The Complete Groupie Trilogy (58 page)

She was likewise overwhelmed by Vanni’s appearance. He looked so much better than the last time she saw him in court with fading bruises and cuts from the accident. His hair was long and luxurious and he definitely wore the evidence he had exercised and eaten right over the past month. He was still lean but more toned, and even the softer part of his tummy felt firmer against her. He had earned new strength, which she knew he was going to need after she told him what she needed to tell him.

“You look well, Vanni. It’s good to see.”

He grinned like a silly boy as he turned around so she could see how he had healed. It had been a really long six weeks. “Not ready to tour yet,” he said. “But definitely ready to get back into the studio.”

She nodded. That was her Vanni. The show must go on.

He took her hand and led her into the beach house. It wasn’t carrying her in like he had imagined, but there was time for that later. He watched with delight as she drank in the view.

“It’s lovely,” she said.

“I’m glad you like it,” he replied. He led her up the steps and out onto the deck for his private view of the Pacific. He wanted to pull her body to his, to hold her from behind, his chin buried in her hair, just like he had dreamed. But her body was rigid and her eyes were troubled. He got the not so subtle hint it was not the time to indulge in his romantic fantasies.

In fact, his heart started to pound. Something was coming and he sensed it was bad. He just hoped it wasn’t another goodbye. He’d barely survived the last one.

“What’s wrong, Andy?” he asked her directly. After all they had shared there was no need for games.

Though he projected strength, his dark eyes were vulnerable. It made her want to take her back into her arms and shield him from the blow. Instead she withdrew a piece of paper from the back pocket of her jeans and handed it to him.

The blood drained from his face as he read the article. “Fuck me,” he breathed as he staggered backward toward the hammock stretched across one corner of his deck.

She joined him as he sat, taking his hand in hers. She more than anyone knew the impact this would have on him. All the anger, disappointment, resentment and hostility he’d ever felt toward this stranger bubbled
up in him as he read each word.

“Angelo Carnevale, the alcoholic father of Dreaming in Blue’s lead singer Giovanni Carnevale, wants to get in contact with his troubled son. After a long absence, Angelo seeks to reach out to the child he abandoned three decades ago and help him through this next painful step of recovery from addiction, as well as support him through his legal troubles.”

Vanni’s deep brown eyes hardened. “Wonder how much he wants to get paid to go away? Or is that in another article?”

She sighed. There was no way to tell him that there were, in fact, several articles and even a few interviews he could reference. Just as they had faded to minor gossip pages, this story put them back on the front page.

“Is he for real?” And as he asked it, he kind of hoped he wasn’t.

She nodded. “Holly had him investigated when she stumbled across the article. Graham called in a few more favors and made doubly sure.”

Vanni nodded. “You know, there was a time when I would have given anything for this,” he confessed softly as he held up the paper. “My first recital. When I graduated. When I signed with my first band. June,” he added as he looked at her.

They were both still in residual shock over what happened in June, on a day that should have been a milestone in his career.

She squeezed his hand. She had no idea what to say.

“You ever think you want something really, really bad… then when you get it you think maybe it
isn’t what you wanted at all?”

She nodded. She could have written a book on the subject. “You don’t have to make an
y decisions now,” she told him.

His sad eyes met hers. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

It was more than Andy could take. Inside this man was a little boy someone had casually abandoned. His soul bore the scar; she could see it written in his eyes. She opened her arms and took him into her embrace.

The warmth of her love knocked over the final wall. His arms tightened her waist and he held on for dear life as he sobbed softly into the nape of her neck. There was no shame, no reason to pretend that he was anything other than what he was: a wounded child. He could do that with Andy. She was his safe place. He knew no one could ever hurt him there in her arms. He pulled her down and held onto her as they swung back and forth in the hammock, listening to the ebb and flow of the tide. He cried until he was spent, then dozed in her loving arms as she rocked them both.

Just before sunset he awoke, but seeing her there beside him made him think he was still dreaming. He reached out to touch her hair. “You’re here,” he said softly.

“You keep saying that,” she pointed out with a slight smile.

“You keep surprising me,” he answered.

His hand slipped behind her head to draw her closer for a kiss. His lips savored hers until her mouth finally parted in submission. It was as electric as it had always been. His hand grasped a handful
of hair as their kiss deepened.

She moaned in her throat as she shifted under him. It was just like coming home whenever he touched her like this. It was a tenderness she often wondered if she alone brought out of him. Nothing else mattered, nothing else existed but the next kiss… the next touch.

But as crazy as he had been for her the last few months, he didn’t push it. His fingers traveled a puritan path along her body, along her shoulder, across her back and down her arm until he clasped her fingers in his. She tested his muster mightily when she whispered his name, but he didn’t push it beyond another sweet kiss.

They had fought a bitter path to get to this place and he wanted to savor the moment. To him, this was truly making love. He was doing what he had never before done to any woman: he was honoring her.

He wasn’t going to pressure her to make love to him before sending her back to Graham. He knew Andy too well. She resented the push and pull, especially over something as stupid as his ego. Thanks to rehab he finally realized that sex had been his addiction as much as drinking. He needed to be wanted in a way that no one could ever fill the void.

He burned to have her in his bed from the moment she left him curious and frustrated in that Philadelphia bar. When she denied him again in New York, twice, she grew even more desirable. He had to have her and once he did even that wasn’t enough. He didn’t want anyone else to have her.

But the sad truth was someone else did have her, at least for the time being. So Vanni decided he would wait until she came to him. It would be her choice in the future. He wouldn’t coerce, he wouldn’t seduce; he wouldn’t take what she wasn’t yet ready to offer.

He hoped that by doing so the next time they came together they’d never have to part again.

When her cell phone rang he knew that she had been summoned and had to leave. She didn’t even have to tell him. He kissed her again and told her he’d see her the next day so they could talk about what he should do with his newfound father. Then he released her to go tend her other obligations without guilt.

She rose from the hammock where he sprawled looking beautiful with fanned out hair and sultry brown eyes. “Why are you being so good?” she wanted to know.

“I love you,” he said simply, as if that explained it all.

Andy smiled, blew him a kiss and left for home.

He pulled out the article and read the copy again. He searched his memory for any hint of Angelo Carnevale but it was futile. His dad split when Vanni was a toddler and his mother hadn’t exactly had a happy scrapbook to fill in the blanks.

Against his better judgment he rose from the hammock and went back inside his house. He opened up the computer and searched for more content, hoping for a photo or something to help him connect the dots.

He found the interviews and saw the man’s face who faintly mirrored his own. His hair was cropped short and he wore a dark beard, but the eyes, nose and mouth were identical. He hadn’t aged well, probably due to the alcohol. He didn’t appear to be a man of means either, though he seemed to try and clean up for the cameras.

How considerate of him
, Vanni thought with a snarl.

He played each video so he could listen to the sad tale of a remorseful father who realized his greatest mistake was leaving his child. He had wanted to spare him, he said. He was cursed with the same alcoholic tendencies as his own father, who never could hold down a job and took out all the pressure that created onto his wife and kids.

“It’s been almost 30 years. Why wait until now to reach out to your son?” the interviewer asked.

“Excellent question
,” thought Vanni.

The older man’s shoulders lagged as he sighed deeply. “I didn’t think I had anything to offer him. Here he came from nothing and made this big success of himself. He didn’t get that from me. What he did get was the same monkey on his back, which threatens to ruin his entire life. I couldn’t run from it anymore.”

The words were like a physical blow. How could anyone sell such irresponsible and thoughtless abandonment as noble?

Worst of all, despite Vanni’s resentment, they rang true. It sounded like something he would say, which dug up a seed of empathy from a mountain of lifelong hostility. Vanni didn’t know who he hated more for that, himself or the man who suddenly wanted to play dad.

He slammed the laptop together. His eyes wandered over to the now empty liquor cabinet. He thought about all those bottles sitting in a bag just outside his front door. It was a brief, fleeting thought, but it was there almost instantly the minute he started to feel anything toward his father.

He pulled out his phone. At first he thought he’d call Andy, but he knew that she was on her way home to Malibu and to Graham. It wasn’t fair, especially after unloading on her earlier like an emotional basket case, to ask her to come back just so he didn’t go suck every last bottle dry.

He sighed and scrolled through his contacts until his eyes landed on the only other person who could help him.

She was there within the hour.

Holly brought him food and even knitted him a throw blanket to welcome him home. Her sunny smile chased the dark shadows from his brain as he let her into his house.

“Thanks for coming,” he said with complete sincerity.

“Anytime,” she answered as she made herself at home in the kitchen area. “You know you can always call me, Vanni.”

He nodded as he strolled over to sit on one of the barstools at the counter. “Andy says you found the article about my dad.”

She nodded as she sent him a sympathetic glance. “I keep an eye out for anything about the band or you, especially since the court stuff. I was shocked and immediately wanted to verify if he was the real deal.”

“Thank
s for having my back,” he said.

Again she sa
id with a big smile, “Anytime.”

She then launched into a full production of preparing his meal, while getting him up to date on everything the band had been doing. They had gotten a lot done in 30 days, laying down tracks and recording background vocals for the new songs. “Leo is a workhorse,” she said finally. “And a slave driver.”

They laughed. He was still smiling when he asked, “All you’ve really talked about is the band. How are you doing?”

She shrugged. “Keeping busy. You know me. I do a lot for Gwen and for Andy. I’ve even been spending some time at Graham’s house. I think I’m one of the very few he’s seen in person aside from Andy.”

His eyebrows rose. “Not even Leo?”

She shook her head. “I generally am the go between whenever they’re not video conferencing. It’s easier that way. Leo can’t stand Andy since Andy’s not really anyone in the company and Graham… well, I get the feeling that he’d rather no one see him in the state he’s in.”

Though he didn’t want to ask, he felt compelled to. “Which is?”

She picked her words carefully. “He’s not the guy who built this company. Not anymore. Leo has been dancing around the idea of finding someone else.”

Vanni shook his head. Despite it all, Graham had been good for DIB. They had done well under Jasper but it was Graham who had catapulted them into the stratosphere. He owed him a certain loyalty.

She shrugged. “It’s your band,” she said. “I just don’t want you to bury yourself out of some misguided sense of obligation. I mean, you have to take care of you, right?”

“And Julian,” he added.

She paused to face him. “Yeah. And Julian. He’s fought a really long time to make it, just like you. But unlike you he needs this big break and he needs it to be perfect.”

He had never seen her get so passionate, but then again it was her brother. If she didn’t take care of him, who would?

“I’m not going to let anything ruin it,” he assured her. “This next CD will be even bigger than the last. You have my personal guarantee.”

Just like flipping a switch she went back to the Holly he knew best. She gave him a cute smile as she came over to where he sat. She held out her hand. “Pinky swear?”