Starstruck (Fusion #1) (10 page)

Indi

Indi entered the small, but bustling airport with only a
little time to spare to check in before the three-hour flight to Gatwick
Airport. She had been on tenterhooks that Xander might appear and try to make
her talk to him.  Accepting that she would probably have to answer one of
his calls or texts eventually, she was not ready for it today.

After handing over her luggage at the check-in desk, Indi made
her way to the large departure hall. Scanning the sea of people to see if Xander
might be there, she felt a lessening of her anxiety when she failed to spot
him.  Sitting down next to a pillar to obscure any view of her from the
main entrance, Indi pulled out her tablet computer from her oversized handbag
and tried to distract herself by answering some emails until boarding was
announced.

Indi opened an email from her other sister, Sadie.  She
was close enough to her, but it was not the same camaraderie as she shared with
Angel. 

Hi Indi,

Angel said she was picking you up today. So much has
happened while you have been gone. I’ll see you later as I’m bringing someone
for you all to meet. His name is Nathan and h
H
e’s
drop-dead gorgeous. Although I hear you’ve landed a man of your own while you
were away, he probably isn’t as wonderful as my Nathan!

Sadie x

Indi rolled her eyes at the last comment. Presumptuous, as
always, that she had something better than anyone else. Sadie had always been
viewed as the perfect one, and she had let the pedestal treatment rub off on
her, to the extent that all the things she did or had became all about being
better than her sisters.

Indi did not know what made her look up at the entrance as
she sifted through the remaining list of unread emails, but as she did so her
worst fear was realised: Xander was standing no more than thirty feet away. 
Despite his impeccable clothing, he looked crumpled and tired, with dark
creases starting to form under his eyes as he stood talking casually to an
airline rep.

Not wanting to draw any attention, Indi got up quietly from
the seating area while Xander was still facing the rep and moved as far behind
the pillar as she could manage, allowing herself a viewpoint of him without him
being able to catch sight of her. All the while her heart was beating so fast
and loud that she was sure all the people around her could hear it. 

She just prayed Xander was not on the same flight as her, as
there would be no hiding her presence from him then.  Indi tried to reason
with herself that she was sure the uniform of the check-in rep of her flight
was in a very different colour scheme to the one in front of her.

To her relief, Indi only had to linger by the pillar for a
few more moments before Xander walked off with the uniformed female, who seemed
too overly friendly for her liking.  Indi tutted to herself as she watched
the rep place a hand on Xander’s suited arm as she guided him towards another
part of the airport. 
Probably going to some exclusive VIP lounge
!
 
In spite of the fact that she was hiding from Xander, she still felt a surge of
raging jealousy that the woman had dared to touch him.

It wasn’t too much longer before the passengers on her flight
were called to the boarding gate.  As she took her seat on the planet, Indi
felt an overwhelming wave of relief wash over her that she was heading home,
fresh in the knowledge that she could finally relax, knowing that Xander would
not be popping up unexpectedly wherever she happened to be.

The flight and task of retrieving her luggage went quickly.
Angel was already waiting in the arrivals area when Indi walked through from Customs.  Her
sister rushed forward through the swell of the crowd to embrace her tightly. 
To any passersby, they looked almost identical: same height and weight with
long, swirling locks of dark blonde curls.

“I’ve missed you so,” Angel exclaimed.

Now that Indi was back in England, feeling safe in the
company of her sister, all the turmoil of her bottled-up emotions burst the dam
that she had put in place since seeing Xander’s pregnant wife. Tears began to fall
as she buried her face against Angel’s shoulder.

“Oh my goodness, what is wrong?”

“Everything,” Indi wailed dejectedly through her quiet sobs.

Angel sighed, unsure of what could have distressed the
normally composed Indi. “Come on – let me get you into the car, so you can tell
me all about it.”

Indi nodded slightly as she raised her fingers to her cheeks
to brush away the tear streaks. Grabbing one of her sister’s hands in hers and
taking her case with the other, Angel guided her out of the terminal building and
into the car park.  With the luggage in the boot, Angel slid behind the
wheel of her car and turned to Indi with a worried expression on her face.

“So, do you want to tell me what had you so distressed?”

Indi solemnly began to detail how she had met Xander,
realised who he was, and let her admiration override her better judgment by
agreeing to a no-strings fling.

Angel shook her head in disbelief that Indi had gotten
involved with such a well-known womaniser. “I don’t understand how you could
put yourself in that position. You must have known you were going to get hurt
when it came to an end.”

“I know it sounds crazy, but it was as if we were in our own
little bubble; we became a couple in every way. He took me to Florence and
horse-riding up Mount Etna. I even went to a vineyard, which he was talking to
the owner about purchasing.  He immersed me in his life, so it was easy to
get swept up in every single moment.”

Despite her incredulity at Indi’s out-of-character
behaviour, Angel couldn’t help but soften as her gaze rested on her sister’s
forlorn expression. “You seemed blissfully happy when we spoke while you were
in Florence. What changed?”

“This woman arrived at his villa the night we came back from
Florence.  He remained adamant that she was just someone who worked for
his father, but the next day I saw her in his neighbouring villa and she had
the most prominent pregnancy bump. I overheard her saying it was his.”

“You’re joking?! What a loser to hide something like that
from you. As much as it hurts at the moment, at least you’re found out before
you got involved even deeper.”

Indi knew Angel was talking sense, but it did not make it
any easier to swallow.  How naïve she had been to fall for Xander’s charm,
simply because he was her idol so soon after all the shit she’d been through.
She was going to have to steer clear of getting close to any man until she
could learn to trust her instincts again.

Xander

“I hope to see you again
very
soon, Mr Keats.” The
first-class flight attendant offered him a knowing smile and a suggestive tone
to her words as he was about to exit the plane. 

Exhausted from lack of sleep, Xander frowned in irritation.
Turning to the woman, ready to tear a strip off her for being so over-familiar,
he felt a tug of mortification as realisation hit him, and he sighed. He had
been so preoccupied with thoughts of how quickly he could clear up his family
problems, so that he could concentrate on repairing his damaged relationship
with Indi, that he had not recognised the flight attendant.

The woman was someone he had hooked up with a couple of
times when he had flown back and forth between London and Sicily. Normally, it wouldn’t
have bothered him to come across a previous conquest, but so soon after Indi’s
rejection, he couldn’t help feeling distaste for the person he had been before meeting
her.

“I have a feeling that won’t be happening,” he responded
tightly.

Concealing his embarrassment, he continued out of the exit
door and down the airstairs to the tarmac. Xander made a mental note to request
the flight attendant be transferred to another route, so that he did not have
to endure being reminded of his promiscuous past every time he flew in future. He
spent thousands on flights each year with the airline when it was not feasible
to use his private jet. As he had attended various private functions with their
management, he knew it would be easy to pull strings.

At the bottom of the stairs, Xander was greeted by another
member of staff who fast-tracked him through arrivals and onwards to Customs
using the airport’s passenger buggy service he had requested. As he was being shuttled
through the airport, he slipped his smartphone out of his pocket and switched
it back on, knowing he would probably have an endless stream of voicemails and
texts awaiting him. He would read them during the car journey home. 

Slipping his phone back in his pocket, Xander glanced
casually at the other departing passengers whom he was whizzing past when his
gaze fell upon one moving person in particular.  Doing a double-take, his heart
began to race as he shouted for the driver to stop; the pitch of his voice
increasing as the man’s reflexes failed to react to his request fast enough.

“Is something wrong?” the driver asked, giving him a
bewildered stare.

“Sorry, I think I just saw someone I need to speak with.
Could you wait here for two minutes?” Xander blathered ten-to-the-dozen as he
jumped off the passenger buggy. His head moved wildly from side to side as he
did a 360-degree spin in an attempt to catch sight of the familiar figure amongst
the throng of people surrounding him.

He strode purposefully forward as he finally caught sight of
her after doing several spins. She was embracing another woman who appeared to
look very similar to her in height and outer appearance.
Angel
,
he wondered, recalling that
Indi had mentioned she would be collecting her from the airport. 

Just as his mouth started to form her name with his tongue,
his phone started to ring. Xander tried to ignore it, but the ringtone
continued to escalate in volume, causing a few of the surrounding group of
people to stare in his direction until he pulled it from his pocket and pressed
it to his ear, feeling cross.

“Keats,” he spoke tersely as he watched the two women walk
further away from him, towards the lifts leading to the airport car park.

“He’s dead!” cried a sobbing female voice over the speaker.

“Freya?” Hearing his sister in such distress distracted Xander
from following the women any further. “What are you talking about? Who is
dead?”

“Daddy.”

“Freya, are you high?” Xander questioned, feeling his
patience coming close to snapping. He did not have time for one of her hallucinations
when he needed to catch up with Indi before she left the airport.

“No, of course not,” Freya replied. “We were talking in his
office this morning and he seemed to become distressed when he opened a package
he received yesterday. He started struggling for breath and holding his chest,
and then he just collapsed on the floor unconscious.  The paramedics came and
took him to hospital, but t-they couldn’t revive h-him.”

Xander could only presume that the package to which she referred
was the envelope of compromising pictures he had specifically asked to be
delivered. Although he had expected his father to have a bad reaction to being
discovered, not in his wildest dreams did he think it would cause him a heart
attack.

“Where exactly are you now?” Xander asked as Freya’s words
captured his full attention this time.

“Warwick Hospital.”

“Is anyone else with you?”

“Noah is on his way. I can’t get hold of Milo or Livvie.”

“Okay, I will be there as soon as I can. You keep trying
Milo and I will try Livvie.”

“Please hurry,” Freya’s fragile voice begged.

Ending the call and cursing under his breath, Xander
sprinted back to the waiting passenger buggy and encouraged the driver to get
him to his waiting car as soon as humanly possible. His brain was on fire as he
stared at his mobile phone. Anxious that he had missed an opportunity to talk
to Indi, but also feeling numb that the bane of his existence since childhood
was now dead, it took Xander several attempts to compose himself before he
started dialling.  He knew he should feel some kind of sadness, but it was the
furthest emotion from his mind. All he felt was regret that he had to deal with
this rather than his mess-up with Indi.

As the well-known figurehead of a massive corporation of
international companies, John Keats’ unexpected death would attract the
attention of a lot of news channels from all over the world.   He had been a
man that not many liked, but his many lucrative commercial deals had earned him
a begrudging amount of respect from other businessman in his circle.

Xander expected speculation to turn on the family
immediately regarding who would step up to run the corporation. As the oldest
of John Keats’ five children, the expectation would fall on him to take up the
position of chairman of the governing board of trustees of the family’s holding
company in the first instance, at least temporarily, while a long-term solution
was found.

Before Xander rebelled and started up Fusion at twenty-one,
his father had made him learn everything about running a company from the
ground up.  Despite dropping out of university to start the band, he had still
managed to complete his business degree while on his first tour. 

Despite the plan already in place to convince the rest of
the board to nominate Livvie once John Keats resigned, now that he was dead, plus
the suddenness of it all, Xander was not so sure the other members would
readily agree. Taking over after their father’s resignation, as opposed to his
death, was a whole different perspective. The man’s overpowering presence when
he was alive, even from a distance, would have put many people off putting
their names forward, but now he was gone, Xander had an inkling that someone
would push to take over. Not that he wanted the job himself, but he did not want
his sister to lose her opportunity.

Livvie lived and breathed the company, but she sometimes
lacked the self-belief to make a stand in order to be heard. First with their
father, and now he feared that someone else would shout louder than her and get
the necessary votes. If he could get hold of Livvie now, they could decide
their next step.

The rest of the journey from Gatwick to Warwick became a
blur of passing trees and cars as Xander’s chauffeur-driven car whizzed him up
the motorway to the hospital. Meanwhile, he spoke on the phone to various
relatives to relay the bad news before his publicist sent a press release to
the wider public.

Finally, as the car pulled into the hospital grounds,
Livvie’s name popped up on his phone screen.  “At last, have you heard the
news?” he asked calmly. He did not expect any of his siblings to be overly
distressed by their father’s demise, except perhaps Freya.  Their father’s
dismissive and manipulative attitude towards each of them had seen to that.

“Yes, I was with David when Freya called him. I think she
feels enough devastation for all of us. It’s mind-blowing, but I can’t muster
even the smallest morsel of sorrow. I know I should feel guilty for feeling
nothing, but I don’t.”

“No point regretting what you can’t change.  He probably
wouldn’t have given us a second thought if something similar happened to one of
us. Ironically, the only person he would have missed is Freya and look at the effect
that kind of emotional pressure had on her.  His love was toxic, so be glad he
didn’t bestowed it on you.”

“So are you heading to the hospital now?” Livvie asked.

“Yes, I thought it best to show willing and I know Freya
needs all the support she can get. I feel this is going to send her over the
edge again.”

Freya was the youngest of the Keats’ children and the most
fragile. She had been in and out of rehab numerous times since the traumatic event
of her past.

“I thought she was doing well this time?” Livvie remarked.

“She was, but seeing him die in front of her like that is
going to really shake her mind up. You know how she blames herself for events
that are out of her control.”

Livvie sighed. “Poor kid, if only she knew her father was
the reason for her being kidnapped in the first place.”

“On the drive up here I was thinking that the earlier we
start the wheels in motion for a new chairman, the better. Perfect timing to
start revealing all the things we uncovered about daddy dearest’s dodgy
dealings and get you in prime position for the vote,” said Xander. “I think if
you were the one to call in the auditors, to make sure there is nothing
untoward still hidden in the financial transactions,  it will give you a good
boost as a person who can be trusted – make sure the company starts afresh with
a more ethical business approach.”

“Are you sure it isn’t too soon to be thinking about such
things. I don’t want to appear heartless.”

“Livvie,
carpe diem
– seize the
day before someone else does, because they will very soon.”

“Do you really think Milo will want to give up his place in
the band and stand against me?” asked Livvie, voicing the name Xander had just
been thinking of.

“While Dad was still alive and simply going to resign, I
would have said no, but now I think it is only a matter of time before Milo throws
his hat into the ring.  Although he hasn’t said anything to me face to face, I
have heard rumours from Noah that he wants to be able to make his own mark on something.”

“Let him bring it on then!” Livvie spoke vehemently for the
first time. Out of the siblings, she and Milo had always managed to antagonise
each other the most while growing up.

“That’s more like it. You are going to have to become more
cut-throat if you really want this position. Even without the Milo complication
there are going to be other CEOs constantly trying to undermine your reputation
when securing new business.”

“I know and I will. Anyway, will you be coming to stay at
the house, at least until after the funeral?”

Normally, Xander lived in a penthouse overlooking the River
Thames in Chelsea whenever he was in the country, wanting to avoid the family
home at all costs, but now he had no excuse to stay away.

“Yes, I think I may be in Warwickshire for the foreseeable
future,” he announced wearily. 

Xander was conscious of how anguished Freya had sounded on
the phone and he could only imagine how the suddenness of their father’s death
was going to dent her recovery from a long history of drug addiction.  His
sister’s health was going to have to be his first priority for a while, putting
any idea of initiating contact with Indi on hold indefinitely.