He's the One by Katie Price Page A

on. She stifled a yawn, it was two a.m. and she was bone tired. She had to be at work by eleven the next morning and she knew she couldn’t afford another shift where she acted below par. Marco had already given her a warning. Although she knew he was a kind-hearted man, she didn’t want to push her luck.
    Downstairs Zara and her gang of friends were playing a drunken game of Spin the Bottle. Some of the boys had already taken off their shirts, a couple of the girls were down to their underwear. Zara was still in her dress but seemed very drunk, her eyes glittering dangerously as she spotted Cory.
    ‘There you are! Come on, you two, you have to join in. No chickening out!’
    Cory looked at Liberty and shrugged. ‘Shall we?’
    No fucking way! Liberty wanted to reply, but sheimagined how that would go down, so reluctantly she followed him over to the circle. They found themselves sitting opposite Zara. The party girl grabbed the bottle. (Of champagne, naturally.)
    ‘One more round of kissing then it’s Truth or Dare,’ she declared.
    ‘Well, hurrah for that,’ Liberty muttered, mimicking her voice, causing Cory to nudge her gently and say, ‘ Shush .’
    Zara spun the bottle and it came to a halt pointing at Hugo, one of her stuck-up male friends whom Liberty had never liked after she had overheard him mocking one of their other friends – a girl who was slightly overweight.
    ‘You’ve got to kiss the two girls opposite you,’ Zara decreed. The power was obviously going to her drunken head. ‘For twenty seconds.’
    Liberty curled her lip when she realised that she was sitting directly opposite him.
    ‘Sorry, baby,’ Cory said under his breath. ‘I’ll get you a glass of champagne to make up for it.’
    ‘No problemo!’ Hugo replied, and crawled over to the girl next to Liberty. He promptly gave her a full on snog while the circle around them clapped and counted down from twenty. Then he detached himself from the girl and lunged at Liberty. She tried to keep her mouth clamped firmly shut but he thrust his tongue straight in. And twenty seconds might not sound very long, but when it involved a man you didn’t like, sticking his tongue down your throat, boy, it dragged.
    ‘… seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty!’ yelled the partygoers. Hugo gave a cocky half smile to Liberty, as if to say, Was that good for you? Then he staggered back to his place. She wiped her mouth and took a long sip of champagne from the glass Cory handed her.
    ‘Poor you,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve heard Hugo kisses like a vacuum cleaner.’
    ‘That’s an insult to vacuum cleaners,’ she muttered, the post-sex glow rapidly leaving her. She wanted to get out of here – now . But Zara was already spinning the bottle and now it came to rest pointing straight at her. Great …
    ‘It’s Truth or Dare time now!’ Zara cried gleefully, clapping her hands together. ‘And because the truth is so dullsville, I think it should be a dare for you, Liberty.’
    ‘So you’ve just decided to change the rules?’ she asked.
    ‘It’s my party! It’s just a question of the dare …’ Zara put her finger on her perfectly chiselled chin and adopted a coy look.
    God, she was annoying! If only Em was by Liberty’s side to say something suitably cutting.
    ‘Got it! I dare you to take a line of coke. I know you don’t do drugs any more, so now’s your chance.’
    ‘That’s a fucking treat!’ Hugo drawled. ‘Not a dare.’
    Zara was staring straight at Liberty, challenging her, taunting her. How could she know that Liberty didn’t take drugs? It could only have come from Cory. God! Why had he done that? Didn’t he realise that Zara loathed her? She had told him that she had experimented with them a little when she was younger, before she’d had Brooke, but since then had vowed to stay off them. It wasn’t exactly a hardship as she couldn’t afford coke anyway, but a couple of years ago one of her friend’s brothers had died