Epic (3 page)

She tried to make me see this was a matter of perspective, that it was just as easy to make honest, real food as it was to toss something in a microwave for five minutes.

I grilled some salmon and steamed some veggies in the same amount of time it would have taken me to bake a frozen pizza. We ate at the table, another Maggie directive (tables are for food, don’t associate everyday tasks with eating) and then retired to the living room to watch some TV.

I lay against Jace’s chest as we reclined on the white sofa. He toyed with my hair as we watched something that passed for entertainment. It was really just a placeholder until
Fierce
premiered on Memorial Day, when we could join the fun on the other end of the spectrum – as fans this time around, rather than contestants.

“How’d it go with Dr. Challis?” he asked softly.

I stiffened against him. It had taken all night but I finally got rid of those residual icky feelings the mere mention of Shane’s name created in me. “Fine,” I lied, mostly because I wanted to get off of the topic as soon as possible.

“I thought maybe that was what was bothering you at the studio,” he said.

I shrugged. “I don’t think Griffin likes me.”

Jace laughed. “Griffin likes everyone. Why wouldn’t he like you?”

“Just a feeling I get,” I said. “Like he’s putting up with me. I know he was kind of press-ganged into working with me, since we’re both on Graham’s label. But I’m not the kind of female celebrity he tends to court, for business or pleasure. He parades all these perfect little bodies around on his arm week after week, year after year, and here I am singing this perfectly ridiculous song on top of it all. It’s a joke.”

“Hey,” he said as he tugged my hair. “I happen to like that song. I hear that the guy who wrote it is a genius.”

I laughed. “And humble, too.”

He tipped my head back. “Sing it to me,” he said softly.

I fell headlong into those green eyes. It was home, no matter where we lived. It was safe, no matter how many bogeymen rattled their chains outside my doorway. I inched around so that I could lie against his lithe body. “
I see it in your eyes, a hunger you disguise, a need inside, it burns like fire and I just want to fan the flames
,” I sang softly as I crept up his body like a tigress, straddling him where he sat. “
Your love is like my drug, we fit like a glove, and I won’t stop till you scream my name
.”

“
I’m not sorry that I want you
,” he joined in as his hands disappeared up my shirt. I shuddered as he tossed it into a corner, and captured my swaying breast in either hand. “
I know down deep you want me too. Let the world spin off its axis, I don’t care. Open your heart and you’ll find me there.”

I slipped my hand between our bodies, touching him where he reached for me, feeling how hard he was for me and knowing that it was worth every single moment I endured to get here. “
I’m not sorry for all these things that I do, I know I was made to do them for you
.” I eased down his zipper as I kissed my way down his body.

As I loved him, gently, thoroughly and as raw as anyone could, I hoped to exorcise those demons in my memory once and for all.

In that way Shane would never win. I could never let him win.

But even that night, as we lay in bed together, snuggled tight and safe and warm, all I could think about were the ghosts that lingered in the edges of the darkness. Dr. Challis had opened a door I was determined to keep shut. It couldn’t close fast enough, in my opinion, especially since I had an appointment the following morning to meet with Eddie Nix and discuss the details of our pending divorce.

I knew from experience that he would give me my freedom, but it would come at a cost… whether physical, mental or financial.

Knowing Eddie, it would probably be a combination of all three.

I had no way of knowing just how much until I sat across from him and his lawyer that perfect May morning. He wanted half of everything I had made while we were legally married, and felt ongoing monthly support was appropriate given my status as the higher earning spouse.

“I’m going back to school,” he told the lawyers. “I suspended my education to be here for Jordi while she pursued her career,” he repeated the same old line, which made him s
ound more saintly than the gold-digging leech that he was. “Since our marriage has ended, I decided to resume my studies. I’ve been accepted at Tennessee State University.”

My eyes met his. What sick game was he playing now? His look defied me to challenge him on the matter, so I let it drop for the moment. His blackmail was not a part of our legal negotiations, nor was the blackmail I now had against him that detailed his whole dirty plan right from the onset.

We had seemingly made the silent pact to live and let live. I should have known better… like Eddie could have ever walked away from the chance to win. If anything, he’d just change the game and tip all the odds in his favor.

I pounced on him in the parking garage. “What are you up to?” I demanded as he stepped through the elevator on his way to the car I had purchased for him.

He grinned. His plan to get me alone had proven successful, and he didn’t even hide gloating about it. “You’re so quick to divorce me, what do you care? Don’t tell me you miss me already.”

“I don’t care about you,” I told him coolly as I crossed both arms in front of my chest. “I care about the people you plan to railroad next.”

“Oh, you mean the people you already railroaded?” he asked as he tried to touch the bridge of my nose with his finger. I slapped him away and he laughed right in my face. “You’re such a hypocrite, Jordi. Emphasis on hippo,” he added as his eyes scanned over my ample frame. “You gave up the right to know who I was screwing when you left me for that cripple. Now, it’s every girl for herself.”

He turned away but I grabbed his arm. “Don’t go after Shelby,” I told him.

He glared down at my hand on his arm, before giving me an icy look of contempt. “Don’t act like you care,” he challenged. “If you gave a damn about Shelby at all you’d show her those security tapes, but you know the minute you do I’ll leak your little X-rated fuckfest for the whole world to see.” He stepped closer, even when I dropped my arm and moved back a step. “Think about it, Jordi. Everyone could see every last disgusting thing you do. Imagine good ol’ Shane whacking off to you sucking Jace’s dick.” I closed my eyes to erase the disturbing thought that he immediately and gleefully planted in my head. “That’s right. And you know it would happen, too. You can see it, can’t you? You always could. That’s why you’ll screw over every single person you know to keep your secret safe. The simple truth is you like being a dirty little whore on your knees with a nice fat cock in your mouth.”

My hand laid a sickening crack across his arrogant cheek. “You’re disgusting,” I gritted between clenched teeth.

He never lost that damnable smile. “But I’m right. And you know it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a plane to catch.” He looked rather pleased with himself as he added, “Guess that means you have some checks to write.”

He spun on his heel and left me flabbergasted in the underground parking garage.

When I let myself into the house a half-hour later, Jace was not there to soothe my wounds. Instead there was an email from my private investigator.

He’d found the woman he suspected was my birth mother, and she was living in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In an afternoon I went from having no mother at all, to a mother who was just a car ride away. With just five more monosyllabic words, he changed everything I might have had planned for my immediate future. Everything else in my crazy, chaotic life came second to a simple sentence.

“
She wants to meet you
.”

I knew I had some decisions to make. And I had to figure it out fast.

Los Angeles, California

May 25, 2012

The notes on the page in front of me scrambled together, just like all the noise inside my brain. I hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything other than the email I received the day before. Ever since Shane Pearcy dropped the bombshell about my true parentage, I had been in a tailspin wondering about my true roots. Pinpointing the one person alive that could give that information to me, after all of the months of uncertainty, was both exciting and terrifying. It shoved everything else that was happening in my chaotic life – with Eddie and therapy and the musician sitting across from me in the studio, Griffin Slade – way at the bottom of my priority list.

I sighed with exasperation as I blew another line, completely lost in the music. Griffin stopped playing and signaled to the control booth that we’d have to start over… again. I avoided his eyes as I sipped from my water bottle. If he was frustrated, it was his own damn fault. He was the one who insisted we come back in to tweak the track. I was perfectly happy with the work we turned in two days before.

Well, maybe not perfectly happy… but satisfied enough not to go back into the studio with Griffin. I still believed that he was indulging me out of obligation to Graham, rather than any real interest in working with me. He barely spoke a word to me, and likely wouldn’t even need me around had it not been my song.

He even used his manager to contact me regarding the new recording session.

We were not friends, and he certainly didn’t treat me as an equal or colleague. I barely registered on his radar as a woman. I knew this because he was saving all his sultry, smoky glances for the new
celebutante sitting on the other side of the glass. This time he chose a lanky redhead, whose freckles were so perfectly spaced across the bridge of her nose I half-expected them to be painted on. The color of her perfect amber eyes matched the knit cap she wore. Her long, coltish legs crossed one over the other as she sat in the chair, and Griffin was definitely a fan as his eyes traveled over her figure every time he glanced her direction.

No w
onder he grew impatient with me. I was the fat slob who couldn’t get her act together enough to sing one four-minute song so he could get the hell out of the studio and ravage the fiery redhead who waited just six feet away.

At least that’s what I felt like every time he wouldn’t speak to me or look my general direction despite the fact that we were working together. Instead he saved all his charm for the girl on the other side of the glass.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered as I turned the sheet music back to the start.

“No worries, love,” he murmured as he did likewise, but he didn’t even look me in the eye.

The music cued up in my headset and I took a deep breath to center myself. I focused Jace in my mind’s eye so I could muster up the seductive quality to sing the song. Instead of a cold, impersonal studio with an even colder and more impersonal colleague, I was on my sofa cuddled with Jace in the privacy of our home. I closed my eyes and relived our most tender, intimate moments. “
I see it in your eyes, a hunger you disguise, a need inside, it burns like fire and I just want to fan the flames
,” I began in a sultry confident voice that zapped into a squeak the minute my eyes opened and I realized that Griffin was staring at me.

I thought about the perfect redhead sitting just across the way, flashing her long legs for his benefit. I would never have that power,
so I couldn’t even fathom what it would be like. All I had was my voice – which apparently failed me whenever there was a real life guy anywhere in the vicinity.

I was no siren, no matter what Vanni or Jace said.

And nowhere was this clearer than in the eyes of Griffin Slade. They darkened as they scanned my face, and I couldn’t help but think how ridiculous I looked to someone like him. He had dated the most beautiful women in the world, many of whom he shared a recording studio with beforehand.

And then there was me.

Which one of these things was not like the other? Which one of these things just didn’t belong?

I issued the kill signal as I tore off my headphones.

“Is there a problem?” Griffin wanted to know in his Aussie drawl.

Yeah, me
, I thought.
Or – more to the point – you
. “I don’t know why this is so hard for me to nail.”

“You’re putting too much pressure on yourself,” he said as he shifted to face me. “This song isn’t the end-all, be-all. It’s just a track. It’s just a song. Let’s try something else,” he said as he began to strum the guitar in a familiar riff. It was a song I had sung countless times, both on
Fierce
and the subsequent tour. His eyes never left my face as he played the intro, expecting me to jump in on cue.

And of course I did.

Unlike my song, which was overtly sexual, the song he had chosen was more of an anthem. I was able to pull it off just like I had all those times before. When I was done, he launched into an INXS song that had a slower, more seductive groove. It changed the vibe from an anthem to a love song, but I kept the pacing as he sang backup and guided me along with his eyes and his soft voice. Without missing a beat, he segued right into my song, but instead of feeling self-conscious I was able to get through the lyrics.