“I’m sorry.” Fletcher rummaged around in his pocket for his wallet. For some reason, he needed out of there. He wasn’t used to being picked up in bars, hotels, anywhere really, so he didn’t know the etiquette of turning men down. So he rushed out an inelegant, “I’m in a relationship.”
Diego stepped back. “Oh.” He cocked his head. “That is a shame.”
All Fletcher could do was nod. But as he collected his things, shoving it all into his satchel and slid out from the booth, a shiver ran down his spine. He could feel the Italian’s eyes on him. His steps, as he trundled out of the Meridian, were a touch quicker than they had been before. Which made no sense. It wasn’t as though Heston would find out he’d been propositioned. And, in hindsight, it wouldn’t be that much of a problem.
Heston might even find it amusing.
A turn-on, more like. Fletcher clenched his hands into balls. Get the feck over it!
He shook all that off when he reached the entranceway to his communal office block as a different sensation bristled his skin. A figure, dressed all in black with a motorcycle helmet covering his face, leaned against a bike parked on the roadside. It wasn’t unusual for a motorcyclist to be outside the building. All the companies who resided within the communal block used bike deliveries across the city. But this irksome figure followed Fletcher with his gaze, staring at him, assessing him. Not that Fletcher could see beyond the darkened plastic of the man’s visor, but he could sense it. And he didn’t like it.
He swallowed.
“Fletcher Doherty?” The man’s voice was muffled by his helmet, but he’d said it loud and fierce enough that the inflection in the name felt like a punch to Fletcher’s gut.
“Who’s asking?” That sounded a lot like he was full of bravado, when inside he was bricking it.
There had been a few instances in his time as the gossip columnist for London Lights when certain people hadn’t cared for what he’d published—true or not. And they’d made it known that he should watch his back. Nothing had really come to anything more than a few threatening emails, and the one time a rotten egg had been delivered to his desk.
Except, of course, for what had happened six months ago. When a certain A-list celebrity had taken a swing at him after an unfavourable review, who then had been arrested the next day on suspicion for murdering his girlfriend.
Since then, Fletcher had become a bit more cautious.
Slipping his hand into his chino pockets, Fletcher located his keys and curled his fingers around the chain. Not that he’d be able to get his hand out and punch the bloke with any impact through the over-protective leathers before being pummelled to the ground, but the comfort was in the possible protection of metal spokes.
The man ripped off his helmet, tousled locks of blond hair tumbling down into piercing blue eyes. Fletcher’s pulse hitched. He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. His throat had seized up and if he hadn’t been fearing for his life before, he was now.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Come on, you don’t recognise me?”
Fletcher drew in a long, harried breath. Of course he recognised him. How could he not? That face had been plastered everywhere. And not just this morning, or over the last few months, but even before then, that blond-haired, blue-eyed, boy-next-door had at one point or another since Fletcher’s puberty been on every screen, every magazine, and every newspaper.
And that dashing smile had once captured the nation’s hearts.
“Jackson Young.” The name fell from Fletcher’s trembling lips.
Jackson plastered on that winning smile. Not the charming, beatific one he used for the cameras. This one was almost melancholic in its delivery. As though he wasn’t impressed by his own name. As if Fletcher saying it had sounded like a murder of crows squawking overhead.
“The one and only.” Jackson held out his arms.
“I heard they let you out.”
“Yeah. Six months too late.”
Fletcher stared down at the pavement, his pulse quickening. “What do you want with me?” he asked.
There was a pause. As though Jackson was wondering the same question. But after a few awkward moments, he said, “I want your help.”
Chapter five
Requests
Fletcher Doherty was the epitome of an absolute, fucking arsehole.
And stood in front of him, on the jostling London pavement, waiting for his reply, Jackson couldn’t prevent his blood boiling. He’d thought by laying eyes on Fletcher again, with foreknowledge that he was here to goad the man into helping him, that he could suppress the anger, the annoyance, the sheer, utter hatred. He couldn’t. Especially when he appeared as a farm boy lost in the city, someone way out of his comfort zone.
Maybe he was just uncomfortable with how tight those chinos were stretched over strapping thighs?
Game face on.
“My help?” Even the way the arsehole asked that inevitable question grated Jackson’s skin. As though it was the coarse hairs of the man’s dark beard scratching every inch of his body.
He knew he couldn’t put all the blame on Fletcher Doherty.
But, by fuck, his subconscious wanted him to.
He looked like Kris too. Tall, dark and impossibly…
“Yes,” he replied to curb his own thoughts.
He needed to get a handle on himself if he intended to achieve the outcome of why he’d bombed it up the A3 in a record hour and fifteen in the first place, with only a brief stop off at the services to fill up with petrol, buy a phone and find the address for London Lights Headquarters using the Internet Cafe.
Fletcher furrowed his brow, a ghost of what-the-fuck trailing over his stark features, and green eyes filling with bafflement. And that pissed Jackson off. How can he not know? He was the fly in the ointment. He was the pebble that had caused a thousand ripples to spread far and wide. He had started it all. His words, written on a page. It had been Fletcher Doherty who had managed to turn Jackson’s normally jaunty outlook and nonchalant attitude to criticism on its head and had transformed him into a monster.
Not the monster he’d been portrayed as.
But a beast nonetheless.
A beast who the world thought didn’t care. He did. He cared so much that he was here, doing this, when he’d rather be anywhere else than begging for help from a gossip columnist.
“Do you have a minute to hear me out?” Jackson dug his fingernails into his palms to curtail his need to throw a fist the arsehole’s way. He couldn’t take another swing at him. Even if this time his sobriety meant he might reach his target and not end up arse-down in the gutter.
And in front of all those waiting, fucking cameras.
But he also needed something to focus on that wasn’t his thrashing, shattered heart that somehow seemed to keep beating beyond its sell-by-date, along with the disturbing images that haunted his dreams and seeped into his daily reality.
“Why me?” Fletcher shuffled backwards, glancing up and down the bustling high street, searching for a saviour, or maybe a camera, a lifeline?
Jackson followed his line of sight. A fight had broken outside a betting shop, the security guard slinging someone’s hook. It gave him a moment to compose himself. To not have to recall the last time he’d laid eyes on Fletcher fucking Doherty, when everything hadn’t been so fucked up. If only he’d held his temper back then. If only he’d reined in his out-of-control ego.