AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Potato!” she bellowed.
“What? No. Halo. Black Halo. Who the fuck are Black Potato? That’s not an actual band.”
“Oh!” Beached, she scurried away from him on hands and knees, leaving rivulets of dirty brown water running under the seating.
“That’s all you’ve got to say?”
She shook her head, still facing away from him. “You’re really a rock star?”
Paul grabbed the towel and reinstated it around his waist. “Take a look around.” Admittedly, the interior was dingy, but music paraphernalia littered the bus interior. “Yes, I’m in a band. I’m the bass player. Sometimes, pretty girls scream and run towards me rather than away.”
He’d meant it as a reference to her reaction, but she just kept staring at him as if he was the fucking Hulk and any moment, he’d pounce on her, and that would be the end of it. She’d be a squashed flesh puddle on the floor, and she wouldn’t have to do any explaining because she’d be deceased. It was a rather fatalistic view of the situation, but, with her plans having clearly gone tits up, she’d obviously decided there was nothing for it but to submit to the inevitable.
It was a philosophy he could get behind.
“Um, did you, by any chance, play in Leeds last night?” she said after a while, when it seemed he wasn’t going to flatten her just yet.
Had they been harbouring a stowaway since the previous gig? “Yeah. Were you there?”
“No. No, I wasn’t. But, my mate… ex-mate… well, former work colleague was. I guess you’re pretty big then, if you’re on tour, and you have your own bus.”
“You should consider yourself lucky that we don’t have a gig tonight, or you’d have something far scarier than me or the police to worry about. Our fans are fucking maniacs.”
She paled. Good to know that the thought of a pack of rabid fans taking out their disappointment on her had struck home. “I’m sure they’d berealunderstanding when you explained why you’d kidnapped me and fucked our bus.”
“I didn’t. I had no idea you were on board. No one was supposed to be on board. I don’t do passengers.”
Hell, that was almost funny.
Apparently, this evening was looking up entertainment wise. Thank you to whichever deity had been listening. That, and now that he had a moment to actually look at her, he’d caught himself a seriously pretty thief. Admittedly, she wasn’t at her best at the moment. Her nose was pink, and black streaks marred both cheeks where her mascara had run. Her clothing, which might well have been loose before, was now plastered to her skin, emphasising curve after glorious curve.
Damn! This woman had a heck of a lot of curves — and not of the glossy fashion magazine or even of the lads’ mag variety, but real, honest curves, the sort you could hold on to and that jiggled and made folds and featured heavily in his wank bank.
“This won’t affect your next gig, though?” she asked hesitantly.
He pulled his mouth into a tight moue. Who knew? It was hard to envisage the next twenty-four hours with any clarity from his current position. Thousands of possibilities seemed to stretch out from this moment. If he was being truthful, he wasn’t in any hurry to be found, either by the band or the police, for while this was fucked up, it was screwy in an entertaining way. It certainly beat sitting around a Formica table in some fast-food joint slurping cola and chancing gut rot.
On the other hand, even if they managed to get a tow truck out and haul Bertha out of the river, she was going to need a major sabbatical in order to get a total engine refit. “It might. Hard to say. We can probably squash onto the rust bucket.”
“What’s that?”
“The other bus. The one the roadies inhabit. The one where all the hardcore rock and roll stuff happens.”
“Are you saying I got on the wrong vehicle?” She flashed him a smile, betraying an impish sense of humour, before the corners of her mouth drooped again.
“Only if you were looking to get stoned.”
“Right.” She gave another huff. “I only saw one bus.”
As he hadn’t precisely been paying attention when they stopped, it was possible the rust bucket had continued on ahead of them. “What the hell made you think you could get away with stealing a bus, lady?”
“I didn’t.” She pursed her lips in response to his incredulous laugh. “I didn’t steal it. I borrowed it. There was never any question of not giving it back.”
That was a rather technical definition of theft, but a delineation that evidently meant something to her.
“Still, a tour bus? Who the fuck looks at a thunking great bus and thinks, ‘Yeah, baby!’ It’s not like hotwiring a Ferrari and taking it out for a spin.”
“Didn’t see one of those parked up.”
