In the Heat of the Spotlight

She turned to him with a smile. ‘It’s amazing. This whole day has been amazing.’

Luke touched her cheek, no more than a brush of his fingers. ‘It has been for me too.’ His gaze was tender and yet intent on hers, the curve of his mouth so close—

‘Luke—’ She wasn’t sure what she was going to say. Kiss me, maybe, because she wanted him to. Desperately. But he didn’t. Didn’t even let her finish, just slipped off the ledge and swam underneath the falls once more.

With a little sigh Aurelie followed him.

They swam a bit more in the shallows of the pool, splashing, teasing and laughing and finally they got out and returned to the sun-warmed rock to dry.

Aurelie sat there, her arms braced behind her, her legs stretched out, wearing only her underwear. And felt completely natural, no Aurelie artifice or armour. She was, she knew, being herself; she’d been herself for nearly the whole day. There was something there, underneath all the posing, and she’d needed Luke to show her.

‘So if your mother was dragging you around in pursuit of her deadbeats, how did you actually become famous?’ Luke asked after they’d sat in a comfortable silence for a little while.

‘At a karaoke night at a bar in Kansas, if you can believe it,’ Aurelie answered.

‘You sang karaoke?’

‘We both did. It was a mother-daughter thing.’

‘Ah.’

‘What do you mean, ah?’ she asked, because he sounded as if she’d just said something significant.

‘Well, your mother isn’t famous, is she?’

‘No—’

‘I’ll bet she wasn’t pleased that her teenage daughter—how old were you, sixteen?’

‘Fifteen,’ Aurelie said softly. ‘It was a month before my sixteenth birthday.’

‘Young and gorgeous,’ Luke stated, ‘and about to be famous. And your mother wasn’t any of those things.’

Strange, she’d never thought of it that way. She’d never considered that her mother might have been jealous of her. Yet now, looking back on that fateful, life-altering night, she remembered how quiet her mother had been. Of course, Pete had done all the talking, made his promises, told Aurelie she was going to be a star. She swallowed, willing the memories away. It had begun right there, she knew, the destruction of herself. The building up of Aurelie.

‘It’s hard to remember, isn’t it,’ Luke said quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’

She shook her head, her throat tight. ‘In some ways it was the happiest—well, I felt the happiest then than I had in such a long time. But if I’d known, if anyone could have told me—’

‘Told you what?’

She swallowed. Here was the honesty that hurt. ‘That I’d lose my soul. That I’d sell it, because I didn’t even know what I was giving away.’

Luke frowned. ‘I suppose fame will do that to you.’

‘It wasn’t fame. It was—’ She stopped because she didn’t want to tell him, didn’t even know how. ‘It was awful,’ she finished quietly.

He was silent for a long moment. ‘“Never give your heart away,”’ he quoted her song softly. ‘Is that what happened, Aurelie? Someone broke your heart?’

She swallowed. ‘Yes.’

He nodded, sorrowfully understanding. ‘Three years is a long time. It must have hurt when it was over.’

She let out a sudden, hard laugh because Luke had completely the wrong idea and she didn’t want to have to correct him. ‘It felt like forever,’ she agreed after a moment. ‘But my heart didn’t break when it was over, Luke. It broke when it began.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT BROKE when it began.

Aurelie had said the words with such flat finality, such aching sorrow, that Luke knew she meant them. He just didn’t know what they meant.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said quietly, but she shook her head.

‘I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to ruin this perfect day by bringing all that up. And it has been perfect, Luke. Everything.’ She gazed at him with those wide rain-washed eyes and Luke felt everything in him twist and yearn.