CHAPTER THREE
A moment, that’s all it had taken. One short moment when I was deleting the bulk of my New York contacts off my phone and the child had disappeared.
Of course the problem was, the great room where we generally hung out to watch dog cartoons on repeat and spread his huge collection of toys far and wide didn’t have a door.
Instead, it joined a hallway running the length of the house.
The same hallway I now ran along looking for the short evil one.
And we all know where he got the evil from.
That’s right, his mother. Not my side of the family. No way.
“Gib?” I called, looking into rooms as I passed. “Gibby, where are you?”
For two and a half days we’d gotten along okay, my nephew and I.
Mostly due to my bribing him with his favorite foods.
Chocolate chip cookies (made by the housekeeper who came in during the day, Greta), chicken nuggets, and grapes.
A not completely unhealthy diet. After all, the five food groups were all roughly represented.
Today, however, no amount of bribery worked.
Gib was in a foul mood for some reason and hell bent on taking it out on me.
Reminded me of a few years back when I’d been working for a big time fashion model and she’d thrown a next-season Louboutin at my head.
Lucky me, we’d been the same shoe size. So it served her right that I caught the shoe and took its mate as an unspoken apology for the incident.
But back to child wrangling.
From the not-so-far distance, the sound of voices, the strumming of a guitar, and the tapping of a drumbeat drifted this way. It was like a rock ’n roll siren call. Especially to a two-and-a-half-year-old who pretty much wanted to hang out with anyone but me. “Oh no.”
On account of the left hand side of the house where the studio and band practice area, games room, home theater, wine room, gym, sauna, and second kitchen (because didn’t everyone need a second kitchen?) were located having its own entrance, I’d happily missed out on the bulk of all of the Stage Dive comings and goings.
Even Sam lived in the two-bedroom pool house out back with Adam the musical genius.
Apart from my needling head doctor of a sister-in-law and idiot brother, I’d pretty much kept to myself.
Because there was nothing wrong with alone, no matter what Lizzy said.
Alone was perfectly fine and actually quite safe.
Especially given the bulk of the people who tended to visit the house.
And there they all were.
Jimmy sat sprawled on one of the leather sofas, watching his brother David, sitting on a large amp opposite him, tune a guitar. Mal, the blond-haired maniac, sat behind a drum kit, keeping up a relatively quiet though steady beat. And Gib was in his father’s arms, safe and sound. Thank God.
I tightened my slightly sloppy ponytail and stood taller. Jeans and a tee wasn’t my usual slick day wear. But at least there were currently no food groups represented in my hair.
“But you’re supposed to hang out with Aunty Martha. We talked about this,” said Ben with a frown. “What if she gets lost? She hasn’t been here that long. She doesn’t know the house like you do.”
“Aunty Martha there.” Expression decidedly unconvinced by the argument, Gib pointed at me, standing in the doorway.
I lifted a hand in greeting. “He got away from me.”
Mal snorted, the jerk.
Ben just nodded. “Yeah, I noticed. He’s like Houdini when he gets an idea into his head that he wants to be somewhere else. Kind of impressed you kept him occupied for as long as you did, actually.”
Phew.
“Keeping track of children isn’t as easy as it looks,” said Jimmy with a small smile. Not a smirk, however, which was interesting. It might have almost been kind. Marriage and fatherhood must have mellowed him plenty.
“I’m finding that out,” I said.
David just jerked his chin at me. Not awkward at all.
With an electric guitar in his hands, the new kid, Adam, stood waiting nearby. He looked a little wide eyed at the company he was keeping. Fair enough. Any no-name baby rocker like him would give up valuable parts of their anatomy to be hanging out with Stage Dive.
“What did you think?” he asked Ben, gaze hopeful yet braced for the worst.
Mal cleared his throat. “So you’d label that maybe a standard sort of rock, pop, soul, with a dash of Americana-type sound, yeah?”
Adam just blinked. “Ah, well—”
“Don’t get me wrong. While there’s nothing particularly fresh or interesting about what you’re doing, you don’t completely suck. Not completely,” said Mal, all seriousness. “I hope you can find something to cling to in that, son.”
“Ignore him,” groaned David. “Unless you want to hit him with something. That’s fine too.”
“Hey!” Mal held up his drum sticks, making the symbol of the cross. “Stay back, fiends. I’m a ninja master with a set of sticks in my hands. I could take you all down without even raising a sweat.”
A hand rubbing tiredly over his face, Ben nodded in agreement. “Definitely ignore him. God knows we do. Your sound is fine, Adam. In fact, it’s damn good. That’s why you’re here.”
Brows drawn tight, Adam looked around the room. “Okay.”
Mal grinned. The man truly was the Puck or Loki of rock ’n roll.
Pure mischief with a side order of annoying as all hell.
“Actually, the truth is that you’re killing it.
But we hate any sort of genuine competition and the only way we could think of crushing your talent was to have Ben produce your next album. ”
Ben quietly grumbled something rude, given the small ears no doubt listening.
“So I’ve decided I’ll play on your album, Adam. But like under a pseudonym,” said Mal. “This is going to be great. I’ll use a cool fake name like Captain P. Niss. Get it?”
“You’re an idiot,” said Jimmy flatly.
Surprisingly enough, the drummer actually looked vaguely wounded. “Anne thought it was hilarious.”
“Your wife is an incredibly kind and gracious person.”
“Enough. You can play uncredited,” said Ben, ending the discussion.
“You can’t hide talent that easily. The true musos will still recognize my style. They’ll be like, ‘no way that’s anyone but Malcolm Ericson on the drums’. Tell them, Marty.”
“Ben, you guys are working. Let me take him.” Ignoring Mal, I wandered over to my brother, arms extended for the two-year-old terror.
Gib of course scowled and turned away, hiding his face in his father’s thick shoulder.
Like I was the worst. Sigh. To think, I’d actually imagined he and I were bonding sort of over the last few days.
Sure, it was based on an illicit chocolate chip cookie enticement system, but you had to start somewhere.
The doors to the outside pool and garden area opened, Sam slipping inside. Immediately, I tensed up further. This was just not my day.
“Done a full sweep of the surrounding area, Sam the Man?” asked Mal. “We under attack from rabid teenage girls again or what?”
The red had faded from my right eye, but I kept my face angled downward just the same. What with the amount of concealer I’d been using, no one could possibly see the bruising. Still, the bodyguard tended to notice things others didn’t.
Sam’s expression never slipped from his business-as-usual demeanour, regardless of the drummer’s ribbing.
God knows where he found the patience. Though he had been working with the band for years.
Guess he was used to it by now. “A few fans and some paparazzi are hanging around the front gate. Ziggy’s keeping an eye on them.
Otherwise, you’re as safe and sound as I can make you, Malcolm. ”
“Does that happen often?” asked Adam. “The rabid teenage girls thing?”
Sam shook his head. “Nah. Their fan base has grown up with them. These days, they’re more likely to just want to have a chat and take a picture. It’s the odd one who’s unbalanced that we have to watch out for.”
“Like the chick that broke into Jimmy and Lena’s place last year. The woman used their shower then took a little nap in their bed,” said Mal. “Crazy town.”
Adam’s eyes opened even wider.
“My bed I could have understood, but Jimmy’s? That woman needs help.” Mal paused, remembering. “Then there was the dude following me around last year and sending me poetry. He actually wasn’t bad.”
“How’d the one about your eyes go again?” Jimmy smirked.
“Don’t get him started,” groaned David.
With a heavy sigh, Mal smiled. “Yeah, it was all fun and games ’til he tried to rip some hair out of my head. I mean, I can understand where he’s coming from, me being a sex god and all. But he scared the crap out of Anne. Pushed her out of the way to get to me. She could have been badly hurt.”
Jimmy took in Adam’s seriously alarmed expression.
“That’s about when we brought Ziggy and Luke on board to help Sam out,” he said, in a soothing, nonchalant tone.
“We always had a team on tour, but with wives and kids involved…better to be safe than sorry. They rotate between us, keeping an eye on things.” Jimmy scratched at the stubble lining his jaw.
“Plus Lena and I got a place with better security. Our daughters needed more space anyway, a bigger yard to play in and stuff like that.”
“Oh, please, your old place was like a freaking mausoleum.”
“It was not. That house won an architectural award.”
“It was cold and ugly,” said Mal. “Lena made you move, admit it. Your wife runs the show and she’d had enough of all the butt ugly monochrome and marble. That’s the truth.”
After first checking Gib wasn’t watching, Jimmy flipped the idiot drummer the bird.
The small child, however, had already found something inappropriate to latch onto. “Butt! Butt-butt-butt!”
“Good work,” grumbled Ben.
Mal laughed, spurring the kid on. Figures. They were both about the same maturity level.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to take him?” I asked, one brow arched high.