Baby Be Mine

sigh and try to enjoy the sunshine, but I can’t. I’ve got itchy feet.
    Johnny comes out to the terrace. ‘What’s up with you?’ he asks me curiously. I’ve started to hop on the spot.
    ‘Sort her out, Johnny,’ Bess says casually.
    ‘What is it?’ He frowns.
    ‘I’m fed up with being stuck in this goddamn house!’ I explode.
    He stands and stares at me for a moment. ‘So let’s get out of here.’
    ‘Ooh, you sounded just like Johnny from Dirty Dancing , then!’ Bess says gleefully.
    Johnny gives her a weird look, not understanding the reference. ‘Are you okay looking after Barney for a couple of hours?’ he asks her, moving on.
    ‘Sure . . .’
    ‘Come with me.’ He grabs my hand.
    ‘Where are we going?’
    ‘Out,’ he says shortly.
    I glance back at Bess. She raises her eyebrows, smiling.
    He drags me all the way around the outside of the house to the garage. I could have shaken his hand off ages ago, but for some strange reason I’ve let myself be pulled along by him. It felt kind of nice, somehow. A break from the norm. And I’m bored – so bored – of the norm.
    He flicks on the lights in the garage and stalks determinedly to the Ducatti. He passes me a helmet and a jacket. I hold them up and look at him with a grin.
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Really,’ he says firmly as he shrugs on his biker jacket. He straddles the machine and looks over his shoulder at me. I climb on behind him and then he starts up the engine with a roar and we ride out of the garage. He lifts his hand at his security team up ahead and they open the gates and hold back the crowd with perfect timing. The paps don’t know what has hit them. I can barely hear anything over the noise of the engine as we shoot past them and down the winding roads, but I know what a frenzy they’ll be in as they scramble into their cars to try to follow us in hot pursuit. They’ll never get close. They’ve got no chance. I hold tighter to Johnny’s waist and scream with delight. I can feel his stomach tensing as he laughs.
    I have no idea where we’re going, but the freedom of this is mind-blowing. Johnny keeps to the hills and out of the city, but after a while we head to the ocean.
    ‘Hungry?’ he asks over his shoulder as we approach a petrol station.
    ‘Always room for chocolate,’ I reply.
    ‘I should’ve known you’d say that.’
    He pulls in and fills the tank, while I run inside to pick up some snacks and pay. The man behind the desk gives me a funny look and I wonder if he recognises me from all the press this week, but we’re out of there and on the road again before he can do anything about it.
    Eventually we arrive at a cliff overlooking the ocean. Johnny climbs off and helps me down and for a moment I feel like we’ve flashbacked to a few years ago when everything was new and exciting and far less complicated. He meets my eyes and I wonder if he’s also remembering back then, when I was merely his employee, or even a few months later, when he claimed he was in love with me. But as quickly as it appeared, that look in his eyes has gone again. We walk as close to the cliff edge as we dare and then sit down on the grass, taking off our jackets. I lean back on my elbows and tilt my face up to the sun. Contentment settles over me. Johnny lies down beside me. Neither of us says anything and it’s perfect; just what I needed. I rest my head down on the grass. I find myself taking a series of deep breaths and the weight I’ve been feeling inside seems to lift a little. For a brief moment I remember the lone blonde doing yoga on the hill in Cucugnan. Next to me, Johnny moves and I feel alert again. I open my eyes and turn my head. He’s propped up on one elbow, looking down at me. My heart flips.
    ‘Better?’ he asks.
    ‘Yes,’ I reply, feeling vulnerable and exposed in a strange way.
    He reaches over and pushes a strand of hair off my face, doing nothing to alleviate this feeling.
    ‘It’s going to be okay,’ he says quietly, and for a while I’m lost for words. I just stare back at him until my pulse begins to quicken.
    He starts to hum a tune and I muse to myself that if any other guy did this it would seem corny, but that’s not a word that could ever be used to describe Johnny.
    ‘What’s that?’ I ask. ‘Something you’ve been working on?’
    ‘Mmm.’
    ‘Sing it to me?’
    ‘I don’t have all the words yet.’
    ‘Hum it to me, then.’
    ‘I am.’
    I smile across at him and he winks at