Groupie/Rock Star Bundle (32 page)

I grabbed his wrist with my hand and finally
muttered, “No.”

“No?” he asked as he nuzzled my neck, his teeth
against my skin. “You want me, Andy. I can feel it.”

“Yes, I want you,” I admitted. “In a way you’ll
never want me.” I used all my strength to push him away. I scooted
out from under him and off the bed.

He turned over onto his side. “How
can you say I don’t want you?” he wanted to know, when his body
clearly indicated otherwise.

“Because you chose Kat,” I reminded
as I wrapped my arms around my body. It was suddenly very cold
without his heated embrace. I turned my back to him as he rose to
his feet.

“And now I’m choosing you,” he said softly as
he reached for me. “Why does it have to be more complicated than
that?”

I spun away from his arms. “Because
it is,” I said.

He grew frustrated and angry. “And what is
Graham offering you, Andy? Marriage? Kids? You know he’s been
divorced twice. Just because you can get him down the aisle doesn’t
mean he’ll stay.”

“This isn’t about Graham!” I exploded. “This is
about me, needing you to go. To leave me alone. To stop playing
these games!”

“This isn’t a game…”

“Yes, it is! That’s all it’s ever been. You
want what you can’t have. The ultimate challenge. You need us to
fall in love with you, but God forbid we expect you to love us in
return.”

“How can you say that to me? How can you doubt
what I felt for you?”

Tears sprung into my eyes. His use
of past tense did not go unnoticed. He might as well have punched
me right in the face. “Because you took it away without even
telling me,” I said sadly.

He had nothing to say to that, and
in fact looked rather uncomfortable by the sight of my tears. So I
did the only thing I could do. I let him go.

“Goodbye, Vanni,” I said before I
turned away.

I didn’t turn back around until I heard the
door shut behind him.

Los Angeles, December 2009

~Andy~

Much had happened by the time I returned to Los
Angeles in December, not the least of which I became a godmother to
George Cullen Wallis, the newest addition to the DIB family. He
arrived via a home birth in early November, and Iain was able to
take a little more than a month off to spend with his new family
thanks to the more lax schedule Graham had afforded for the band
for just such an occasion. Nothing would really “happen” with the
band until the big fan event scheduled around Vanni’s birthday, and
then they would begin their tour by February with a big Caribbean
cruise.

Vanni and Kat became an “official” couple,
though scuttlebutt had it that this was more Kat’s idea than
Vanni’s. I had kept in constant communication with Alana about
Talia and my concerns about her possessiveness, and we three sort
of agreed that this new label and new band image gave Vanni the
opportunity to reorganize his relationship with his
fans.

Kat was more invested in this change than
anyone else, and I heard through Alana she had carefully
interjected herself into the entire show, where he would focus his
attention on her rather than sing directly to any fans. That she
was now his girlfriend on record would hopefully keep fans from
getting too close and too personal, though from what I could tell
from the emails and the forum posts they really didn’t care much
who was on his arm.

They didn’t even qualify Kat as
“competition” because they didn’t find her to be a good match for
their Giovanni.

She was too alternative, so therefore “ugly.”
She was a pole dancer, so therefore a “slut.” They found various
reasons to trash her until Alana or I would deal with those posts
and delete them, sometimes even banning the users
themselves.

So far Talia had not crossed any
significant lines. It was as though she knew just how far she could
push, which somehow made her more of a threat.

But without her behaving in a manner that we
could show to Vanni was troublesome, he pretty much turned a blind
eye to what was going on.

It got to the point I preferred to talk to Kat
than to Vanni. Alana had become the peacekeeper between us, even
though she had been honest about Kat’s opinion of me in the
beginning – which was unflattering to say the least.

She found me “obsessed” with Vanni,
and clearly had a problem with my size. I chalked it up to her
being so small that she was threatened by a larger girl, but the
initial comments had been catty and unkind as she lumped me in with
the rest of the “desperate cows” who wanted her man.

Alana tried her best to play devil’s advocate,
and suggested that Vanni might have not been completely forthright
with her about our relationship – and as such she would have no
reason to think I wasn’t like another fan. Since his fans had
fluctuated wildly between being so nasty to her and trying to cozy
up to her to get to Vanni, she didn’t have much use for any of
us.

But once she saw that I was not after her man,
and in fact would not speak to him hardly at all, she was able to
allow me into her “inner circle.” That Alana trusted me was a big
plus in my favor. So the three of us kept a close eye on
troublesome groupies, while Vanni was allowed to remain blissfully
clueless so he could write his music and record his
songs.

After I had literally turned my back on Vanni
in June, he finally gave me the distance I needed to help heal. It
was hard at first, especially when he went full steam ahead with
Kat after maintaining for so long his life was not equipped for a
long-term relationship. But Graham filled the void with thoughtful
gestures like flowers for no reason, calls that lasted into the
night, emails and texts just to let me know he was thinking about
me.

For the first time in my life I was
actually being courted by a man, and it did a lot to heal my
wounded ego after the whole Vanni debacle.

By the time I boarded the plane for Los Angeles
I had a full dance card prepared to keep me occupied when I wasn’t
doing anything for the band. I only hoped that it was enough to
steel my spine against those lethal brown eyes that rendered me
powerless to Vanni’s capricious charms.

Fortunately most of my
responsibilities now were fan-related rather than band-related. I
would interview them, of course, but I could do that as a group. I
really didn’t have to spend any time at all with Vanni. I could
skip performances, and at this point I’d rather prefer to, and
simply hang out with Alana as she prepped for the fans or
interceded with the media.

This was my job now, and Graham had
made it clear I could have it as a real job if I ever decided to
relocate to California.

So far I had managed to hold off on committing
to anything so concrete. I needed to know that my heart was truly
over Vanni before I got that close to the fire again. I hadn’t said
that in so many words to Graham, but I got the feeling he could
sense that was the reason I hedged any suggestion to move
west.

Our flirting had turned up in recent
weeks, and he even offered that I could stay in his house, in his
guest room, rather than stay at a hotel. “You’d be doing me the
favor,” he had said. He claimed his house was so big and empty that
it was depressing to stay there alone. Sometimes he’d just like to
hear another voice.

“No pressure,” he added.

That had become our go-to phrase. We were both
willing to see where this thing between us was going, but we didn’t
want to rush into anything. He confided that his two previous
marriages were spontaneous decisions based on heat that faded as
fast as they ignited. He thought he’d rather like experimenting
with the slow burn instead.

I knew by this point I could trust him, and I
knew he’d never push me farther than I was willing to go. So I
agreed to stay at his house and even help him host one of his
holiday parties for his talent. If I ever did move to L.A. these
would be the kinds of things I’d do as part of his PR team, so it
made sense to get some experience under my belt.

Hopefully it was all leading to a promising
future on the west coast, something that – provided I could be sure
I was over Vanni – was looking more and more like something I
wanted to do.

Graham took the afternoon off to pick me up at
the airport, and he swung me in his arms when he saw me. Only
briefly I thought about the time I had picked Vanni up at the
airport in Nashville, and couldn’t rush into his arms like I had
wanted. In L.A., even with the significant notoriety that Graham
enjoyed as an entertainment mogul, he was not ashamed to show the
entire airport he was more than a little excited to see
me.

This was punctuated by a deep kiss,
something that he had told me before he couldn’t wait to do again
after our brief but passionate embrace in June.

Though it didn’t engulf me with an
uncontrollable passion, it did give me hope that I could enjoy this
trip on a more romantic level than I had previously expected. I was
still in a wait-and-see pattern, but things were definitely looking
up.

Unlike my itineraries in New York, the L.A.
schedule was a little more relaxed, especially since I was there
for almost ten days. The fan event would take place that weekend,
and then after that I would organize Graham’s holiday party. This
gave us plenty of time to do what needed to be done, and I could
finally meet my godson and spend some quality face-to-face time
with my friends.

Eventually I would have to socialize
with Vanni, especially since he was going to be at the fan event
and Graham’s party, but in the meantime I could just take my time
and enjoy myself.

Just being in the mild California sunshine was
enough to make me relax. By the time we reached Graham’s house I
felt completely decompressed. I didn’t even think I’d need the
massage he had promised for about two months that he’d give
me.

Graham’s house was a multi-level
sprawling mansion with a view of the ocean from floor to ceiling
windows all along the sides facing the Pacific. The white interior
was crisp, sparse and stark, which he confessed was a remnant of
the last Mrs. Baxter. “It matched her personality,” he confided
with a wink.

But he had filled the rooms with colorful
flowers for my visit, and it smelled and looked lovely amidst the
white art deco furniture. He showed me to my room, which had new,
bright linens on the bed with a large box with a ribbon sitting
right on top.

“Graham,” I admonished. “What did you
do?”

He shrugged as he leaned on the
doorframe, where he watched me unwrap his gift. “A little welcoming
gift,” he said.

I opened the box and found a fiery orange
peignoir set made of satin. It was much too beautiful to refuse,
even though the implied intimacy of the gift did not go unnoticed.
“Oh Graham,” was all I could say.

“I want you to feel at home here,” he said
without ever moving from the door. “Look underneath.”

My brow furrowed as I dug under the
tissue, only to find chaste flannel pajamas underneath. I had to
laugh.

“You choose,” he said. “No
pressure.”

I returned to where he stood in the door way.
“You’re too good to me,” I said as I reached up to kiss his
cheek.

“There’s no such thing,” he
whispered, as he enveloped me with his eyes. He reached out with
one hand and traced my cheek. I knew if I had wanted to I could
walk right into his arms right there and consummate our attraction.
But I think both of us knew that there were lingering questions
that had to be answered before I could move on.

So wordlessly he took my hand in his and led me
to the kitchen, where his staff had prepared our lunch.

We hadn’t talked much about Vanni in
the last few months. He had never pressured me with questions and I
had never offered the information. My feelings for this other man
remained the elephant in the room. I knew we’d probably have to
have that discussion, and soon, but neither of us seemed eager to
introduce that dose of reality into our very sweet
fantasy.

Instead he gave me plenty of space to get
freshened up before we went to see Alana and Iain and my tiny
godson, George.

The minute I took him into my arms I understood
immediately why Alana had subtly changed since his birth. She had
unraveled a mystery so many of us had yet to figure out. It all had
to do with holding your child in your arms, and seeing the best of
you and the one you love in a brand new person.

Suddenly I couldn’t remember why I had been so
reticent to have a baby. It seemed like the most normal thing in
the world. And everyone said I was a natural, and that George
seemed to take to me unlike most people.

I was likewise smitten with him.
Truth was I didn’t want to put him down. But by dinnertime it was
time for his nap and Graham and I decided we should go. We left the
new family in their safe little cocoon that existed so far beyond
the fishbowl I knew that they could find some balance of normalcy
that Vanni never could.