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not taking his eyes off me. ‘And it’s your fault that she’s still here. But I’m telling you both, this is it. I’m not leaving your side from now on.’
‘I get it, Blake,’ James smiled easily. ‘We’re absolutely going to play by your rules. But if we’re going to be doing a full hour’s talking, I’m going to need a coffee. Coffee Bean is just round the corner, can we get something? You know I hate the coffee at the hotel.’
‘Fine,’ Blake said, eyes still locked on me. I thought about putting my sunglasses back on. ‘She can go get your coffee.’
‘You want Angela to get out of a limo and order my favourite coffee at my regular coffee shop?’ James reached across the seat and took my hand. I resisted the urge to giggle. Nerves, just nerves. ‘Really, Blake, you’d just be fuelling the fire. This place is always crawling with paps.’
‘Crawling,’ I croaked.
‘I said not a word out of you until we get to the hotel,’ Blake shot back, climbing out of the limo.
I held my breath until the door slammed shut. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I choked. ‘I know it’s not funny.’
‘Angela, just a sec. Hey, Jack,’ James squeezed my hand then pressed the mic button to speak to the driver. ‘I think I saw some photographers as we pulled in. Can we make a move? Uh, Pinkberry on Beverly Drive?’
A shadowy nod through the tinted glass and we were off.
‘Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it?’ James sighed, stretching his arms out along the back of the seat. ‘Honestly, Blake’s been going crazy since those pictures were posted.’
‘And he’s not going to go even more crazy now?’ I panicked. ‘We have to go back for him! He’s going to call the magazine, honestly, James, I’m so close to getting fired right now. If he calls them—’
‘He’s not going to call them.’ James picked some nonexistent fluff from his dark blue shirt. ‘How many times do you need telling? Blake can’t cancel anything. And the magazine can’t fire you. I emailed them as soon as the pictures were posted yesterday. I’m only doing this interview with you and they know that.’
‘You just don’t make any sense.’ I rubbed my temples and tried not to think about how his shirt was exactly the same colour as his eyes. ‘All I’ve done is cause you trouble. You could have a real interviewer; you could just do that one-hour hotel room thing Blake was talking about and save yourself all this hassle. And the photos, aren’t you upset? Or at least annoyed?’
‘Did you do no research before you met me?’ James shook his head. ‘There have been much worse pictures of me leaked online. Pictures, videos. God, things I could never show my mother. And why would I want to sit in a room giving the same old spiel about my next movie, what I like about living in LA, what I miss about the UK, blah, blah, blah, when I could be eating burgers and talking about actual real things with you?’
‘Fair point,’ I conceded. ‘But you’re not even a little bit bothered by the photos?’
‘I’m only bothered that they bother you,’ he shrugged. ‘I’m used to them. The women that are in them with me are usually used to them.’
He didn’t even blush. So I blushed for the both of us.
‘And I’m sorry, I should have said something at the time. Once you’ve spotted the photographers, it’s usually too late,’ he said, peering out the window. I looked past him, onto the Beverley Hills sign set against a spotlessly manicured lawn. Not quite the Hollywood sign but still, terribly glam. ‘How was your friend when you got back?’
‘Jenny? Not amused with me in the slightest,’ I admitted, ‘but she was more or less calmed down by the shopping. Thank you, by the way. That was, well, madness. You really didn’t have to do that.’
‘Don’t even mention it,’ James waved away my thanks. ‘And what about your other friend, Joe?’
‘I haven’t seen him. I’m so sorry, he was totally out of order.’ I still couldn’t quite believe how pathetic Joe’s behaviour had been. ‘And, like I said the other night, he’s really not my friend.’
‘Yeah, he was a bit…’ James paused. ‘Well, never mind. There’s nothing in life that can’t be solved by frozen yoghurt.’
‘Oh my God, you’re such a woman,’ I said. ‘I’d like to hear you say that in Sheffield.’
“Shut up and get your wallet out,’ he said, as we pulled up at the side of the road. ‘You’re buying.’
‘Frozen yoghurt?’ I climbed out of the limo after him. ‘That sounds like a fair exchange for everything we bought yesterday.’
‘Yeah, but I won’t have to pay for that stuff; this is pricey frozen yoghurt.’
‘You have forgotten where you’ve come from, Jim Jacobs,’ I tutted.
It turned out that Pinkberry frozen yoghurt was ever so slightly magical. As James loaded his with pineapple and strawberries, I packed mine with Coco Pebbles cereal and chocolate chips. And I got change out of ten dollars. Just.
‘This is amazing,’ I raved through a mouthful of yoghurty goodness. ‘Shouldn’t this be all tasteless and healthy?’
‘It is healthy, or it was until you shovelled all that crap on to it,’ James teased. The street outside was packed with tanned, good-looking men in workout gear and more of the ever-present Ugg girls.
‘So I thought we’d crack on with your tour of my favourite bits of LA,’ James carried on, striding down the road, past all the girls that stared and all the men that pretended not to. The only difference today was they were staring at me as much as him. ‘So how about The Grove, do some more shopping? What do you think? That should cheer you up.’
‘Sorry, James,’ I hugged myself tightly. Why was everywhere in LA so open? What I wouldn’t give for a shadowy side street or a subway station. ‘I know you don’t want to do the usual sit-down thing, but could we maybe go somewhere slightly less, I don’t know, somewhere less open?’
‘Maybe The Beverly Center?’ James finished up his yogurt and dropped it in the rubbish bin. ‘Or Melrose? There will probably be paps on Melrose though.’
‘Are there going to be photographers everywhere you go?’ I asked, actively ignoring two girls clutching tiny dogs and huge coffees, staring at us from across the road.
‘Maybe,’ James shrugged. ‘Seriously, I told you, it’s not a problem.’
‘It is a problem,’ I said, spotting a group of pre-teens, head to toe in Juicy Couture, blatantly comparing the real-life James Jacobs and ‘mystery girl’ to the images on their Sidekicks. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s going to be a problem for me.’
‘Not at all.’ James threw his arm around my shoulders. I could practically hear everyone in the street breathe in. ‘If it’s a problem for you then it’s a problem for me. If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would you go?’
‘New York?’
James smiled. ‘Well, I can’t get you across the country in half and hour but I can do the next best thing.’
Back in the limo, we drove out of Beverly Hills, through Hollywood, and kept going until James tapped on the glass partition to stop Jack, his driver. As soon as we stepped outside, I felt as though I was home. Gone were the tans, the big boots and the teeny-tiny shorts and in their place were beards, battered Converses and vintage plaid shirts. Starbucks were replaced by corner cafes run by slacker hipsters, Urban Outfitters taken over by vintage stores and the huge cineplexes swapped for a tiny art-house cinema. And while I couldn’t see the ocean, the beautiful blue sky was framed by the hills and mountains that surrounded us.
‘You like?’ James asked, leaning against the ridiculously