The Austen Playbook (London Celebrities #4)(103)
Rupert left after the broadcast, looking drained and small, and Freddy stood with Sabrina, watching him go.
“How much trouble do you think he’ll be in?” she asked, and felt her sister tense against her.
“Not as much as he probably deserves.” That expression that only hardened her features where their father—or Nick Davenport—was concerned faded into a smile as she hooked one arm about Freddy’s neck in a hug. “Nice job, Pea—” She stopped herself. “Freddy.”
Freddy found herself smiling back. “You can still call me Peanut, you egg. Just try to remember that I’m not six.”
“You’re a star.” Sabrina raised her brows. “Speaking of which—was that Allegra Hawthorne I saw earlier? Do you have news?”
“Not yet. But I have hopes.” Freddy cleared her throat. “And where do you think you’re placed now in the great race of the headliners?”
“Davenport’s not going to take it out without a fight. Put it that way.”
“To be fair,” Freddy said warily, “I don’t think he knew what was going to happen during the broadcast. With Ferren.” She brought him into it with reservations; it was going to be a raw subject for a long while, and the slice of pain that went across Sabrina’s face was explicit.
“Maybe not,” Sabrina said after a moment. “Didn’t stop him going ahead with his little plot afterwards, though, did it?”
“No. It didn’t.” Across the room, Griff ended his conversation with the producer, who seemed to be a friend of his, and Freddy found a stupid smile widening across her face.
Sabrina sighed, and when Freddy dragged her eyes back to her sister, Sabs was looking at her with affectionate exasperation. “At least not all of his mates are knobs,” she said, inclining her head towards the two men before she headed for the dressing room. “And he’s got the brilliant taste to be utterly infatuated with you, so there’s definitely hope for the wanker.”
As she left the studio, her longs legs moving effortlessly in her high heels, hips swishing, she gave Griff a small nod.
He tilted his head in absent acknowledgment, but his eyes and attention were fixed on Freddy, and as they met in the middle of the studio, she looked up at him, and his face turned down to hers. It was smudged with tiredness, lined with the residual strain of the past few days—weeks—and just looked so...unmistakably hers.
“What’s that look for?” he asked with a hint of amusement, brushing a curl from her face.
She brought her palms up and rested them on his chest. “I suddenly felt alarmingly possessive.”
“I know the feeling.” His hands closed warmly over hers and rubbed her fingers in the slight chill of the air. “I believe I handle it with a little less subtlety than you do.”
With a swift tug on his shirt, ignoring the scattered crew around them, she pulled him down and pressed her mouth to his, and he kissed her back deeply, his tongue stroking hers. It wasn’t a hard, groping snog—although those were fun too; it was slow, and dreamy, and loving.
Pulling away to catch her breath, Freddy leaned her forehead against his chin. “We’ll learn how to do it together,” she murmured. “I’ve never been in real love before.”
She heard and felt Griff’s uneven breath. He lifted his head. “In love?”
“Utterly. I suspect irrevocably. Even unconditionally, since even when you’re being kind of a dick, I’m still completely mad about you.” Freddy considered. “I should have seen it coming. That first night we spoke at The Prop & Cue, you made me go all fluttery inside. Logically, I should have wanted to knee you in the balls. I was doomed.”
He touched a fingertip to the curl at her temple, an echo of his gesture in the moments before they’d kissed for the first time. “I love you.” Something in the way he said the words made her wonder if he’d ever said them before.
Her hands tightened on him, that immense gratitude and profound wonder flooding her. “Proper in love?”
His smile spread from his eyes to the rest of his face. “Proper in love.”
When he kissed her again, she said against his mouth, “Still duller than a pair of safety scissors, Griffin?”
His chest moved abruptly with his laugh. “I will retract one single statement from my past reviews. I had no idea what I was in for.”
Epilogue
Four months later
The show had finished almost thirty minutes ago, but the foyer of the Majestic was still packed with people. They clustered around the perimeters of the huge Baroque space, bending and pointing at every small detail as tiny mechanical figures moved behind little bevelled windows. Miniature carriages rattled over real paving stones, and dragons flew from the roof of the gold-plated castle, their wings fluttering in the air, duochrome scales glittering in shades of purple and green as they hit the light from the enormous Christmas tree nearby. As the clock struck the hour, a door opened and the beautiful little train puffed out.
Freddy and Allegra had been right in their plan for the miniatures; the display brought the public flocking. Carolina Griffin and James Ford’s expanded design had people queuing to get inside the theatre as early as nine o’clock in the morning. It was one of the most popular holiday attractions in the West End this year. And thanks to Griff’s and her father’s combined negotiating skills, his parents had sold it to the Anathorn musical for a sum that had totally exceeded Freddy’s expectations.