Crushworthy

On New Year’s Eve, Jinx literally falls down a flight of stairs and into the strong, surfer-boy arms of Jamie, her brother’s friend and the cutest boy to wear Tiger sneakers and drive a BMW. Meanwhile, her best pal Liberty has returned, ready for more mischief. This semester, the must-haves include new friendships with triplets Olga, Masha, and Irina, and their mysterious, handsome bodyguard who makes sure they don’t get into any trouble—or at least don’t get caught. School starts and Jinx remains fascinated by Jamie. She giddily awaits the moment when she can swerve with her dream boy.

When the girls sneak out to attend the wildest bash of the year, it could turn out to be the end of their good times at Stagmount…

1. Hampshire, A Few Days before New Year’s Eve 2007

Jinx Slater sat at the kitchen table of her parents’ house in Hampshire, flicking moodily through the papers and giving her elder brothers, George and Damian, the occasional death stare. She was in the grip of a fierce bad mood. Damian had just finished an epic bout of complaining about his monumental hangover, and was now slumped in the corner with a pillow over his face. George was engrossed in sorting out the massive pile of mail that no one had looked at for days. Even the dogs looked bored as hell. They were ranged by the back door and didn’t even look up when one of the farm cats jumped through the cat flap, landing on the mat in front of their noses with a thump.

Jinx sighed loudly as she thought about a spat she’d had with her mum earlier that day over the shocking state of her bedroom. She hadn’t meant to upset her mum, but most of the Slaters were suffering from a severe case of cabin fever following an excessively boozy Christmas; she had to think about packing and getting herself ready to go back to Stagmount—the exclusive girls’ boarding school perched high atop Brighton’s cliff face where Jinx was in the lower sixth—for the start of the spring term. But worst of all, as far as she was concerned anyway, for the first time since she was fourteen years old and allowed out to party with her friends, she had a grand total of zero options for New Year’s Eve.

Jinx wouldn’t even allow herself to think about Liberty, her best friend and partner in crime since they’d met on their very first day at Stagmount. She missed her terribly—and the absolute last thing she fancied was a boring night in with her parents when everyone else in the world would be living it up at some fabulous event complete with rivers of vodka, uber-cool DJs, hot boys and probably bloody rock stars as well, knowing her luck.

“Right…then I guess it’s just me and Jinx who will be RSVP-ing yes to,” George said, looking up from the letter he’d just ripped open and winking slyly at his sister, “Tarquin Stone-Hall’s super glamorous party.”

Damian sat bolt upright, looking more alive than he had all morning.

“Tarquin’s invited us to his party? Well,” he said skittishly, “since it’s him I guess I can make an exception to my usual no going out on New Year’s Eve rule.”

“You’re such a terrible snob, Gaym,” Jinx snorted, secretly pleased that she’d be spending the evening with her brothers at Tarquin’s gorgeous country pile—his parties were legendary but she’d never been allowed to go to one before. And since all of her school friends were out of action—Liberty was probably hanging out with a bunch of hippies in California by now; Chastity had gone skiing in Austria with her mother and her mother’s new fiancé, Ian; and Liv and Charlie were going to a party hosted by some friend of theirs in London—this was the best, and only, invitation she’d so far received.

“Oh Jinx,” smirked George, “don’t be so naïve. I don’t think it’s Tarquin’s ancestry our dear brother is interested in. I think he’s more taken with his ass.”

“Well,” said Jinx, her eyes bright with delicious anticipation, “I can’t say I’ve ever heard you use the words ‘super glamorous’ to describe any event. Are you sure you’re not taking a leaf out of Gaymian’s big gay book?”

“Shut up!” George blushed. “I only said ‘super glamorous’ because super glamorous is the THEME of the bloody party. It’s printed on the invitation.,” He squinted as he held what looked like a cardboard cutout of a cocktail glass up to the light. “Alongside such gems as ‘champagne on arrival, Viagra on departure,’ ‘dress to impress’ and ‘leave your inhibitions at the door.’”

*

Yes, Jinx reflected two days later as she looked vaguely around the room she was chilling out in, thank God for brothers with friends who have parties. She was lounging on a chaise lounge covered with a pale silk embroidery and—even if she did say so herself—she looked pretty damn hot to trot in her black silk dress and vintage purple Biba platforms with dramatic makeup. It had taken her at least an hour to get ready before they’d left. She drew in a massive, self-satisfied toke from the bong that was hovering in front of her; belatedly realizing it wasn’t simply hanging in the air but rather being proffered by a tall giggling man wearing a red trilby hat, and tried to focus. And even though her current viewpoint was decidedly impressionistic, Jinx realized as she looked around that she was in an extraordinary room.

The ceilings seemed miles away and the antique coffee table was covered with glasses and ashtrays. Jinx shuddered as she clocked a huge stag’s head mounted on the wall above the huge fireplace that was framed on either side by two very gloomy-looking oil portraits of fat men dressed all in black. The remnants of a fire were dying in the grate and the stag’s horns had a straggly piece of red tinsel looped from one to the other and back round. A man stood in the corner wearing what appeared to be a suit made of metal. He was stock still and the rest of the party seemed to be completely ignoring him. As Jinx peered over at him she could have sworn she saw him sway slightly.

“Hey dude,” Jinx said, tapping his arm in a friendly way as she walked past on her way to the door, “is everything okay?” She waited for an answer, but whoever was inside the thing was clearly in a vicious bad mood and refusing to talk to anyone.

“Ok,” she huffed, cross that he’d ignored her when she’d made such an effort to include him, “have it your own way. I was just trying to be nice. Fuck you!”

Jinx stuck her middle finger in front of his visor and staggered towards the door. She was about to sway through it when George flew round the corner, hotly pursued by a naked girl with long blonde hair astride a chestnut brown pony. Jinx drew back and stared in awe after the three of them as they clattered down the corridor. She was sure she’d recognized the girl…and a horse in the house? Maybe she would like to live here!

Standing in the wide door frame, Jinx suddenly felt rather short. She looked down at her feet and groaned. “Fuck it,” she muttered, miserably contemplating her dirty bare toes, “I’ve lost Mum’s favourite shoes.”

Clutching her head in her hands, Jinx vaguely recalled that she’d been chatting to a couple of girls on the grand marble steps at the front of the house for a good hour or two at some point earlier on. She also recalled—more sharply this time—that she had neglected to mention the borrowing of the purple suede platforms to their rightful owner who had, incidentally, managed to keep them clean and safe since the freaking sixties or something. Shit. She had to find the fuckers. Jinx purposefully turned left and made her way in the direction of what she was sure was the front entrance.

Five minutes later she was delighted to find herself standing at the foot of a stunning Jacobean staircase that wound its way through four floors to the top of the house and was lined with yet more gloomy portraits of ancient fat people, some of whom were astride noticeably thinner horses.

She spotted the man in the silver suit standing to the side of one of the impressively shiny—considering the layers of filth that seemed to cover the rest of the place—dark wooden steps. “Oi,” she yelled, pointing an accusatory finger at him, “you! Are you following me?”

She was incensed when he ignored her again and stomped up the few steps to the half landing above her to confront him. “Hey!” she shouted. “I’m talking to you! It’s beyond rude of you to ignore me like this!”

Jinx was in full flow when a gaggle of older girls, enjoying a good old bitch about some poor soul, stopped to look at the commotion going on halfway up the stairs and started pointing and laughing in her direction.

“Christ,” she muttered under her breath, thinking she recognized one of them as Not So Lovely Lydia. She was one of George’s more terrifying exes. “What now?”

“Is that you, Jinx?” asked the most impeccably groomed, blondest one, who Jinx sadly realized was definitely Lydia. “Jinx Slater?”

“Um,” Jinx managed to squeeze out before Lydia interrupted her.

“Girls,” Lydia practically screamed, “this is Gorgeous George’s little sister. Can you believe it?” Her acolytes giggled and shook their heads. Jinx wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole, shoes or no bloody shoes.

“Jinx,” Lydia said, raising a perfectly shaped eyebrow and gesturing at Jinx’s filthy feet, “are you aware that you’ve got no shoes on, there’s a humungous rip in the back of your dress, and you’re standing on your own, shouting obscenities at a suit of armour?”

“Um,” Jinx said again, the shock of this unexpected and highly undesirable encounter temporarily removing most of her powers of speech. “Well, yes actually, I am aware––”

Anything else Jinx might have had to say on the subject of saving her dignity was lost when the girls turned as one and began screaming with ear-splitting delight as a tall, bronzed, surf-god type made a very belated entrance clutching carrier bags filled to bursting with bottles of vodka, beers and mixers.

Her fury at Lydia’s bitchy comments meant that Jinx momentarily forgot her current shoeless state. She aimed a vicious kick at the suit of armour. As her right foot connected with the suit’s iron leg, Jinx felt an unimaginable pain in her big toe. She screamed a hell of a lot louder than the girls in the hall combined, stumbled, skidded and fell backwards down the very shiny stairs. She closed her eyes and waited for the inevitable thud, hoping she’d knock herself out and therefore not have to endure the look on Lydia’s smug face.

She felt a thud alright, but it wasn’t the kind she’d been expecting. Whatever she’d landed on was pretty soft…but sort of hard at the same time. She decided she wasn’t going to open her eyes just yet but enjoy this unfamiliar swooning sensation for a little bit longer. She was making a confused mental note to explore other falling-down-staircase possibilities when she realized that the arms circling her waist were not her own. She kept her eyes tightly closed as she registered that they were strong, muscular arms, warm and definitely belonging to a man. She surreptitiously sniffed the air and was rewarded with the incredibly sexy combination of smoke, beer, surf wax and chewing gum.

“She’s mucking about. Look at the state of her.” Lydia’s voice echoed into Jinx’s head from farther away than it had been a second ago, “She’s absolutely trashed. She was shouting at that suit of armour a second ago like a proper nutcase.”

“Hey,” George’s best friend Jamie said softly in what seemed to Jinx an impossibly sexy voice. Gosh, she thought dreamily, how one word can spark a zillion thoughts!

She cautiously opened one eye and gave Jamie a quick once-over.

She was so overwhelmed by what she saw that she rapidly shut it again and felt a hot flush begin to spread across her face. Dammit! She hadn’t seen him since George and Gaymian had taken her, Chastity, Liberty and—Jinx almost had a total gross-out just thinking about the bitch’s name—fucking Stella Fox to his party last term. Trust her to—oh my God, she thought, nearly hyperventilating at her most recent unedifying memory—land on top of him from a great height looking her absolute freaking worst.

Jamie, George’s pal from school and now the richest art student in Brighton, was a lovely boy. He had a huge trust fund, which he was charmingly embarrassed about, and had used some of it to buy his incredible seafront apartment about ten minutes west of Stagmount. He’d always felt slightly shady about his vast wealth, so he rented rooms out for practically nothing to his mates, most of whom were amazing surfers. He was constantly throwing parties for the rest of his scruffy student chums, and Jinx knew him to be an extremely genial host.

Nor did it hurt that he was totally hot. Jamie was six-foot-four with brownish blond hair, complete with golden highlights courtesy of the hours, days and weeks he spent surfing in Brighton and Cornwall. All the salt and sea air had left him with a permanent honey-coloured tan, and his blue eyes were shot with flecks of green. He looked like the lovechild of David Beckham and Matthew McConaughey wearing just one of Diddy’s gold chains. Even his clothes were so damned sexy. He was wearing Diesel jeans with a pale green faded T-shirt and navy and silver Onitsuka Tigers trainers in the cool, understated way that was made for beach boys like him.

The last time Jinx had seen him she was so preoccupied with Stella’s evil plans for Liberty that when she’d finally managed to get Liberty on her own outside she’d jumped at the chance to find out what was going on. Although the more she thought about it, the more she recalled a distinctly hot-and-bothered feeling when he’d met them at the door. She prayed its repeat wasn’t spreading across her chest in the manner of a livid rash at this very moment.

Jinx really liked him; she always had. Since the beginning of last summer holidays in fact, she’d begun to feel a bit hot under the collar every time she saw him. And, if she really thought about it, she had to admit that it hadn’t taken long for that same feeling to take hold even when she only thought about him.

“Hey,” Jamie said again, slightly louder this time, “are you okay, Jinx? You’ve been lying there not saying anything with your eyes closed for ages. Talk to me, Slater!”

“Oh my God,” Jinx spluttered, realizing she’d been lying in his arms and daydreaming for probably like ten minutes already and opening her eyes wide in horror. “I’m totally fine, Jamie, I’m sorry! You can put me down.”

Jinx struggled in his arms. Ooo, she thought with a shiver, he really was the fittest guy she’d ever seen.

“Easy, tiger.” Jamie laughed and gently placed Jinx on her feet. “You’d better start watching your step. I might not be so handily placed the next time you decide to take a flying leap.”

“Um…” Jinx stood in front of him, but since she couldn’t bring herself to look into his eyes she found herself staring determinedly at the top of his right ear as she tried to speak. “I––”

She didn’t manage to finish her sentence because Jamie tenderly cupped her face with one hand, licked the forefinger of the other and used it to wipe a smudge of dirt from her cheek.

“There you go,” he said, standing back and appraising his handiwork with a wide smile. “Now you look like the million-dollar babe we all know and love again.”

Jinx felt like she’d been struck by lightning and also struck dumb in the process. She very much doubted she was capable of saying another word even if she wanted to.

Jamie put an arm around her shoulder, pulled her in close and gestured at her feet. “Something tells me,” he said, before turning to wink at her, “that someone needs to find her shoes.”

“Yes,” Jinx agreed, finally finding her nerve and twinkling up at him from where she was squidged deliciously into the crook of his armpit. “I do.”

As the pair of them made their way outside they ran straight into George and Damian. At the same time Jamie relinquished his hold on Jinx’s shoulder, Damian grabbed her arm.

“We’ve looked bloody everywhere for you,” he said, clearly very cross about it, “and we want to go home. NOW!”

“Yeah,” George agreed. “Come on, Sis, Mum and Dad will take it out on us if we don’t get you home soon.”

Jinx was furious inside, but knew from past experience there was no point in defying the Slater boys when they’d already made up their minds to go home after a party. She knew they couldn’t wait to get home and raid the fridge—there was literally nothing she could say to dissuade them at this point, however much she might have pleaded. Her stomach clenched as Jamie leant over, kissed her cheek and softly whispered a goodbye into her ear, but she had no time to think about anything as the boys clasped each other’s shoulders before she was practically frog-marched away from the crowd by the door.

“Jinx!” hissed Damian suddenly. The trio had slipped past the crowd towards the winding drive that would take them on the road to home, but Damian had stopped to point in horror at a pair of beautiful shoes discarded by the fountain, and was now giving his sister a fright. “Please tell me those aren’t Mum’s Biba shoes perched precariously on the edge of that fountain!”

“Thank God!” Jinx—who in all the excitement had totally forgotten her earlier mission—darted into the melee, emerging a few seconds later triumphantly swinging the purple platforms by their long suede ankle ties. “Thanks, Gaym, you’re a legend.”

“Hmpf” was Damian’s only response. He shook his head in disgust at her casual way with vintage clothing, and the three of them started off down the drive.

Jinx trailed a few metres behind her brothers all the way home and got into bed in an absolute daze.

She daydreamed her way through the last few days of the Christmas holiday, constantly replaying the scene with Jamie in her head—and imagining a fair few more besides. She finally stepped off cloud nine and started throwing things haphazardly into her trunk for the beginning of term about an hour before her dad was due to drive her back to Stagmount. As she tied her curtains back and threw open her windows, however, Jinx caught sight of George pulling his boots on down by the stable block. It took about twenty seconds for her to decide she’d prefer to go for a ride in the forest than think about school anymore. It took another twenty for her to race down the stairs, out the doors and present herself, huffing and puffing with her riding hat in her hand, in front of him.