She tilted her head back and closed her eyes as she began to spasm uncontrollably on top of him. They both gasped as they realized he was coming inside her too. She hadn’t expected it, which is one of two major reasons why she didn’t bother with birth control, but it pleased her to know that he could still feel like a man in her arms if nowhere else.
It was the best gift she could give him.
Vanni was right to move on to someone else, someone who could give him the life he couldn’t. Her life was Graham’s, and had been since he took a bullet for her.
This was the only way she could totally let Vanni free. She would bond herself to Graham once and for all.
As she dozed in his arms, Graham stroked her hair like he had always dreamed he would do in the wake of their lovemaking. It had been more than fulfilling. It had been life-changing. He was in awe of the miracle she had performed, not just on his body but in his very soul. She had given him a gift, specifically his manhood. All he could do was pray that somehow he could return the favor.
As he drifted to sleep he dreamed of a baby with his dark hair and her hazel colored eyes.
Chapter Twenty
November 26, 2010. New York City.
Vanni
Vanni felt like a jackhammer had been let loose inside his skull as his eyelids peeled apart that following morning. He fought cotton mouth as well as nausea as he tried to pull himself in an upright position. He struggled to remember what had happened to him the night before. He remembered parts of the party, but not much else.
It took the movement of a warm body snuggled up against him to remind him how he ended his evening. Holly cuddled up against him, her hand possessively cupping his morning hard-on. “You’re insatiable,” she giggled as she slid up his body for another kiss. “Four times wasn’t enough for you?”
He ran a hand over his eyes. Four? He didn’t even remember one. He knew in an instant his sobriety had been blown all to hell, and now he had an unexpected bed mate to show for it.
He was just grateful it wasn’t another hooker.
“I thought you didn’t date musicians,” he said as he glanced over at the clock by the bed. He’d overslept, big surprise.
“What can I say,” she mused. “Love makes you do silly things.”
His eyes shot open as he glanced at her. What was she talking about? She didn’t give him much time to wonder as she reached for another scorching kiss that almost demanded his response.
For a little thing she definitely knew how to get her way.
He tried to disengage. “Holly…” he started but her hands were all over his body encouraging him to follow more primal urges. It’d been long enough his traitorous body was ready to give in almost immediately to her magical touch.
Even in the throes of a monster hangover he knew that this was a complication in their relationship they didn’t need. He wasn’t over Andy by far and it just wasn’t right to use this sweet innocent girl as a replacement. “Don’t tell me you don’t want me,” she purred. “I have evidence to support that you do.”
He tried to move her hand away. “Obviously I find you attractive. You’re a beautiful girl.”
Her face fell in an instant pout. “But?”
He felt like a shit but he had to say it. “But last night was a mistake. I’d been drinking and I obviously wasn’t thinking anything through.”
She pulled back and covered herself up with the sheet. “What are you saying?”
He reached out to touch her but she brushed him off. “Holly, you know I like you…”
“Like?” she repeated. “You told me you loved me, Vanni,” she said tearfully. “Otherwise I would have never…”
She slipped out of bed and ran toward the bathroom, leaving Vanni to chase after her in an almost comically awkward state. He pounded on the door she had slammed between them. “Holly, come on. Open the door. Let’s talk about this.”
Instead she sobbed louder. He sighed as he slid down the door to sit naked on the floor. What a mess, he thought to himself. He had obviously drunk himself into mess of things – again – especially if he told someone he loved her when he didn’t.
Could he really have said that to get into her pants? Wasn’t that phase of his life behind him?
It was hard to tell for sure given he didn’t remember any of the events after his third bottle of booze. He tried but he simply couldn’t. And now he had alienated one of his few remaining friends as a result.
Though they had let the gossip mill create a whirlwind romance, neither of them had ever made any move beyond harmless flirting to take their relationship to any other level. There had been hugs, of course, but nothing that would have been inappropriate. No kisses beyond a casual peck here and there.
Granted she took care of him much like a girlfriend or even wife would do, but she took care of everyone. There was nothing even remotely that made him stand out from anyone else… except of course that she basically lived in his house. But they didn’t share a bed; they didn’t even share a bathroom.
She took care of him much like she took care of her brother.
Had he really misread her intentions all this time?
And now that he’d done something as reprehensible as drop the “L” word during casual sex, how could they ever get back to anything normal, especially when she cared for him more than he cared for her?
He kept knocking but she didn’t open the door until a good twenty minutes after she stomped in. He tried to stop her as she grabbed her clothes, which were strewn all the way from the bedroom to the kitchen. She was spitting fire at him the whole way. “You selfish, lying asshole. You told me you loved me,” she spat. “You told me you wanted me to be the mother of your children.”
Vanni felt like he’d just been hit by cannon fire. He couldn’t imagine saying that to anyone, much less someone he barely knew. He didn’t mess around with things like pregnancy and birth control. The only times he’d been careless were with Andy, but that was because he had been truly in love with her. He never wanted to create a child where he knew he couldn’t be a hands-on parent, and he knew Andy was the only woman he’d ever considered for that kind of lifelong commitment.
She never knew that, but it was the God’s honest truth.
“Holly, I would never say that,” he told her. Even at his drunkest he couldn’t imagine it.
She stopped dead in her tracks and looked at him wide-eyed. “Are you calling me a liar?” she wanted to know. He didn’t know what to say. “You begged me to make love to you even after I told you it was unsafe.”
He staggered backward. “What are you saying?”
“I told you before I wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of girl. I can’t use hormones and I’m allergic to latex, so every man I ever sleep with has to be willing to be a father, especially during the middle of my cycle. I told you this before our first time, but you begged me to let you make love to me anyway, that you loved me…that we could handle anything because of all the things we’ve been through.”
He searched his brain to remember. Maybe in a drunken stupor he would have said those things to Andy. Had he confused the two of them? Had he been that wasted?
“As the night wore on you started daydreaming of having a baby with me. Remember? You said you thought it made sense to have a baby with someone like me because of how well I take care of everyone, especially you. You touched my stomach, remember? You told me how much you wanted a baby daughter with my blue eyes. You said you just wanted to make me happy. It was the most romantic night of my life,” she said as she dissolved into tears. “Now we had sex four times and I know for a fact I was ovulating. Oh my God… you’re going to leave me just like all the rest, only this time I’ll be pregnant.”
She collapsed to her knees in the middle of his kitchen. He ran over to her and lifted her up. He couldn’t imagine that he’d have done something so horribly against his nature, even as drunk as he was, but he’d never leave any woman to raise his child alone.
“Holly, no. I would never do that.” He swallowed the huge lump in his throat. “If you got pregnant, I’d take care of you. And the baby. I promise.”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t burden you like that, Vanni. You clearly don’t love me like you said. Obviously you were substituting me for someone else.”
Each accusation hit him like a gunshot. There was a kernel of truth inside each one. “Holly, I’m sorry. I don’t remember. I had been drinking…”
“I’ve heard that excuse before,” she hissed, referring to her alcoholic father and making Vanni feel even more like a shit. She struggled to her feet as she attempted to dress, hiding her body now from him out of obvious humiliation. “I’ll go,” she said. “You’ll never have to see me again. I won’t even tell you if there’s a baby. You’re off the hook. Congratulations.”
He grabbed her by the arm and turned her around. “Holly, listen to me. I will not let you do this on your own. If there’s a baby I want to know about it. I want to be there for you and for the baby. I’m a selfish son of a bitch but I will not let you down. I will not,” he paused as he rolled the weighty words around on his tongue, “let our baby down. I promise.”
She stared at him for a long moment, obviously weighing the truth in his promise. Finally she nodded and allowed him to take her into his arms. When she apologized he felt even more like a heel. “I’ll move back into my apartment,” she said.
“There’s no need to do that,” he said. “Unless you can’t stand the sight of me,” he offered, because he couldn’t blame her a bit if she felt that way.
“I love you, Vanni,” she said in a small voice that touched his heart. Such a young girl, so innocent to the life he lived. As always he felt the need to protect her. He put his arms around her and hugged her close and let her cry on his shoulder.
That afternoon she went back to her apartment and Vanni thought about calling Andy for the first time in weeks. But then he remembered how things went south in San Francisco when they had their own pregnancy scare. He had asked her to go without condoms because he wanted to be as close to her as he could physically be. In the back of his mind had he wanted to have a baby with her? Had he wanted life to intervene and make him grow the hell up once and for all, to commit to the one woman who scared him the most?
But when the possibility stared him in the face he wanted to bolt like a skittish rabbit. He was enormously relieved they hadn’t gotten pregnant… at first. Then afterwards all he could think about was a baby who was half him and half Andy. Suddenly the idea wasn’t so scary. It felt right.
If they had a baby maybe she wouldn’t be with Graham right now.
He shook his head of such treacherous thoughts. Life happened the way it happened. Maybe Talia would have shot his child rather than aim her gun at the woman he loved. There was no way to predict anything.
Although Holly seemed fairly certain they had conceived a child, given her level of fear at the idea. If her cycle was right and they had embarked on a sex marathon, which if history was any indication was highly likely, the chances were probably very high he could be a father whether he was ready or not.
Biology was a funny thing. All it took was one careless, unthinking moment to change entire lives. He’d gotten lucky all the years before, so maybe this was just karma doing what it does best.
After the year he’d had, he should have been used to that.
Holly looked much better when she got back to the apartment that afternoon. He knew he’d be watching her like a time bomb for the next few weeks. He asked her when they’d know for sure and she said that some tests could be taken within a couple of weeks. She told him she’d keep her distance until then but at his insistence they spent the evening sharing a meal and then playing cards until midnight.
It was as though they were putting off going to bed for as long as possible to avoid that awkward moment where he’d go to his room and not invite her to join him.
She gave him every possible opportunity to change his mind, right up to the point he bid her goodnight and escaped into his bedroom.
As he lay in bed he tried desperately to remember the events from the night before. His hangover had lingered most of the day, which clouded his memory and gave him a headache unlike anything he’d remembered having.
When he reached over to set his alarm clock he saw a vial of pills he instantly recognized as the sleeping pills Leo used to supply. He wasn’t sure how they ended up on his nightstand, but he figured Leo’s presence at the party the night before was no small coincidence. He never bought into the whole addict thing and had been pretty vocal about it, trying every once and a while to get Vanni to come back over to the dark side, mostly when Holly wasn’t around. This new bottle held a variety of pills, some he recognized and some he didn’t.
He assumed that was at least partly responsible for his blackout.
When he went off the wagon, he really went off the wagon apparently.
He was so ashamed he couldn’t even answer his dad’s phone call the following day. Instead he did what he always did. He threw himself into his work and tried not to think about babies or fatherhood for the next fourteen days. They kept their secret famously, though his subtle shift of taking care of her didn’t escape Leo’s watchful eye.
“You’re doing the right thing,” he told him during one of their breaks. Leo sucked down a beer while Vanni nursed a mineral water. “Holly’s a good woman. One of the few left who knows her place is to take care of a man.”
Vanni scowled his direction. He wasn’t used to that kind of misogynist thinking. He was a womanizer because he loved women, not because he hated them. He wanted to romance every last one of them because he needed to fill his world with their love and affection… not their servitude. That was why they all fell in love with him. He was a hopeless romantic in every sense of the word, who sought to make their dreams come true.
He had done that on a global scale with his music, which was why his fans were diehard and devoted. Even after all the scandals he knew they had forgiven him. Women loved him, even when it was against their own best interest to do so.
This was why Holly was in the pickle she was in. She had fallen in love with him and got too close. It was up to him now to minimize the damage.
Because of that, he took even better care of her. He’d have dinner delivered and made sure she had all the vitamin supplements she wanted “just in case.” She started to go to bed earlier and earlier each night, which he already knew was an early sign of pregnancy since he had done a crash course in research on the subject. She had even begun missing recording sessions because she couldn’t keep her eyes open.
By the time it came to take the test, Vanni really didn’t even need to go with her to the clinic and see the positive sign for himself.
It was clear.
He was going to be a father.
Chapter Twenty-One
December, 2010. Los Angeles.
Andy
After that first night together, Andy and Graham had tried to maintain a physical relationship. Unfortunately it came with more disappointment than success. The doctor warned them this was on par with what they could expect, and offered advice how they could have a more fulfilling relationship that depended on emotional intimacy more than physical intimacy.
Even so it pained Graham that he couldn’t physically fulfill the woman he loved. He spent hours trying to pleasure her, which brought them physically closer without the benefit of sexual intercourse. But he could tell that she was still having a hard time moving on now that Vanni was completely out of her life.
Within weeks of their first conversation Holly had confided in Andy that the mystery woman in question was indeed pregnant, and now they were talking about marriage to bring the child up in the two-parent home he had been denied as a child. Though she faithfully maintained the ruse, Andy had already figured out the identity of the mystery woman involved, and had from the moment Holly dropped the initial bomb.
&nb
sp; That was why it had been so easy for Andy to believe. Of course he had moved in with someone. Of course he had gotten serious. Wasn’t there always someone waiting in the wings? She had been down this road many times before; she had just never been friends with his other woman prior to their “doing the deed.” She knew from the moment Holly referred to them both as a possessive “we” she was staking a claim. Why would she have done that if she hadn’t the right to?
Not only was Holly obviously in love with him, she was just the kind of girl that Vanni would choose to have on his arm for the whole world to see. This was proven by all the photos splashed over the tabloids of the two of them.
Andy knew it would be a top priority for him to commit to her now that there was a baby involved. He really was out of her reach now, but maybe that was for the best. She had made her choice to be with Graham. It was unfair to ask him to hang on indeterminately when there was no guarantee she’d ever be free from her obligations.
Now that she had made love to him, Andy knew there was no turning back. It wasn’t quite a marriage but her vow to remain at his side was as binding as one.
It wasn’t as easy getting Vanni out of her head, though. On more than one occasion she was glad they couldn’t consummate the love affair due to Graham’s physical limitations. It spared them both her treacherous thoughts of another man while in his arms.
And it wasn’t that Graham was not a kind or conscientious lover. He knew tricks even Vanni hadn’t learned yet about how to fully satisfy a woman. He had the patience to get the most out of their foreplay, so much so she couldn’t speak as her body trembled in the aftermath of several explosive orgasms.
The Complete Groupie Trilogy Page 51