Chart Toppers (Star Maker Book 3) (39 page)

Sean
changed his position in the limo to sit next to her.
 
He put his arm around her, giving her a
gentle squeeze.
 
“Anything I can do,
love, please let me know.”

She
nodded and patted the top of his hand that rested on her shoulder.
 
“I will.
 
Thank you, Sean-Bon.
 
Now, please tell me some funny story to
get my mind off this bullshit before we have to head back and have that band
meeting.”
 
He grinned and launched
into one immediately.

Kit
stood in the middle of the living area of her suite; the band and Sean
assembled around her, all sitting at attention, ready to take in her every
word. “Ok guys, I’m going to make this as short and sweet as possible, so I
need you to listen and be open-minded.
 
I think we all know that Sully has had some challenges lately with his
voice.
 

“He’s
encountered some trials with his vocal chords.
 
He saw a doctor yesterday, and it’s not
good, guys.
 
He needs to have
surgery when the tour is out.
 
It
may seem like he’s not hanging out as much with you, or chatting it up or
missing soundcheck.
 
This is all by
design.
 
He needs to rest his
voice.
 
He’s not supposed to be
speaking.
 
The doctor has said no
soundcheck—it’s shows only and lots of vocal rest.”

Remo
couldn’t resist a smart-assed dig as he looked at Sully.
 
“Wow, you even got a doctor’s note for
this?
 
Impressive shit, man.”

Sully
glared at him.
 
Kit shot him a look
of warning and pointed.
 
“Shut up,
Remo.”
 
She glanced around the room
at all of them.
 
“Any more stupid
comments from the peanut gallery?
 
C’mon, you may as well get it all out.”

They
all stared at her, silently awaiting her next word.
 
She continued.
 
“Guys, I need you to step up, ok?
 
You’re professionals, start acting like
it.
 
Bryan, next to Sull and Jimmy,
you have the best voice in the band.
 
You’re going to lead backing vocals.”

Jimmy
frowned and stared at her, his patience growing thin.
 
“What about me?
 
That’s
my
job.”

She
shook her head.
 
“Not anymore.
 
You’re backing Sully directly.”
 
She shifted her attention to Sully.
 
“You’re going to back off of some of
those higher notes and Jimmy’s going to pick them up.
 
Your voice can’t handle the strain.”
 

Jimmy
leaned back and folded his arms in front of his chest with a satisfied grin on
his face.
 
“I can handle that.”

Sully’s
eyes were wide, and Kit could see his anger bubbling up.
 
He raised his voice.
 
“What?
 
No fucking way!
 
He is
not
doing that.
 
I can
hit those notes. I did it last night!
 
I don’t need his fucking help.
 
I’m the lead singer of this band, not him!”
 
He glared at Jimmy and folded his arms
in front of him as well.
 

Kit
shook her head.
 
“Sully, you know
what the doctor told you.
 
You are
only one day into vocal training.
 
Your voice is not ready to do what you did last night.
 
I know you felt good from the shot, but
you’re still putting strain on those vocal chords, even if you can’t feel
it.
 
Do you really want to set
yourself up for permanent damage?”

He
glared at her and then at Jimmy again.
 
“He doesn’t fucking deserve to back me.
 
Asshole.”

Jimmy
stood up and headed toward Sully.
 
“Oh,
it’s on!
 
You’re the one that’s the
fucking arrogant asshole!”
 

Their
chests were both puffed up, ready to brawl.
 
Sean and Kit leaped across the room
quickly at the same time.
 
Sean held
Sully back, while Kit stood between the two of them, her hand on Jimmy’s
chest.
 

“Guys,
relax.
 
This is a temporary solution
only.
 
No one is better than anyone
else in this band.
 
Without any one of
you this band wouldn’t function.
 
There
would be no more platinum records or sold out shows or Grammy awards.
 
Cool your jets and listen to me!”
 
When they both refused to back down, she
lost her patience and yelled at the top of her lungs.
 
“Sit the fuck back down, both of you, now!”
 

They
took their seats across the room from each other, stewing.
 
Sean stood tall next to Kit, his arms
folded across his chest, looking more formidable than usual.
 
He never thought he’d be serving as a
bouncer at a band meeting.

She
sighed.
 
“Listen carefully, all of
you.
 
I need you guys to be on top
of your game.
 
We have about ten
weeks left on this tour.
 
Fans love
you. Don’t let them down.
 
Jimmy you
will be taking the higher notes where needed and Sully you will back off of
them.
 
You guys have done this in
the past.
 
You’ll need to do it
again and be in sync.
 
Bryan, you’re
leading backing vocals for the rest of the band.
 
I want to see you own that.
 
Can I trust all of you to get the job
done or are we going to have to cancel the rest of our tour and disappoint all
those fans?”

Sully
and Jimmy exchanged a reluctant silent acknowledgment.
 
They were still in complete resistance
to the idea, but understood what needed to be done and the level of
professionalism needed to execute the show seamlessly.

Kit
surveyed all of them carefully.
 
“Ok. Are you guys all in?”

They
agreed and left the meeting one by one to return to their rooms and prepare for
soundcheck.
 
Kit talked with Sean about
a few additional minor details and then he left.
 
         

Sully sat
on the couch, reclined and watched her, waiting for her acknowledgment.
 
She glanced over at him silently, and
before she could speak, he launched into a tirade.
 
“How the fuck could you do that to
me?
 
I thought you had my back!
 
I’m the star of this band remember?
 
Fans rely on
me
to lead the show.
 
How the fuck can I lead the show when you’re telling me to back
down?”
 

He
shook his head and shifted his eyes away for a moment.
 
“Y’know, Kit, I’ve known you for a while
and there are times when I still don’t get you, like right now.”
 
He met her eyes again and glared.
 
“You fucked me during that meeting and
not in a way that I like.”
 
He
looked away again, his anger still intense.

She
stared at him and when she spoke calmly, an icy tone resonated in her voice.
 
“Then I suggest you get yourself a
groupie who will fuck you all the ways you like to get fucked in the day or
night
and
tell you exactly what you
want to hear.
 
Get over it,
Sully.
 
I’m not going to see you
destroy your career by straining your voice more than it’s needed.
 
Get your ego in check because right now
it’s out of control.
 

“I told
you when I agreed to manage this band that I would make you a star and I
did.
 
Now, you have to stay on top. I’m
trying to help you do that.
 
If you
want to go against that now and for all the shows going forward, be my
guest.
 
When the doctor comes back
and tells you that you’ve done permanent damage to your vocal chords, and
you’re finished as a frontman, don’t come to me asking me rebuild your
career.
 

“Being
on top takes a different level of responsibility.
 
Stop being such an egomaniac and start
thinking about all the lives you’re going to effect in addition to your own. It’s
your choice, baby.
 
But if you
expect me to stand by and watch you wreck your voice
and
your career, you’ve got the wrong woman.”

Kit
seized her handbag and stormed out.
 
She ran down to Giselle’s room and pounded on the door.
 
She swung it open, jarred by the
urgency.
 
Kit noticed Bryan in the
background sitting at the table by the window.
 

She
connected eyes with him and yelled.
 
“Go!”
 
He scrambled to get up
and scurried past her making a run for his room down the hall.
 

Giselle
stared at her with wide eyes.
 
“What
the hell is going on, Kit?”

CHAPTER 21

The plush
leather seat and cashmere blanket on the chartered jet offered little comfort
to Kit as it sped through the sky toward its destination, Rio de Janeiro.
 
She gulped her scotch and chain-smoked
cigarettes in hopes of keeping herself from a full-blown meltdown.

She
used work as an additional vice, reviewing documents and frantically jotting
notes for calls she’d have to make once she was back on land.
 
Anything to stay distracted and keep
swirling thoughts of Sully at bay.

She was
grateful for the long flight and having an entire plane to herself.
 
The first few hours were all about
numbing her existence, but it was short lived.
 
She got a wake-up call she wasn’t
expecting.
 
Her over indulgence in
cigarettes and alcohol led her back to the small bathroom at the back of the
jet where she proceeded to get sick.
 
She composed herself and returned to her seat, hoping she wasn’t coming
down with a flu bug.
 

Now
that she had pushed through all her work and had no desire to hop on the scotch
and nicotine train again, there wasn’t much else to do but deal with the pink
elephant she had been avoiding.

On the
heels of the discussion with Sean in the limo, the band meeting to follow and
the concluding blow up with Sully, she promptly hired a pilot and chartered a
jet out of Heathrow from Giselle’s hotel room.
 
She was wheels up on her way to Rio two
hours later, a full day ahead of the band.

She
booked an extra room for herself as well, not knowing if she’d be ready to deal
with Sully when he arrived.
 
She’d
been in and out of crying spurts since she left the hotel.
 
She couldn’t hold her discoveries in
anymore.
 
She needed to talk to
someone about her conversation with Sean and get an opinion.
 
Her head was spinning with
confusion.
 
She had been tempted to
confide in Giselle, but thought it was too personal.
 
Involving her could jeopardize the
budding relationship between her and Bryan, and she didn’t want to thwart their
happiness.

She
sighed and shook her head.
 
There
was only one solution. She had to call Alexa the moment she touched down in
Rio.
 
In the meantime, she needed to
get her thoughts straight.

Learning
of Sully’s assumed indiscretion left her feeling emotionally raw and betrayed,
easily leading her thoughts back to her past—a place she had been
visiting more often in recent weeks.
 
She sighed, allowing her thoughts to run rampant recalling memories of
her relationship with Kirby.

Having
shoved all of those memories down for almost a decade and choosing to recall
them recently hadn’t been the best strategy, she assessed.
 
With all the pressures in her new
position at Diamond, the band’s discontent, tension with Sully and now these
splinters of her past, she felt like she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
 

She
kindly asked the flight attendant for ginger ale, hoping it would settle her
stomach.
 
When she received it, she
started sucking it down, desperate to rid herself of the queasiness she felt.

She
stared at the empty seat in front of her and wished Joe was still alive sitting
across from her.
 
If he was there,
she knew he’d have the perfect answer.
 
He always gave the best advice.
 
She leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes and silently posed a
question to him.
 
She had been doing
this on occasion since his passing, and it usually yielded positive results.

Her
eyes popped open moments later when the jet hit a patch of turbulence.
 
She threw on her seatbelt and glanced
out the window, chuckling as she recalled Joe’s fear of flying, especially when
turbulence occurred.
 
He was born
into a very wealthy, jet set family, yet never found ease in flying.
 
She quickly recalled the good times,
before Kirby was gone, when the three of them were in college.
 
Joe would make visits to Philadelphia
with his girlfriend, Alli, and stay the weekend.
 
Kirby and Kit would reciprocate,
spending time with them in Boston.
 

A vivid
memory flashed into her mind that drove her to tears—the day Kirby took
her engagement ring shopping at Tiffany on Fifth Avenue, letting her pick out
whatever she wanted.
 
She gently
fingered the half-carat diamond studs that graced her earlobes, still her
favorite pair of earrings.
 
They
were one of the purchases he made that day in addition to her ring.
 

Until
the day he passed, Kirby always strived to do whatever necessary to make her
happy, and that trip to Tiffany was no different.
 
It was one of her childhood dreams come
true and she still deeply treasured the memory.

She
took a gulp of her ginger ale and wiped her tears.
 
Sully never knew she shared such a rare,
deep love with another man nor had been engaged years before she met him.
 
She had kept that a secret, sensing it
wouldn’t have been well received, nor did she want to compare the two
relationships, both being the most significant in her life, past and present.

But now
with the new developments occurring in her relationship with Sully and thoughts
of Kirby flooding her consciousness, she couldn’t help take a trip down memory
lane and compare the two.
 
She had
hours at her disposal, and when she had completed her evaluation, she found
herself even more depressed and confused.

She was
desperate to speak to Alexa and sort this mess out.
 
She quickly realized she still had some
feelings for Kirby, her real reason for dismissing all thoughts about him in
the first place.
 
His death had been
way too painful for her at the time and recalling the beauty in what they had
only made that pain worse.
 

She
started sobbing again, willing to work through it now all these years later,
hoping she would be free from her love of a ghost that her husband had no idea
ever existed.
 
She had never felt so
deeply submerged in a sea of hot water.

Sully
was still battling exhaustion as he headed off stage.
 
All he wanted to do was head back to the
room and go to sleep.
 
There were
more fans than usual that night, and he found himself posing for pictures and
signing autographs more than he normally did.
 
He was only able to manage a few breaks
in between and knock back some whiskey.
 

At one
point, Jimmy approached him and patted him on the back.
 
He gave him a positive nod of
acknowledgment.
  
The show had
faired well.
 
They had all
cooperated and done what Kit had asked in the meeting.
 

The
fans had finally dwindled, and he was desperate to get out of there.
 
He found himself packed into a limo with
Sean, Remo and some girls that were hanging on him.
 
Even though it was only a five-minute
jaunt back to the hotel, it seemed like an eternity.
 
He wanted another drink, his bed, and
Kit – the one person in the world he knew he owed the biggest apology.
 

Sully
walked into his suite to find it completely dark.
 
After turning on the lights, he noticed
that Kit wasn’t there nor were any of her belongings.
 
He went into a panic calling everyone he
could, including the hotel manager, unable to get in touch with most of them,
hitting nothing but dead ends.
 
He
laid back on the bed feeling defeated and wondered where she went.

Kit
didn’t bother to get settled into her suite in Rio, her first matter of
business was picking up the phone.
 
Her body clock was off and even though she was exhausted; sleep was not
on the agenda—resolve was.
 
She had calculated the time difference with her driver’s help on the
short trip from the tarmac to the hotel.
 
New York was three hours behind.
 

As she
dialed Alexa’s number by heart, she prayed she wouldn’t be waking anyone,
especially the children.
 
She
grinned when she heard Wes’ deep voice answer.
 
She giggled and couldn’t resist joking.
 
“Hey, baby.
 
Can you talk or is your wifey around?”

He
stifled an immediate chuckle and played along, using his sexiest voice
possible.
 
“Ooh, she’s in the other
room; we gotta be careful, pretty lady.”
 
He wasn’t able to hold his composure and burst out laughing.
 
“Good evening, Kitty-girl.
 
This is a pleasant surprise.
 
You never call this late.
 
Is everything ok?”

She
sighed, the gravity of the situation hitting hard.
 
“Um… do I have to answer that question
honestly right now?”

“Oh
God.
 
Maybe I shouldn’t have
asked.
 
Anything I can do to help or
do you need the Mrs.?”

She
grinned.
 
“You know me well, don’t
you?”

He
chuckled.
 
“If I didn’t by now, that
would be worrisome, wouldn’t it?
 
Hold on, sweetheart.
 
I’ll
grab her for ya.
 
She was putting
the baby down.”

Kit
interjected.
 
“Oh no.
 
Don’t take her away from that.
 
I’m going to be up for a while.
 
She can call me when she’s done.”

“Naw.
 
I’ll take over and do my daddy
duties.
 
Hold on.”

She sat
back and immediately felt better when she heard the lilt of Alexa’s voice
greeting her.
 
“What’s up,
Kitty?
 
I guess one of two things.
 
This is either a doozy you’re struggling
with, or you’ve got insomnia because of a time zone change.
 
Which one is it?”

Kit
chuckled.
 
“Both.
 
You’re spot on.
 
My body clock is still in Londontown and
hasn’t been very kind to me in the last twenty-four hours.”

“You
left London early?”

“Yep.”

“Where
are you now?”

“Rio.”

“Isn’t
it like…”
 
Kit heard her cover the
phone and ask Wes what time it was in Rio de Janeiro.
 
Getting the answer she wanted, she
continued.
 
“Two in the morning?”

Kit
giggled. “That was smooth.
 
Is Wes
your personal world clock?”

She
joined in the giggles.
 
“Why yes he
is.
 
He knows most of them by heart
because of the markets.
 
That’s the
sole reason I married him.”

Kit
smiled, feeling a sense of comfort in trivial banter with her best friend.
 
“Yes, clearly.”

She
giggled again.
 
“Ok, night owl.
 
Let’s talk.
 
Is Sully late from a show?
 
Shouldn’t he be dwelling in the room by
now?
 
Or is he passed out already?”

Kit let
out a long sigh.
 
“He’s in London,
Lex.
 
I’m here in Rio by myself.”

She
paused for a moment and chose her words carefully.
 
“Ok.
 
Did you go ahead for professional
reasons—getting things squared away, so they have a soft landing when
they arrive?
 
Aren’t they due in Rio
soon?”

“Yeah.
 
Tomorrow night.
 
They have a show the day after tomorrow,
but I’m not here for professional reasons.
 
I’m here because I needed a day to myself on another continent away from
my husband.”

Alexa
let out a long sigh.
 
“Oh no.
 
What happened now?”

She
shook her head and closed her eyes.
 
“Can I just ask you a question?
 
And please be completely truthful with me.”

“Of
course.
 
What?”

She
took a sip of her water and posed the question, boldly.
 
“Have you ever suspected Wes of having a
fling on the side?
 
Or has he ever?”