Groupie/Rock Star Bundle (45 page)

He walked over to the piano and plopped down
onto the bench. He placed the bottle of champagne next to the
metronome, which he wound to start. His fingers touched the cool
keys of the piano, which slowly and unconsciously found their way
through the very first song he ever wrote for her. He remembered
how feverishly he wrote that song after he returned from
Philadelphia, unable to get those piercing eyes and luscious lips
out of his head. All he had wanted was a kiss and she was
gone.

Like now.

“Does she know how I feel?” he sang softly with
a catch in his voice. “How much I want this to be real. An angel
from a dream I can’t claim…”

His voice trailed off as tear splashed against
his fingers.

With a growl he launched into an angry song of
betrayal. Why was he crying for someone who left him for another
man? She was the one who killed their dream. She was no angel. She
was heartless, cruel. Worst of all she had figured out his dark
secret, that he didn’t deserve her, and she went to the man who
clearly did.

He slammed the wooden fallboard down with a
loud bang. Out of frustration he slammed it again and again,
gratified by the harsh sound bouncing off of the tall walls of his
new place.

Their
new place, he reminded himself. And she’d never
even see it. It would be Graham’s house she’d return to when she
finally came to Los Angeles. A sloping mansion atop a Malibu cliff
it would have taken at least ten of Vanni’s new dwellings to
completely fill.

Each thought swept through his head with loud
rhythmic ticking of the metronome. He grabbed the bottle of
champagne for another glug while he glared at the antique atop his
piano. Anger welled up inside of him until it exploded through his
lips in an impassioned roar. He kicked back the bench as he rose
and took a swing at the metronome with the champagne bottle. Glass
shattered along with any liquid that was left in the bottle across
the keys.

He stooped to pick up the heavy bench and swing
it almost as effortlessly as a baseball bat against the piano until
it cracked right down the middle with a resounding bang which was
loud and off key. He didn’t stop, even though the bench broke apart
in his hands. He tossed aside the solid wooden legs and resorted
instead to the iron fireplace poker to bash the hell out of his
expensive piano, his grunts and shouts as loud as the musical
instrument he was dismantling.

It crumbled into kindling as he raged on
blindly. Finally his hands surrounded the metronome – the gift that
had meant so much to him, the one thing that had turned his heart
in a way nothing before it had. It had been so thoughtful, like
giving him a piece of his own heart. He knew in that moment she
understood him in a way no one else had.

He took the most precious gift he had ever
received and hurled it against the opposite wall until it exploded
and crashed to the floor in irreparable disarray just like the
piano. Just like him.

There was no one there to fix him
anymore.

It’d be Graham’s life she’d grace and his
broken pieces she’d put back together. And if he walked again it
would be her strength that would have healed him. Of that, Vanni
was absolutely certain.

He stumbled across the debris to his alcohol
cabinet, stocked full. He grabbed the first couple of bottles he
came to before he walked out onto the balcony facing the ocean. He
couldn’t face the destruction he had wrought upon his new home. He
needed air. He needed strength – a strength she stole the minute
she turned him down flat. What he would do now that he was no
longer graced with that strength? How many times had she saved his
ass, even inadvertently? In an almost ironic twist of fate his
massive success through Graham’s record company was due almost
entirely to her. Hell, even this beach house was due to her in some
way. Without her he’d probably be without a career, without his
friends, living in his Brooklyn brownstone, working at an Italian
restaurant and singing for tips. Jasper Carrington would have made
damn certain of that.

But here he was, in an expensive house on the
beach he owned outright. He was making money faster than he could
spend it thanks to millions of screaming fans all over the world,
most of whom couldn’t wait to see Dreaming in Blue, and Giovanni
Carnevale, just one more time. He had two hit songs on the radio, a
chart-topping CD and offers pouring in from everywhere to use his
voice and his image to sell anything from fast food to movie
tickets.

It was everything he had always wanted but
nothing seemed to matter anymore. Not the music. Not the band. Not
even facing another fucking sunset from this spectacular fucking
patio.

He slumped on the double sized hammock on his
deck, cradling the bottles to his chest. It was a hammock built for
two. From the moment he first tried it out he imagined how many
hours they’d spend together kissing and cuddling with the Pacific
Ocean as their backdrop. He could almost feel her in his arms. He
loved the way she filled his embrace. She was so real. So solid.
And she fit him completely.

She’d been in his head ever since that first
dance three years before. He got lost in those eyes and felt those
curves mold to every single inch of him like a missing piece of a
puzzle. Each touch demanded more. Once he held her he had to kiss
her. Once he kissed her he had to make love to her. Once he made
love to her he wanted to possess her, body and soul. With her in
his arms he made sense. He wasn’t just some wannabe singer taking
up space in a bar. In her eyes he was a superstar owning the stage
for a faithful audience of one.

He thought back to the whole debacle with
Lourdes, or what he now knew was Mistake Number One. Initially he
had been convinced it would be a great publicity stunt to be seen
with a beautiful model in all the tabloids. It was purely a
marketing move that hurt no one and helped catapult DIB out of
obscurity and onto a national stage. Though it was convenient at
first, it quickly became an excuse. Lourdes never appreciated being
the “other” woman and with her fiery Latin attitude she made Jasper
pay for it on regular occasion. When she decided to make a fake
relationship a little more real just to make the entitled magnate
jealous there seemed little harm in indulging her. Vanni was still
a red-blooded – and single – American man and she was a gorgeous,
sensual woman. Their relationship of convenience became a fun
little dalliance, and it also had the added benefit of ensuring his
inaccessibility. He couldn’t get serious with anyone else even if
he wanted to. Though he flirted with Andy and wanted to be with
Andy, he certainly wasn’t ready to commit to anyone, not for
real.

Lourdes was his first
get-out-of-commitment-free card.

His lies caught up with him that December. He
had fantasized what it would be like to seduce the voluptuous vixen
he couldn’t get out of his head, to rise like a god from her
embrace. On his birthday, no less – like a brand new awakening. It
was planned to be perfect. But after that untimely call from
Lourdes Andy no longer looked at him with wonder and fascination.
She didn’t open up to him like a sexual flower at his touch, she
recoiled away from the disgusting cheater and liar and user and
poser he was.

He didn’t want to stop until that look went
away, which it finally did in Las Vegas when they made love for the
first time. It took his confessing the truth and of course his
readiness to risk it all for the sake of his reputation. He was no
deadbeat dad and wouldn’t play one on TV no matter how much Jasper
threatened his newfound successes. His reward? Andy opened up and
took him into her soul. It went beyond sexual release. When they
were locked together in a passionate embrace he felt safe…
protected… home.

He truly did feel like a god.

After that he was hooked. The more he had, the
more he wanted. Close was never close enough, which is why he
suggested they ditch the condoms on Christmas. He was a big boy who
understood sexual risks, so he had never considered asking anyone
to do that. With Andy it seemed right. He wanted to feel her, all
of her, and take their relationship to that next level of
intimacy.

It was only after he went back to New York that
he freaked out, knowing they had gone too far. That first night
without her he had actually cried, which was a first. He knew right
then he had given too much of his heart away. As a new couple they
had hit heights he had never before imagined, Vanni knew there was
nowhere to go but down. So he jumped out of the emotional plane
first in some weird attempt to control the inevitable heartbreak.
When he saw the familiar interest in Kat’s eyes that New Year’s
Eve, he reverted to past behavior that kept him safe and
noncommittal. The minute Kat reached for that first kiss at the
stroke of midnight it drove him for the next conquest.

He lied to Kat. He lied to Andy. Most of all he
lied to himself that he could keep up the familiar games without
anyone getting truly hurt. He didn’t know it at the time but he had
started to buy his own hype. As doors started opening for Giovanni
Carnevale, he started living by his own rules. He honestly thought
he could keep it up indefinitely.

All that nearly blew to hell the minute Andy
fainted to his feet in San Francisco. When he thought she may have
indeed been pregnant, he knew it was God showing him who was really
in charge. Karma didn’t give a rat’s ass that he was some
burgeoning star. In that moment he was like any other man who had
rolled the dice and lost. A baby would have made him grow
up.

Only there was no baby.

All Andy saw was the initial relief; she
couldn’t have known that deep inside he wrestled with
disappointment much like she did. That night he had dreamed of what
their baby would have looked like, only to have it stolen away by
his estranged father, a man whose face he could never
see.

It was a recurring nightmare for Vanni. In his
dreams he’d finally get his happily ever after only to have it
ripped away by the one person who had discarded him like
yesterday’s garbage. His deepest fear was that he would never have
anything of value because he’d never be anything of value. That was
the ongoing lesson from an absentee father who hung just around the
shadows of his psyche.

He felt punished so he punished himself. He
pushed away the one good thing in his life and instead focused on
more superficial relationships. Neither Kat nor Andy knew about the
other groupies he’d romance and even bed from town to town. That
was just classic Vanni: a girl in every port. When he started to
feel too much toward Andy he’d woo Kat. When he started to feel too
much for Kat he’d seduce the prettiest groupie in the front row of
any concert.

They all looked at him like he could do no
wrong and he desperately wanted to believe them. As long as he was
invincible he could never be vulnerable.

But then everything fell apart – again – in New
York, when Andy busted him on his philandering ways. She was
completely right of course, which made her even more of a threat.
She not only saw him as a flawed man, she saw him as a cheating
asshole, which, of course, he was. But as any cheater knows the
minute one is caught one needs to deny and deflect. Vanni was quick
to throw Graham in her face during their fierce argument, and then
realized something very important: she never actually denied
sleeping with Graham.

The card she gave him after Vegas with Graham’s
info had a hotel room number scrawled along the back. That,
combined with her “expert” advice on how he needed to renegotiate
his contract with Jasper, made him suspicious that something more
than a dance in a bar had happened between them. He was no fool; he
could tell Graham was interested in Andy by the way he held her in
his arms on the dance floor. There was a look in his eyes, a
tenderness to his touch. His sexual attraction to her full-figured
beauty was palpable.

Had she felt the same? This was a very
powerful, older eligible bachelor, one who could romance her in
ways Vanni had not yet learned. Had she done to him what he had
done to her when he used people like Lourdes and Kat?

After a while it became easier to believe she
had. This was especially true once the band moved to L.A. Vanni
knew Andy still did her P.R. work for the band, and he also knew
Graham wanted to keep it that way.

When he saw them together outside her hotel
room locked in a passionate embrace, it just reaffirmed all of
Vanni’s worst fears.

Turn about was fair play, but he didn’t expect
it to hurt as bad as it did… especially when she sent him from her
hotel room that night. He didn’t hold back when he took her into
his arms, but his power over her had apparently waned. She turned
her back on him and left him cold.

After that he threw himself into his
relationship with Kat. In his mind she hadn’t betrayed him and
deserved his loyalty. Yet he couldn’t get Andy out of his head. He
wanted her so badly he ached. Nothing filled the void she left in
him.

As he tipped the bottle to guzzle more of the
intoxicating liquid, he began to suspect that was still painfully
true.

What was worse was knowing that Graham had not
made the missteps he had made. He didn’t romance anyone while Andy
was away. He was content to be by himself and wait for the one
woman he knew had captured his heart. He had nothing to prove, to
the world or to himself. When Andy was in Los Angeles he courted
her like she was the only woman in the world. More importantly was
when she wasn’t in Los Angeles and he still managed to demonstrate
the same. He was a wealthy, powerful man – but he didn’t show up to
events with women on his arm. He didn’t date. He simply waited for
the stolen moments with Andy.