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?
It was not unlike that conversation they had at a Brooklyn pizza joint so many years ago. He had been bound to Lourdes and couldn’t break free, and honestly let her know he couldn’t give her what she wanted. Now the tables had turned. She was limited in what she could give, and it was up to him to decide if it was enough.
She made her decision to walk away, so why shouldn’t he?
Andy had started to suspect their whole affair was just the product of bad timing.
Yet despite her constant, possessive language in regards to Vanni, Holly wasn’t the one racing toward Manhattan to support Vanni through what had to be the toughest emotional speed bump of his entire life. In fact Vanni had decided not to share much about this trip with her at all. She had offe
red to come, naturally, but he declined. He wanted Andy there and he felt that it would have complicated more than it helped to include both women in this ordeal.
He agreed with Andy, the fewer people who knew the better. It was hard enough trying to carve out any kind of private life these days now that he was on the PING hit list. Any decision he could make that didn’t make the front pages of tabloid news was one more battle against the gossip mill he won.
The ironic part was only he knew it.
So they both signed into the hotel under aliases. They booked suites on the top floors where patrons paid way too much money to care what kind of celebrity was doing what around them. Giovanni Carnevale was small potatoes next to the dignitaries and box office titans who might be registered right next to him.
But he still tied his hair back, wore glasses, hats and overcoats, and basically didn’t make eye contact with the crowd that milled about the streets of New York.
Fortunately for him no one in those crowds seemed to care. That was the beauty of the city. Everyone was racing on their own path to their own destinations. They couldn’t care less if he was the reincarnation of Elvis. They had their own lives to worry about.
It was a nice respite from Los Angeles.
Despite it all neither one of them felt the need to take any chances. They didn’t travel together, they didn’t ride together. They didn’t even stay on the same floor. On Andy’s first night in the city she went out to eat with Iris and with Jacob and didn’t even see Vanni at all.
He made his presence known with a two dozen champagne colored roses in her room, along with a box of her favorite chocolates sitting on the table by the bed. Jacob provided a gift basket full of soaps and bath bombs and lotions, and Iris had given her gift certificates for birthday mani/pedis, facials and hairstyling that Andy was finally at a place in her life to enjoy.
It was midnight before she heard the knock on the door. Vanni had a smile on his face as he rolled in the room service tray covered with the makings for a midnight ice cream sundae.
“What are you doing?” she giggled as she followed him into the room.
“I was hungry,” he explained. “And I heard it is bad luck to eat ice cream alone.”
“I don’t think that’s a thing.”
He just gave her a lopsided grin. “It has to be. I mean, if you don’t eat it then it will melt, and how can melted ice cream not be bad luck? Do you really want to risk the ice cream gods smiting the children of your children’s children?”
She shook her head as she laughed, and then sat at the table where he was preparing an enormous sundae she knew she’d never be able to eat. “I’ve already eaten,” she said.
“You ate with Iris and Jacob,” he clarified. “Odds are you went to an expensive restaurant where you paid $75 for two bites of food on a plate as big as your head.”
Again she laughed. He wasn’t far wrong. “Fine. I give.” He handed her a bowl with a sloppy, gooey sundae with every imaginable topping. She took a big spoonful as he finished his own. Despite that it looked like it was constructed by a five-year-old the ingredients were decadent and delightful. Her eyes rolled back at the first bite. “If I get fatter it’s your fault,” she mumbled with her mouth full.
He reached over to wipe some chocolate from her nose. “I already told you,” he said with a smile. “I like my Andy bear squishy.”
She shook her head at him with a roll of her eyes as she plunged even deeper into Mount Sundae.
“I’m glad you’re finally here,” he said as he dug into his own sundae. “It’s been kinda lonely.”
She wanted to ask if that was because Holly wasn’t around, but found herself unable to. Instead she pointed out, “You lived here for more than a decade. Don’t you have friends?”
He shook his head. “Haven’t you heard how lonely it is at the top? I’m not the same guy I was before. I can’t disappear in a crowd. So it’s not like I can just go hang out with a buddy from high school at a neighborhood bar. Iris has taken care of me but she has her own life. I’m more a client now than a friend, and she’s got a full roster. Without the guys here, it’s just not the same.”
Andy nodded. As closed up as he had always been it wasn’t like he made any real attachments. Everyone who got close to him lived in Los Angeles now. “I guess it doesn’t even feel like home anymore, huh?”
He gave her a sad nod. His dark eyes met hers. “At least until right now.”
She stopped chewing. This was a dangerous path. “Vanni…”
He held up a hand. “I know. Not the time.”
They ate a bit in silence until she finally asked, “So have you made plans to meet with Angelo?” She couldn’t even really bring herself to call the man his father, not after his being gone most of his life.
He shook his head. “Putting it off as long as I can,” he said. “Not sure if I’m ready at all, but I knew I couldn’t do it alone. We have to do it by Friday though. That’s when Iris has set up the televised interview.”
“What if it doesn’t go well?”
“It has to go well,” he told her. “If not I just lie my ass off. I’m pretty good at that.”
She didn’t say anything. She just watched as he finished off his sundae in silence. Finally she said, “Let’s do it tomorrow.”
His eyes met hers. She could instantly tell it was the very last thing he wanted to do, so she went on, “Why wait? Let’s just tear the bandage off so no matter what happens to the wound we can be in better control of the bleeding by Friday.”
He gave her a smile as he reached for her hand. “My wise Andy. This is why I wanted you here.”
She returned his smile. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
And that was the God’s honest truth.
The next day they arranged for a meeting at the hotel. It was the safest place in the city, free from any peeping PING reporters. They booked another suite where they could have some privacy, and if things did not go well then Angelo would not have the exact room number where Vanni was staying.
In fact they chose a more opulent suite than the ones they opted to personally stay in. Andy wondered if this was a loud and proud statement on Vanni’s part that even though he had been abandoned by his father, he had grown up into ten times the man this obviously poor man could ever be.
Andy stood by the window and stared down at the city below. Her heart was in her throat as she waited for Angelo to arrive. Her heart lurched every time a cab pulled up to the entrance just below the awning. She could only imagine how Vanni felt as he waited in the other room. When the knock finally came a quarter after two, Andy walked on shaking feet over to the door.
Though she was ready to hate Angelo Carnevale for all the things he had done to his son, her heart immediately went out to the man standing on the other side of the door. He may have been tall once but his stature had definitely shrunk with age. He was thinner than the clothes he wore, which added to the frailty.
His hair was neatly trimmed short without an ounce of style, as was the beard that framed his face. Lines gathered at the corners of his eyes and mouth and his hands trembled as he clutched a hat in his hands. He looked old, unsure and ready to bolt at the hint of any conflict. It made her instantly understand some of the hidden undercurrents that motivated Vanni.
She found herself giving Angelo a reassuring smile as she opened the door wider. “Mr. Carnevale?” she asked. He nodded but did not enter until she gestured with her hand that he should come in.
“Is…is Giovanni here?” he asked with a quiver in his voice.
She nodded. “He’s in the other room. I’ll go get him. Please, make yourself at home.”
He glanced around the grand room uncertainly. This was not a place someone like Angelo Carnevale could ever feel “at home” and it showed all over his face.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked.
He cleared his throat. “Water would be nice, miss.”
“I’m
Andy,” she said as she walked over to the bar to prepare him a glass.
“Are you … a friend?” he asked.
She smiled as she brought him his drink. “You could say that. I’ve known your son for a few years now. We work together.”
He just nodded and looked down into the crystal tumbler. “Does he hate me?” he asked softly, but the power of the fear behind his words took her breath away. It dawned on her how much courage it took for him to be in that room, ready to face the justifiable anger of someone he had so wronged.
“I think you should ask him that question,” Andy said softly. Without another word she went into the bedroom of the suite where Vanni waited.
Like she had previously done, he stood staring out the window toward the street below. She couldn’t help but stop and watch him for a moment. His hair toppled down his back and he wore a simple button down shirt over black jeans. It was as fancy as someone like Vanni got. But as strong as he was and as powerful as he could be, there was a frightened boy there. That boy was about to walk through the door and have all his questions answered, whether he liked those answers or not.
Would he see the sickly man Angelo had become after years and years of battling alcoholism? Or would he still see the man who heartlessly and selfishly left him with his mother to struggle and survive all on their own?
Silently Andy walked up behind where he stood and took him into her arms. She rested her mouth against his shoulder for a comforting kiss as he tightened her grip around him. There was a catch in his voice when he confessed, “I don’t want to do this.”
She fought back tears of her own. “You have to, Vanni. It’s the only way to fix what’s broken.”
He turned around to pull her closer into an embrace. “Don’t leave,” he begged.
She shook her head. She wasn’t going anywhere. She kissed his face softly and then pulled away to lead him into the other room by the hand.
The Complete Groupie Trilogy Page 45