Making Trouble (6 page)

“I was joking, man.”
Rob smiled and winked, trying to take the sting out of the comment.

“Yeah, I know.”
Tyler shrugged.

“Seriously, congratulations!” Rob went around my chair to put his arms around Katie, who accepted his hug with the smile of a woman who was so happy she wasn’t sure her feet were touching the ground.

“Thanks,” she whispered, kissing Rob’s cheek. “For everything.”

Rob squeezed hard once more before releasing her and then turned to Tyler. The two men embraced, patting each
other on the back, smiling like goofballs when they parted. They both looked like the cat that ate the canary and I wondered if they were both thinking that they got the better girl. The funny thing was, they were both right.

“By the way, feel free to play the piano.” Tyler took the chair beside me as Katie and Rob
started talking. “I bought it with my very first Trouble check.”

“Must have been a big check.”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “Arnie wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“He’s clearly good at what he does,” I agreed. “He really knows how to create the whole Hollywood package. I had no idea so much went into making a band.”

“You have no idea.” Tyler snorted, glancing around as if someone might overhear. “You know he cherry–picked the band right?”

“Trouble?”

“Yep.” He nodded sagely. “Rob had to fight to get me in. Arnie didn’t want me.”

“He didn’t want
you
either?” I felt a little better that I wasn’t the only one.

“He didn’t want anyone to compete with Rob’s pretty face.”
Tyler rolled eyes. “He picked Nick, Jon and Kenny because he knew they’d never question him and none of them were the type to want to take the lead. He didn’t want anyone the girls would go
too
crazy over. He knew Rob was going to make or break the band.”

“So why didn’t he just let Rob go out as a solo artist?”

“Because Rob wanted me to be in the band.” Tyler shrugged. “He wanted me along for the ride.”

“So he fought for you?”
I asked softly, glancing over at the way Rob leaned in to say something to Katie, the soft, caring look in his eyes. He was always willing to put himself on the line for someone else.

“Just like he fought for you,” Tyler reminded me.

“Yeah, well…” I made a face. “Arnie won.”

“The battle. Not the war. We’ll get you into Trouble—so to speak.” He chuckled. “Eventually. Watch, you’ll see.”

“So Arnie’s the man behind Trouble’s success?” All the years I’d been following Trouble and I’d never even heard of the man. Maybe he wanted it that way.

“Arnie created
Trouble,” Tyler agreed. “He looked at Rob and saw dollar signs. He knew he couldn’t have him without me. So he decided to make himself the best band any agent ever repped.”

“How did you guys meet up with Arnie?”

“Rob didn’t tell you that story?” Tyler laughed. “Arnie ‘discovered’ him playing guitar on a street corner for cash.”

“You’re kidding me?”

“We were broke. I was eighteen when he got me out of the foster care system. We moved in together, but we didn’t have anything. We didn’t even have beds. We had a couch and a chair—Rob slept in the chair. Or on the floor. He let me have the couch.”

I smiled. That sounded like Rob.

“I was working the McDonalds drive-thru, midnights, and I got at least one meal a day free—which was good, because it was usually my only meal,” Tyler went on. “Rob was pounding the pavement, trying to get himself an agent, but he couldn’t get a foot in the door. He’d been doing that for two years. He taught guitar lessons for cash. Rich kids—he’d into the Hollywood hills to teach five-year-olds how to play Ode to Joy. But he was good with the kids. They liked him.”

“I’m sure they did.”
I glanced over at my husband, thinking of Esther. He would have been such an amazing father.

“But he wanted what he wanted.” Tyler sighed. “
And you know Rob, when he wants something…”

“Yeah.” I
laughed. “He’s kind of stubborn.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”
Tyler looked over at his bandmate, a mixture of admiration and exasperation on his face. “So he would take his guitar case and go stand on the corner of Avenue of the Stars and Constellation Boulevard. There was a talent agency right there. They’d turned him away three times. But he wouldn’t give up. He stood on that corner and played and sang and people threw money in his guitar case. And that’s when Arnie walked by.”

“And it was love at first sight?”

“Money at first sight.” Tyler grinned. “Which, for Arnie, is the same thing.”

“How come I’ve never read this story in the press?”

“Because Arnie didn’t want you to read it.” Tyler winked. “When he made Trouble, he made us too. All of us. He used a little bit of the truth, sprinkled it with a lot of glitter to pretty it up, and that’s what he fed to the PR machine. And they ate it up. They always do. It’s always easier to swallow a lie than it is to choke down the truth. No one wants to hear that Trouble was completely fabricated. We were created out of thin air.”

“That’s not true…”
I admonished. “You’re an amazing guitar player!”

“Rob taught me.” He gave me a wry smile. “Started teaching me when I was just seven.”

“Maybe.” I shrugged. “But you can’t teach talent. You’re talented, Tyler. Very talented. So is Rob. You have to know that. Arnie wouldn’t have had anything to work with if you didn’t have that.”

“Arnie wanted Rob.” He shrugged. “The rest of us just came along for the ride.”

“Hey! Tyler!”

“Hey man
!” Tyler turned and greeted a Jack White from The White Stripes and I gaped as he turned to introduce him to Katie. “Meet my girlfriend.”

“
Fiancée,” Katie reminded Tyler with a grin, presenting Jack with her left hand and her giant diamond. It make me think of my own wedding ring, hidden away, unable to be worn.
Yet
, I kept reminding myself. But when was yet?

“Hey, congratulations!”
Jack exclaimed.

“You okay?” Rob cocked his head at me,
pulling me up and putting an arm around my waist to drag me a little away from the group.

“Yeah.” I put on a smile. “Katie and Tyler—how about that?”

“You happy for her?” He gave me that little smirky smile, the one that said he knew he was asking a rhetorical question, but he wanted me to answer anyway.

“Of course I am.”

I looked over at my best friend and her new fiancé, at the shine in her eyes and the sound of her laughter, and I knew I really couldn’t have been happier for her. And I should have been happy for me, too, I reminded myself. I had everything I could have ever wished for—except my daughter. Maybe that was it, the thing Rob was picking up on. Katie and Tyler were just beginning their life together, and me and Rob, we had sort of skipped to the end of everything before we’d even really begun, especially once I’d discovered I was pregnant. It had all happened at once, sometimes I felt as if we’d been living on fast forward.

“She wants to have a double wedding.”
I met his eyes, seeing the way his eyebrows went up in surprise at the idea.

“We’re already married.”
His hands moved from my waist to my hips and he nuzzled my ear, reminding me with the heat of his breath who I belonged to.

“She doesn’t know that.”

“Ahhh.” He lifted his head to look at me, eyes narrowing slightly. “Now we’re getting to it.”

“G
etting to what?” I made a face, wrinkling my nose and changing the subject, hoping to distract him. “Hey, let’s go inside, I can’t wait to get my hands on that piano.”

“Mmmkay,” he readily agreed, his
palms moving down from my hips to squeeze my ass. “Then maybe I can get my hands on you.”

“Rob!” I laughed, waggling my fingers at Katie when she glanced over to see us heading toward the house. I mouthed, “Be right back” and saw her nod.

The house wasn’t as big as Rob’s, but it was still huge. We passed through the kitchen, the dining room, went down a hallway that headed into the foyer. I glanced into one of the rooms, a door half-open, and saw a couple making out on a sofa. It reminded me of high school. People everywhere were drunk or high and acting stupid. Of course, in high school, I never snuck off with the cutest boy at the party and no one I knew had a piano like this one.

The baby grand was black and gorgeous. I wanted to life the huge top and peek inside at the strings, but didn’t want to disrupt anything, so instead I just sat down at the bench and played. Rob smiled, watching me. I’d taken piano lessons since I was seven and could play a myriad of pieces by heart. I played and we sang together, the sweet music of our voices filling the empty room. I expected someone to hear us and come in but no one did. It was like we were secreted away, and that reminded me of high school too.

But the truth was, I couldn’t have imagined this, not back in high school. Even if my fantasies had ventured into the realm of meeting Rob Burns, lead singer of Trouble, and doing all sorts of things with him I couldn’t even quite picture back then, even my imagination hadn’t gone so far as this. The man I was sitting next to on the piano bench was now my husband. We’d shared so much together already—so much joy, so much pain—and I couldn’t have anticipated any of it.

“God, I love your voice.” He swept my hair away from my neck so he could lower his head and kiss me there, halfway between my shoulder and my earlobe, his breath sending shivers and a slow rise of goose flesh down my bare arms.

“You look so delicious in that dress.” His gaze dipped to my cleavage. He had quite a view from his vantage point. My cheeks felt warm, the heat spreading low to my chest, where Rob was feathering kisses. His arm moved around my waist, hand massaging my hip, his words murmured against the tops of my breasts. “I could eat you up.”

“Promises, promises,”
I teased, but my fingers trembled over the keys as I glanced toward the door. We’d closed it when we snuck in, like two teenagers sneaking away at a party to have sex. And that, I realized, as Rob dipped his head to capture my nipple through both my dress and bra—perfect aim—was just exactly what might happen tonight if things kept progressing.

“It’s not a promise, i
t’s a guarantee.”

“
Rob!” I gasped when he grabbed me, turning and lifting me onto the piano.

The keys clunked and tinkled as he settled me in front of him, one leg on either side of his as he looked up at me, eyes dark and full of lust. I knew that look.
It was the one I couldn’t resist. It was the look that said he wanted me, here, now, in the middle of Katie’s new living room, maybe even on top of Tyler’s baby grand piano.

“Rob… we can’t,” I whispered, my thighs trembling as he kissed the inside of my right one. My legs were bare and there was nothing between the silk of my skin and the press of his lips. My whole body was broken out in goose flesh now, nipples hardening under my dress.

“We are,” he countered, his hands sliding up from my ankles, circled with the straps of the Jimmy Choo heels shoes I was wearing, to my knees, parting them completely.

“Anyone could walk in,” I whispered, glancing once again at the door.

“Let them.” His hands moved over my bare knees, nudging up the hem of my dress.

“
Nooo…” I protested, trying to close my legs in one last act of protest, but he wouldn’t let me.

“Yes!”
His eyes bore into mine, lighting a fire in my belly, burning away my resistance. “Say it.”

“Yes.” My voice trembled and I swallowed as I looked down at him, the piano keys playing
discordant notes as I braced myself with my hands on the keyboard.

“Yes.” He nodded, gaze dropping to the part of my body now at his eye-level. “
Now show me what’s under that dress.”

“You want to see?”
I bit my lip, feeling heat spreading further south, clenching my belly, flooding my sex.

“Fuck, don’t tease me.
” His voice was low and the way he stared, so intently, filled me with an incredible sense of feminine power. “I’m so hard for you.”

I lifted my dress, sliding the material slowly up my thighs, showing him what was underneath.

“Are those silk?”

“Yes.
” I nodded, lifting my dress a little higher still to reveal the black panties I was wearing. “Real silk.”

“Oh God, so soft.”
His fingertips brushed the damp crotch of my panties, making me moan softly. Then he pulled my panties aside, leaning in to spread my thighs even wider, and I gasped.

“And so damned smooth!” he marveled, fingers caressing the soft skin of my labia.

“Brazilian wax.” I flushed, remembering my embarrassment when one of Arnie’s team told me I was scheduled for one. I shaved, but had never waxed before. I was amazing how smooth everything was down there, and for so long!