“Yeah, okay, Mom.” I turned to give one of the bags to Anna and Mom thumped me across the head. I rubbed the knot with a scowl on my face.
“Your pregnant wife does not need to be schlepping bags around. All she should be doing is resting.” Mom gently took Anna by the arm and Anna finally smiled. “Now come on, dear, let’s get you on the couch.” She glanced down at Anna’s nearly bare body and her lips pressed into a thin line. “Maybe dressed too.”
My sister was wrangling her kids when Mom walked off with Anna, but she paused in chasing them to smirk at me. “Nice shorts. Thanks for putting them on before the girls noticed.”
Annoyance twisted my features. “They’re four. They don’t know enough to care.” Both of my nieces had their hair in matching French braids; they looked like they could be the spokeschildren for Swiss Miss with their fair skin, pale eyes, and platinum hair. Chelsey’s husband was a burly, muscular dark-haired guy that I had affectionately nicknamed the Italian Stallion, or I.S. for short, since he reminded me of Rocky. The girls looked nothing like him. The Hancock genes were just too strong for Rock.
“Where’s I.S.?” I asked her, looking around for the mountain of a man. Was he still in the car? You’d think the bulging muscles would be easy to spot.
Chelsey gave me a sigh I was all too familiar with from people. It was a Why don’t you know this? sound that really got under my skin. “Dustin shipped out three weeks ago, Griffin. He’s on deployment for at least a year. I know I mentioned that a couple times recently.”
I nodded, like I’d known that all along. And now that she mentioned it, it did seem like I’d heard that somewhere before.
Chelsey smiled at me, then turned and barked, “Girls! To me, right now!” Dawn and Della instantly responded. Stopping in front of Chelsey, they stood tall and straight, at attention for their commander. Chelsey had a tendency to talk to her kids like she was a drill sergeant and they were new recruits, and they usually responded to it right away. I’d have to remember that with Gibson and Newbie, although I didn’t think Anna would be cool with me shouting at our kids.
Once Chelsey had the girls following her like ducklings, we headed toward the house. Out of the three of us siblings, I was the youngest. Liam was the oldest. Chelsey was pretty close in age to me, just a year older. She was also the coolest sibling, besides me, of course, and the most attractive. Also, aside from me. Good looks ran deep in my family, but they ran a little deeper in Chelsey. She just had that California girl thing working for her, which meant I’d spent a lot of time when we were younger kicking losers’ asses who’d thought they had a shot with her. Dreamers.
The pair of us had been pretty tight when we were younger, and we still got along really well. Chelsey was a dancer, the regular kind, not the exotic kind. Before she’d had kids, she’d belonged to a ballet troupe in L.A. I’d been forced to go to so many of her recitals as I kid that I’d refused to go as an adult. I felt kind of bad about that now, since her career was essentially over. With Dustin gone so often, she was practically a single mother.
Dawn and Della ambled inside after us, and I shut the heavy door behind them. Dad and Liam had come into the house with Mom, and I could hear them upstairs claiming rooms. I could also hear Gibson talking to Anna in the living room. Guess all the commotion really had woken her up.
Chelsey let out a low whistle as she looked around. “I’m sure I’ve said this before, but this really is a nice place you’ve got here, Griffin. You know, in case none of us have ever mentioned it before, we’re all very proud of you. Our little brother, the rock star…it’s pretty amazing what you’ve accomplished.”
The praise made me instantly uncomfortable. It wasn’t that I didn’t like praise. I loved that shit! But pride from a family member, that was just…weird. That was taking awesomeness and applying emotion to it, and I didn’t do emotion. I’d rather just skip over all that mumbo jumbo and stick to cold hard facts, like nobody could shred it like me. That I’d be totally cool with hearing.
“Uh, thanks,” I mumbled. “Want to go pick your room, before Dad and Liam nab all the best ones? I think the pink taco room is still open,” I added with a laugh.
Chelsey rolled her eyes again, but laughed. “You’re so gross, I don’t know how Anna puts up with you.”
Sometimes I didn’t either. Instead of admitting that, I told her, “Puts up with me? She’s just as bad as me, maybe worse.” Thinking about my crazy, sexy wife made me smile. Anna was perfect. Fucking perfect.
Chelsey laughed at the look on my face. “Never thought I’d see the day a girl made you look like that.”
Gibson came trouncing into the room then. She must have heard me and wriggled away from Anna and Grandma to get to me. She did that a lot. It really pissed Anna off. Releasing the bags about to pull my arms out of my sockets, I scooped her up. She kissed my nose and I laughed as I rubbed her back.
“Yeah,” I told Chelsey, “Now I have two girls who knock me to the floor. I’m not the man I used to be.” I said it with a forlorn sigh, meant to generate sympathy and compassion, but Chelsey nodded with enthusiasm.
“No, you’re not.” Just as I was about to get offended, she added, “You’re about a thousand times better than the man you used to be.”
Again, that uncomfortable feeling settled around me. When did Chelsey get all soft and girly? Aside from ballet, she’d been the toughest chick in the neighborhood growing up, doing all the tomboy stuff that the prim and proper girls hated—skateboarding with me and Matt, throwing out curses and insults that would get us whooped if our parents heard us, and snaring every rodent, reptile, or arachnid we could find. Aside from the budding boobs and pointe shoes, she’d practically been a guy. In fact, I think she still held the record for farthest loogey launched.
Guess marriage and kids had softened her some. Oh well, she was still my favorite sibling, and I hated the thought of stuff being hard for her while Dustin was gone being a hero. She didn’t have to be alone. “Hey, just to let you know, my place is plenty big enough for you and the girls. Stay as long as you like.” Anna was going to kill me for weaseling out of our negotiation, but surely she more meant my parents and my brother. Chelsey was different, and Anna would be cool with it once she got to know her.
With a soft smile, Chelsey nodded. “Thanks, Griffin. That means a lot to me.” After she said it, she walked over and knuckle punched me in the arm. It stung like a bitch, but I laughed as I flipped her off. Guess she hadn’t softened as much as I’d thought.
After a couple of hours, everyone was all settled in and Mom was making dinner. Anna was still smiling, so I had to believe she was pleased with having my family around. So far, at least. Dawn and Della were keeping Gibson entertained while Mom worked on her to-die-for spaghetti sauce. My stomach was already growling, and I knew it wouldn’t be done for another couple hours. Can’t rush perfection.
Anna was trying to help Mom, but Mom just made her sit down whenever she tried. Mom’s hair was still the perfect shade of blonde, and she kept it in a short, sensible style that required little fuss or muss. If we were at home, Mom would have a cigarette in her mouth while she worked, but she was being respectful of our house and keeping her vice to brief visits outside. Smoking was the one thing Mom had been an absolute hypocrite about growing up; she’d constantly forbid us to pick up the “nasty habit,” as she called it. When I was eleven, she’d caught me with one of hers. Instead of grounding me, or giving me a slap on the wrist or something, she’d made me smoke it, plus the rest of the pack, and then another pack after that. I’d never been so sick in all my life. Even now, cigarettes made me nauseous.
I was having a beer with Dad and Liam, and Liam was filling us in on a commercial audition that he was sure he’d nailed for a high-end watch company. He really wanted to get the job; he’d heard that he’d get to make out with a model in it.
In my distracted state of homelife bliss, I did something out of habit that I’d been purposely avoiding
doing for a while: I answered the phone when it rang. “Griffin? You are alive. Where have you been? I’ve been trying to get a hold of you.”
Hearing Matt’s voice on the other end made me clench my jaw. I wasn’t ready to talk to him yet, but it was too late now. With a shrug he couldn’t see, I told him, “My family is in town. I’ve been busy with them.” It was only a partial lie. True, they’d just gotten here a few hours ago, but I was busy with them.
Matt’s voice instantly changed. “Oh, okay. Well, tell them hi for me, and we’ll catch up soon.”
Great. He was going to want to come over now. “Yep. Will do. Thanks for calling.”
I was about to hang up, but Matt quickly said, “Wait! I wanted to talk to you about rehearsals. We want to get together as soon as possible and start on the next album.”
Now I knew I should have been all gung ho about work to impress both Matt and Kellan, but we’d just fucking gotten home. I needed a few weeks off. And fuck them if they didn’t understand that. When I responded to Matt, my voice came out in a whine. Maybe it wasn’t the best way to deal with him, but I couldn’t help the reaction. “We just finished one. Let’s take a break. Relax.”
The firm, no-nonsense Matt answered me. “We can’t, Griffin. This business is competitive, we have to continuously release new stuff to stay relevant. We need to keep pushing the envelope.”
Irritation ripped up my spine so fast, the hair stood up on my arms. Push the envelope, stay fresh? That was the same shit I’d been saying on tour, when I’d tried to get them to give me five seconds in the sun. Hadn’t meant a damn to them then, so why should it now? “You were fine sticking to the same ole on tour. What’s it matter now?”
My voice echoed my mood, and Matt let out that damn impatient sigh that everyone around me seemed to have mastered. “Griffin…” Just the condescending way he said my name set me off. I wasn’t three, and he wasn’t my dad.
“Don’t ‘Griffin’ me, I have a point and you know it. You guys blew me off, even before the tour, when you flat-out told me no, I couldn’t advance my position. So why should I give you the time of day? What’s in it for me to be a part of this band?”
Silence fell around my home, and I could feel everyone’s eyes on me. Maybe I should have taken this into the other room. Matt was silent a moment before he answered me. “What’s in it for you is what’s always been in it for you—fame, money, and women. That’s all you care about, all you’ve ever cared about, so don’t act like we’re screwing you over by making sure you get exactly what you love. Rehearsal is tomorrow at three. I’ll see you then.”
He hung up the phone before I could respond, and all I could do was stare at the damn thing and wait for my fluctuating mood to even out. Fame, money, and women? Yeah, maybe that had been my goal in the beginning…and maybe it still was now, but…something was missing. I had a hole in me that wasn’t being filled properly, and FMW just wasn’t enough anymore.
Dad was giving me concerned eyes when I put the phone away. “Everything okay?”
Trying not to sound too disgruntled, I told him, “Yeah. Matt was just being a douche is all, like normal. He says hi, by the way, and wants to hang out while you’re in town.”
Dad’s worry faded away as he smiled. My parents both loved Matt to pieces. Matt used to joke that they wished he was their son and not me, but I knew that wasn’t true. Well, I was pretty sure that wasn’t true. I was the coolest person my parents knew. They had bragging rights for being able to say they’d encoded my DNA. They couldn’t say the same about Matt. He was Uncle Billy’s kid through and through. They even had the same stick poking out their assholes.
I considered bailing on rehearsal, but Matt would just hound me until I showed up, and Mom and Dad wanted to go “watch the show.” I told them a few times there wouldn’t be much of one, since the “show” was mainly going to consist of Matt, Kellan, and Evan huddling around a piece of paper covered with lyrics that, to be brutally honest, didn’t make any sense at all.
They insisted on coming though, along with Liam, Chelsey, and the girls, so the whole damn family was packing up to head out to the countryside. Oh well. At least Dawn and Della would get a kick out of running around Kellan’s farm. Okay, he technically didn’t have a farm since the only animals on the property were a couple of stray cats, but it had that rural, rustic, there-are-pigs-in-the-shed feel to it.
I sighed as I took one last look at my backyard. It butted up against Lake Washington, and there was a private dock, with a few feet of shoreline that created a shallow area for Gibson to play. But the favorite part of my backyard…there was no grass to mow. The entire space was one gargantuan tennis court. I didn’t even own a mower. Neither Anna nor I could play tennis for shit, but just the fact that my “grass” was artificial was amazing. You couldn’t find crap like that in the countryside. Kellan was missing out.
When we finally got to Kellan’s ostentatious security system, I let Kellan know that my family was with me. Maybe I should have asked if they could come, but asking permission wasn’t my style.
After ringing the Let me the fuck in buzzer, I said into the intercom box, “Hey, Kell…Anna and I are here, and uh…we’ve got two cars…’cause, you know, I have family visiting and they want to see your spread.” Leaning over the steering wheel, I added, “And just so you’re aware, if my dad has a heart attack climbing up your forty thousand steps, I’m totally suing you.”
“Always a pleasure, Griffin,” Kellan’s tinny voice responded.
I smiled up at the camera while the gate squeaked open, then I made an exaggerated waving motion with my hand so Dad would know to follow me. Our caravan wound its way up Kellan’s driveway. When we pulled to a stop at the bottom of the steep slope where Kellan’s palatial home rested, Liam oohed and aahed. You’d think he hadn’t been to my house at all by the way he acted. I mean, come on, my pool was indoors!
“Damn,” he muttered. “So this is what being the biggest rock star in the world gets you,” he muttered.
Removing my seat belt, I twisted in my seat to toss him a glare. “Second biggest, or equally big to me. We’re the same size, I mean.”
Liam’s lips curled up as an indecent thought snapped into his brain. “I’m sure you are,” he told me, amusement all over his face. “But did you measure, just to be sure?”
“Ha. Ha. Go for the penis joke, how original.”
Anna let out a soft laugh, and I turned my attention her way. She shook her head as her jade eyes locked on mine. “Nowhere near the same size. Kellan wishes,” she added with a wink.
“Damn straight,” I said, leaning in for a kiss. Her lips were so soft against mine it made me a little delirious. And she was sweet like strawberries and smelled like orange Creamsicle suntan lotion. It was a heady combination, and I considered handing Gibson to Liam and staying in the car with Anna so we could spend a little quality time together. It had been too long, nearly three whole days, and with her due date right around the corner, I knew it might be three more until she was comfortable enough to get horny. This last week and a half were going to be long for me as well as for her, just for different reasons.
As our kiss deepened, I heard Liam make a disgusted noise and open the car door. Gibson whined about wanting to see Ryder, so I sadly disengaged from my wife to take care of my daughter. Anna was breathing a little heavier when we separated, and I reconsidered my earlier assessment of her libido. I knew the gleam in her eye fairly well, and I was certain we’d be busting out the toys tonight. Maybe something pink, with a lovely hint of vibration to give my girl that oh-so-special release that she deserved. She was about to deliver my second child, after all.
“Ready?” she asked. My hands flew to my jeans and I started unfastening them. Shit, if she wanted to do it now, I was all in for that. Surely someone would remove Gibson for us. Laughing, Anna stopped my fumbling fingers. “No.” She nodded outside, to where my family was gathering and staring. “Ready to see the guys again?”
I sighed, remembering the last words I’d spoken to Kellan when we’d parted ways. Thanks for being a complete and total tool and yanking me around for the past few weeks. That was awesome. We should do it again sometime. Or never. We could try that.
Kellan had given me a Try to understand face. It wasn’t intentional. We just didn’t have time to properly plan anything. Next tour, okay?
I’d walked away without even dignifying that comment with a response. Next tour sounded an awfully lot like Tomorrow, Griffin, tomorrow. But the problem with tomorrow was that it never actually came to pass. There was always another one, waiting.
Shaking off my malaise, I gave Anna a bright smile. “I’m always ready. For anything.” Stepping out of the car, I walked to the back to unleash my child. Once she was wrapped around me tight, like a python crushing the life out of its prey, we headed up the numerous steps to Kellan’s front door.
Mom was huffing and puffing long before we reached the top. Maybe this would convince her to ease back on the cigs. “Wow…he needs an elevator,” she murmured. Having had the same thought more than once, I agreed with her.
When we got to the top, we were all grateful that the trek was over with. At least the trip back to the car wasn’t so bad. I set Gibson down while Mom rang the doorbell. I told Mom to just go inside, but she ignored me. Guess she figured she couldn’t be as informal as me, since she hadn’t met Kellan yet.
With a charming smile, Kellan opened the door and welcomed us all inside. I could tell right off the bat that Mom and Chelsey were a bit taken with Kellan’s looks. Their gazes flicked over his jaw, his hair, his “smoldering” eyes, and their smiles grew with each feature they studied. Whatever. He couldn’t rock a pair of shorts like I could. Dude had chicken legs. No one ever mentioned that about him, but it was true. His feet were tiny too, but that was to be expected since, well…everyone knew the answer to that.