My Rock #8 (The Rock Star Romance Series - Book #8) (7 page)

Behind us, the hills looked close enough to touch
and the neighborhood had a feel to it like you’re in some quiet little village in
the mountains, when the truth was that we’re only a few miles from major
shopping centers and restaurants. It’s in a gated community and at three thousand
plus square feet with four bedrooms and three bathrooms, it was a little big
for us when we first bought it. Tristan said he didn’t care; he wanted me to
have the nicest house in town. He tried hard to make up for the times he let me
pay for everything. He’d done that and then some. He still didn’t seem to
realize that I would have continued to pay for everything forever just for the
chance to spend my life with him.

The house had a pool and a fully-equipped gym where
my sexy husband and I worked out together every day. The bedrooms all had
private little terraces, and in the back we had a large courtyard surrounded by
gorgeous, colorful, fragrant flowers. Some days I liked to just sit out there
and read or think…I’d never imagined being that happy. When my mom came to
visit, she said that she’d always imagined my life like this someday. It’s
funny how a parent sees you so differently than you see yourself. I can only
hope that someday my kids will think that I was half the mother she has been to
me.

We drove up into the circular driveway and Tristan
pushed the remote for one of the garage doors. We each had a car now and
Tristan’s bike, so the three car garage wasn’t pushing it too much, I guess. We
had a lot, but I liked to believe that since we’d both been through so much in
our early days, we were still just regular people.

We left our helmets in the garage and let ourselves
into the side door through the kitchen. Brandi, our babysitter, was sitting at
the dining room table, surrounded by text books.

“Hey, guys! How’d it go?”

“My wife made the CD, it’ll sell billions now,”
Tristan told her.

“I bet,” she said with a smile.

“How are the babies?” I asked her.

I was suddenly craving them and almost disappointed
when she said, “Perfect. They’ve been asleep for an hour already. I checked on
them a little while ago and they had their little fingers together, holding
hands. It was so sweet I almost cried.”

“Aw, I love them!”

Brandi got up to gather her books and put them in
her backpack. She was studying to be a dentist. She lived with her parents in
the gated complex we lived in and she’d come highly recommended. To me, she was
a huge blessing. I hadn’t wanted to hire a nanny to live in the house and I
refused at first to leave them with anyone but family…my family, that is.
Tristan still hasn’t agreed to let his parents meet them. His
dad has supposedly been out of rehab and clean
for over a
year, and his mother for almost two, but he still had issues with them he needed
to resolve. I leave that part of his life alone. I can’t make that kind of
decision for him. They’d read in a magazine that I’d given birth to the babies
and started calling all the time. Tristan had all of our numbers changed and he
rarely trusts anyone enough to give out our address.

My mom comes and stays in town as often as she can.
She can’t get enough of her grand-babies, but eventually she had to go home and
we had to have a babysitter. I found out one day from a friend in the complex
that almost every family with kids had used Brandi at one time or another since
she was thirteen years old. She was the daughter of a movie producer mother and
a camera man father. No one had anything bad to say about her. She’d told me
she wanted nothing to do with show business. I can’t say that I blamed her. I
had a lot of respect for her though, growing up where she did and being
seemingly unaffected by the wealth and grandeur of everything around her. Her
parents did a great job.
Most importantly though, she was
amazing with the kids.

 
I watched as
Tristan handed her two one hundred dollar bills. Her eyes went wide and she
said, “You really don’t have to pay me so much. I wasn’t here that long.”

“It’s worth it to us, Brandi; to have someone here
we can trust,” he told her. She didn’t argue with him, she’d tried before and
hadn’t gotten anywhere. He could definitely never be accused of being stingy
with his money.

She threw her backpack over her shoulder and said,
“Thank you.”

Tristan followed her out. Even though we live in one
of the best neighborhoods in Orange County and it’s constantly patrolled by
security, he insisted on making sure she made it to her house four doors down
from us every time she left after dark. While he did that, I went to see my
angels. I made my way down the long hallway to the nursery. The door was
cracked open and I could see their nightlight shining stars on the ceiling as I
pushed it open.

I tiptoed past the giant giraffe that Tristan insisted
on buying and the pile of Thomas the train cars and tracks over to the crib.
I’d read a lot of books when I found out I was having twins and most of them
said that the babies would sleep better at night together. Tristan and I had
ordered a specially made crib for them that had one mattress the size of two
regular crib mattresses. The boys started sleeping through the night when they
were six months old. I looked down at their sweet, curly heads and as I watched
their little chests rise and fall my heart filled so full with love that it
almost ached. Patrick was on his right side and Eli on his left. They did have
their hands stretched towards each other and their little fingers intertwined. People
asked me all the time how I could tell them apart. I don’t really have an
answer for that other than a mother always knows her own child.

“Don’t, you’ll wake them.” Tristan had snuck in
behind me and whispered in my ear.

“Don’t what?” I whispered back. I knew what he was
talking about. He knew I wanted them to wake up so I could hold them.

“Take a picture, or touch them,” he said with his
lips to my ear.

I stuck out my bottom lip and said, “Can’t we just
wake them up for a little bit? I want to hold them.”

I felt his face curl up into a smile against my
cheek and he said, “Me, too. But since you’ve done that before and we’ve each
ended up holding one all night, I’m guessing it’s not the best idea.”

“Fine,” I said, still pouting. I kissed my fingers
and touched each one of their soft warm cheeks. “Aren’t they the most beautiful
things you’ve ever seen?” I asked Tristan. “It’s such a shame not to get a
picture of them holding hands.”

He smiled again and said, “Yes they’re the most
beautiful things I’ve ever seen, except for their Mama. As far as pictures go,
I can’t imagine that in the fifteen or twenty you snap every day that we don’t
have one of them holding hands already. Good night, little men,” he whispered.

We tiptoed out, taking the baby monitor with us to
our room. The boys were fourteen months already and hardly ever woke up at
night any more. It was nice to finally get some sleep…the first six months of
their lives I didn’t get any. I’d often sat in the rocking chair in the nursery
all night with one in each arm. Tristan helped a lot…for a guy who’d never been
around kids, but he had work and I didn’t, so I did most of the night call. I
guess I’m never satisfied. Now that I got to sleep at night, I missed holding
them. They were getting big too fast. Sometimes I wished I could turn back the
clock just a little and re-live all the good things that had happened over the
past five years again…only slower this time.

When we got to the bedroom, Tristan kissed me and
said, “You want to share a shower? No sex, but I’ll wash your back. California
is in a drought you know. We’d be doing our civic duty.”

I laughed, “Well, if it’s our civic duty how could I
say no?”

Our bedroom was huge with a granite fireplace and an
attached little sitting room that made it comparable to a suite in a nice
hotel. There was a huge set of French double doors that led out to the veranda
and double walk-in closets. The bathroom was all made of grey and black granite
with double sinks, a sunken tub with power jets and a double headed glass
shower. Tristan and I shared it a lot…and most of the time it wasn’t just for a
shower. That night though, we were both satiated and tired. We helped each
other undress slowly while the water warmed up and then we stepped in. I stood
under one of the shower heads and got wet while Tristan let the other cascade
over his hair and down his back. He was so beautiful that sometimes I felt almost
sexually satisfied just looking at him.
When we were both wet
he stepped over to my side with a sponge in his hand.
He reached up and grabbed
my body wash and after squirting a more than generous amount on the sponge he
stood behind me and began washing my shoulder blades. He ran it down my back
then and across my ass cheeks before kneeling down and running it first down
one leg and then the other. He even rinsed it and bent back down to do my feet.
When he finished soaping my back he turned me around and started on the front.
He washed my neck and chest and then down my arms. I couldn’t help but shudder
a little when he ran the sponge gently across each one of my breasts. He washed
my belly and down both of my legs in front. After he had me all soaped up, he
guided me back under the spray and kissed my lips as he rinsed me off.

“Thank you, baby.
That was wonderful,” I told him.

“I’m not finished,” he said. He reached up for the
shampoo and poured some into his hand. Stepping behind me again he began to
massage it into my head. In spite of standing on my feet in the shower, I swear
I nearly
fell
asleep right then. It felt so good, even
better than when my hairdresser washed it. When he finished, he rinsed it and
did the same thing with the conditioner. He kissed me again and said, “Now I’m
finished.” I smiled and reached for the sponge. “Nope,” he said. “Dry off and
get ready for bed. I’m
gonna
do this quick and then
I’ll join you.”

By the time I was dried and dressed for bed he was
out and doing the same. We climbed into our California King bed together and,
as usual, we used a portion of it the size of a twin bed. He lay on his usual
side and I snuggled into him with his arm around me and my head on his chest.

“Good night, baby. I love you,” he said as my heavy
eye-lids started to close.

“Good night. I love you too.”

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

TRISTAN

“Tristan, we have to go baby,”
Elly’s
voice floated down the hall.

I was sitting in the living room with one baby in my
lap and the other sitting down by my feet playing with his blocks. Some days I
woke up with this crazy urge to be a stay at home dad. It was getting so hard
to leave them, especially since that they were old enough to notice and make a
fuss when I did. It was also hard for me to imagine that my entire life I swore
I would never make a baby. Bringing kids into the world was cruel and unusual
punishment for everyone involved. I looked at them and realized how wrong I had
been. I shuddered to think about what would have happened if I’d never met Elly
and they’d never been born.

Little Eli started saying Dada first when they were
about nine months old. I wish I could describe how that made me feel, but there
aren’t any words for it. Patrick picked it up quickly after that, and when they
know I’m leaving, they chase after me saying it over and over until I think I’m
going to have to quit leaving and stay home with them forever. Either that or
take them with me everywhere I go. I love them more than I ever imagined loving
anything or anyone besides Elly. It was a different kind of love, but just as
strong. Sometimes it made me resent my parents that much more for being able to
do the things to me that they did. I could kill anyone that tried to hurt these
babies in any
way,
with my bare hands…I was sure of
it.

“Tristan!”
Elly called out to me again. The house was big and she was probably making the
rounds through it, looking for us. When she finally found us she said, “You
were ignoring me, weren’t you?”

I smiled and said, “Absolutely. Can the boys go with
us this morning?”

“I’m not sure they’d be too cooperative in that
little green room over at ABC.” She came over and scooped Patrick up off the
floor. He squealed as she started kissing him all over his face. They were
teething again and he slobbered like a faucet. Elly didn’t care, she kissed him
anyways. When she finished with him she handed him to me and picked up Eli,
doing the same to him. “Brandi’s here,” she said then. “You’re going to be
late.”

With a sigh, I picked up both the boys and kissed
their little, fat faces. I carried them to the dining room where Brandi was
putting their breakfast on the table and I sat them in their high chairs. I
kissed them on top of the head one more time. I really didn’t want to leave
them.

“We won’t be long, Brandi,” Elly told her as we were
leaving.

“Take your time,” she said, “Good luck, Tristan.”

“Thanks,” I told her.

Brandy quipped, “
It’s
live
television, so watch the potty mouth.”

“No one has any
fu
—”