazzo photographers,” he muttered under his breath.

 “What?” Rachel’s eyes widened in horror.

He shot her a look that silently asked if she was stupid. He obviously assumed she had recognised him. Pompous git.

 “The press,” he repeated slowly, with pointed wryness. “That’ll now be in every corner of the world now, for everyone to comment and click on.”

 “They can’t be that desperate for stories, surely?”

Luke shot her an incredulous glare and crossed his arms across his rather substantial chest. Not that she was looking.

“They’re always desperate for stories,” he retorted dryly. “God knows what they will create out of this.”

“Well, that would be one more thing that would be your fault,” Rachel grumped loudly at him.

“Oh, for God’s sake, stick a cork in it, honey,” Luke exclaimed in exasperation. “Now. I am leaving. I’m sorry you couldn’t look where you were going. I’ll probably see you tomorrow morning all over the damn gossipy entertainment news. Goodnight.”

He strode off, and Rachel huffed and stomped off in the opposite direction, muttering obscenities about him under her breath as she walked away. Stevie was going to hate her by the end of the night.

And Stevie did – especially when Rachel let herself into her flat and went about slamming everything and complaining loudly about something at eleven-thirty at night, when all she wanted to do was get some sleep.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Stevie demanded, slamming open the door to her room. Her ruffled, long hair was skewed, and she was in her Winnie the Pooh pyjamas, but Rachel ignored her, and carried on as if it was still the middle of the day.

“That goddamn Luke Heartless is what’s wrong with me,” Rachel steamed. “He thinks he’s so bloody marvellous because he’s some up-his-arse celebrity.”

 “I take it you’ve seen him again, then?”

 “Seen him? He only just came stampeding towards me at sixty miles and hour out of nowhere and nearly knocked me over, then insisted it was all my fault!”

 “So, a gentleman then?”

 “Hah! Are you kidding? There’s nothing gentle about that egomaniac arsehole, I can tell you.”

Rachel threw herself on the couch in a stressed-out huff and Stevie watched her stomping tirade with weary amusement.

“Are you done yet?” she asked dryly.

“No, I am not.”

“Well, can you please strop quietly, go home, or just get in the bed, so I can get some sleep?”

Rachel made a face and eventually succumbed to the idea of company, rest, and a warm duvet. She motioned for Stevie to lead the way into her sole bedroom, who then proceeded to throw pyjamas at her and climb into the big bed to get back to sleep. It’s what they’d been doing ever since they’d known each other, staying up and hanging out until all hours in one person’s place or the other, then staying over in the bed of whoever’s home they were hanging out in. They’d probably still do it in their 90s – it was so much easier than trying to actually go home.

Rachel crawled in soon afterwards, snuggled into one of her soft and warm pyjama sets she kept here for just such an occasion, and was indeed grateful for the warm duvet and some company. She now hoped she could at least try and go to sleep.

Unfortunately, sleep didn’t help whatsoever. Despite having quite a comfortable night with Stevie – where the warmth and safety of another person, in her hugely comfortable bed, made her feel warm, and fuzzy and relaxed – it was the daytime that proved to bring the true nightmares instead, to make up for the lack of any the night before.

Despite being on the late shift the evening before, Rachel had been roped into the breakfast shift the following day in someone else’s absence. It did not sit well – and was going even worse.   

“Miss? Miss? Excuse me?”

That was someone wanting a “real” sugar bowl, not “this tiny thing in front of         me” – which was the size of a normal sugar bowl.

“Oi, 'scuse me?”

Oh, goodie, someone with no manners whatsoever, who is probably more used to people bowing to him, rather than… say… poking a finger into his eye? Rachel turned to find out it was indeed a cocky rich bloke waving his arm and clicking his fingers, like she was some kind of damned genie. He had wanted “bigger eggs”, to which one could only presume he was used to ostrich eggs or similar – because no hen was capable of creating anything bigger than the ones on his plate.

“Excuse me, miss?” Rachel turned to yet another person who wanted a very busy restaurant to materialise things at the drop of a hat. “We ordered coffee ten minutes ago and it hasn’t come yet? Do you think that perhaps you could make sure that we finally get it now?”

That was the story of her life now, with no exception. She was always running around after everyone else. And they always complained. Rachel assured them that the coffee was on its way and apologised for the wait. Just what was going on in the kitchen for coffee to be late was beyond her.  It was coffee.

“Excuse me, miss? There was no mushrooms with my English breakfast, and the menu definitely defines the English Breakfast as having mushrooms? Please don’t come back until this order has been done properly.”

Well. There was an offer she didn’t want to refuse. Maybe, then, she might just not come back at all… She didn’t have to tell Chef that he required mushrooms, meaning she had blanket permission from the customer to therefore avoid him the rest of the entire day, no…?

Rachel deftly bit back an equally snarky retort around this thinking, and left it all to the hyper-privileged and smug douche, preening himself in front of his fellow tablemates for “putting her in her place and telling them straight”, as she overheard another one of them say after she’d left.

“Call me again and I’ll pour the plate all over your head,” she muttered under her breath as she walked off with said plate to go and get someone else’s order. They could wait, now.

“Excuse me...”

There was another one. She was seriously beginning to consider legally changing her name to “Excuse Me”, since that was what she always being called. Not even “Waitress”. Hell, why complicate things by having an actual name? Christ, she really, really, really hated working the early shifts.

 “Yes, sir,” she answered with grinding politeness, turning around, and giving him a tight smile. Then the smile quickly snapped into pursed lips when she saw who it was. Was this man ever going to leave her alone?

The. Luke. Heartlett. He was sitting at the table[DK2] , the last person who had called out to her, waiting to be served, and of course she was the one who had to do it. Especially since he was the last person she wanted to see after both last night and that morning’s gossip headlines all over the internet, real print, and social media – claiming the photograph of the two of them arguing was them having a lover’s tiff – the audacity! – publicising their “secret affair” after the very supposedly-famous and apparent recent break-up between he and his supermodel girlfriend. So famous, she certainly hadn’t had a clue about it, and – what the ever-loving Hell, journos? – why did it have to be her, the only woman alive who would rather skewer him with one of her fancy silver forks, than be anywhere near him now, let alone some imaginary “love interest”?

The story had come with the headline “Not-So-Secret Heart-To-Heart” spanning the width of her phone screen that morning.

“I’d like some coffee,” Luke answered her coolly. “And to know when your break is.”

Rachel stared at him as if he was crazy – which, of course, he must have been. Why else would a superfluously aesthetically gorgeous man of international boyband and solo-artist mega-fame be asking her that?

“My break?” she demanded indignantly. “Why?”

Dark eyes snapped on hers intently as he held up the huge iPad in his hands with that very same headline written all over it. “That’s why.”

Rachel flinched, cringing at being faced with it once more, by him, no less. On a screen that big, it felt and looked even worse.

“So, one coffee is it, then?” Rachel said, trying to ignore him and that infernal iPad, left face-up on the headline-screaming screen. “Would that be a café au lait or café noir? For you, an Americano perhaps?”

“Come on. Five minutes and I’ll leave you alone.”

She gave him a scathing look from over her order pad. “Why can’t you leave me alone now?”

The Luke Heartlett placed both hands on the table cupping them together in front of him. His hands were covered in multiple silver rings, which seemed out of place with the rest of his traditional good-boy male model aesthetic. The rest of his attire certainly lived up to it, from the

“I’d like to discuss something with you.”

Rachel looked back at him sharply. What on earth did he want now?

“I’m the waitress here, and the only thing you need to discuss with me is your order. Sir.”

This was ridiculous and unbelievably weird, and wasn’t supposed to happen at all. He was obviously a little out of his head. All that celebrity dope, probably. Actually, after his behaviour last night, he probably was the celebrity dope. The stuff itself didn’t get itself called dope for nothing, either.

“It’s not my order that I wish to discuss.”

“Then what?” Rachel demanded, suspicious and sceptical. She looked around to check Jean-Pierre wasn’t going to descend on her for talking while she was working, and waited for Luke to answer.

“You’ll find out when I can speak to you,” he respond   ed infuriatingly, looking inanely smug about it.

Jean-Pierre floated past them and gave Rachel a suspicious glance and she looked down at her order pad.

“And would you like anything else with that coffee?” she quickly asked Luke, ducking her eyes from the stern maître d’.

“A conversation, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh… Fine then,” Rachel grumbled. She gave up. If this got the American celebrity out of her hair, she would do it. “My break’s at eleven. I’ll go to the hotel's lobby. Don’t expect me to hang around for you.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be there,” he assured her, and she wandered off to get his coffee. He was still there when she came back with it, and there he stayed, until he finally vanished.

Keeping her word – reluctantly – Rachel took her over-tired brain and heavy legs over to the hotel lobby and, unfortunately, there he was. At ten past eleven, she had gone for her break – leaving for her break a little later than usual, in the hope he would be gone by then. It was usually spent on a short walk to the nearest Starbucks, and she passed through the front entrance, just in case the famous nutter had been serious and was still there. Dear God, why did these things happen to her?

She saw him standing by the reception desk and she attempted a calming breath as she approached him. It was only now, in the daylight streaming in, that couldn’t help noticing how ethereally stunning he looked, especially this close and in person. Damn.

“Yes?” she prompted him, using a hard tone she could barely muster, but somehow managed to pull off. Being that annoyed obviously helped a lot.

“Ah. Hi,” Luke replied, giving her an expression that vaguely looked like a smile. She did not smile back. “I think that by now you know who I am. But I still don’t know your name.”

“And why do you need to know?”

“Please?”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s Rachel. Rachel Adams. You want my National Insurance and passport numbers, too?”

“Hello, Ms Adams,” Luke greeted pointedly, holding out his hand. She reluctantly shook it, and wondered how bizarre this was. She never thought she would be holding The Luke Heartlett’s hand, even if it was just for a handshake.

“Can we make this quick, please,” Rachel grumbled at him, covering how flustered she felt about this. “I’d still like to make it to my Triple-Shot Caramel Latte.”

“Oh, of course. By all means, lead the way. I’ll walk you to them.”

It was not what she was going for, but it looked like she wasn’t about to make him give this up at all. Sighing defeat, Rachel let him walk with her to Starbucks, where they sat to discuss whatever he wanted to talk about. There was no point arguing with him. He was obviously a seriously stubborn git when he wanted to be.

“So, are you going to tell me what all this is about?” Rachel finally asked when he didn’t immediately offer an explanation for his bizarre behaviour. She watched him wearily, noticing the odd, interested looks from other people and inwardly cringed.

“Actually, I was wondering if you would perhaps do me a… favour.”

She choked on her coffee. Now she was really confused, as well as annoyed.

“What?”

What. The. Actual. Hell...?

Rachel stared blankly for a moment, processing words that technically made sense – but not from him. Or the fact he’d waited in her restaurant to see her about who knows what.

Luke seemed to hesitate a moment before seemingly blurting out, “I was wondering if you would help me out by pretending to be my girlfriend.”

“Yuh – eh… What?” Rachel stammered out. She stared at him in bewildered, stunned and incredulous astonishment. “Why?”

“OK, let me tell you what’s going on.”

“You think?” she snapped back at him in incredulous horror. Oh, God… this was not happening.

Luke leaned forward in his seat, and glanced around him surreptitiously, to check no one was listening.

“I think by now, thanks to the wonderful world of the damned world media, Social Media, and every gossip publication known to the planet, everyone and his dead dog knows about Tara and me braking up.” Rachel shrugged. She didn’t really know, and she certainly really didn’t care. “So, now I need someone to pretend to be my girlfriend so they’ll get off my back about it.”

Rachel actually snorted – out loud. How old was he? Twelve? “You are joking?”

Luke, bless him, held her gaze earnestly and shook his head. Rachel stared incredulously and emphatically shook her own.

“Nuh-huh! Not on your life,” she insisted with a dry laugh. “That’s so pathetic.”

“You’ll be getting something for it,” Luke added quickly, “including a trip to Paris. I can give you a cheque right now, or a contract of payment due, if you prefer?”

Rachel stared at him dumbly in very incensed shock and disdain. “You’re trying to buy me?”

“Or… you could see it as a gesture of goodwill to make up for any earnings you lose from your job while you’re away with me?”

“I’m sorry – you want me to drop my life for God-knows how long and go to France with a perfect stranger for money? Are you out of your mind?”

“It’s only a week, and I'll make it worth your while.”

Nausea rose in Rachel’s throat at the mere thought. Not just of the insinuation, but that she’s be even capable of falling for such a blatantly obvious insinuation as that.

 “Seriously?” she explained indignantly.  “I am not sleeping with you, and you certainly can’t entice me with your celebrity nonsense.”

“What? That’s so not what I meant!” Luke looked horrified and a little pale, so she’d give him that. But still…

“And what makes you think I’ll possibly do anything of the sort, anyway?”

“Nothing! I’m just asking.”

Rachel rubbed her head in confusion. This was giving her a bigger headache than she already had. “Why me?”

“Because you’re the genius who decided to chew my ear off in front of the world media. And frankly, everyone’s already got it in their heads we’re seeing each other, after that huge banner across the entire gossip world,” he grumbled. “Will you at least think about it?”

“The only thing I’m thinking of is that you’re crazy,” Rachel remarked dryly. She pulled uneasily at the dickie-bow and closed shirt collar of her uniform, which was now suddenly starting to feel very constricting under his intense expectant gaze. “I don’t care who the hell you are, I’m not going anywhere with a stranger who is obviously stranger than most.”

Luke Heartless’ expression fell into disappointment. It was obvious he had been waiting for some star-struck mutterings and squeaks, ending in her throwing herself at him for the chance of spending a few days in his company. His whole approach had been based on the thought of that since he was The Luke Heartlett, there was no way any girl was going to pass it up. What a shame he had chosen the one girl who would.

“You won’t even consider it? I really can make it worth your while.”

“No! I don’t even know you! I’m not going to Paris with you. And the only place you should be going is away.”

Luke looked like he had never considered it was going to be even difficult, and Rachel took great satisfaction in making it as hard as possible for him. He had, after all, managed to publicly humiliate her in the national press.

“What can I do to change your mind?”

“Leave me alone,” Rachel snapped grumpily. “I could always go to the papers with this and tell the world what you’re trying to do if you don’t.”

“Would you?” He looked rather genuinely startled by that, looking intently at her with evocative deep brown eyes. “I could give you more money than they would.”

Rachel looked straight back at him, arms crossed. “I don’t want the money. And no, I wouldn’t really, you moose!”

“Just… think about it as a free trip to Paris? Real French restaurants instead of Park Lane splendour?” Luke sighed exasperatedly at her scowl and rubbed his head. “Look, seriously, just think it over. At least let me take you to dinner and show you I’m not some psycho axe murderer, or whatever it is you’re thinking. It’s just two weeks of pretending, we ‘break up’ and then I’m out of your life. And the damned media and Tara’s out of mine.”

With only five minutes of her break left, and out of sheer morbid curiosity, Rachel decided on the spur of the moment to at least consider this insanity. Because there was nothing else interesting going on in her life right now, and this man was certainly enamoured with the idea of causing as much fracas as possible, so why not at least let the egomaniac pop star continue to make at least some real entertainment for her?

“You take me to a nice restaurant somewhere and try and win me over, then I might think about it,” she offered, deciding she may as well get something decent out of the crazy, rich bugger. “And I mean a nice, expensive place with real food, not that continental crap they spew out that you need a microscope to find, like L’hôtel D’amour.”

“Why do I somehow get the feeling I’m being taken for a ride?” Luke gave her a wry smile and eventually agreed. “OK. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

Oh.

Well. Shit.

CHAPTER 3

he next night, Rachel dressed in her best – which, for the record, was not that good – and waited for her pre-ordered taxi to turn up to take her to the rather curiously-named Bête Noire bar that was newly opened and very exclusive, and the venue where she was meeting Luke.

The. Luke. Heartlett.

They had discussed it briefly at the coffee shop and on the way back to the restaurant. The Luke Heartlett was going to happily – so it seemed – book Rachel a taxi of some sort to take her to the glamorous bar and restaurant, and he would be waiting there. Reluctantly, she gave him her address for the cab, and her phone number so the driver could contact her if he needed to. She tried not to think too hard about the fact she had given her phone number to one of the most famous people on the planet, or that he was, effectively, taking her on a sudo-date – even though the aim was to woo her into being amenable to his harebrained idea of being his pretend girlfriend, instead of the general idea of a date, which was to ask someone to be a real one.

Stevie clearly thought she had completely lost it for doing this. Despite her reservations, though, Stevie had still dutifully made her way to Rachel’s apartment and was now sprawled across Rachel’s bed and watching her best friend go through the finishing touches of what they had managed to pull together over the past couple of frantic hours.

Rachel was now dressed up more than she had been in the longest time, and she quite liked the feeling. Ever since she had stopped performing, especially the intense dancing, muscle had slackened and weight had slowly crept up on her, meaning her normal clothes were starting to feel decidedly uncomfortable, or just basically not fit, so she no longer even tried to wear anything but her favourite soft denim bootleg jeans, random tops that could still be classed as flattering, and black platform heeled boots.

Currently, however, she was feeling pretty good about wearing a dark red halter-neck top, wide-leg black pants that reached almost all the way to the floor, and her usual platform heels under them, so she would at last know how to walk. Over the ensemble went a black dress coat, short and fitted at the front, then just skimming out over her hips, and flowing all the way past her knees over the sides of her hips and down the back. Her hair had been straightened and makeup was equally theatrical in purples with thick and long-flick eyeliner and big mascara.

“I still think you’re an idiot,” Stevie informed her derisively, for at least the fifth time, whilst Rachel preened herself in front of her full-length mirror, trying to squeeze herself into the miniscule space it was in and turn herself around, whilst at the same time to try and see all of herself in there     , somehow. “You don’t even know this man, and it’s not even a real date.”

Rachel grinned and shrugged. As far as she was concerned, she was getting into a place where even celebrities were on the waiting list and was being given a free very posh dinner as a nice bonus. She could also push it and brag she’d had a date with The Luke Heartlett to whomever might listen, in the future. Incidentally, a quick Google search would even support that, thanks to this ridiculously stupid story being absolutely everywhere.

Hopefully, now, she might even somewhat look the part.

The pesky full-length mirror had been hung on the wall next to the built-in wardrobe, squashed onto the wall between said wardrobe and the pull-down bed of Rachel’s miniscule studio “apartment” – something that was more akin to a matchbox than an actual home. It was therefore almost impossible to squeeze herself in front of it and turn around to see as much as possible – and no, she was not putting the bed back up because it was a nightmare to get back down again. Last time she tried it, it took her, Stevie and Kirk to convince it to get yanked back down again.

“I’m not losing anything,” Rachel rebuked, running straighteners through the front layers of her hair to combat last-minute carrot-coloured fizziness. “He might actually leave me alone afterwards.”

“Why don’t you at least admit to me what the real reason it?  You fancy him, don’t you?”

Rachel stared at her in shocked disbelief. He is being insanely attractive, and thinking it, did not equate to her fancying the famous wackadoodle.  “Ugh… What?”

“Oh, come on. He’s twenty-eight, has one heck of a body, a face and smile to die for, and is, let’s face it, actually really gorgeous. And you didn’t get all those CDs for nothing. You like him!”

Rachel screwed up her face and scowled at her friend bringing that mistake up. “I only bought two. And that was absolutely years ago! They were on sale, and I wanted to try something different.”

“Two?” Stevie echoed in disbelief, then laughed in amusement. “Right, sweetie. You keep telling yourself that, and when you finally learn to count, and figure out what is so ridiculously obvious, get back to me so I can say ‘I told you so’.”

“Whatever, darling.” Rachel rolled her eyes at her. “You’re just jealous.”

“About what? That you have an imaginary date with some celebrity idiot?” Stevie smiled pityingly. “Yeh, I don’t think so, somehow.”

A car horn blew outside, and Rachel made the final adjustments to her outfit.

“Right, see you later,” she swiftly whipped out at Stevie, grabbing her bag and heading down to the taxi.

“Have fun then,” Stevie smirked, as the door shut behind her. She’d let herself out later, after making dinner out of whatever her absent friend had left in her kitchen, shaking her head at the antics that girl somehow seemed managed to get herself into.

*

The Bête Noire was usually almost impossible to spot, with its almost-hidden entrance just off Piccadilly Circus, but there was no question where that entrance was when Rachel got out of the taxi and headed towards it. The queue looked long enough to reach to the moon, and she vaguely wondered just how she was going to get in. The prospect of heading right towards the entrance with the giant bald bouncer – one that looked like he enjoyed throwing people out for fun and would love to turn it into a national sport – filled her with immense dread. But there was nothing else for it after Luke had unhelpfully just breezily added that he’d “leave her name by the door”, when she’d asked about how she was getting in.

went and tried her luck anyway. If she was really lucky, he’d turn her away and she wouldn’t but actually have to see the infuriating celebrity bonehead ever again. Unless he came back to harass her at work.

 “Name?” the bouncer snapped with a growl.

She told him her name. To her stunned surprise, and disappointment, the burley man nodded and unhooked the red velvet rope to let her pass through. Trying not to look too dismayed at being let through, Rachel made her way up the long black and red steps before her and wandered into the bar, her eyes darting around the huge, beautifully-decorated, opulent room for Luke’s familiar face, rather hoping he wasn’t going to turn up.

The enormous space was filled with people, talking in small groups, standing and sitting around tall bar stool tables, sitting in small groups at enclosed booths backed up against the walls, or at multiple three-sided back-to-back tall sofas with low drinks tables and opposite seating for each. Surrounding them was a monochrome marvel of interior design, from black marbled tile flooring to whitewashed walls with random black designs and random floor-to-ceiling strips of black reflective glass. The moulded ceiling, painted all in red, seemed way above Rachel’s own hair’s-breadth-over-five-feet height, sporting multiple low-hanging black chandeliers at seemingly random spacers, and along the far wall and its perpendicular counterpart, large, long black-and-chrome bars were being tended to by immaculately dressed bar and waiting staff in uniformed outfits that rivalled her own penguin suit at the hotel.

As she looked around her, Rachel could see what seemed like a hundred other familiar faces around, leaving her flabbergasted at the amount of celebrities hiding in corners that were in the place. So many, in fact, that she couldn’t make out which one he was supposed to be.

“Rachel... Hi.”

Oh. There he was. That one.

The voice behind her startled Rachel and she spun around to see The Luke Heartlet now standing beside her, looking utterly stunning – enough for even Rachel to accept he was genuinely breathtakingly gorgeous. Ugh… So unfair, that he was a complete moron but could look like that. Why were all the pretty ones always justifiably infuriating and nothing more than egocentric self-centred gits?

In black jeans, black buttoned-up shirt with a few buttons from the collar opened, under a black jacket, the man knew how to make a good impression and clean up nicely. And… Oh. He was smiling in the heart-stopping way she has seen on album and magazine covers. At her. Well… Looked like the charm-offensive had started already, she could see.

“Uh-huh,” she replied nonchalantly, not letting it show that she was totally impressed and awe-struck with the venue he had chosen, as well as the man himself. After all, the exclusive bar and club was utterly spectacular and gorgeous. Like him.

Shut up, Rachel Veronica Adams!

She flicked her hair and looked about her impassively, those years of acting classes coming handy for a change. “I hope you’re buying.”

Luke indicated for her to follow, and he returned to the table he had been sitting at. Rachel sighed, then silently followed. At the small, round table, Luke acted the gentleman and pulled out a chair for Rachel to sit. She quickly took off her coat, sat down and perused the drinks menu right away, requesting the most expensive cocktail on the list and expecting some fight over it, but Luke didn’t blink or baulk at the request, and she was soon sipping at a delightfully decorated cocktail with a bizarre name in a fancy glass, whilst he sipped at the wine in front of him, three-figures per bottle. She knew that very well – she served it up at work to people obviously trying to make an impression, or take whoever was paying for everything they had.

“Your cab ride was OK?” he enquired politely. He had, after all, paid for an private hire car to come and get her and bring her here.

Rachel shrugged, barely paying attention, because it was currently elsewhere at that moment. “Yep, it was fine. Did pretty well to get me through London without managing to get stuck in too much traffic, really.”

“Good. That’s… good.”

“Considering you’re supposed to be impressing me and wooing me into agreeing to your harebrained idea, you’re not making much of an effort,” Rachel remarked dryly, trying to surreptitiously look behind him to where she was sure her favourite musician in the whole world was sitting.

“Well, I would try to talk to you, but you wouldn’t actually be listening,” Luke retorted mildly. “And if you really want to see Christian Lee that much, I can introduce you to him if you, if you’d like.”                       

“Hmm... Pardon?”

Oh... So busted.

Rachel looked at him innocently, pretending she didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, or who Christian Lee was. Despite the fact she had indeed been staring, star-stuck, at what she thought was the music legend and icon she had worshipped since before she was a teenager.

“Christian Lee. You haven’t stopped staring at him) since you came in.”

Wow, so it really was him?

She had only adored him and plastered her bedroom walls with his face since he was in his original band, Spirit, and had loved him ever since. The posters were now no longer on the walls, and she had come to terms with the heart-breaking reality that he was – in his own words – very completely and very definitely a very out-and-proud gay man. But the legend and the music lived on, and she never missed buying a new releases, because everything he made was always pure brilliance and genius. And he was now sitting not ten feet away from her. Not bad for a little girl from the back end of nowhere.

“I wasn’t staring,” Rachel insisted, looking back at Luke.

“Are you kidding? Your eyes just lit up like two Christmas trees on fire.”

“They did not.”

“Yes. They did, honey,” Luke smirked. She cringed at his calling her “honey”, like she was some six-year-old child. Or worse – his girlfriend.

“What would you know? You weren’t even looking.”

“Yes, I was. It was you who weren’t paying any attention to me.”

“Yes, I was.”

No “, you weren’t.”

“Yes, I was.”

“What was I saying then?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but she realised she didn’t have one because she really hadn’t a clue what he’d been talking about from the minute she had arrived. Even though she really has dad, almost, been paying attention.

So Busted.

“And there’s my point,” Luke added dryly, with a wave of his hand.

Rachel rolled her eyes and grumbled under her breath.

“Fine,” she sulked. “So, what have you got to say then?”

“Well, I was about to tell you what I thought.” Luke took another sip of his wine and looked across the table at her. “Are you actually going to listen this time?”

“Huh – what?”

Luke shook his head with a short laugh. He leaned back in his chair with a small shake of his head and took a long sip of wine.

“Seriously, I can introduce you if you want,” he said genuinely.

“No, no. Still not looking at him.”

Rachel didn’t really care that much that she was obviously and pointedly lying to him, while taking          no notice of a word he was saying. Christian Lee was sitting and laughing just across the room to her, making Luke even more irrelevant than usual, and she had huge stars in her eyes – something she didn’t usually suffer from.

Her general attitude towards Luke was pretty much the best any celebrity would get from her, unless they gave her a reason to behave otherwise. She simply just didn’t believe in giving someone undue respect when they hadn’t earned it, just because they were rich and popular with the rest of the world.

“At least hear me out, since I’m paying for those overpriced cocktails.”

Rachel blinked and looked back at Luke as he spoke to her again.

“Oh, all right then,” she huffed grudgingly. She couldn’t argue that. “Give me your excuses for this ridiculous behaviour. Tell me why on earth you want me – or anyone! – to pretend to be your girlfriend.”

Luke took another sip of wine and gazed right back at her with his intense, deep brown eyes.

“Well, the press seems to have caught on to the story they made up this morning and it works towards putting the wrong idea to Tara. She thinks she can make a fool out of me in public with the media and I just want to do the same back – a      nd give them something else to write about. Even though it’s through the entertainment columns, of all things, I can at least look like I’m getting on with things without her.”

Rachel took a moment, waiting for the teasing smile and a “ha! No, seriously, the real reason is” to follow quickly. Only... None materialised. She blinked at him. Was this guy serious?

“I think being in the public eye for the last decade has rattled the sense right out of your brain,” Rachel muttered, pressing her fingers against the sides of her nose. “This is just too pathetic! Really. Look, you’ve already slammed me on the front pages of all entertainment media. I’m not planning on being there again.”

“Not even for a free trip to Paris?”

“A free trip to Disneyworld, Florida, including recording an original album with Christian Lee and Paul McCartney couldn’t convince me,” Rachel retorted sharply. “I am not pretending to be your girlfriend just to make some matchstick on legs actually jealous – and give bored journalists something to write about.”

“I can give you a cheque right now.”

“You got to be kidding me!” Rachel exclaimed, incensed. “You cannot be seriously trying to buy me? If you want that, just go and Google an escort agency.”

“Like I told you before, it would be just to reimburse you for any loss of earnings.”

“I thought you were joking.”

“It wouldn’t work with anyone else.”

“You really are one hell of an arrogant git and a sad bastard, aren’t you?” Rachel growled at him. She really couldn't believe what she was hearing. “You’ve been buying into your own publicity until your head is about to explode.”

“What have you got against me?”

Rachel looked at him in an unimpressed way, stating mildly, “Precisely that.”

Luke sighed and poured the rest of the eye-wateringly expensive wine down his throat.

“Look,” Rachel said, for the first time actually giving him her serious attention and leaning forward, forearms on the table, “at the end of the day, I don’t even know you, and so far, I don’t even particularly like you. You’re a publicity-obsessed moron who cares more about your reputation than people. How can you honestly expect me to go away with you and pretend to be your girlfriend? I’m not exactly a professional actress – and I’m definitely not for hire, in any capacity.”

Luke actually gave her a hurt-puppy look. “You won’t even consider helping me out?”

Rachel levelled him with steady eye-contact and quite some disdain. “You haven’t exactly given me any good reason to.”

“How about I make you a deal?” Luke’s eyes fixed on hers and captured them in his gaze so her attention was completely focused on him. “You stay here, I’ll buy you a few more drinks, and you at least consider it.”

“Consider what – that you’re a complete wackadoodle?”

Luke muttered something under his breath, which Rachel guessed was not very complimentary by the look on his face.

“Come on, there’s no way I could get the time off work, either” she said seriously to him. “It just would never work. Have you actually thought it all through? You’d have to put up with me every day until you decide to humiliate me again by publicly dumping me on the front page of every crappy newspaper, magazine and entertainment website there is.”

He didn’t say anything to that, and Rachel hoped that she had finally won. She was well aware of how many girls, and guys (who basically had very bad taste, in her opinion, and despite how good looked), would give their anything and everything to jump headlong into the ridiculous proposition he had offered her, there was no way she could ever go through with it. Especially since the whole thing was based on his ego believing that anyone cared about his idiot life and that any random person would actually throw themselves at such a chance. This was nothing more than a horrible, harebrained idea stemming from a horrible accidental coincidence that resulted in some photographer and journalist making up some crackpot story about their non-existent relationship.

The fact they were saying they had been having a lover’s spat when she had never even met the bloody man before was beyond her, and might have been amusing, if it wasn’t coming back to bite her in the backside now.

Luke was just about to say something to her when she heard someone walk up behind her. She turned and looked up to follow his eye-line, then found herself looking straight into the smiling eyes of Christian Lee.  And nearly fell off her chair.

Luke laughed at her stunned face and went to introduce them, so he could clearly humiliate her some more.

“Chris, this is Rachel. I bumped into her yesterday and talked her into getting a drink with me.” He looked from his friend back to Rachel. “Rachel, this is Christian Lee.”

Her face immediately flushed, and she tried to smile as she went to shake Christian’s extended hand.

“Hi,” she squeaked breathlessly. Christian smiled at her, and she nearly passed out.

“Hello,” Christian greeted her, now smiling in a slightly bewildered fashion. “So, what did he tell you to get you to see him, then?”

“He pretty much threatened never to leave me alone,” she responded dryly, shooting Luke a hard look and realising by that comment that Luke seemed to regularly need to coerce women to go out with him by playing on his fame.

...... “Good to see you’re still the same old romantic,” Christian commented sarcastically, shaking his head at Luke. “Is this really how you think you should get girls to go out on a date with you?”

“So, it’s not just me that gets this wonderful treatment?” Rachel shot Luke a pointed look.

“No, dear.” Christian put a hand on her shoulder and patted it sympathetically, making Rachel was ready to explode with fangirl excitement.

“The sad thing is that he does this to pretty much every… Ah, I see.”

Rachel looked curiously up at the still-gorgeous iconic musician, wondering what he suddenly saw.

“You’re the one from all over the internet this morning,” he grinned, and she stared at him in horror, completely mortified. She shot a furious glare at Luke and slumped back in her chair with a disheartened sigh.

“Well, there’s my reputation out of the window,” she grumbled.

Luke threw her a cold look in return. “I didn't realise you had one.”

Christian slipped into a chair next to them and looked at the two of them in interest. Rachel just wanted to throw herself off the nearest cliff. After all these years she finally got to meet Christian Lee, and Luke had managed to humiliate her in front of him. She had always dreamed that he would see her and know who she was – but certainly not as the hussy who supposedly was Luke Heartlett’s secret love affair, yelling at him in the streets.

This just got better and better.

           “Right, so tell me what’s really going on,” Christian said to them, his eyes gleaming with mischievous interest. “How much of it is real?”

           “None of it,” Rachel vehemently assured him. “He walked into me, I’d had a long day, he refused to apologise, so I yelled at him.”

           “And they got all that from that? Come on.”

           “You know what they’re like.” Luke threw him a hard, pointed look, and the other man backed down – if anyone knew how gossip writers could make a mountain out of a molehill it was Christian Lee. “I’d honestly never seen her before. But I didn’t walk into her. She walked into me and blamed me for it. They took a photograph of us and decided to run with it – the whole fairytale marathon.”

           Rachel didn’t miss the raised eyebrow and look of dubiousness Christian threw back at him, but still she ignored it.

           “So you're not actually on a date with him? Why are you here, then?” Christian looked at Rachel. “You don’t seem to like him very much.”

           “I don’t,” she muttered. “And… Don’t ask,”

With his interest now really peaked, he looked across to Luke for an explanation.         

“I’ll tell you later,” Luke mumbled. “It’s a long story.”

            “Right.” Christian pushed back his chair and shot him a look. “I’ll be going now, kids. But you are definitely telling me later.”

           He grinned at Luke and patted him on the back. Grunting, Luke pushed him away and then turned his attention back to Rachel, with a look on his face that said he knew that any tiny hope he may have possibly had in convincing her before was now utterly and completely out the window.

           “Well, thank you for that,” Rachel said stonily, getting her bag together and pushing her chair back. “After adoring him for too many years to count, you’ve just embarrassed me in front of him, and if by some strange phenomenon he actually remembers me for any longer than five minutes, this is what he’s going to remember me for – being your paid escort. Surely you’ll agree it’s not the nicest situation.”

           She got up and started walking away. Luke quickly got on his feet and stood in her way.

“You’re leaving?”        

“Take a guess, Einstein.”

“One more drink?”

“In your dreams, mate.”

She went to move past him and he grabbed her hand.

“Just at least think about it,” he implored. Rachel snatched her hand away and glared at him. “A free trip, some extra money, fifteen minutes of fame and a few days from work – and that’s it. No strings.”

“Hah! No way.”

“I’ve got all night to talk.”

 “Well, I haven’t, so bugger off.”

 Undeterred, Luke fished in his wallet for something. “Here’s my number. Don’t lose it too soon.”

 Rachel gave him a look, then snatched it from him at the last minute before making her way towards the door, leaving without even a backwards glance. If she ever saw him again in her life, it would be too soon. The arrogant egomaniac had another think coming if he thought she was going to fall for that bull. And Paris, of all places – how contrived was that?

Under more usual circumstances she would have given her eyes’ teeth to go to France, especially since she had never been on a real holiday before. Her parents had barely been able to afford the basics, and school holidays were celebrated with inexpensive, but very fun, camping adventures around the country – not fancy airplane holidays to all kinds of hot and interesting international destinations.

However, there was no way she was going anywhere with that famous lunatic. Even if it was somewhere as wonderful as Paris.

The card she had been given was thoughtlessly stuffed into her bag as she stormed out into the night. It was probably a good thing that she didn’t realise at the time that it wasn’t going to be too long until she realised that she needed it. Otherwise she might have happily thrown herself under the taxi that ignored her raised hand and instead went shooting past.

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