Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
S everal days later, Adam watched the most beautiful woman he’d ever met sleep beside him, happier than he could ever remember being.
Last night had been a glimpse into what their future would hold. They finished dinner with the guys, made love, then passed out in each other’s arms.
Mattie’s hair covered the pillow, the sheets were tangled around her body, not quite covering one of her bare breasts, and every other breath she let out a soft snore. It was mind numbingly captivating.
In between one breath and the next, he saw the future. He pictured their kids running into the room on Saturday morning to watch cartoons with them in bed. He saw her in the studio with him and the guys, working out new songs, or joining him on stage for a duet.
A new melody sparked in his thoughts, and he hummed it softly while he waited for her to wake up.
A bird call interrupted his song. It was the sound Mattie’s phone made when it received a text. He’d heard it often enough it had imprinted on his brain like an ugly tattoo.
He stilled, hoping Mattie was too asleep to notice.
She stirred, groaned, and stretched. “What time is it?”
“Don’t know. It doesn’t matter, go back to sleep.” He stroked her hair.
“Mmm.” She wiggled toward the nightstand. “It might be Kat.”
“It’s late for her, isn’t it?” The world had to intrude at some point, but he wished she’d just turn off the damn phone while they were on the island.
Mattie opened the drawer. “Not if she had a show. She’s a night owl…” Her back stiffened.
“What?” Adam sat up, but he couldn’t quite see her phone.
Mattie swore as she scrolled through messages. “She just can’t let me have these few days, can she?”
“What’s wrong?” Adam rested his chin on her shoulder to peer at the screen, but Mattie clicked it off before he could read any of the messages.
“Nothing.” Mattie threw the phone back in the drawer and shoved it closed. “I’m going to take a shower. You should go get a change of clothes.”
She launched out of the bed like she’d been poked in the butt with something hot.
Adam blinked. One moment they were having a sleepy late morning in bed, the next Mattie was wide awake and pissed off. He had whiplash from the sudden change, and he wanted to know what the hell had set her off.
“Mattie. Hang on a second. What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” She rounded on him. “We only have ten days left, and we still haven’t finished the second song. You won’t talk about the third one at all. This trip is going to end, and it’ll be the first time in three years that I haven’t finished a project, and my stupid sister wants to turn my life upside down again and won’t leave me alone until she manages to do it. And I’m just tired. I’m done.” Mattie ended on a shout so loud it scared a bird outside the window.
Adam got out of bed.
She turned toward the bathroom. “Go get changed, Adam. We’re late.”
“They’ll wait.” He tugged gently on her shoulder until she turned around. Her hazel eyes had intensified until they were a deep green, with gold flecks of fire in them. She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Which sister?”
“Della.” Mattie huffed out an irritated sigh. “It’s always Della.”
He nodded, encouraging her to go on.
She didn’t.
He knew everything public there was to know about her sisters, but he’d learned from his own experience that public information was a skewed version of the real story.
“You don’t talk about her much.” He tried to keep his tone light. “I thought you all were really close.”
Mattie snorted. “‘Were’ being the key word.”
He considered her. He’d never seen this much fury in her eyes. “Right. So if you aren’t close, why are you so angry?”
“It really doesn’t matter. It’s just something I need to deal with when I get back.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. He didn’t believe that for a second.
Mattie huffed out an impatient breath and shrugged her shoulders as if that would somehow ease the tension. “She always does this. She knows I’m on a project, but once she decides she wants something she can’t leave it alone. Piper’s right. Della’s a spoiled brat with no sense of boundaries. ”
“What does she want?”
Mattie pressed her lips together and looked away. “I need a shower.”
She left the room before he could stop her. He followed the irritated woman into the bathroom.
Mattie was already in the shower. Her back was to him, and the water flowed down from her hair to trace the muscular curve of her ass before dripping to the ground.
“Mattie.” He kept his voice soft, trying not to startle her.
She didn’t turn around. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
He stepped in behind her and picked up the washcloth. “It’s okay to be pissed off, you know. Especially at family. The world won’t fall apart.”
She sniffed. “She really knows how to push my buttons. And the shitty thing about it is I don’t think she even knows she’s doing it.”
He worked the washcloth over her back, careful to take his time to leave room for her to say what was on her mind.
Mattie stayed silent.
“I don’t know about Della,” he said, “but I know my brother absolutely knows when he’s pushing my buttons and he always does it on purpose, the little shit. But these days I can make him back off if I want. Then there’s my dad. He may not know he’s doing it, but he’s really, really good at it. I swear he refuses to move just to piss me off.”
“I doubt that’s why.” Mattie sniffed. “You said you used to practice in the garage. The memories you both share are there, in that house. Maybe he doesn’t want to lose them.”
He’d never looked at it that way. They’d fought so much over the music Adam thought the garage was more of a sore spot than a memory to hold on to, but he had to admit, he’d never asked why Dad didn’t want to move. Adam squeezed her shoulder, then went back to work with the washcloth .
“Maybe.”
Mattie rolled her shoulders and lifted her chin to let the water run down her face. “You said you could make your brother back off. How?”
He grinned. “I know all his secrets. He knows mine. We’re a mutual destruction society. And if that threat doesn’t work, we end up wrestling for dominance. I’m bigger than him, so I usually win.”
Mattie giggled, which was exactly the reaction he’d been hoping for. “Girls don’t do that. We fill the air with silence. It cuts deeper.”
He ran the washcloth down her back and hovered at the little dip just above the curve of her bottom. “What did Della say to upset you?”
Mattie sighed and leaned into his hand. “You know The Bellamy Sisters broke up. You know she went solo. I mean, there’s all kinds of gossip about it in the tabloids, right?”
“Yeah.” He kissed her shoulder, then shifted the cloth to his other hand and went back to work. “I figured you were all tired of the circus. You’d been at it since she you were, what, twelve?”
Mattie nodded. “What’s not in the tabloids is that Della did that without asking the rest of us.”
“Seriously?” Adam stopped moving, momentarily stunned.
Mattie wrapped her arms around her stomach. “It was one of the worst days of my life. On top of Dad dying it was …never mind.”
“She just popped up at dinner and said, ‘Hey everybody, I’m going solo?’”
“Not dinner. Worse than that. It was right after the last show of that big world tour. We were in the greenroom getting ready for the after-party. She was so excited to tell us she couldn’t stand still, like it was Christmas morning and Santa was there with presents. She tore our family apart without a second’s thought for how it might affect the rest of us.”
“What a bitch.” He probably shouldn’t have said it quite that way, but the words burst out of him before he could stop them.
To his relief, there was a grin on her face when she turned toward him. “That’s exactly what Piper said.”
“Well, it’s true. That was a shitty move. Kind of like when Johnny J quit. He had a good reason, but it was a gut kick all the same.” His gaze followed the water now running between her breasts, over her nipples, and down the rest of her. “I will never, ever get tired of this view.”
She took the washcloth from him and rolled her eyes. “No, no, no, we are not doing that now. We’re already late.”
He pulled her closer. “I swear, when we get back I’m having an outdoor shower installed just like this one.”
He’d seen the faraway look that flashed through her eyes before. He just wished he knew what it meant. He kissed her long and slow to help ease her out of the bad mood her sister had inspired and bring her back to the here and now, with him.
The shower took a lot longer than it probably should have.
When they were both washed and satisfied, Adam handed a towel to Mattie.
She wrapped the towel around her body and picked up a hairbrush. “Sorry about before. I didn’t mean to be so snotty. It’s not me.”
“You don’t ever have to be sorry for saying how you feel. And everybody needs to lash out every now and then. It lets off steam.”
“It doesn’t make me feel any better.” She sighed and worked at a knot in her hair. “There are at least twenty texts from her and every one of them makes me feel guilty. She thinks if she pounds in her idea enough times I’ll just do what she wants. I guess I’m still processing that stupid brunch.”
“Brunch?” He saw her grimace at herself in the mirror.
She caught his gaze. “Shouldn’t you be getting dressed?”
He waved his hand. “It’ll take me two seconds. Tell me about brunch. When was this?”
She walked past him to the closet and thrust clothes back and forth. The towel inched down her back with every move. “Just before this trip. It was just supposed to be Piper, Lizzie, and me, but Della showed up and announced that she wants us all back together, and something inside me just snapped. It was like the room turned upside down and inside out and all the things I should have said years ago came spilling out. It wasn’t my finest moment.”
“I doubt that’s true.” To distract himself from the flesh she slowly revealed, he picked up the swim trunks he’d discarded next to the bed last night and pulled them on. “It sounds to me like it was about time you told her what’s what.”
Mattie tugged a light blue sundress out and frowned at it. “I don’t do that, you know? Like, ever. Lizzie calls me the peacekeeper of the family. That’s why I’m the backup Bellamy. I sing backup on stage. I’m always there in the background. Whenever Piper and Della fight, I’m the one who steps in between them. At least, until we split up.”
She tossed the dress onto the bed and dove back into the closet.
Adam retrieved the crumpled linen shirt he’d tossed aside last night from underneath a chair. “That’s a long time to hold a grudge.”
Mattie emerged from the closet with a white top and bright blue skirt. “I’m not holding a grudge. It’s not that.”
She dumped the clothes onto the bed, dropped the towel, then pulled on underwear .
It was a striptease in reverse that made his body tingle in anticipation. “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. You deserve to hold a grudge after what she did.”
He pulled his shirt on and tried not to notice how her top and skirt didn’t quite meet in the middle so that a tantalizing strip of bare skin winked at him.
Mattie slipped on sandals and picked up her bag. “I just wish we really could go back to before. I was happy then. It was fun. Me and my sisters, taking on the world. Traveling everywhere. Meeting new people. I loved it. I loved being with them. Then it was just gone.”
“Yeah, but now you’re here in a tropical paradise, with a rock star.” He pulled her close for a quick kiss. “So obviously that’s better, right?”
“You are remarkably self-assured, you know that?” She smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck. Her lips found his, and they let the conversation drop for a few minutes.
Mattie pulled away from him just as his hands began to wander. “We should go. We have a song to finish, remember?”
He stifled his inner protest and followed her out of the villa and into the waiting golf cart.