The Rock Star's Girls

by Tasha Taylor

  Had she, Leah, herself not spent many of the years since she left home, finding herself missing the close contact that came so naturally to so many other people? If things had been different between her and Nathan, if they had stayed together and brought Pippa up together as it was meant to be, wouldn’t it have been a natural process to let her mother and her sister back into her heart?

  Leah took a gulp of air to stop any of the unshed tears in her eyes, for it would only worry Pippa and cause Nathan to think she wasn’t happy, when in fact she was the happiest she had been in years, as long as she didn’t allow herself to think further than the end of Nathan’s vacation. Looking at Pippa, Leah knew that it would crucify her if anything ever caused a split between them. That was why she had been so concerned about the effect Nathan was going to have on their daughter.

  It hadn’t occurred to Leah that her own mother might have had much the same feelings at Leah’s sudden and unannounced departure, shortly after her father’s death. Had her mother felt the hurt and pain and loss that Leah knew she would have felt if Nathan ever decided to try and take Pippa away? This sudden thought caused a rush of guilt to flood her already rosy cheeks, as she considered the inadvertent, if not deliberate, pain she must have caused her mother, to suffer another unimagined loss, so close on the heels of her father’s death.

  Leah’s eyes met Nathan’s then, but she could not hold his gaze. How could she accuse Nathan of being selfish after all these years, when she herself had deprived him of his daughter, much the same as she had deprived her mother of a grandchild and her sister of a niece? A tear then escaped from her lowered lashes and slid unhindered down her cheek.

  “Finished, Pip?” Nathan asked. “Why don’t you go upstairs?”

  “I haven’t had my pudding yet!” she protested.

  “I’ll bring it up to you in bed,” Nathan bargained.

  “But I’m not allowed to eat in bed. Mum says…”

  Leah knew she should intervene, but another tear followed its predecessor.

  “Never mind what Mum says. You can eat your pudding in bed this time. Now, go on!” Nathan interrupted her and nodded his head toward the kitchen door. When she’d gone, he took Pippa’s vacated chair; his hand sought hers across the table.

  “Why are you crying?”

  Leah looked up through shining tears. “I’m sorry, Nathan. I’ve been so selfish.”

  “Hush now! What are you talking about?” He stroked her hand. “How can you be selfish?”

  “I’ve kept Pippa to myself all this time.” Nathan started to quieten her with denials, but Leah needed to finish. “No, listen. When you came back, all I could think about was losing her, of spending the rest of my life without her, when she is my whole world. I would have rather died than lived without her. And yet, my mother went through exactly the same thing and I put her through it!”

  “Leah, your mother loves you. If you were to call her right now, she would be the happiest person on this earth. She would give anything to see you, anything.” Nathan squeezed her shoulders tightly.

  “You don’t understand, Nathan!” She raised her gaze to his.

  “Yes, I do. More than you think. I’ve kept in touch with your mum since you left.”

  “What?” Her eyes widened as she tried to take in what he said.

  “I bump into Rebekah every couple of months, at parties or award shows. They miss you very much.”

  Leah was shaking her head now. It was hard enough that she’d acknowledged she’d hurt her family, but to hear it said that they missed her, that was like pouring salt on an open wound.

  “Listen to me. I know you never expected to meet up with me again. I know that I gave up hope years ago of ever seeing you. But that doesn’t mean just because you’re not in someone’s life anymore that they forget you, and your mother’s no different. She wants to see you, and I know she’d be over the moon with Pippa.”

  His urging words and eager expression caused Leah’s heart to start hammering, her breath to come quick and shallow. His firm grip on her shoulders felt like a vice all of a sudden, and she could feel the walls closing in on her again.

  A reconciliation with her mother and sister would bring a host of press, clamoring for the hottest story in Katherine and Rebekah Mitchell’s lives since the death of Luke Mitchell ten years ago. The number one best-seller and millions of magazine covers worldwide would mean nothing compared with an emotional reunion of mother, sister, daughter and granddaughter. Torn apart by tragedy and reunited by the most sought after man of the decade.

  Leah’s throat constricted as she tried to keep the torrent of emotion inside of her, not wanting to show such weakness to Nathan. She was stronger than that, especially when she had him back in her life, on her terms for the time being, and the consequences of what may happen when he finally returned to London were not something that she could even consider at this moment in time, especially now he had brought up the subject of her mother.

  “Pippa will be waiting for her pudding now. You should take it up to her before she feels neglected!” Leah managed to smile, even though she was going to pieces inside.

  Nathan took his hands away from her shoulders and contemplated her in silence for a moment. “I doubt she has ever felt neglected,” he noted dryly and stood up.

  Leah tried to concentrate on his movements around the kitchen as he took the chocolate mousse from the fridge and set about dishing it up into three bowls, but her eyes were swimming and her head was pounding. All she could think about was the last time that she had seen her mother and her sister and it left a sour taste in her mouth.

  Nathan had made every effort for her 18th birthday; all of her friends in London had been invited to a party in a restaurant in Soho that she and Nathan often visited, and it had all been a surprise. Leah remembered feeling overwhelmed at the trouble he had gone to and it had brought tears to her eyes that her father was not there to help her celebrate or to see how proud she was of Nathan and how much she loved him. There were many presents, gifts from all her friends, but Nathan had kept one gift secret from her and she was dying to know what it was.

  A secret part of her was hoping that it was an engagement ring, showing that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, loving only her. In her wildest dreams, she had never imagined that he would present her mother and sister to her, complete with armfuls of presents and accompanied, as always, by a mob of photographers and reporters who followed their every move.

  As her mother had swept across the crowded restaurant, her arms open wide, her eyes full of tears, her face filled with hope, Leah felt a rush of love for the woman she had not seen in two years, whom she missed more than she could say, and stepped towards her. But then, the photographers, seeing a front page in the next day’s tabloids, started snapping pictures, the flashes bright and blinding, and Leah was instantly transported back to the day of her father’s funeral. It was too much pain and heartache to face again and she turned her back on her mother and sister and fled to the toilets.

  Unaware of the turmoil she had created in the restaurant, Leah slumped against the locked door of a cubicle and laid her head on her knees, silent tears falling constantly, such was the strength of her feeling of betrayal by both Nathan and her mother. It wasn’t until much later, when she and Nathan took a taxi to her rented flat, that she spoke and then it was in a quiet voice, taut with pain.

  “Why did you do it, Nathan?” she asked, looking out the cab window.

  “Why did I do what?” Nathan’s voice trembled with barely controlled anger. “I should be asking you that question. What the bloody hell do you think you were playing at? Do you know how much trouble I went to, to get them both to come? Do you?”

  Leah flinched and moved closer to the door of the cab. “You don’t understand!”

  “You’re damn right I don’t understand, Leah! How could you treat your own mother like that? Completely ignoring her when she’d made the effort to reschedule her engag
ements to be at your party?”

  “She shouldn’t have to make an effort! If I meant that much to her, she should have dropped everything to be with me, like she should have done when my father died, but no, she was far too wrapped up in her own grief and how she would look in the papers to worry about me!” Leah voice broke as tears started to flow down her flushed face.

  “Leah, I…”

  “Don’t Leah me! You don’t know. You weren’t there. She insisted all the photographers came into the churchyard where we were burying my dad. I had to walk behind his coffin, trying not to cry, when all these lights kept flashing in my face, when all these people were shouting at us to look at them so that they could get a good picture. My father was the most important person in my life and I couldn’t even say goodbye to him in peace with all these people wanting to be part of the show my mother had created.”

  Leah stopped to take a deep breath, to calm herself down. She hadn’t lost control like this since her father had passed away, and she hated the feeling. “I not only lost my father, but also the rest of my family that day. The only thing that could have kept us together that day was my mother. I was 15, Nathan, I didn’t know how to cope with that loss. And yet, the very first time in many years that I actually wanted something from my mother, she failed. I wanted her to respect my father’s privacy in his last moments, especially after the press had crawled all over the car wreck before the ambulance even got there. But no, she insisted on having them there, to catch every glorious moment.”

  “I’m sure she only wanted to give your father the tribute he deserved, Leah!”

  “What my father deserved?” Leah snorted in disgust. “My father was a quiet man, he didn’t like the pomp and circumstance any more than I did, but because he loved my mother, he put up with it. I know damn well that he would never have wanted the side-show that his funeral turned into!” Leah’s words were fierce, and Nathan realized now how much the loss of her father had affected her.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was like that.”

  “And I hope you never have to, Nathan. I hope you never have to go through what I did. I honestly hope that you never feel that much loss in your life, because until you do, you can’t understand how I feel!”

  Then the taxi had pulled to a stop outside Leah’s home. Nathan moved to come with her but Leah shook her head and closed the taxi door behind her. And with the closing of the car door, had come the first barricade around her heart.

  Leah shook her head to clear the memory, but she could still see the camera bulbs flashing in her mind eye. With the lights came a blinding headache and she staggered to her feet, intent on making it to the safety of her bedroom, to the darkness where she could hide and try to forget the past pain and the pain of the future that she knew was yet to come. She couldn’t take anymore, she had no strength left to fight the consequences of her own actions. Her eyes were swimming as she left the kitchen, and she could not see clearly to make her way to the stairs.

  ***

  Nathan flew down the last two steps, dropping Pippa’s empty dessert bowl in his haste to save her from hitting the solid wooden floor. Carrying her into the living room, he deposited her gently on the sofa, talking to her softly, making her comfortable against the cushions, smoothing her hair from her damp brow.

  Leah’s eyes fluttered open and then closed against the bright light of the lamp, and Nathan reached for the dimmer switch on the wall behind the sofa. Tears lined her eyelashes as she tried to open her eyes once more, grateful for the darkness.

  “What happened?” she muttered.

  “Don’t sit up, just lie there. You fainted. How are you feeling?”

  “My head is killing me. Where’s Pip?”

  “In bed, nearly asleep. I wish I could fall asleep that easily,” Nathan knew he was talking nonsense but he couldn’t deal with seeing Leah like this. She had always been the strong one in their relationship, even if she hadn’t known it.

  She had shared her strength with him when she had held him close, she had given him confidence when she smiled at him in that special way, and when they had made love, she made him complete, ready to fight for everything he believed in and for everyone he loved.

  The last time he had seen her lying like this was when she was in hospital, after she had tripped and fallen in their apartment. She had been so still and quiet, as if the spark had left her body, and it frightened him. That was how he had lost her last time. Even now, he still was not sure why she had left him the way she had. She had mentioned something about some woman, but he had been so shocked at finding her again after all these years, that he had taken very little of those words on board. Looking at her now, her high color and the unshed tears still lingering on her closed lashes, he felt completely useless, as he had when she was in hospital.

  If he did not even know what to do when someone had fainted, how the hell would he have known what to do with a newborn baby had he and Leah stayed together for the birth? He did not acknowledge the fact that he would have been prepared to a certain extent for the arrival of his daughter into this world had he been there during the run-up to her birth.

  All Nathan knew was that he had stopped letting people get close to him after Leah’s departure, and felt that he had lost the personal touch with people, he was that far removed from everyday life.

  For Nathan, at that moment in time, looking at Leah asleep on the sofa, all he could think of was the sense of loss that filled him, a great emptiness that flooded through him, leaving him feeling hollow. What good was all that adulation, all that fame and all that money, if he had no one to share it with? When he went home at night, he was greeted by a great big house, albeit the finest money could buy, filled with antiques and classical artwork, but really it was just an empty shell, just like his heart.

  Many minutes later, Nathan’s reverie was broken by the sound of his daughter’s voice, crying plaintively in the night for her mother, and as he soothed the little girl to sleep, a tear of longing and of extreme loss formed in the corner of his eye.

  Chapter Nine

  The house was silent, but Leah’s head was throbbing. A glance in the bathroom mirror confirmed she looked as bad as she felt, then she noticed a distinct lack of clothes. A blush fused into her cheeks as she surmised that Nathan must have put her to bed. She remembered vaguely that he had placed her gently on the sofa in the lounge, but that was it. Why did she feel so strange, almost embarrassed, that he had taken her clothes off, when he had seen it all before.

  A note on the bedside table didn’t shed any light on the night before. Nathan had taken Pippa to school, phoned Joe to let him know that she wouldn’t be in to work today. She was supposed to phone Louise when she woke up, and that Nathan would pick Pip up from school and take her out for something to eat.

  Leah raised an eyebrow at that point, wondering whether she had given Nathan permission for an unaccompanied outing, especially when she was that paranoid about anyone spotting Nathan and his daughter. But, in reality, Leah knew she could trust Nathan. He had told Justin that much the day before that he was on holiday and did not want to be disturbed.

  Justin! The events of the day before, and the emotions that she had experienced flooded back in full force. Feelings for Nathan that had been locked inside her for years, for her mother, for her father and for her sister. Tears rolled down Leah’s cheeks, she felt so emotionally drained. With a sob she flopped listlessly back on to the bed, and gave into her tears, and eventually falling into an exhausted sleep, not even waking when a worried Louise let herself in, and tucked the duvet snugly around her, smoothing her hair back from her now peaceful face.

  Nathan called Louise, checking on how Leah was and to say that he and Pippa were going into town to go to a games arcade. Leah finally woke, much rested and feeling a whole lot better after a long shower.

  Louise made her an omelet. Leah ate it all and asked for more.

  “You were hungry!” Louise laughed as Leah sat
back with a contented smile on her face. “I haven’t seen you eat that much since you were pregnant with Pippa!”

  “I guess I was really empty,” Leah said. “I was a mess last night. Nathan told me he kept in touch with my mother and Rebekah, I was confronted by a lot of feelings that I had never let myself think about. I cried a lot, and now I feel, I don’t know, somehow lighter. Does that sound weird?” Leah looked at the older woman with a puzzled expression, then shook her own head.

  Louise did not respond and filled Leah in on Nathan and Pippa’s activities for the afternoon.

  “If you’d have asked me ten days ago, even a week, if I’d have let Nathan take Pippa somewhere by himself, I’d have probably laughed at you, or called him every name under the sun. I never imagined letting myself agree to it.”

  “Ten days ago, I didn’t even know that you knew Nathan, let alone him being the father of your daughter!”

  “I didn’t know that I would feel like this. It’s all happened so quickly, Lou.” Leah smiled at her friend, and then looked at her questioningly. “Did you ever wonder who Pippa’s father was? You and Joe never asked me anything about it.”

  “Of course we wondered, love. But once we got to know you, it was obvious that it wasn’t something you wanted to talk about.”

  “It was a fresh start for me when I came up here. I’m really grateful, you know, for everything you’ve both done for me and Pippa. I don’t think we’d have ever coped on our own.”