The Rock Star's Christmas Reunion: contemporary holiday romance (A Charisma series novel, The Connollys Book 1) (10 page)

Quin’s eyebrows lifted and his lips curled in derision. “You mean you don’t know?”

“Know what, Quin?” Bax shifted his stance, alert to some kind of threat.

Quin snorted. “You don’t know that Yakima claimed to be pregnant with your child just after you left?”

Bax’s chest rattled with a laugh, his first instinct. “Yakima? My little next-door neighbor? The babysitter?”

“Yes, my sister,” Quin snarled.

“Well, what happened to the baby?”

Quin shrugged as one of the customers brought a selection of vape accessories up to the counter, ignoring Bax. He stepped aside so the man could be rung up. The customer, maybe four or five years younger than Bax, and probably a little stoned based on the glazed, reddened eyes, finally noticed him. He opened his mouth as if to ask a question.

Bax was used to the behavior, the mental processing of people who almost remembered who he was but not quite. Around here, that might not be a celebrity thing even. He might have been friends with a member of the person’s family.

“Bax?” the guy asked, as Quin gave him his change and bagged his purchased.

“That’s me.”

“Huh. I thought you were long gone.” The guy blinked slowly.

Bax kept his expression polite and neutral, not knowing where this was going. Quin wasn’t offering any clues since he hadn’t greeted the man by name.

“You gonna open a nightclub around here or something?”

“Ummm, no,” Bax said. “Why would I do that?”

The guy shrugged. “Isn’t much to do around here and you musicians like the nightlife.”

“If you say so,” Bax said.

The customer glanced at Quin, then back at Bax. “Oh, you’re going to open a cannabis store, right? I saw some celebrities had their own personal shit, am I right?”

Bax did not want to mention his party to this guy. Given Quin’s hostility, he regretted offering the invitation to him as well. But the customer wasn’t moving on. Bax desperately wanted to know what Quin was talking about. Yakima? A pregnancy? She hadn’t mentioned it, nor had his cousins. If it had really happened, it must have long since been forgotten.

He smiled mysteriously, half-lifted his hand in a casual goodbye, and walked out of the shop, figuring he was as likely to come off as enigmatic as anything else. But mostly, he’d just gone numb. He’d thought his family would be his biggest problem around here, not the former neighbors.

~

“Bax isn’t home,” Yakima said into her cell phone at six p.m. that evening. “Any idea where he is, Haldana?”

“Did you have plans?” Bax’s cousin asked.

“I said I’d stop by with the menu for his party. I told you. I wanted to go to Costco to shop tomorrow. I texted him but he isn’t answering.”

“I’ll give you the garage code,” Haldana said, reeling off the digits. “You’re dating, right? I’m sure he won’t mind.”

“I don’t know if dating is what we’re doing, exactly. Hanging out.”

“Less formal but still the real deal,” Haldana said cheerily. “Anyway, go in through the garage. I doubt he locks the door into the kitchen.”

“Why isn’t he getting back to me?” Yakima didn’t like her own tone of voice. Too needy.

“Probably let his cell battery die. Guys, right?”

She squared her shoulders. “Okay, getting out of my van now.”

“Have fun, but don’t tell me about it. He’s my cousin. Ewww.” With a giggle, Haldana terminated the call.

Yakima left her van and tried the garage door code. The door shuddered and began to rise. She left her van in the driveway so that he’d know she was there, and went inside. The house felt empty, the only sounds a hum from the refrigerator and a hiss from an iPod player that had been left on. She noted a new sign of habitation. A metal Santa Claus, stick-thin and grinning cheerily, had appeared in the center of the pristine counter to the left of the stove. Slowly, the house transformed, becoming more than a designer house set.

After she placed her notes on the kitchen table, she peered in the refrigerator. Bax would probably love it if she made him dinner.

About twenty minutes later, she had a mushroom quesadilla on the stove when the doorbell rang. Bax was nowhere to be found, despite his popularity that evening. The house phone had rung a couple of times as well.

She wiped her hands on a dishtowel and went to answer the door. In this town, she could assume she’d know anyone at any door, but the reason she recognized the woman there was not because they were a neighbor, a fellow shopper at the Kroger, or someone her brothers had been to school with.

Remy Rose, the woman at the door, owed her recognition to global stardom. Yakima didn’t know how old she was, around twenty-five probably, but the jet black hair cascading to her collarbones, the famous green eyes, and pointed face, would be recognizable to just about anyone under forty. She’d been famous for nearly a decade already.

“Hi,” Yakima said. She felt underdressed, competitive, in a strange sort of way. While she had better hair, and it was undeniably her hair and not a piece, she certainly didn’t have the perfect porcelain skin or those amazing eyes.

Remy Rose pointed a lacquered blue fingernail downward. Yakima followed the finger to a small Louis Vuitton suitcase. “You can take this in now.”

Yakima glanced into the driveway to see a limousine parked in front of the other bay. A uniformed chauffeur was removing cases from the trunk.

“He’ll bring the cases to the door. You’ll have to take them from there,” Remy explained. “Unless Bax has more employees? I don’t know if he’s been here long enough to hire enough help.”

Yakima’s eyes widened. “I’m not Bax’s employee.”

Remy tilted her head, her hair cascading from one shoulder to the other. “Then what are you doing in his house?”

“I was making dinner for him.”

“So you are his employee.”

“No, a,” she paused, feeling vulnerable. Maybe Haldana shouldn’t have told her how to get in. Maybe she shouldn’t be here. “A friend. An old friend.”

“Hmmpf,” Remy said, and sidled past her into the house. She knocked against an evergreen wreath, newly placed on the door. Yakima straightened it, releasing fragrant tree scent, as the chauffeur came up the walkway, duck-walking under a load of designer suitcases.

“Are you expected?” Yakima asked, turning around. Now, roles reversed, she was in the doorway, and the pop star was in the hall.

Remy stood, hands on her tiny hips, which were covered in a black leather pencil skirt. “I’m his girlfriend. It’s not like I have to schedule.”

Yakima’s stomach growled, but it was dismay, not hunger. She wanted to be sick. Bax had been romancing her when he had a girlfriend back in Los Angeles or wherever someone like Remy Rose lived.

She smelled something burning. Her beautiful food! She ignored everything and went to rescue her quesadilla. Snatching up the spatula, she flipped the tortilla-framed concoction over and pressed down, hoping she wouldn’t ruin the insides by heating the other side. Next to her left hand, the metal Santa smiled on. She felt the urge to explain to it. “My burned tortilla might be fine with a little scraping.”

She must be losing her mind. “Bluejay,” she said, renaming the Santa as the helpful trickster of the local Native peoples, “Don’t you let me get careless now.”

In the hallway, she heard Remy speaking to the driver, and the thumps of cases hitting the floor. She ignored it all, removing her food and scraping off the burned layer, which thankfully had risen in a bubble. Then, she covered it in foil and set it in the oven, which she’d heated to just two hundred degrees, and placed a second quesadilla in the pan. While one small woman didn’t need the calories from an entire one herself, a hungry, stressed out woman could easily manage it.

While the second one cooked, she took an avocado apart and mixed it with salsa and sour cream to make a simple guacamole. It would have been better with lime juice but Bax didn’t have any citrus fruit. She’d been surprised to see the avocado.

By the time Remy appeared in the kitchen, Yakima had flipped her food and had all but forgotten the pop star.

“Where is Bax’s room? I’d like to refresh myself.” the woman said.

“Don’t know,” Yakima said.

“Oh, I never eat avocados. Too much fat. Just make up a little pico de gallo for me, would you, sweetie? Lots of jalapeno.”

Yakima turned off the stove and turned to face the pop star. “I’m going to pop this in the oven for Bax. You can eat whatever you want. I’m leaving.”

The younger woman’s red lips curved into her signature sultry style. Yakima realized she was allowing herself to be run off by the competition. But she didn’t want a player, a liar. She didn’t want to be Bax’s local girl, no matter how nice it would be to have a boyfriend at Christmas. He’d made it clear that was why he wanted her. She just hadn’t realized the subtext was that he had women elsewhere, too.

Feeling rebellious, she covered the pan in foil and shoved it in the oven, then took out the other plate, put her bowl of guacamole over it, and pushed around Remy Rose to get back into the hallway. She sailed out of the front door with the food she’d prepared from Bax’s pantry stores.

A stupid move, to be sure, but she was so angry she couldn’t help herself, and she was starving.

She was in her van with the motor going before she remembered she’d left her party notes. Now Remy would know she really did work for Bax, even if she wasn’t actually a housekeeper. She should have made the blasted woman the food she wanted and sucked up to keep her catering job.

Now, all she could do was concentrate on the dinner parties she was catering in the next few days. She needed referrals from other clients, since Bax wouldn’t be providing any when he discovered she’d been rude to an A-list celebrity.

~

Bax slammed the back of his head against the headrest of his SUV. He’d parked in Yakima’s driveway, ready to get clarity about what her brother had said. The house was dark. Even the lights of her Christmas tree couldn’t be seen through the lacy curtains. Was she here, maybe gone to bed early, or out somewhere?

When he’d arrived home, he’d found an odd mix of delicious and burned scents wafting from the kitchen into the garage. As he opened the door into the kitchen, he saw Remy at his kitchen table, scooping salsa onto a triangle of deliciously cheesy tortilla. His old girlfriend problems had come to town to join his new girlfriend problems.

Remy had spotted him, then set the food down with a guilty expression. He’d never seen her eating before.

“What are you doing here? You don’t cook.” The moment the words left his mouth he realized how stupid they sounded. Remy should be in Cancun, where she’d planned to spend the holidays. Ugh. Why had he ever returned her texts? He hadn’t meant for them to trigger a reunion. No wonder he’d managed to let his phone die and had forgotten to recharge it.

He squashed the movie playing in his head with another vicious slam of his head against the headrest. The leather cradled his head though, instead of causing the satisfying reverb of pain through his skull. While it was true that dating Remy had kept him on the A-list since the Dealys went on hiatus, allowing him entry to all the best industry parties in Nashville, New York, and Los Angeles, he’d reached the point where he couldn’t stand her and her lack of independent decision making. She wouldn’t do anything, even go out for dinner, without consulting her psychic, and her wardrobe had taken over both of his spare bedrooms. Despite all the money she had coming in, even more went out, on jewelry, shoes, handbags, designer juices, and of course, the psychic. It was like all her mental energy went into maintaining her tiny body.

He’d told Remy it was the psychic or him in October. She’d chosen the psychic. So he’d told her to rent her own house instead of camping out at his. She didn’t even like Laurel Canyon, and felt like the vibe on his street, where long ago there had been horrific murders, wasn’t good for her aura. But it had still taken her a month to move, a month where she’d tried to coax him into sex just about every day, even though he knew she’d already started sleeping with her trainer.

Even the sight of the crystal necklace hanging around her slim neck irritated him now. He knew the pink agate, outlined in gold, was there to protect her from evil spirits. What he wanted to be protected from was her.

Why had he thought if he dated a nice, normal, small town girl that life would be any different? Yakima had seemed like a sure thing, a popular local businesswoman whose early life he knew at the micro level. Why hadn’t anyone ever told him she’d announced she was his baby mama twelve years ago?

The answer was simple. He hadn’t stayed in touch with anyone, throwing himself into those one hundred hour workweeks without a second glance. He’d had songs to write and learn, dances to commit to muscle memory, studio time, photo shoots, nightclubs and parties to attend. He hadn’t looked back. If he’d glanced into the rearview mirror, he wouldn’t have liked what he saw.

He hit the steering wheel with his palms then opened his door. It might take a couple of days to get Remy out of his house, but he would deal with Yakima now. He’d taken Remy to a guest bedroom and left.

He rang Yakima’s doorbell after he went to her door. No answer. Where else would she be? At her kitchen? He knew she’d booked the dinner for sixteen, just two nights away.