Unpublished scene from You Don't Have To Say You Love Me!

Hallo!

I am up to my elbows in really hardcore heavy-duty novelling and also my business taxes are due so I'm aware that I haven't been blogging much. In fact, I haven't been doing much of anything but whittling my fingers down to the bone as I write, re-write, edit, tweak and try to decrease my word count.

But I did promise that periodically I would entertain you with bits from my books that never made the final cut. Or didn't even make the second draft. This is a scene from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me that never made it past the first draft, so it is rough. It might even be stuffed full of typos. It occurs about two thirds of the way in to the book when Max and Neve are all loved up, except they don't call it loved up, because of the whole pancake relationship thing. Max flies Neve out to join him on a work trip in LA. There is more of this chapter and if you're really good, I may post it in a couple of weeks.

But you have to be really, really good.

Live on

Sarra x

Neve wished she could breeze through LAX airport looking as glossy and groomed as celebrities did, but after eleven hours in a pressurised cabin, her hair was a static halo around her head and she was still frazzled from her encounter with a Homeland security official who insisted that she didn't even remotely resemble the picture in her passport.

It had turned out all right in the end, though she'd had to spend another ten minutes debating the benefits of a low-carb diet with him. Neve hauled her shabby weekend case off the baggage carousel, tried not to look too shifty as she walked under the Nothing To Declare sign and emerged blinking into the arrivals lounge.

There was a heaving mass of people waiting to collect passengers and Max had said that someone would be waiting for her with a sign. Celia had also said to ignore anyone who claimed they were there to collect her unless they had official ID because they'd take her to the La Brea tarpits steal all her money, rape her and leave her for dead. But mostly she'd just screamed for ten minutes straight when Neve had told her that she was spending the weekend in LA.

Now Neve had scanned the crowd for a sign with her name printed on it. She couldn't see the words 'Neve Slater' anywhere. Then she faltered and her gaze skittered back to five signs ago and there she was: 'Mrs Pancake.' And there he was, Pancake Boy, rolling his eyes and grinning at her.

"Thought you'd know your name by now," he said, when Neve had fought her way to him. "Give us a kiss then."

Max didn't take his hands off her. As they walked to where he'd parked the hire car, he kept this arm round her shoulders, even though he was carrying her case in his other hand and they kept bumping him.

Once they were in the car and driving to West Hollywood, his hand stayed on her knee as Neve thanked him, then berated him for cashing in a sizeable portion of his air miles on a business class ticket.

"Sweetheart, it's an eleven hour flight. You didn't want to be crammed in to economy. Was it boring? After about two hours, I'm ready to storm the emergency exits."

"Oh no, it was great," Neve enthused, because it had been. The only other time she'd flown had been when she'd gone to see Celia in New York and she'd had to ask the stewardess for a seatbelt extender and had a really horrible man sitting next to her who kept pointedly looking at the spread of her hips and Neve eating her meal on her lap because the flip-down tray wouldn't flip down over her girth. This time there had been a complimentary glass of champagne and a seatbelt that clipped in place with room to spare.

There also hadn't been a Charlotte on the plane so she'd managed to scrawl a rough draft of her Chalet School piece, read two Chalet School novels, watch the new Clive Owen film and have a little nap. Now she was wide awake and looking out of the window as they passed strip malls, twenty four hour drugstores and small squat buildings. Everything looked slightly grubby and off-white in the brilliant, unrelenting sunshine.

"It's not what I expected," she told Max. "I thought it would be more glamorous than this."

"I'll take you to Rodeo Drive tomorrow," he said, with a grin. "But I'm not buying one of those star maps so we can drive around and stare at the gates of Harrison Ford's house."

"Glad to hear it," Neve said, reaching out so she could cup the back of Max's neck. "But I do want to have my picture taken with the Hollywood sign in the background as photographic proof that I was here."

"Bloody tourist."

They circled the actual city of Los Angeles, the sun glinting off the skyscrapers, and just when Neve thought she might have to whine, "Are we there yet?" because they'd been driving for an hour, Max turned rightt off Santa Monica Boulevard and pulled in to the kerb.

"This is us," he said, as Neve peered out of the window at the hotel until her view was obscured by a black-clad hotel employee intent on opening her door and helping her out of the car.

The sun was still high in the sky and the lock on the dashboard had told Neve it was only six pm, but as far as her body was concerned it was two in the morning. Her eyes swam as she walked across the zigzag-patterned marble floor through the lobby and leaned against Max as they travelled up to the fifth floor in the lift, though Neve assumed she'd have to call it an elevator – when in LA do as the LA-ians did.

Then Max was opening a door and Neve had a vague impression of muted blues and greys but all she cared about was the huge bed on a raised platform, which she fell up in her rush to flop face down on the bed.

She gave a blissful and muffled sigh.

"Oh no, you don't," Max said, tugging at her foot so he could begin to pull her off the bed.

Neve clung to the quilt but it was no good – the quilt came with her until both of them were in Max's arms.

"I'm so tired," Neve mumbled, because talking clearly would have required too much effort. "Way too tired for you to be looking at me like that."

"Like what?" Max protested but his eyes were gleaming as they ran from her flyaway hair and grumpy face to her body shrouded by the crumpled dress and leggings she'd travelled in. "Seriously, Neevy, if you go to sleep now, then you'll never adjust to the time difference. Best to just ride it out."

"Just a little snooze," she begged as she tried to wriggle away from him and curl up on the bed, but Max's arms were doing a good impersonation of steel girders and she had no choice but to let him drag her upright.

"You'll soon get your second wind," Max insisted. "Have shower and then I'll take you out for dinner."

"Shouldn't I be taking you out for dinner?" Neve argued, but she didn't have the energy to put up the much of a fight. Instead she let Max steer her towards the huge bathroom and the huge shower that was as big as her spare room back in Finsbury Park.

Max had set the shower on the sting-ray setting and after, though her bones still ached, Neve felt invigorated enough to leave the hotel room, even if she did cast one longing look at the bed as Max hustled her out of the room.

He took her to what looked like an abandoned car park in a bad part of town. Abandoned apart from the ramshackle hut strung with fairy lights and surrounded by plastic lawn chairs and tables, which Max assured Neve sold the best Mexican food north of the border. They ate tacos and shared one Margarita that was so heavy on the tequila that Neve had to suck on a lemon slice every time she took a sip.

By the end of the glass, she was fading fast and she'd wanted to know how the cover shoot had gone but as Max told her, his voice seemed to come from further and further away. Neve could feel her head drooping and his eyelids getting heavier and heavier, and then she'd come to with a jolt, forcing herself awake and getting a bad case of vertigo every time her head jerked back.

"Do you think they do peppermint tea?" she asked Max doubtfully.

He shook his head. "That's the third time you've asked me that. I take it you don't want to go clubbing, then?"

Neve looked at him in horror through bleary eyes. "Oh God, please don't make me."

"Joke." Max took Neve's chin in his hand. "Are you sure you can't stay up for another couple of hours. You'll feel better for it tomorrow."

She thought about it for all of three seconds. "Bed. Now. Please."

Neve fell asleep during the drive back to the hotel, even though Max kept shaking her awake. And she must have got to their hotel room on her own two feet and under her own steam because when she bolted out of sleep a few hours later, she was in bed and naked. Max was sprawled out next to her, his hand on her hip, fast asleep. She angled her head so she could squint at the digital clock on his nightstand.

It was 3.51 am. Statistically that had to be the most depressing time to suddenly find yourself wide awake and with no hope of going back to sleep, while the person next to you was snoring gently.

Neve thought she'd been laying there very quietly and very still, until Max curled against her and whispered in her ear, "Go back to sleep."

"I'm trying," Neve whispered back, shutting her eyes and settling back against him. But Max was naked too and however sleepy he was, she still feel his cock getting hard. Now other bits of her were starting to wake up and really, what was the point in Max using all those air miles to fly her across the Atlantic if he wasn't going to take full advantage of having her naked in his bed.

"Don't do that," Max murmured, as she gently ground her hips back against his pelvis. Neve could tell he was trying to sound stern, but the hand that had been resting on her hip was already moving up and across so he could run his thumb over the aching tip of her breast.

She didn't think that they'd ever made love so slowly or so sweetly; whispering nonsense words against each other's skin and the first streaks of dawn light breaking up the darkness as Neve came with a startled cry that echoed in the still of the room. Afterwards, sleep was a simple matter of settling back into Max's arms and closing her eyes.