Groupie/Rock Star Bundle (54 page)

“That is different,” she stiffly responded.
“Aren’t you taking a risk from turning away from the songs that
made you a star? Won’t your groupies be disappointed?”

His eyebrow arched. Evilly he shot back, “I
don’t know. Are you?”

She swallowed hard. It always came back to
that. “Fine,” she relented before reluctantly accepting the CD from
Leo. Vanni was determined to make a statement with the song he
chose to pass along to Graham, which made her even angrier at him.
“I’ll be sure to let Graham know.”

“Pillow talk?” he wanted to know.

She glared at him. How dare he do this to her
in a business meeting? Was he really this far gone? She produced a
folder from the desk.

“I think you’ll find the new contract with
Julian is pretty straight forward,” she said as she sidestepped his
question, sliding the paperwork across the desk as she gave him a
pointed glare.

He grabbed it but didn’t even open the folder.
“I’m sure,” he sneered. “But you’ll forgive me if I don’t sign this
before I have it looked over by my attorney.”

Cool as ice she replied, “He already has a
copy.”

“Fine,” he snapped.

“Fine,” she repeated. She got up and walked
around the desk to bring this meeting from hell to a close. “Thank
you gentlemen for stopping by.”

Leo got up and Julian followed, but Vanni sat
right where he was. He glanced at the other two men. “I’ll see you
at the studio. There are a few things I need to discuss with Miss
Foster,” he concluded as he turned his angry stare back at
her.

Leo looked at her and then back at him. She was
the reason he was speeding down a runaway track? He didn’t get it.
And he didn’t like it. “Don’t get yourself worked up, man. We have
too much work to do.” He sent Andy a dismissive glance and stalked
from the room.

Julian took her hand again with another
friendly shake. “It was nice to meet you, Andy,” he said. “Give
Graham my best. I truly admire what he’s accomplished with the
label.”

She nodded and tried to smile but her heart was
thundering against her chest. She didn’t want to be alone with
Vanni, not after last time. “I will,” she said. “Thanks for coming
in.”

He shut the door after him and only then did
she turn to Vanni. He made no move to rise from his seat, but with
those lethal eyes he didn’t really have to. She felt powerless
under the weight of his stare so she walked back around the desk to
sit before her knees buckled entirely.

“What the fuck was this?” he demanded. “I come
here to talk to the president of my label and I now go through
you?”

She shrugged. “Apparently.”

“What makes you qualified to even be in that
chair?”

“Nothing at all,” she agreed. “I’m just a
representative of Graham’s. He’s the one who still calls the shots
and signs the contracts and handles your career.”

“So why isn’t he here?” Vanni wanted to
know.

“You’d have to ask him,” she answered. “Maybe
he just wants to punish me too.”

His eyes clouded. “You think that’s what I’m
doing?”

“Yes,” she answered honestly. “I think that’s
what you’ve been doing ever since you left
Philadelphia.”

“Someone thinks a little highly of herself,” he
sneered hatefully. “I’m pissed to be talking to some kind of
administrative assistant when I should be talking to the president
of a fucking company. You ran a fan club, that’s it. I have a right
to be angry.”

“Oh yes,” she agreed. “You’re entitled. But
that’s the problem, isn’t it, Vanni? You’re getting a little too
much out of being entitled.”

“I’m not the one acting like I own a goddamn
company,” he reminded. “So what’s the deal, Andy? He catered to my
career to steal my girl and now that is done he’s got better things
to do?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Yes. He has better things
to do. He has to learn how to walk again.”

He chuckled as he shook his head. It always
came back to Saint Graham and his selfless, noble
sacrifice.

“And for the record I was never ‘your girl.’
That was Lourdes. Then Kat. But never me. I was your shameful
little booty call you enjoyed on the sly, but never had the balls
enough to tell the world you loved.”

Rage surged through his body. He glanced at the
charm bracelet she still wore. “You were more my girl than anybody
and you know it,” he said in a low, dark voice. “I mean, we can
test it if you want. All it takes is one kiss. One touch. I’m under
your skin like a bad tattoo, lady. I have been since the first time
I took you in my arms to dance. You’re still mine no matter whose
bed you share.”

Her heart dropped. He couldn’t do this to her
again. She didn’t have the strength to take it. “I never said
otherwise,” she pointed out. “You’re the one who left me,
remember?”

Her admission raced over his senses like
wildfire. He had chased every demon out of every bottle because he
needed her to tell him she was still his.

But there was still a huge wall in their
way.

“And you’re the one who sent me away when I
came back,” he said. “So where does that leave us?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. She had
entertained the idea she could resume a relationship with him once
they returned to Los Angeles, but that was before Graham’s emotions
bottomed out. To make love to Vanni, which every cell in her body
cried out to do, would feel like the ultimate betrayal.

“Just tell me the truth,” he said softly. “Do
you still love me?”

Her eyes misted over with tears she didn’t know
she had left to shed. “Yes,” she said so faintly he could barely
hear it.

She toppled headlong into those sultry brown
eyes she had never been able to resist. She knew she was powerless
to anything he would say or do as he finally rose from the seat and
rounded the desk. He knew it too because he felt just as
spellbound. He had chased her ghost around in his head so much that
being near her filled his senses to complete overload. He pulled
her to him with one hand. His mouth descended on hers with all the
longing he had been so unable to satisfy. She responded in kind,
clutching to him with the same level of need.

He was her drug. He always had been. And until
that very moment neither of them realized that she was his as well.
He couldn’t get enough. He could never get enough. His tongue drove
between her parted lips as he took command once more of what he
knew was his. She didn’t – couldn’t – fight him. She just held on
for dear life so she wouldn’t melt completely to the
floor.

For just a moment neither of them thought of
anything or anyone else. They meshed together like they always had
done. His hands ran all over her familiar body as he clutched onto
her like a life raft.

“God, how I want you,” he whispered against her
lips. She groaned as her hands wound in his hair. They were words
she had longed to hear ever since he left her bereft in a
Philadelphia hotel room.

He lifted her up and planted her on the desk.
With one hand he pulled her top open and slid his fingers inside
her blouse to dance upon her cool skin. Her longing for him was so
exquisite she thought she would split right in two. She called his
name unconsciously, which drove him to toss everything from the
desk onto the floor and lay her down against the finished
wood.

His hand disappeared between them to release
the button on his jeans that had suddenly become very restrictive
from his need. “Tell me you love me,” he begged as he slipped
between her legs under her skirt.

“I love you,” she muttered in an incoherent
whisper.

“Tell me you don’t love him,” he persisted as
he reached for her underwear to rip the final barrier between them
away.

It was tantamount to a splash of cold water. It
always came back to Graham. He had to beat Graham. He had to win.
And here they were about to make love on top of Graham’s desk while
Graham lay helpless in a bed across town.

He fumbled to enter her, still lost in a fog of
chemical intoxication and lust. “Tell me,” he pleaded.

She tried to scoot away but his weight held her
fast. She used her hands to push him away as she tried to shove him
from between her thighs. “Vanni, no!”

He stumbled backward, confused and frustrated.
She covered herself up and wouldn’t look him in the eye.

“You do love him,” he finally said. “Don’t
you?” She didn’t answer. “Don’t you!”

Her tearful eyes met his. How could she explain
it? How could he ever understand? It was so complicated and he was
determined to make it even more so by pressuring her like this. She
did love Graham. Not in the same explosive way she loved Vanni, but
enough to change her whole world upside down to just be with him
and help him heal.

It was as though two men hung off a cliff and
she had to choose which one to save. The only difference was if she
let Vanni go he had a whole world to catch him.

She was Graham’s only real shot. She knew that
now.

Finally, softly, she said, “Yes.”

It was one small word but it exploded in the
room like a clap of thunder. The tear that ran down Vanni’s face
nearly brought her to her knees. She reached for him but he turned
away. He dressed quickly and quietly and staggered across the room
as mortally wounded as she had ever seen him.

He slammed the door behind him and staggered
down to the elevator. His mind was scrambled. His heart was
decimated. In the last two years he had repeatedly thrown Graham in
her face to test her, to hurt her, to punish her, because deep down
he had feared that Graham could give her the world she
deserved.

And he could not.

Now he knew that she had figured that out for
herself. As desperate as she was for him, as much as she longed for
his touch, her heart was now beyond his reach.

She was in love with another man.

He had never allowed that to happen before. He
had always chosen those who preferred to give their bodies away but
not their hearts. Then he met some normal girl from Tennessee,
whose fire, sass and determination had turned his head and made him
long for something more than just the party girls he routinely
courted. He had always wanted the romance and the sex but never the
love. As a result he ended up with a collection of hearts he never
wanted, hearts he could carelessly discard when things got too
complicated. It was a modern world and these were modern
relationships based on heat and need and nothing more.

Until Andy that had been enough – a perfect
relationship loophole.

Finally he found the one heart in the whole
world he wanted – needed – to hold in his hand, and it had been
denied him.

He knew it was karma coming to kick his
ass.

He spun out of the parking garage in the new
expensive sports car he had awarded himself during his trip to
Europe. He had visited the factory while in Italy and ordered it to
be shipped to his home, but this was the first time he had actually
let it out of the stables so it could run.

He didn’t even bother with a seatbelt as he
sped through the streets of downtown L.A. Within a handful of turns
he was prowling the streets of Hollywood. He passed the stripper
clubs and the lingerie shops in a town built for sex. There was
only one way he could fix his current problem… he needed to find
someone quick to get Andy out of his head.

One day he hoped it would serve to get her out
of his blood as well, but one need was way more pressing at that
moment.

He scoured the crowded boulevard until he saw
someone who was the complete opposite of Andy. She was skinny and
tall, with platinum hair and dangerously high heels. He sidled up
to the corner.

She turned when she heard the engine rev. With
a grin she knelt down to the window. “Nice car,” she
said.

“Wanna go for a ride?” he offered.

“Sure,” she said as she opened the door and
climbed in. He peeled away from the curb and headed
west.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“Somewhere private,” he answered with a knowing
wink.

“So what do you want?” she asked.

He reached for his wallet and pulled out a
handful of hundred dollar bills. “Whatever that will give me,” he
said.

She tucked them away, payment in advance.
“It’ll get you pretty much whatever you want. You’re the boss,
sugar.”

He liked the sound of that. He turned up the
radio and unfastened his jeans.

Behind the tinted windows of his new car she
teased and tantalized with her hands, then her mouth, as they drove
past the speed limit toward the Hollywood Hills. He gasped as she
took him in her mouth, and he grabbed a handful of that platinum
hair spilling into his lap. The speedometer crept steadily higher
as they squealed along the hairpin curves and narrow
roads.

She lifted up. “Maybe we better pull over,” she
suggested.

He pushed her head back down. “Don’t stop,” he
instructed. He needed the release so badly he couldn’t think of
anything other than her mouth on his skin. His brain felt like it
was under water from all the pills, the alcohol, and the pure
intoxication that was Andy’s mouth. He closed his eyes to imagine
her head in his lap around the time another car rounded the curve
and hit that beautiful brand new sports car and its unsuspecting
occupants head on.