The other headlines were just as bad. What was it with American media and their inexplicable obsession over the most absurd titles? The U.S. leg of his tour had barely started and already they had a dozen nicknames for him.
Mr. Fucktastic
Europe’s badass version of Justin Timberlake
Sweden’s #1 Sex God
These people were insane. They made it sound like his countrymen were so fucking obsessed – literally – that they actually kept a list for man whores.
He clicked on the next page that Constantijin – a Dutch billionaire who had been his friend since their boarding school days and was also one of the so-called Pussketeers –had emailed.
This one you will love,
Constantijin had typed on top of a red arrow pointing down.
Staffan almost choked at what he had read. Clearly, his friend had saved the best for last.
Mr. Rockstar Chic.
A fan-made collage created by someone named
Starry Eyed
had been pasted below the title, featuring rows and rows of his red carpet photos and paparazzi snapshots.
He wanted to puke at the title. They made him sound like a fucking fashionista with a dick.
So he liked his clothes fucking decent. So he preferred his blazers custom-designed, his shirts made from the finest cotton and smoothest silk, his trousers bearing only labels of European’s leading houses of fashion and his shoes and belts cut from hand-sewn leather.
All those didn’t mean he welcomed being in every fashion police’s Best-Dressed list. Other men might have considered that an achievement, but as far as Staffan was concerned it just made him sound fucking gay.
They didn’t know that his almost fanatic obsession in having the best clothes was a by-product of his childhood, of the times Staffan had been forced to alternate between two shirts until there were more holes than clothes in them, had no fucking uniform to use for school, and had nearly peed in utter shame whenever he was forced to go to Mrs. Gustav next door because he was close to starving to death.
Running an irritated hand through his hair, Staffan tossed the iPad on the opposite row of burgundy-colored seats in disgust.
His phone rang. He accepted the request for the FaceTime call and a second later, the faces of Constantijin and his friend’s girlfriend popped out on the screen. “How was the email?” Constantijin asked with a grin. An extremely good-looking man in his own right, Constantijin used to be known as Netherlands’ #1 Playboy. He had also been notorious for his unsmiling ways, but that, too, had changed when Yanna Everleigh entered his life.
Staffan answered his friend by flipping him off.
Constantijin’s bark of laughter was cut short when Yanna slapped his arm. She gave Staffan a sweetly apologetic smile. A pretty, dark-haired charmer, Yanna had easily won him over with her sometimes-shy and sometimes-bubbly personality.
“Don’t mind him, Staffan. He just misses you.”
Constantijin choked.
Staffan deliberately lowered his voice, adopting a seductive tone as he teased, “And what about you, my beautiful darling? Did you miss---?”
Yanna blushed.
“Goddammit, Staffan, I’m the only one who can make Yanna blush,” Constantijin growled.
“Constantijin!” Yanna wailed as her cheeks turned a darker shade of pink.
“Just tell him what we called him for so I can get you naked---”
Eyes widening, Yanna slapped her hand over Constantijin’s mouth. Clearing her throat, “Umm, anyway, I just wanted to remind you that it’s the 30
th
today, Staffan. And you haven’t yet made a call.”
Shit
. He had forgotten about that.
“I know you’re tired after your concert and you’d rather relax---”
Staffan shook his head. “You were right in reminding me.” He checked his watch, a slim gold type that had no doubt added to his newfound “fashionista” image. Earlier, he had even heard one of the popular morning show hosts refer to him as the music industry’s very own David Beckham.
God save him from all these fucking comparisons. David Beckham? He had utter respect for the man, but they were too different. The soccer player had the patience to stand in front of camera for hours, but Staffan found it literally hell to be still for more than five minutes, and especially when it had to be for photo shoots.
“Staffan?”
He shook the irritable thoughts of photo shoots away and glanced at his watch again.
Fuck
. 10 minutes before midnight. “I need to put the phone down. I have to make the call now.”
“Understood.” Yanna beamed at him. “We look forward to spending more time with you when you come here to Florida!”
He gave her his sexiest smile. “After the tour, I’ll go straight to you, darl---” The last thing Staffan saw was Constantijin kissing Yanna as his friend reached for his wife’s iPad to end the call.
It almost made him smile. These frequent displays of Constantijin’s possessive jealousy were extremely amusing, mostly because his friend had never been like that until Yanna entered the picture.
Staffan used to think he had that with---
Fuck.
To distract himself, Staffan reached for his iPad again and signed in for the administrator account of his fan club’s website. He went to the members’ page, clicked a button to have it sorted according to birthdays, and picked the first name he spotted on the list who was celebrating her birthday today.
One of the perks that his fans club members enjoyed was having the chance to receive a birthday call from Staffan himself. He had been doing it for eight months now, and so far all the women he had called had acted the same. They would pretend they didn’t recognize his voice, did everything they could to prolong the call, and when they finally realized that he would be putting the phone down, they’d ask him to fuck them.
He had no reason to believe this call was going to be different.
~~~
Sapphire “Saffi” March tumbled out of her bed in her haste to get to the phone. It had to be him. It just had to be. She didn’t have any close friends, had never gone out on a date, and none of her family would ever have considered calling her at this hour of the night.
After all, an eccentric bookworm like her had no reason to be up this late. No one would have reason to expect that she was the most diehard of all fangirls and that her locker had a pin-up of Staffan Aehrenthal, hidden behind the evolutionary chart of ichthyology she had taped to her locker door.
Oh, please, it just had to be him.
Saffi lost her footing as she got hold of her phone, falling flat on her face as she pressed the green button to answer the call. “Suffering sardines!” The words escaped her as she bit back a groan of pain, her chin connecting with the floor in a small thump.
On the other end of the line, Staffan sputtered in disbelief when instead of ‘hello’ he heard two words he had never imagined he would hear in his entire life.
Suffering sardines?
Perhaps he had dialed the wrong number? But---did sardines actually suffer? When they were canned perhaps?
Saffi quickly stuck the phone to her ear, hoping
he
had not put it down yet. “H-hello?”
He had probably imagined it
, Staffan thought. He decided to put his half-empty glass of whiskey away, placing it back on the glass cabinet hidden cleverly behind one of the limousine’s paneled doors. Nothing good would come out from chatting with a fan while drunk.
“Is this---” He glanced at his iPad to confirm the name. “Saffi March?”
Saffi
swooned
.
That voice. Oh dear, THAT VOICE. How many times had she dreamt of Staffan Aehrenthal saying her name? It was pointless to count. It was that many.
Wondering where he could be as he talked to her on the phone, she tried to recall the schedule of his tour. Fangirls knew their favorite stars’ schedule the same way sports buffs could recite the entire season’s schedule of games.
Tonight, he would probably on his way to JFK Airport since Staffan Aehrenthal was well-known as a man of habit. And when it came to working while on tour, there were quite a number of those habits that were, well, notorious.
Supposedly, Staffan always “hand-selected” which girls got a backstage pass.
Supposedly, Staffan’s definition of stress relief after a concert involved getting naked.
Supposedly, Staffan needed stress relief more often than a thirsty man needed to drink water.
Mmmm…
could she be his stress relief on the phone?
She blushed at the thought just as Staffan said, “Hello?”
Fluttering flounder!
She had actually zoned out on Sweden’s #1 Sex God!
Staffan choked, shooting up on his seat, so amazed that he actually put the phone away from his ear to stare at it in amazement. This time, he hadn’t been wrong. This girl was…weird. Funny as hell but she was still weird. Who the fuck used goddamn species of fish as exclamations of surprise?
“Sorry, sir, I mean, Mr. Aehrenthal.” She wanted to kick herself several times the moment the words went out of her mouth.
Playful piranhas
! Hadn’t she been rehearsing for this call the entire month? Hadn’t she firmly told herself every day that she would
not
act like Emily Post’s protégé with him?
Staffan Aehrenthal likes his women slutty.
The former groupies Saffi was friends with online had told her that, too!
At the mention of his last name, the ennui resting so heavily on his shoulders fell off like a winter coat he no longer needed.
This girl had broken rule #1 for fans: she had not acted coy. She had admitted knowing who he was.
It was refreshing to say the least. It was interesting, too, enough for him to sit up and take notice, enough to make him forget that most women in the world were only good for fucking.
He said huskily, “Hello, Saffi March.”
THAT VOICE sent shivers down her spine. Saffi slowly covered the mouthpiece of the phone.
And then she squealed, like a baby, and like the excited fangirl she was.
Staffan stopped speaking. The sudden loss of any sound at all from the other end was familiar to him. He knew that Saffi had covered the mouthpiece, probably to…scream? Hug herself? It almost made Staffan smile, but fortunately he held it back in time.
He was Staffan fucking Aehrenthal, infamous for his cruel tongue and foul-mouthed ways. He was the type to smirk, sneer, and snarl. But one thing he did not goddamn do was
smile.
The moment he heard her lift her hand off the mouthpiece, he drawled out, “I’m guessing you know why I called?”
Busted.
“Yes,” she admitted sheepishly.
God, that voice was too fucking cute, mostly because none of the women he had dated in recent
years
had ever sounded naturally
sheepish
. A thought occurred to him. What the hell did this Saffi March look like anyway?
“Happy birthday, Saffi.” Even as he murmured the words, Staffan was already clicking her name on the iPad screen. A new page loaded, which included her profile picture.