‘I bet everyone throws the game, like you are some sort of five-year-old.’ I try to sound playful; we have to let the sexual tension swill away – or I might drown.
He takes my cue and jokes to lighten the mood. ‘God, I hadn’t considered that. I just thought that I was really good, you know? The superior player. But now you’ve mentioned it maybe that’s exactly what they do.’
‘Oh, Scottie is a poor little rich boy,’ I tease. I get the sense that he likes me gently taking the piss out of him; it’s probably a novelty but I don’t like hurting anyone’s feelings so just in case I’ve gone too far I add, ‘Of course it might just be that you are the superior player to those guys you usually play with but you’re just not as good as me.’
‘Rematch. I demand it,’ he laughs. ‘And call me Scott, not Scottie. Only people who don’t know me call me Scottie.’
We play on. OK, deep breath. So I described Scott Taylor as the perfect fantasy man; that didn’t mean I expected to like him if I met him for real. Frankly, distanced from his lyrics and the airbrush I expected him to be a big let-down; an infantile tosser with an ego the size of a planet and a brain the size of a pinprick. But after just two hours in his company I realize that my preconceptions were totally, utterly, completely wrong.
Scott is not a manufactured, brainless bore. He’s the real deal. I’ve heard it said that if a girl met some super-star in a supermarket she probably wouldn’t even notice him. And, honestly, I think I would leave Justin Timber-lake stacking shelves and it’s possible that even Mark Owen would not cause me to get all flustered while squeezing my fruit and veg. But I’d notice Scott. He could take me even in the dairy aisle – and it’s really cold there. There are no screaming fans buoying him up as we play cards, no sign of an enormous entourage, no photographers, and he’s not wearing clothes embroidered with gold leaf or any outward sign of his colossal wealth, and yet he oozes that ephemeral star quality that only one person in ten million is lucky enough to be born with. He is breathtakingly compelling.
I realize that Scott has asked me to play cards on a whim. This is not the start of a lifelong friendship. This dream will end when he gets hungry and needs to call for food or when something else catches or demands his attention, so I squirrel away every last detail of this experience. I know that I’ll want to savour each moment over and over again, on my own and with friends. Hell, I might throw a party to tell people about this. Although I guess I’d have to edit slightly for Adam’s sake. Not that I’ve actually done anything wrong but I imagine he’d be less than happy to hear that I’m zapped with lust every time Scott so much as glances at me. I watch the way Scott stands, moves, talks, stays silent, sips from his water bottle and it is absolutely fascinating to me. I’m entranced.
We are joined by a mountain of a man who appears not to be accustomed to smiling. I assume he is a personal security guard. He doesn’t have a uniform but he checks behind doors and in cupboards and he examines the phones before he finally sits in a chair, in the corner of the room. Even then his eyes don’t settle but dart constantly from left to right. He asks if he can look in my bag. Scott says it isn’t necessary but I hand it over anyway.
‘What was he looking for, my hairbrush?’ I joke.
Scott grins as he glances across to the bald-as-a-coot security guard. ‘Tape recorder, drugs, a gun,’ he replies with a shrug.
‘You’re kidding?’
‘No. I’m clean at the moment and these guys are paid to help me keep it that way. The last thing I need is some sexy siren coming in with a stash of crack, then getting me to do and say all sorts of weird things that she’s recording so as she can serve them up cold in the tabloids the next day.’
I’m crazily flustered because he’s just indirectly referred to me as a sexy siren. I wonder what sort of weird things