Forever Rockers (23 page)

The alarm went off and Drake jerked, his arms automatically tightening around me. He lifted his head and pressed his lips to my cheek before reaching out to turn off the alarm. Seeing that my eyes were already wide open, he grimaced. “Did you sleep at all, Angel?”

“A little,” I assured him and turned over so that I was lying with my head on his chest. The sound of his steady heartbeat in my ear calmed some of my nerves and I buried my face against him. “I just want this day to be over, Dray.”

His arms tightened around me. “I know, Angel. I know.”

We lay there like that for several more minutes before I finally forced myself to get up. Drake followed, helping me to get the girls ready before taking them downstairs for breakfast so I could take a shower and dress. We were all ready by the time the doorbell rang.

Drake, dressed in a suit for the day, lifted Neveah into one arm and lifted the car seat in the other and then headed for the door as I opened it. Cole, dressed in a suit as well, stood on our doorstep, dark glasses hiding his brown eyes. He gave me a smile and pulled me into a tight hug. “You ready for this, Lana?”

I shrugged. “I guess I have to be.”

“Pop-Pop,” Neveah said when she spotted her grandfather, and the look on my father’s face changed. It never failed to melt me when I saw the way Cole was with his granddaughters. His bond with Neveah was more than I could have ever asked for. He’d been there when we’d brought her into the world. She was his favorite person in the world.

The smile on my father’s face right then could have melted the polar cap it was so bright. Drake handed her off to the older rocker and he pulled her close, kissing her face. “Hey there, pretty girl. Miss me?”

Neveah held on to his neck and buried her face in his chest, breathing him in. “Always, Pop-Pop.”

“Good, ‘cause I missed you.” He kissed the top of her head and then turned to look at the limo waiting for us at the end of the driveway. “Ready to take a ride?”

The ride to the office building in downtown L.A. took nearly an hour, but Neveah kept the tension down by telling her grandfather all about what she and her sister had been up to since they had last seen Cole, which had only been a few days.

After getting served with a civil lawsuit by Garon, Cole had been back in California within two days. He’d gotten me the best lawyer in the country and had fielded all the press to make sure my name wasn’t in the papers. The meeting we were headed to at that moment was unavoidable, however.

My lawyer, Ursula Feinstein, was meeting us at Garon’s lawyer’s office so that we could have our first sit-down. The first of many, I was sure. Cole was determined to make sure that this didn’t see a judge. I was determined not to pay a single penny to the vulture who was my brother and his hag of a mother.

Ursula had told me that legally, Garon didn’t have a leg to stand on, but that he would attempt to make us all so miserable that we’d end up paying any price he wanted to make him leave me alone. If I didn’t have my girls to worry about, I wouldn’t have cared what he did, but I couldn’t let them be dragged into what I knew would turn into a public battlefield, with the paps eating it up like candy. They didn’t deserve to have the sins of their mother—or rather the sins of
my
mother—falling on their heads.

Maybe I shouldn’t have brought the girls with us, but there had been no one I could call to watch them. Not without having to answer a million questions. We hadn’t told anyone in our family about what was going on with Garon, and I wanted to keep it as quiet as possible for as long as possible. Emmie had enough on her plate with not only work but stress over the stalker as well. Layla and Jesse were happier than I’d ever seen them now that things had calmed down on the ‘let’s have another baby’ fight they had been at a standstill on for so long about. Lucy had school so it wasn’t like I could call her and ask her to babysit for me, and I didn’t like the thought of someone I didn’t know watching my girls.

Drake took the car seat when we finally reached our destination and Cole lifted Neveah into his arms as we walked into the office of one of the most prestigious law firms in the country. The receptionist greeted us with a professional smile and moments later the two lawyers appeared. Ursula had said she would meet us there and it looked like she’d already been working her magic as she smiled almost coyly up at the man representing my brother.

“Lana Stevenson, meet Brenton Goldman. He and I were at Yale together a million years ago.”

I forced a smile for the man and shook his hand. “Mr. Goldman.” I glanced down at the diamond-encrusted watch Drake had given me for my last birthday. “We aren’t late, are we?”

“No, not at all.” Ursula glanced behind me at Cole and Drake, each with their arms full of baby or toddler. Her eyes flashed appreciatively over Cole and then even more so over Drake and I had to squash the need to scratch up the older woman’s pretty face. “Let’s go down to the conference room, shall we, Brent?”

The man nodded and turned to go back down the hall he’d just come from. “Can I get anyone something to drink? Coffee? Water?”

“No,” I told him.

“Coffee would be good. Black, no sugar,” Cole told him as we entered the huge conference room where a gigantic table took up most of the room. He pulled out a chair and sat Neveah on it before taking his own chair. “And some water for the pretty girl.”

“Yay. Thanks, Pop-Pop.” She gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek.

Drake sat the car seat down on one of the many other chairs and uncovered Arella’s sleeping face. Of course she was still sucking on the binky Neveah had passed down to her. If anything happened to that damn pacifier, I knew my life would become a nightmare where my precious little baby was concerned.

Brenton Goldman left with a nod and a promise to return with the drinks while Ursula took a seat beside me at the table. She turned to me and grasped my hand. “Garon and Claudia are already here,” she murmured in a quiet voice so Neveah wouldn’t hear her. “When Brent returns he’s going to have them both with him. Claudia is going to sit down without brothering to look at you. She will have that haughty, superior look on her still-beautiful face and pretend you aren’t even in the room.” She nodded her head toward where my girls were seated. “Bringing the kids might push a few buttons. Be prepared for her to run her mouth. From the few times I’ve seen her, she’s been rather dramatic.”

My anxiety climbed, but I tried not to let it show. Damn, I should have just called Linc. He would have come over and taken care of the girls without asking a single question.

With Arella safe and comfortable, Drake finally took the seat that separated me and Neveah. His big hand caught mine and gave it a reassuring squeeze. He leaned in close and pressed his lips to my ear. “I’m right here, Angel. No matter what, I’m right here.”

I wanted to crawl onto his lap and let him hide me away from the monsters that were coming. Instead I let his strength float from him to me through our joined hands and stiffened my spine as the conference room door opened again. I clenched my jaw as Brenton Goldman entered once more and was quickly followed by a man who looked nothing like me but carried half of the same DNA as me.

Garon was a mixture of his mother and our father. He had Cole’s eyes—just as I did—the same jaw line, the same stubborn tilt to his arrogant head. He was as tall as Cole, but leaner. He had the body of a runner, but no real muscle definition anywhere on his skinny body.

Something he and his mother had in common, I noticed, when Claudia Steel entered the room. No. No, she didn’t just enter the room. She took over the room as soon as her expensively heeled foot stepped inside. She had a presence about her that screamed for anyone within eyeshot to look at her. Claudia was a beautiful woman, still incredibly lovely, and it wasn’t all thanks to a well-paid plastic surgeon, although there was no way a woman her age could have had a face that looked that young without at least a little nip and tuck here and there.

Her blue eyes stayed on her son as she stepped completely into the room, her head held high as she forced us all to look right at her. I couldn’t not look at her, couldn’t keep from comparing this woman to my own mother and finding that they shared odd similarities. Lydia Daniels would have been just like this woman if she were still alive. The same haughty eyes, the same ‘you’re beneath me’ tilt of her lips as she more sneered than smiled at her son.

“Who’s that, Pop-Pop?”

I inwardly groaned as my curious toddler spoke, pulling every eye in the room to her as she sat beside her grandfather with a small bottle of water in her lap that Brenton Goldman had handed over along with Cole’s coffee.
Should have called Linc
, I thought not for the first time in as many minutes, when I saw my father give his granddaughter a smirk. “That’s the devil’s sister, pretty girl.”

“Oh.” While everyone else’s eyes were on Neveah, her blue-gray gaze was on Claudia Steel. “She’s pretty.”

If I hadn’t glanced at the older woman right then, I might have missed the flash of surprise cross her face. It came and went so quickly that I still wasn’t completely sure it had happened. Was she surprised that my child was so frank? That was just the way Neveah was. She didn’t know how to tell a lie…yet. Everyone around her always spoke the truth as much as possible, so she didn’t even know what a lie really was.

“Only on the outside, pretty girl,” Cole assured her as he took a sip of his coffee. “Only on the outside.”

Ursula stood. “Mrs. Steel.” She greeted the woman with her megawatt, professional smile. “Mr. Steel.” She shook Garon’s hand. “Thank you for joining us today.”

“I’d say it’s a pleasure…” Claudia said in her ultra sophisticated voice as she took a seat across the huge table from me. Her gaze went to Cole for a moment before landing on me. “…But obviously it isn’t.”

Drake’s hold on my hand tightened, telling me that while I might not have been insulted by this woman, he definitely was on my behalf. I squeezed his hand back, letting him know that I was fine. It was time to stop acting like a scared little girl—even if that was how this bitch made me feel—and start acting like the woman I was. “Yes,” I told her, my tone bored. “As you can see, it’s no picnic for us to be here either. So why don’t we cut the pleasantries. They only turn my stomach.”

Garon sat back in his chair and smirked at me. Gods, how I wanted to wipe that fucking smirk off his face. “It’s good to see that you have sense enough to play this right, Lana. I’m sure we can be adults about this and reach an understanding without involving a judge.”

I lifted a brow at the man who was my brother. “Yes. I’m sure we can.” I gave him a smile that was just as fake as his mother’s forehead. “You see, I think you must assume I’m a complete idiot, Garon. I know good and well that there isn’t a judge alive who will take your case seriously. I’m only here because I’d rather not have my girls’ lives disrupted more than needed. Cole agrees with me on that. Right, Dad?”

The temperature in the room dropped a good ten degrees when I called Cole “Dad’. Garon stiffened and Claudia’s face froze with a look that was in no way pretty. “You let her call you ‘Dad’?” Claudia asked with a sneer.

“I’m her father, so of course I let her call me ‘Dad’.” Cole took another swallow of his coffee. “The girl is my family. The only family I seem to have these days.” He gave Garon a cold look. “And she’s right. You don’t have a leg to stand on. I know that you’re both broke as a joke. Just as I know that your production company is about to file bankruptcy if it doesn’t get a quick infusion of cash.”

The room grew even colder and I was sure that Claudia’s face was so hard it might never unfreeze. “Where would you get such an idea?”

“I still have friends in the movie business,” he told her calmly before turning his cold gaze back to his son. “If you’d approached me yourself, I would have gladly backed you, boy. Now you pull this shit, trying to drag Lana through the mud, and expect me to play fair?” He shook his head. “You’re out of luck, kid. Not only will you not get a penny from Lana, but there isn’t a prayer in hell that could get me to loan you fifty bucks, let alone the millions you need.”

Garon crossed his arms over his lean chest. “Why are we here today if you aren’t willing to cooperate?” he demanded, not nearly the block of ice as his mother so obviously was. It was one more thing he took after our father. His temper was a hot one. “Don’t think that I won’t announce to the world who you really are, Lana. What your mother was.” He practically spat my name as he turned those fiery brown eyes on me.

Drake sat a little straighter in his chair. “Say her name like that again, and I’ll show you exactly why
I’m
here.”

“Gentlemen,” Ursula tried to intervene. “We’re here to discuss everything in a civil manner. “I’m sure we can come to some kind of reasonable understanding.”

“Cole doesn’t understand the meaning of civil,” Claudia said with disdain. “He’s nothing more than a heathen.” She snorted. “Good to see you haven’t changed.”

Cole tipped his cup at her with a smartass grin on his face. “And you, Claudia. Still coldly beautiful. How I’ve missed the frostbite that accompanies you into every room, love.”

“Pop-Pop, can I have an ice cream?”

“Of course you can, pretty girl.” Cole tapped a finger on the tip of Neveah’s nose, making her giggle.

“After dinner,” I was quick to compromise before my daughter started asking for one right then.

“Okay, Momma.” She reached out and took hold of Cole’s hand. “Will you eat dinner with us, Pop-Pop?”

“Anything you want, pretty girl.” He lifted her from her chair and tucked her in his arms.

Watching the two, Garon and Claudia seemed at a loss. Garon’s jaw clenched and I could have sworn there was jealousy in his honey-brown eyes. I nearly laughed at the sight. Really? This grown man was jealous of my little daughter and the relationship she had with her ‘pop-pop’? Seriously, this fucker needed to grow up.

“Perhaps we could get down to the business at hand rather than trading insults?” Brenton Goldman suggested, sounding only slightly bored as he watched our exchange. “I am being paid by the hour, though, so if you would like to keep throwing daggers at each other, I’m okay with that.”