Groupie/Rock Star Bundle (63 page)

They didn’t talk about any pressing matters
until they were en route back to his house. Finally she asked, “So
are you really going to New York to see your dad?”

He shrugged. “I guess Graham is right. It would
be good press in the face of all this other stuff.”

“You don’t have to go alone,” she offered
quietly. “If you need me to come with you, I will.”

He grinned at her. “That would be extremely
helpful,” he said, and then he thought about the kiss they
shared.

Would it… could it be something
more?

He thought about Andy in a hotel room all by
herself. The most important question was if he could be truly
satisfied with anything else, or would he always pine for the one
who got away?

Though she offered to stay with him at the
house, Vanni told Holly that he needed some time alone after the
stressful day. He had a lot of thinking to do and he felt that
would be more appropriate if he did it alone.

She was disappointed but she did her best to
hide it as she backed out of the driveway. He waved at her before
he walked past the liquor bottles still in the bag on his front
porch. He thought briefly just one drink wouldn’t hurt him, but he
kept strong as he entered the house.

He felt like he carried the weight of the world
on his shoulders. He had to fix what had gone so wrong with Baylee,
that was priority one. Now that she had a name, a family and a
history he felt like even more of a shit for what had happened. He
had been sincere when he told Graham he was ready to pay whatever
restitution was needed. Anything was worth ridding himself of the
pitch black ache he had carried around since the accident. He hated
making any public mistake, but making a mistake he couldn’t take
back cut him to the core.

People all over the world treated him like a
god. Things like this showed just how much of a fraud he was and
always would be.

Then of course he thought about his father. His
father was the main reason he felt like a fraud, like a walking
talking mistake that someone had regretted so much he had to
disappear entirely. Now Graham wanted him to go make nice with him
for the cameras just so he could come back from the horrible things
he had done.

He had a hard time reconciling it in his head
as worth the bother. He was confused as to what he should do and
suddenly without any real mentors to guide his path. After that
afternoon he was no longer convinced that Graham would guide him to
make the right decision emotionally, or even
professionally.

Even the other members in the band – as well as
Holly herself – had ulterior motives for him to polish his
tarnished image.

There was only one person in the world who
could guide him to make the right choice for his
conscious.

Within an hour he was walking through the lobby
of her hotel.

He could tell she didn’t want to open the door
and let him into her room, but she relented anyway. There were
lines around her eyes that made her look older and more tired than
usual. Vanni realized in that moment she had been carrying her own
problems much like he did. He wanted to take her into his arms and
tell her he was sorry for adding to the burden, but he refrained.
Instead he sat in one of the chairs by the large window overlooking
the L.A. basin as lights twinkled to life in the
twilight.

“I’ve been thinking about what Graham said this
morning regarding my dad. It’s the last thing I want to do, but
maybe he’s right. Maybe there’s no way around it.”

She shrugged slightly. “It’s still up to you
what you want to do, Vanni. You have every right to be angry with
him. You can’t just turn off those feelings because it may help
your career. What kind of man would you be if that were
true?”

“The kind of man everyone else thinks I am,” he
answered dryly. It mattered to him more than he wanted to admit,
and she was the only one he could even trust with that dirty little
secret. He watched her soften with his confession. She still loved
him despite all his failures and all his faults. It made all the
rest of the bullshit worth it. “Do you think I should
go?”

Again she shrugged. “Being abandoned by this
man was the cornerstone of every problem you have ever had. How can
I send you right back into the lion’s den on a ‘maybe’ that it
would actually heal anything?”

“You could if you came with me,” he said
softly. She stiffened immediately. “For emotional support only,” he
said. “No expectations beyond that. No guilt. No blackmail. I just
really need a friend and you’re the closest one I got.” She
hesitated so he said, “Please?”

She sighed. As much as she tried to extricate
herself from the tangled ball of muck that was her life, she knew
there was no way she could turn down anyone who really needed her,
especially someone she loved as much as she loved Vanni. He knew
that too.

“A couple of conditions,” she said. “One: you
don’t drink. Not one drop. I don’t care how bad it gets or how much
it hurts. You can’t afford to backslide now.”

He nodded. She was right. He was nearly 50 days
sober; he had no real intention of breaking his streak for someone
like his father, especially when it could do more damage to him
when he finally got back home to Los Angeles.

“Two,” she continued, “Graham can’t know. Ever.
I don’t care how much you guys want to ‘win’ by who I choose; you
can’t use my good intentions against me anymore. When I do a favor
for either of you it’s not to hurt the other one. Got
it?”

He nodded. He noticed that she had left out any
caveat that they couldn’t find their way back to each other while
they were away, back in the city where their affair had taken root.
Maybe she thought it didn’t need to be said.

But when they booked the trip that night he
couldn’t get it out of his head that New York City was where he
first kissed her and he knew instantly she was different than all
the rest. So much so he had shared his brownstone and his
neighborhood with her and no one else, even Kat. With everyone else
he turned on the charm as a star. With Andy he was able to be
himself.

He suddenly really wanted to be himself. That
they would be there around her birthday this time gave him plenty
of ideas how to rekindle what they once shared. No matter what she
thought he wasn’t trying to ‘win’ her away from Graham. He needed
her in a way that didn’t involve anyone else, no matter how many
people they both had put in between them.

It was time to prove that to her.

As he drove back home he made a mental promise
to himself that after this trip she would have no doubt how much he
loved her and how much he was willing to turn the world upside down
to show her. It was time they took things back to basics, to
reclaim something as sweet and simple as two hearts in love.
Everything else would work itself out as long as they reestablished
a foundation, and he knew they were so much stronger together than
apart.

He could only hope it would be the thing that
would save them both.

Chapter Fourteen

October 20, 2010. New York City.

Andy

There were a lot of things running through her
head as the plane made its final descent into John F. Kennedy
Airport. Not the least of which were all the other memories of
traveling to NYC in order to indulge her crazy, unpredictable and
tumultuous love affair with Giovanni Carnevale. She’d come a long
way from that Tennessee girl who arrived there nearly three years
before. She’d gone from being a low paid freelance travel writer
with a five piece wardrobe to a jet setting executive assistant for
one of the most powerful entertainment moguls in the
country.

How it had all fallen into place she couldn’t
even remember.

When had she stopped writing? And when had
entertainment, music and celebrities taken over her
life?

It had been a dream of hers for so long, ever
since she and Iris mooned over big name movie stars at the
neighborhood theater. Now Iris was a public relations powerhouse
with influence in New York City, and Andy helped run an
entertainment label on the opposite coast. It was a dream come true
for both, so why wasn’t she happy?

Unlike Iris, Andy’s dream had come with serious
dues. Graham lost his ability to walk and Vanni was up to his neck
in legal problems thanks to some poor personal choices. These were
the men she loved and felt the need to protect and to heal. Doing
any kind of work in what should have been her dream career came
second to take care of these two men… who by no small coincidence
hated the very sight of each other.

Which was why she had to lie her butt off to
Graham in order to get away from Los Angeles, coincidentally around
the same time Vanni was traveling to New York City for some
positive PR. As far as Graham was concerned, she was visiting her
grandmother in Nashville for her birthday.

He had been doing so well with his physical
therapy since she left the house that Andy hardly felt any guilt at
all for leaving him for the week. Maggie was turning out to be a
godsend. They seemed to get more done without Andy around than with
her under foot. Graham hardly put up a fight at all when she told
him of her plans, and she suspected that had everything to do with
the hard work they had put in for his next milestone: taking his
first independent step.

He only mentioned how much it would mean to him
if, when she got back, she could move back into the house. Things
would be different, he promised. This would be his gift to
her.

She hadn’t made any concrete decisions either
way. She actually liked staying in her hotel suite by herself. She
was able to get some writing done, fiction this time, while she
inadvertently cleaned out all the emotional clutter from her brain.
Writing was, as it has always been, cathartic. It was also
liberating to control at least one world somewhere, as well as all
the people in it.

So aside from the several hours she spent at
Graham’s house each day helping him with his business, her time was
mostly her own. There were some stolen lunches with Vanni to
prepare for this emotional meeting with his father, but she was
perfectly happy to keep their relationship well under wraps. This
time around it was her idea to keep things clandestine, especially
with how the paparazzi followed Vanni around in Los
Angeles.

She never wanted it getting back to Graham that
she was spending time with Vanni. She hadn’t moved out to choose
one over the other, but he’d never understand that.

Even the trip east had to be carefully
orchestrated. Vanni set out a few days before she did, and Andy
actually did make a pit stop in Nashville to visit her grandmother.
Two days before her actual birthday she bought a plane ticket on
her own money bound for New York, where she would meet up with
Vanni in a five star hotel across from Central Park.

They had considered staying in his brownstone,
which he kept for sentimental reasons. But the minute he got to NYC
he realized that the paparazzi stalked him just as tirelessly on
the East Coast as they did the West. Instead Iris set him up in the
hotel while she personally put together a televised interview with
his father for one of the weekly news magazines broadcast in the
city.

There was a car waiting for Andy when she
picked up her luggage. She adjusted her sunglasses and hat as she
slid in the back seat. She figured no one really knew or cared
about who she was by this point, but she figured it was silly to
take any unnecessary chances. If it got back to Graham that she had
spent her birthday in New York with Vanni, it could set him way
back in his recovery. Andy considered this pointless because she
hadn’t come to New York for any other reason than to provide Vanni
some friendly support.

The entire time they spent organizing the trip
there had been no mention of rekindling any romance. Instead of his
usual innuendo whenever he had it up his sleeve to seduce anyone,
he was a perfect gentleman in all topics of
conversation.

On one hand, Andy was relieved. Getting
romantically involved at this point was beyond foolish. It would
complicate everything. She knew they were both wise to avoid
allowing even their thoughts to go down that road. But deep down
Andy found herself curious at the sudden about-face. Was it truly a
mark of maturity on Vanni’s part?

Or was something more conventionally Vanni at
play? Andy knew that Holly had become a huge part of his everyday
life. She was there when he practiced and recorded with the band,
but she was also there right on the front page of any gossip
website. They were constantly being photographed together, which
Graham fully supported. If anyone could help polish his image after
a hooker scandal it was the sweet faced Holly with her ever present
smile.

Andy wanted to ask if a stronger relationship
had taken root between them or if it was really only for show, but
then decided she didn’t want to put him in the position to lie. It
really didn’t matter anyway. Andy wasn’t free to be with him and he
knew it.

Could she really ask him to wait for her when
there were no guarantees whatsoever she would ever be
free?