Resurrection_a ROCK SOLID romance

by Karina Bliss

  An image of Moss glancing at his cell flashed through Lily’s mind. It seemed safer to say nothing.

  Dimity was already on her phone. “It’s going to message… Moss, where the hell are you? This is important.”

  Seth pulled out his cell. “Let me try.” He switched it on and paused. “He already sent me a text.” He read it aloud. You and Jared will be better at saying all the right things.

  Dimity’s blue eyes narrowed. “That’s a bullshit excuse.” Pulling a face, she looked at Lily. “I’m so sorry, but I have to go placate the music journalist.”

  Seth laid a hand on his fiancée’s shoulder. “Stay and have one drink at least—I’ve got this.”

  Dimity hesitated, some silent communication passed between them, and she nodded.

  Wow, the control freak delegating? This man was seriously good for her.

  “Lily, we’ll catch up another time.” Seth bent to kiss her goodbye. “You can meet our fur baby.”

  “I feel like I already know Madeleine through the puppy pictures Dimity posted on Instagram. She’s getting quite maternal.”

  Dimity shuddered. Her baby phobia was funny and real.

  “I caught her holding Rocco’s hand at Christmas,” Seth confided. Rocco was Jared and Kayla’s nearly two-year-old.

  “He grabbed me,” Dimity protested. “That toddler’s got a grip like a wrestler.”

  Lily exchanged smirks with Seth.

  “Don’t do that,” Dimity warned. “I am not cute.”

  “Punish me later, Honey B.” With a wink, Seth left for the interview.

  As Dimity paid for two flutes of champagne, Lily said curiously, “Moss is giving you a hard time?”

  “Heard that saying, ‘You can bring a horse to water but you can’t make the stubbornly independent ass drink’?”

  She tried not to laugh and failed.

  “Shut up.” Dimity’s lips twitched as she handed Lily a glass. “In me that quality is charming.” Her amusement fading, she added gloomily, “I even tried empathy tonight. It didn’t work. Not one of my talents.”

  “It’s not surprising he has an issue with authority,” Lily reminded her, “given his background.”

  “Well, he needs to brush the chip off his shoulder and start seeing the benefits of teamwork. Anyway, enough on wrangling rock stars, tell me about this new course you’re doing.”

  “It’s an online degree program in Early Childhood Education.” Lily couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice.

  “You’ve achieved so much in a year.” Dimity beamed like a proud mama. “Especially considering you’ve been nannying fulltime.”

  “It’s amazing how much energy you free up when you don’t have to inspire men to take care of you.” To say she was ambivalent about her former self was an understatement. She added shyly, “I’m actually quite good at studying…who knew?”

  “I did,” Dimity said. “I only have smart friends.”

  “Thank you for pushing me.”

  “Much as I’d love to take all the credit, it was probably the platinum hair dye that was impairing your learning.”

  “Still can’t take a compliment, can you, skinny bitch?” Lily said fondly, as they tapped champagne flutes.

  “No, I can’t, Suckerlips. Wait…” Dimity peered closer. “Did you stop getting collagen shots?”

  This woman had eyes like a hawk. “Yes, and put on a stone. I no longer live on salads or spend more than ten minutes applying makeup and I feel a million bucks. No one makes assumptions about me based on my looks anymore…except that I’m a nerd maybe,” she added hopefully.

  “Is that what that awful dress is about?” Dimity shook her head. “We nerds can still wear makeup and be beautiful, FYI.”

  She ignored that. “Eventually I’ll have my own childcare center and the experience to handle your type A kids.” Saying it aloud made her giddy. Little Irene Lily Stuart, too scared to put up her hand in class for extra help, working in education.

  Dimity nearly choked on her champagne. “Seth and I are nowhere near ready to have that conversation yet.”

  “Of course not,” Lily soothed. “You have to conquer the rock world first.” She suspected her friend was desperate to overcome her fear of babies, because their complete helplessness unnerved her. And Dimity hated being unnerved. Diplomatically, she changed the subject. “What’s the latest on the wedding?”

  “We’re working with immigration.” She and Seth had hoped to marry quickly, but with Rage disbanded, the New Zealander’s US work visa needed careful handling. “Listen, I have something to tell you and I don’t want you to freak out.”

  “Okaaay.” If Dimity was afraid to tell her something it had to be bad.

  “I got an email from Travis Calvert this morning, asking if I knew how to contact you.”

  Make that very bad. Dating Rage’s original guitarist, to punish Zander for breaking up with her, had been the worst rebound decision she’d ever made. “What did you reply?” she asked carefully.

  “I told him not to hold his breath.”

  Lily swirled the champagne in her glass until it made a whirlpool. “That’s a shame. I’d love him to hold his breath.”

  Dimity nodded approval. “I knew I could bring out the bitch in you if we became friends.”

  People generally described Lily as sweet and nurturing. She was still that person—mostly—but she’d toughened up with brutal self-honesty. Which was why she was uncomfortable in this place. She didn’t want to remember that once she’d been Shiny Blonde, but without the smarts to stop herself getting hurt.

  Dimity’s cell beeped a text. “Damn. The journalist wants to schedule a photo shoot. Why don’t you come with me? I can introduce you to some cool people.”

  For a moment she misheard ‘cool’ as ‘cruel.’ Wow, this place really was throwing up bad memories.

  She’d always felt a phony among the cool kids, trying too hard, caring too much. Pretending to be someone she wasn’t. Equating attention with affection.

  “Thanks, but the kids will be up at five-thirty. And this…” Lily’s gesture encompassed her surroundings. “This isn’t my world anymore.”

  Chapter Five

  “Stormy…it’s Travis.”

  Two weeks later, Lily dropped the Mickey Mouse backpack she was filling with toddler supplies and stabbed at the ‘end call’ button like a recovering arachnophobe squashing a spider.

  Seconds later her cell beeped a text. We need to talk.

  Unfortunately, cockroaches were harder to kill. No interest. Zilch. How did you get this number?

  Dimity passed it on.

  She chewed the inside of her cheek, her unseeing gaze on Henry, aged three, who was crawling commando-style under and between the hotel beds instead of settling to his morning nap. If Dimity had surrendered her number, this wasn’t just important. It was dread-inducing important. Arming herself with anger, she hit redial.

  Travis picked up on the first ring.

  She didn’t bother with a preamble. “Just tell me it’s not an STD.” They’d used condoms, but she’d been so wasted in the week they’d hooked up, maybe her recent medical had missed something.

  He huffed out a laugh. “That’s harsh.”

  Even his voice made her skin crawl. “No, harsh was leaving me stranded in Vegas.” This man represented the rock bottom of her old life. She moved to the window, looked down on the happiest place on earth, and lowered her voice. “What do you want?”

  “Remember that sex tape we made?”

  Her relief was as enormous as her contempt. “You’ve confused me with another hook-up.”

  “In Vegas, we got high and we made a sex tape,” he persisted.

  Unconsciously, she wrapped her fist in the hem of her purple T-shirt. “I would never have agreed to that.”

  Through the gauzy curtain, she looked down toward the hotel pool where her employers were entertaining their nine-month-old and four-year-old. Lily had been catching up o
n kids’ chores while she waited for Henry to crash. Up at five a.m., he was normally out cold by now.

  “Babe, it was your idea.” He was getting impatient now. “We were both pissed after arguing with Zander and we did more drinking, more pills. You said it would be fun to make a sex tape and send it to him. It starts with us both mooning the camera and yelling, ‘This is for you, asshole.’”

  All she could dredge from her memory was Travis’s anger the next morning, when he’d accused her of still being in love with her ex. It was the truth. Hungover and sick, she’d been too dehydrated to cry when he’d stormed out of their hotel room. It hurt remembering how many poor decisions she’d been making then.

  “I kept it,” he said, when she didn’t respond. “You never followed up so I figured you were cool with it.”

  Visual evidence of how low she’d sunk after Zander dumped her? “Not cool,” she managed. “Not cool at all. Destroy it.” She struggled to keep the panic out of her tone. Stormy was a skin she’d shed. “Now, while I’m on the phone.”

  “I can’t. My cell was stolen last week and—”

  “You stored a copy on your phone?” She groped behind her for the bed and sat down.

  Henry stuck his head out from under the bed base and gave her a cheeky grin before disappearing again.

  “It gets worse,” Travis said grimly. “Today it was uploaded to the Internet.”

  The blow was so annihilating that she put a hand over her heart to check it was beating. When she was seven, she’d stayed overnight at a school friend’s farm—this was before people stopped their kids playing with Dee Dee Hagen’s daughter—and witnessed the casual slaughter of half a dozen chickens. Mesmerized, horror-stricken, she’d watched their headless bodies flap and convulse around the yard and asked her friend’s dad, “How come they don’t know they’re dead yet?”

  “I’m trying to get an injunction to have it taken down, but you know how these things play.”

  She did. When she and Zander broke up, the press had been vultures, picking over every aspect of their relationship, following her into markets and the gym, chasing heartbreak shots. This would grow and grow until there was no oxygen left in the air.

  Henry was trying to stuff his teddy bear into the backpack she’d dropped. Teddy’s bright button eyes peered up between his furry legs. Oh God, people are going to watch the most shameful episode of my life. Removing her glasses, she lay down on the bed and pressed her face into the pillow, her new life folding like a house of cards.

  Travis was still talking. “It’s likely to go viral when the press get hold of it. I thought you should know.” He paused expectantly. “Stormy…you there?”

  She turned her face free of the pillow. “I think I would have preferred the STD.”

  After the call ended she couldn’t seem to get up. Henry pottered around happily, bringing her gifts that he laid by her face…a piece of giant red Lego, his shoe, his sister’s pacifier. When he tired of the game he crawled onto the mattress with her and cuddled close, clearly thinking they were going to nap together. Blindly, she rested her face on his silky curls, listening to him suck his thumb until he fell asleep.

  It isn’t fair. The thought chased its tail around her head. Not when she’d worked so hard to reclaim her self-respect. Not when she’d finally found her meaningful life.

  You dated Travis to hurt Zander. Maybe this is karma? No, that was victim thinking and she didn’t do that anymore. Her days of being a passivist were over. No one deserved the kind of public humiliation coming her way.

  Henry murmured in his sleep, reminding her that she wasn’t the only one affected by this. Falling apart was a luxury she couldn’t afford. The press would be trying to track her down the moment they discovered the tape.

  Rolling off the mattress, she found her glasses, buried under the pillow and jammed them on. I have to protect this family. With shaking hands she checked her schedule for the coming weeks, then took a deep breath and made her first call.

  * * *

  “We’ll weather this,” Lucinda—Lady Spencer-Fleming—said ninety minutes later when Lily met them in the hotel foyer with Henry to go to lunch. The thirty-five-year-old tightened her hold on the active baby on her lap. “We Brits are good at weathering weather. Anyway, we’re returning to England the day after tomorrow.”

  “British journalists are worse than Americans,” Lily reminded her.

  The gutter press had run stories when she’d started working for the Spencer-Flemings a year earlier, calling her the au PAIR instead of the nanny. They did so love their clever word play.

  Are Lord and Lady Spencer-Fleming our most eccentric peers? They’ve employed Stormy Hagen, best known for modeling saucy calendars and dating rock ‘royal’ Zander Freedman, to look after their children.

  They’d illustrated it with a five-year-old topless shot with two Union Jacks artfully hiding her nipples. Oh yeah, they’d had fun. She resisted the urge to press her fingers to her temple. And that would be nothing to this. Travis had been lead guitarist in Rage for close to two decades before the band imploded and Zander went on to reinvent it. The two men hated each other.

  Zander was in the headlines again thanks to his biographer fiancée’s tour memoir, so his ex-girlfriend bumping uglies with his bitterest rival wouldn’t sink unnoticed into the swamp.

  Lucinda didn’t look convinced.

  “The paparazzi will follow me every time I leave the house,” Lily explained. “We’re talking parks, markets, nursery school. If you keep me on, your morals and your fitness as parents will come under the microscope. They’ll approach your neighbors for their opinions, your friends, your newsagent. They’ll take photos of your kids.” Lucinda was shaking her head, so Lily turned to James. Like her, he was a pragmatist.

  “It’s not bloody fair,” he said.

  Over by reception a stocky guy started fiddling with a camera and Lily tensed, but an elderly woman joined him and they carried on to the elevators.

  She returned her attention to her employers. “I need to leave before the story breaks and the press track me here. The good news”… Oh, yes, let’s accentuate the positive…”is that there’s a reputable agency who can send a nanny to cover the remainder of your stay.”

  She handed Lucinda a piece of paper with the number. “This doesn’t have to ruin Disneyland for the kids. I feel terrible for the short notice but you don’t want to be connected with me. Luckily few people know what I look like now, or that I’m using my father’s surname, so you can tell everyone that I stopped working for you before Christmas. That will create a buffer for you.”

  She glanced over to the atrium fountain, where their two older children were dropping a coin in the water and making a wish. Please let this be a bad dream I can wake up from.

  “And delete all recent photos of me with the kids.”

  James nodded. He owned a tech company, so if anyone could cover her digital tracks he could. “What about money? We can—”

  “Thanks, but I have money.” She didn’t mention how little. The surgery had taken most of her savings. “I’m so sorry for bringing trouble to your door. I’ll also talk to a British agency about finding you a permanent replacement.”

  “Don’t be silly,” James said stoutly. “You’ve become part of our family. We want you back when this settles down.”

  “Thank you.” They’d probably change their mind if they watched the tape. But she didn’t have time to grieve. She had to leave before the press connected blonde, buxom Stormy with brunette, bespectacled Lily. “I need to pack.”

  Lucinda blinked away tears. “Do you have a place to stay?”

  Keep it together, Lily told herself. Just a little longer. “A friend is picking me up.” Travis had to divulge the truth to Dimity to get Lily’s number and she’d immediately phoned with an offer of help.

  I thought the days of being the dumb broad who needed rescuing were behind me.

  With a monumental effort, she conce
ntrated on the task at hand. “I’ve told Bree,”—the four year old—“that I’m visiting my mom and to phone me whenever she wants.” At least being on holiday with her parents would ease the transition. The other children were too small to miss her for long. The loss is all mine. “Obviously, that goes for you too.” Excusing herself, she returned to her room to pack then ticked off her most unpleasant task by calling her mother.

  “So I guess this means the press are gonna come knocking on my door again,” Dee Dee said with such relish that Lily felt sick. Her mother’s favorite show was Keeping Up with the Kardashians and her own life had been a white trash version of it, with roughneck boyfriends, screaming matches, and repo crises. She’d strutted around like queen of the coop when Lily had dated Zander. “The neighbors can take that and shove it up their disapproving asses.” She’d then advised Lily to ditch contraception. “Once you’ve had a kid with him, you’ll never have to work again.”

  All evidence to the contrary in her own case. Of her three daughters, only one had a father who’d accepted any financial responsibility and he’d been smart enough to pay expenses directly until he’d won custody. For the first time Lily was glad she didn’t share a surname with her sisters; they wouldn’t suffer repercussions from this. Not that they were close. Polly had turned to religion as an antidote to her childhood and cut all contact; Susan lived with a biker gang.

  There was a sucking sound as Dee Dee dragged on a cigarette. “Do you think that bastard slipped something into your drink? We could sue.”

  So much hope when dollars might be involved. “I wasn’t drugged.” The last thing Lily needed was her mother stirring up more publicity. “The sex was consensual.”

  “Don’t talk all fancy now you’re working for lords and ladies.”

  “Travis didn’t make me do it, Mom.” There was no point admitting she couldn’t remember agreeing to a video; she didn’t doubt consent. “But neither of us meant for it go public. I’m just giving you a heads-up so you’re not caught unawares if anyone comes looking for me or asking questions.”

  “I won’t stand by and let anybody bad-mouth my sweetest girl.”