And how about my older brother, Colton? It was anybody’s guess what was going on in that guy’s head. He was a freaking locked book, a stone-cold serious corporate raider. I could barely remember a time when we even spoken more than a few words to each other. It would have to have been when we were kids, but I didn’t really have any memories of Colton acting like a kid. Then once our parents split, he’d headed off to boarding school, too, but unlike me he hadn’t gotten kicked out. He’d gone on to Princeton and Harvard and taken over stewardship of our family fortune, whatever that meant. The few women I’d seen him with over the years were freaking terrifying. Ice cold, calculating bitches, it seemed like Colton kept it all-business inside and outside the bedroom, relationships just another merger or acquisition. No, I couldn’t call him about Ana.
Gram. I guessed I could call her. She’d always take my call. She’d been the most parental figure in my life. But you didn’t exactly call your 83-year-old grandmother in the middle of the night in a panic because you realized you’d fallen in love.
Actually, I realized Gram would probably be up. She’d most likely be back in England by now and it would be middle of the day. She’d always be happy to hear from me, and too well-bred to sound overly surprised.
But to Gram, my problem would have a simple solution. I should be honest and forthright and true. She’d set a straight path for me, as she always did, down which I’d live up to my true potential and all that. But, honestly, I didn’t even always know what she meant when she said things like that. And right now, I didn’t know if I could handle her certainty. Talking to her might really send me over the edge. And she wouldn’t want to hear my hemming and hawing. She didn’t suffer fools gladly.
Fuck, I needed to do something. This whole in-my-head silence-after-the-storm thing really wasn’t working for me. Turning to walk into the kitchen to fix myself another drink, I stopped. There was the piano, over by the windows. Looking at it, I drew a full breath for the first time since I’d risen out of bed.
Music, my lifeline. Of course, I could turn to it. I didn’t have anyone to call, but I could make some music. Sitting at the bench, I instantly felt like myself again. There, I didn’t need to figure shit out or make decisions, I just played.
When Ana came to me, a blanket wrapped around her, her hair in a glorious tussle, I had no idea what time it was.
“Have you been up all night?” Her voice sounded morning-scratchy and she yawned.
Huh. I looked up for what must have been the first time in a few hours. Out the windows, the first rays of sunrise were peaking over the horizon. How about that?
“Come back to bed.” She smiled at me, still clasping the blanket around her with one hand but with the other she reached for me. “Come back with me.”
Mmm. Looking up at her, I suddenly realized how tired I felt, heavy in my bones.
“Yeah.” I nodded, still not standing up. That sounded good. Coming closer, she took my hand in hers. Her skin felt so soft, so soothing against mine.
“Come to bed.” She smiled at me.
“Yeah.” I followed her into the bedroom and together we got under the covers. Her body felt so good against mine, so supple and soft. She smelled so good and I nuzzled into her as I closed my eyes. Her fingers drifted through my hair, smoothing it, calming the unruly locks I’d been pulling on hours ago. This felt much better.
“Go to sleep,” she murmured, her fingers whispering along my hair, my forehead. This was right. This was good. I think I groaned in pleasure as I sank into a deep, dreamless slumber.
A few hours later, the next sound I heard was a lot less soothing.
“What was that?” Ana sat up, alarmed, next to me in the bed. Voices rang out from the main room of the cabin.
“Helloooo!” one of them called out.
Now my groan was one of frustration. Sinking my head back into the pillow, I brought my hand up over my eyes. I knew that voice. It wasn’t a voice I wanted in my cabin. But, then, it wasn’t my cabin. It was the band’s cabin. And now that the storm had stopped, the roads had apparently cleared enough for the band to come join us.
“Who’s that?” Ana asked me, startled. “Is someone here?”
Laughter rang out from the other side of our bedroom door. “It’s the guys,” I reluctantly confirmed. I could hear Johnny and Connor messing around, and some higher-pitched whoops as well. Groupies, celebrating their windfall, up in a swank cabin with rock stars. Great. Just great.
“Wow, I hadn’t realized the roads were that clear.” Ana sounded about as happy about our unexpected company as I was. Our private world wasn’t so private anymore. Fuck.
I rubbed my eyes, wishing it was just a bad dream. Sighing deeply, I rolled to my side and pulled Ana back down to me. I didn’t want anything to change.
“Ashie!” Connor’s voice rang out. “Come out, come out wherever you are, Ashie!”
“Fuck.” I groaned again. “I’d better go out there.” I didn’t want them coming into the bedroom. Ana wasn’t wearing anything. Damn it, now she’d have to start wearing clothes again. That was a crime.
Reluctantly, I gave her a kiss on her cheek and climbed out of bed.
“There he is!” Connor boomed out as I emerged. “Ooh, who you got in there?” I shut the door behind me, but he tried to peek around to catch a glimpse. “Is it the librarian? Bet you’ve had fun with her up here, mate. Snowed in.” He licked his lips and waggled his eyebrows.
“Yeah, yeah.” I rubbed my hand across my face, hating the way he made the last few days sound. All right, yes, we’d done a whole lot of exactly what Connor had in mind. But it had been more than that, in a way I was sure he wouldn’t understand.
“Hope you don’t mind us joining you.” Johnny walked in carrying a bunch of bags, flanked with even more women. How many groupies had they carted up here? He set down the bags and came to stand next to me, in a quieter voice adding, “Connor said you wouldn’t mind. It’s cool, then?”
“Yeah, sure. Of course. It’s your cabin, too.” We had purchased it as a band, no rules, no sharing schedule with time divided into one guy’s weekend then another’s. We were a band, a team, best mates, acting as one. It had never been a problem before.
Now it was. First things first. I needed some hot coffee.
“Coffee?” Johnny asked, heading into the kitchen.
“You’re a good man,” I called after him. He really was. And now he was making coffee, so I loved him.
The afternoon passed exactly as I expected. Connor cranked shit up, the music, the drinking. The hot tub got put to good use. He had some excellent coke, he informed me, and though I declined the girls he had with him were more than happy to join in.
Ana emerged after a bit, looking pale and shy and almost spooked by the intrusion. She started off making small talk. I could see her visibly cringe from Connor when he tried to say hello, but with Johnny she was more relaxed.
It went downhill from there. As the afternoon stretched on, she grew more and more quiet. She progressed steadily from shaken to disconcerted to downright upset. I’d wrap an arm around her, give her a kiss, but it didn’t help. It was like she was slipping away from me even as I held onto her.
“You need to loosen up!” One of the groupie girls elbowed Ana, her teasing tone laced with venom. They clearly eyed her as competition, seeming none too pleased she’d gotten first dibs on me. As the sun disappeared behind the hills, so, too, did the groupie’s clothing. It came off, piece by piece, until one only wore a bra, another went topless, and another strutted around in just a G-string thong.
The less clothes the groupies wore, the more Ana put on. The wilder and crazier they got, cranking up the music and starting to dance and makeout with each other, the more Ana huddled into a giant ski sweater and nursed a hot cocoa. It was as if they were challenging her to a game of chicken, and Ana’s response was to refuse to play at all.
I have to admit, I wasn’t handling it well. The natural groove f
or me to fall into was to join in the fun. That wasn’t going to happen, and not just because I didn’t want to hurt Ana. I didn’t want to join in the fun because it didn’t seem like it would be fun.
At a loss, I did what dumb-ass guys do at dumb-ass parties. I sat on the couch with a beer in my hand and a dumb-ass smile on my face. Connor heckled me like he was president of a fraternity and I was a freshman pledge. When one of the groupies started giving me a lap dance, I shifted her off of me and apologized that I had to use the bathroom.
When I came out, I found Ana furiously making pasta. She looked more boiling hot with anger than the water bubbling away in the pot.
“Are you hungry?” I gestured lamely to the giant pot. More of a cauldron, really. She stirred her brew, not answering. “Are you making that for all of us? You don’t have to do that, you know.” It looked like she had enough pasta in there to feed an army.
She dumped a pile of salt into her palm and threw it into the pot. Angry salt.
“It’s not like you have to make everyone dinner,” I tried again, reaching out to attempt to twine my fingers through hers.
She pulled away to stir, like she needed two hands to do it. She was stirring pretty vigorously. “I’m hungry,” she finally said. “It would be childish to not make enough for everyone. It’s not like I’m doing anything fancy.”
“OK.” I stepped back, holding up my hands as if an officer had pulled me over to the side of the road and told me to step out of the car.
“How did you like your lap dance?” The look she gave me made me wish I was being pulled over by a police officer. Or getting some serious dental work done. Anything would be better than facing angry Ana.
“I wouldn’t say I liked it.” I brought my hand to the back of my neck, which was feeling pretty clammy. I glanced at the clock over the stove. Seven o’clock. The night would eventually end at some point. And then, tomorrow, we could get out of there.
“What do you say we get out of here early tomorrow morning?” I asked her.
She nodded, staring at the pasta. But then, finally, she looked up at me. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I’d like that.”
I saw my opening and I took it. Wrapping my arms around her waist, I tilted my head down so I could nuzzle her hair.
“Ana, I’m sorry they all came up here. We all own the cabin together so it’s their place, too.”
She nodded again, still somewhat stiff in my arms, but she didn’t pull away. I kissed her cheek, her jaw, her throat and she actually started to lean into me.
“We can take off early tomorrow,” I murmured. “We can head to S.F. I don’t even feel like I’ve shown you my place yet.”
“No,” she agreed. “Connor was there the last time.” And then she pulled away.
Shit, somehow I’d managed to say the wrong thing. I’d reminded her of that afternoon when Connor had made a pass at her in my hallway. Damn it, the two of them were like oil and water. I’d have to figure that out. Some way the two of them needed to co-exist. But right now I had to admit, I felt exactly like Ana. I wanted to get away from it all, Connor included.
I drifted between rooms, lamely failing in different ways at each and every interaction. Ana sat down and ate some pasta, her fork making angry scraping noises against the plate. No one else said they were hungry and she ended up dumping the remaining gooey lot of it into the trash bin.
At eight thirty, Ana declared she was going to bed.
“No shit?” Connor looked at her, wide-eyed, like he’d never heard of such a thing. “What time is it?”
“We’re going to head out early tomorrow.” I shrugged, trying to take the spotlight off of Ana.
As I went in to check on her a few minutes later and steal a goodnight kiss, I heard Connor’s teasing at my back. “She got you on a curfew, Ashie? What happens if you’re a bad boy? Do you get an overdue fine?”
I laughed it off, but my fists were clenched by my side.
“You all right?” I asked Ana as she lay in bed, looking anything but.
“I’m fine.”
I sighed. This wasn’t going well, but I didn’t see any way to make it right until we could leave the next day. We weren’t all going to party hard all night together like one, big happy family. And they weren’t leaving. So, bedtime it was. Honestly, I wanted to join her.
Out in the other room came a deafeningly loud crash. I winced. “Better go see what that was all about.”
She nodded, looking tense.
“I’m sorry.” I looked down at her lamely, my apology like a thin, flimsy blanket that didn’t quite cover the extremities. I didn’t know when everything had gotten so complicated. It was like I’d been on autopilot for years and now I found myself at the wheel, unable to figure out how to drive the goddamned bus.
She nodded again and closed her eyes. Out in the other room there was another crash and a great boom of laughter.
I padded out in my bare feet and sure enough, Connor was trying to swing on the giant antler chandelier. Was I the only one who saw that ending in an emergency room? I suddenly felt like the parent walking into a party filled with crazy teenagers. And I kept right on feeling like a freaking chaperone, sitting with them all but wondering who might O.D. and who might not be 18 years old yet. Partying was a lot different when you weren’t drunk or having sex or both.
After a few more drinks, I found myself relaxing. How did the saying go? If you couldn’t beat them, join them? I wasn’t exactly joining. I wasn’t having a go at the chandelier, for example. But I felt a hell of a lot less stressed out as things got a bit more blurry. The more fuzz, the more I got to asking myself what was the big deal? So my band mates were up here having a good time with some good-time girls. What was the harm in that? It wasn’t like they were out stealing purses from grannies or abusing puppies. They were good guys, once you got to know them.
And Connor was a fucking riot. Once he got to doing impressions of some of the more stuck-up celebrity twits we knew and did not love, he had us all rolling. Too bad he wasn’t a transvestite. He could do a mean impression of a pissed off, bitchy lady demanding better service in a restaurant. Which was something we’d seen an Oscar-winning actress do back at a restaurant in L.A. a couple of months ago.
“What did she send the eggs back, three times?” I laughed, remembering how furious she’d looked, how outraged at the insult and injury from an improperly cooked meal.
“Seriously, mate. Four times.” The room broke out in laughter.
“No.” I didn’t think it had been four times. Connor liked to exaggerate. But maybe he was right? I couldn’t really remember the details, all I knew was he was nailing it in his impression.
“Do you call this an egg?” Connor drew himself up to his full height, not more than 5’6” but he worked it. Pursing his lips and waggling his index finger, he had her down.
Later, much later, I stumbled my way into the kitchen. Some water would probably be a good idea. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I thought I recalled something about leaving early the next day. As in the day it now was. So probably in a few hours. That might not happen.
Stooping over the faucet, I let the water run as I stared at it. Interesting thing, water. At least when you were drunk.
Bumping up against a counter, Conner lurched in after me. He looked like an extra from a zombie movie, his shirt torn at the bottom, his hair wild and his skin deathly pale with a faint tint of green.
“You look like shit,” I informed him.
“I’m fresh as a fucking daisy!” he insisted in an exaggerated Irish brogue, then attempted to dance himself a wee leprechaun jig. It didn’t go so well. Tripping on his own feet, he crashed into the fridge and then landed down on his ass with a loud thud. We both started laughing so hard we could barely stop.
“You OK, man?” I managed once I could.
Sprawled out on the kitchen floor, he shook his head. “Not at all.” But somehow that devilish smile coupled with the accent made ever
ything sound like he was taking the piss out of me. He looked like he had one foot in the grave, but you could never really tell with Connor. Just when you’d think he was down for the count, he’d jump up and catch you with a mean right hook.
I gave him my hand and helped him up. “Thanks, mate.” He clapped me on the back, then joined me in filling up a glass of water at the sink. “So, where you been, Ash?”
From the serious turn his voice took, I figured he wasn’t just talking about the last couple of days. But I decided to go for the easiest answer, anyway.
“We got snowed in up here.” I gestured out the window, though with no lights on outside you couldn’t see a thing.
“Yeah, I figured. But where’ve you been the past month. It’s like you”—he clapped his hands together, then brought them up like a magician after a trick—“disappeared.”
I winced and scratched the back of my head, uncomfortable. I didn’t feel all that drunk anymore. At least not drunk enough for this conversation.
“I’ve had a lot going on,” I tried. “I’ve been dealing with this Mandy Monroe shit.”
“Seems like more than that.” Connor suddenly seemed sober as a nun. Where was a bottle of Jamison when you needed one? I fidgeted like I was in the principal’s office instead of talking with my best friend. That made me feel even worse.
“I miss you, mate.” He looked up at me, all rumbled and sad.
“Yeah, me too.” And I did. I missed how it used to be, how much fun we used to have. Back when we were just starting out, it had felt like we’d gone from outcasts to the most popular kids in school overnight. Or like we’d gotten away with a multi-million-dollar heist, walking away scott-free with the profits. Together, we’d been unstoppable. When had that changed?
“It’s been a rough couple of weeks.” He looked down at the floor. I realized I had no idea what had been going on with him, none at all.
“What’s up?”
“Tandy’s in rehab again.”
“Aw, fuck.” His sister had been in and out for the past few years. I knew it was hard on him. They’d relied on each other for so much growing up.
Undone: A Fake Fiancé Rockstar Romance Page 40
