The Complete Groupie Trilogy (96 page)

She wanted to call herself his friend… she wanted to sell this idea that she cared about him deep down. That she loved him, even if she wasn’t in love with him. She could slip into his bed, take him into her body, seal every physical promise between a man and a woman and ultimately it didn
’t mean a fucking thing to her.

Again he was reminded that she was his Vanni. She was the one he’d chase after, the one that he’d always make excuses for and the one he’d never fully be able to let go. He would always love more than he loved. She would always be just out of his reach, even
when she was right in his arms.

When had he lost his balls? When he had he given up his spine?

He was livid by the time he pulled into the drive. He stomped into the house, stopping only at the bar. He didn’t even bother with a glass as he took a whole decanter of scotch and headed for the guest bedroom she had called home.

He stayed in there until the sun went down, drinking straight booze as he lay on the bed. He thought back to the very first moment he brought her there, and what great hopes he’d had to begin something amazing with her. She had no idea how much he would have turned the world upside down to please her. She had been unimpressed by it all. He wasn’t a long-haired rocker with more swagger than substance. He was just a man who paid his bills, built his business, and truly loved and respected his women.

That was clearly not what she wanted. She wasn’t set aflame by his touch. Every time he held her close she was thinking of someone else.

He remembered walking in on Vanni and Andy in this very room. He saw her respond to Vanni in a way he could only fantasize about. He watched their mouths swallow demanding kisses, their hands gripping at each other as if they would have died if either had let the other go.

She’d never felt that way about him.

No woman had ever felt that way about him.

Had that been the driving force behind his pursuit?

He poured more alcohol on the hurt. He swallowed every painful thought, every cursed memory. He was frustrated, angry and intoxicated when Maggie found him hiding in the dark, oblivious to the world around him.

She entered the room soundlessly, and took the crystal decanter from his hands before he spilled what was left on the bedspread. It was still the same pattern as the first time he’d brought Andy to stay, when he was trying to make her feel comfortable to stay in his home without any demands.

“No pressure,” he had said.

Maybe he should have pressured her. Maybe he shouldn’t have been such a damn gentleman. Maybe she really did want the caveman who took what he wanted whenever he wanted it. He practically growled at Maggie when she turned on the light.

“Oh, Graham,” she said softly. “What are you doing to yourself?”

“She wanted me angry with her,” he slurred. “So I’m angry.”

“Good,” Maggie said. “Long overdue.”

“You know what else is long overdue?” he asked. Before she could shake her head he grabbed her by the hand and pulled her down onto the bed. His hand snaked behind her neck as he pulled her close for an angry, deep, and probing kiss that tasted of scotch. Her hands that reached up to push him away stalled at the muscled wall of his chest, which felt like heaven under her touch. He was so solid… so real… so much better than the Graham of her fantasies. He met this submission with more demands. His hand grasped a handful of her fiery red hair, and she didn’t fight him as he pushed her back down on the bed and covered her body with his own. His weight was delicious as it pinned her down. His hands were everywhere as his tongue pushed between her lips.

Color and light exploded in her brain as he took possession of her mouth.  She felt his unmistakable desire, and just for a moment she gave into it. It had been so long since she had been held… since she had been wanted. It was as though she was a virgin – his virgin. Her hungry response to his kiss was enough to spur him on as he groaned deep in her mouth. His fingers slid up her shirt across her bare skin, then slid into her bra. His fingers circled the pert nipple, which made her gasp.

The more he touched her, the more she craved. She had wanted him for so long… long, lonely months as she watched him pine for someone else. It had been torture, but now he was in her arms and he was kissing her, touching her… and just a few garments away from making love to her.

She ached for it within every inch of her body. His body was hard under her hands, which explored him as liberally as he explored her. “Graham,” she whispered.

“Say it again,” he demanded against her lips. “Tell me you want me,” he pleaded. “Tell me you want only me.”

“I want you,” she finally whispered aloud. “Only you,” she added as she nuzzled his neck. “Only you,” she kept repeating.

“Oh, God,” he groaned against her as his hand disappeared between them to unzip her jeans. She helped kick them free before she turned back into his embrace. His hand cupped her breast possessively as his knee parted her legs. “Oh, Andy…”

The word hit her like a splash of cold water, and Maggie turned to ice in his arms. She wriggled away and hopped off the bed, trying to catch her breath. She didn’t look back at him, and he was too drunk and too far gone to even recognize his blunder. “What’s wrong? Where are you going?”

“I’m sorry, Graham. I can’t,” she said as she stooped for her clothes and bolted from the room. She didn’t stop running until she was safely behind her own bedroom door. He never came to find her, and when she emerged from the bedroom sometime around midnight, she found Graham sprawled across the guest bed. With a sigh she turned on the light and entered the room. From the looks of it he passed out right after their encounter. He likely wouldn’t remember any of it.

Lucky bastard
, she thought to herself. She could think of nothing else. For one brief moment she had everything she’d wanted. And in a split second, Andy Foster’s ghost had stolen it all away.

Again.

It strengthened Maggie’s resolve. She’d spent far too much time watching him chase after rainbows he could never catch, turning him from a powerful man into a desperate, frustrated mess. She wasn’t about to do the same.

She was his nurse. He was her boss.

That was all it could ever be.

She turned off the light and left him to his tortured dreams.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Los Angeles, California

April 5, 2011

The night after Graham’s little bombshell in Andy’s office wasn’t a good night for Andy and Vanni either, who had a huge fight regarding his plans to incorporate Julian back into the band without discussing it with her first. She raged, he apologized, but in the end Vanni was unmovable in his resolve to keep Julian gainfully employed. He tried to convince her it would help Holly feel more secure and less threatened by their relationship. And, he tried to reason, having them close meant they wouldn’t be in for any more nasty surprises.

Andy was no more convinced than Graham, but in the end Vanni told her he wasn’t asking for her permission – only her blessing. It was going to happen; he just hoped they could one day be on the same page about it.

Graham had made it plain she couldn’t go cry on his shoulder, and the time differences kept the wisdom of all her other friends at bay. Instead she muscled through the tense night, where she kept up ev
ery wall against him she could.

Inevitably he brought them down by morning, when his masterful hands on her sleeping body roused her to consciousness, and convinced her once again that he was her man alone. “Only you wear my ring, baby,” he crooned in her ear. “You’re my bride, my heart… my life.”

She couldn’t deny him even if she wanted to. He knew how to infiltrate her walls and penetrate her fortresses. He talked about their wedding, about their daughter, about their future. He spent the weekend pampering her, taking her out on the town and showing her off on his arm in ways he had never done before.

By the following week he had convinced her that if they couldn’t get rid of Julian and Holly, it was best to be able to control their access into their world. She hated every aspect of it but she knew Vanni would never forsake his child. They were stuck with them for the foreseeable future; she finally agreed that it was best to let Julian shoulder as much responsibility as possible. Keeping him busy with the band and Holly busy with a baby sounded much safer than throwing them out to their own devices. Neither Holly nor Julian seemed equipped to figure out a way to make things work that didn’t involve extreme poverty or – if history proved true – duplicitous, criminal behavior.

As long as Holly understood that she couldn’t take Vanni away, which Andy was willing to prove by snatching every last hair out of her head, then they’d all be fine.

By then Graham had calmed down as well. He’d spent the weekend boozed up and hung over, and deeply regretted hurting Andy like he had. He couldn’t keep punishing her for her choices like a petty child. If he loved her, that meant he had to champion her happiness. Much as it pained him, he knew that would never be with him. He thought he had made peace with that months before, but he realized he’d been in denial that she’d eventually come running back like she always did.

That was why it was so hard to believe that her baby was conceived by Vanni and not him. If that baby was Vanni’s, he knew that their connection was unbreakable. She belonged to him now, and would never be free to be Graham’s.

After a tough weekend he finally realized the only way they could all move on was if he truly let her go. As a peace offering he offered new, strict contracts that gave Julian a job with very precise compensation. Essentially he was a studio musician contracted by the label, rather than a true member of the band. Vanni and Yael still ran the show, and with Felix back in the group these core members were the ones who got featured in all PR. Julian went to work the week after that. With the help of another contracted musician, bassist Davy Gray, they laid down new tracks with Yael and Felix while everyone waited for Vanni’s commitment with
Fierce
to come to an end.

There would be a new album and ultimately a tour, but Vanni didn’t really want Julian to go out on the road with them and leave Holly and the baby at home by themselves. He hadn’t brought it up yet, but figured there was still plenty of time to work out the specifics.

Holly wasn’t due until September.

When she finally hit twenty weeks, Vanni scheduled his day around her ultrasound. Julian was working 12-hour days at the studio by then, so she would have taken a cab otherwise. Vanni assured her that he wanted to be there, and it was the truth. Now that he had gotten his head around the idea of having two babies, he knew he could never love or want one more than the other. They would both be born of his blood, and he would move heaven and earth to ensure their happiness, their health and their security.

This time he didn’t hide his intention from Andy. She made it clear in her screaming fit after the Julian debacle that no matter what the details, his lying by omission cheated their relationship. She was either his partner or nothing at all.

She wasn’t happy to hear he’d be holding Holly’s hand through her ultrasound, but she said nothing against his going.

Deep down she had hoped something in the test would reveal that Holly had been lying all along – that she wasn’t really pregnant with Vanni’s baby. Maybe Holly had gotten some sperm at the fertility clinic, anything but the distasteful truth that her fiancé had fathered two babies from two different women within months of each other.

All they really needed to prove was that conception occurred after December, when he and Holly had last been together.

Every day Andy prayed for that miracle.

She kept it to herself, however. Though Vanni never really spoke of his future plans with his other child around her, they would discuss minor details like the baby having its own room in their new house, or playing with their little Bean on the weekends they would have visitation.

Andy thought that he was painting too idyllic a picture for their future, that it would come with complications like another mother who would do whatever she could to keep her attachment with her baby’s father – even if that meant screwing around with his visitation. If she dared breathe a word of her concerns, Vanni would remind her that once the baby was born and they knew it was his, there wasn’t really any legal recourse for Holly, particularly if he financially supported the child.

The minute his name went on that birth certificate, he felt he’d be protected.

But Andy had been doing some research. She knew they’d have to make everything neat and legal the minute they confirmed it was his child. She wanted everything to be ironed out in court, from how much money he paid to how much access they would have to the child. Andy didn’t trust Holly as far as she could throw her (and often fantasized about finding out just how far that would be.) She knew that if they didn’t dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s, Holly would find some other way to screw them.

But she said none of this as she watched Vanni drive one direction that morning while she and Kelly made their way to the studio.

Vanni arrived at Holly’s apartment a little early. She opened up the door, wearing a yellow sundress that draped around the growing baby bump. It was almost startling to Vanni, who didn’t see Holly as much as he saw Andy. She looked considerably more pregnant than the last time they had seen each other. “It’s all the water I had to drink,” she teased as she followed him out the door. “I feel like I’m going to explode.”