Vanni: A Prequel (Groupie Book 4) (27 page)

When she turns to face me, her eyes dart to mine. She hides behind her beer bottle. If she’s doing all this to put me off, it’s not working. She’s adorable. Young, but not too young, probably close to mid-20s. And she’s sweet. I can tell by the way the blush rises in her cheek. She’s clearly not used to a guy like me, and I find that endearing after the last few years I’ve had.

“Thanks,” she says with all the proper manners I’d expect from a girl from Tennessee.

“Thank you,” I say.

She’s instantly confused. “For what?”

I can’t help but smirk as I lean closer to that spectacular cleavage. It’s all I can do not to dive right in. “Great scenery during the show.”

She blushes a deep crimson. This girl is killing me. “I didn’t think you noticed,” she said as she looks away.

I’m quick to assure her. “I notice everything. Especially when it’s put there for me to notice.”

The look in her eyes is enough to convict her. She knew what she was doing when she put on that top for the show.
Mission accomplished, baby
. “You know what they say. Play the hand you’re dealt.”

I have to laugh. “That wasn’t a complaint. I quite enjoyed the view. I wanted to see more but it was a bit like looking into the sun during an eclipse. Be careful how you wield that weapon.”

She tips her beer towards my chest. “Ditto.”

Oh, so she’s a smart girl, too. Even better. “I guess we’re even then.”

“Not really,” she says.

I cock an eyebrow. “No?”

She chugs more beer before she has the guts to say, “To be even I’d have to take my shirt off.”

What a naughty little thing, and I bet she doesn’t even know it yet. How much fun would it be to show her? “You have a point,” I say as I lean closer. I just want to touch her. I want to feel her. It’s completely crazy but the New Vanni, the one who was taught to take what he wants, springs forward. I can’t even stop him. “Maybe we should go somewhere and rectify this grievous injustice.”

Instead she cocks her eyebrow right back at me. “Or you could just put your shirt on.”

It’s there and then I know I want her. She’s not dropping at my feet. She’s making me work for it. I like girls who make me work for it. “Well played,” I salute.

She clears her throat. “Shouldn’t you hang around to see what Jasper Carrington has to say?”

I fire off my sexiest smirk. “Iris tells me I should always leave them wanting more. What’s more attractive than a star you can’t quite catch?”

I can tell by the way her eyes darken that she gets the innuendo.

Good
.

I motion to the dance floor. “Care to dance?”

“I don’t really…,” she starts, but I don’t let her finish her sentence. It’s too negative for my tastes. I grab her hand and drag her through the crowd to the middle of the crowded dance floor. Because it’s so crowded, she’s pressed up flush against me, with that incredible chest pressing into mine. It doesn’t matter if she knows how to dance. She feels like paradise in my arms. I lock my arm around her waist and pull her closer. I know she can feel me. Her breath catches when my hands roam across her generous backside.

The song they’re playing is “
Closer
,” which I’ve sung many times before to many women. I lean to sing directly in her ear so she can hear me. She swoons against me a little, which makes me even harder. Suddenly all I want to do is get the fuck out of here and bring that naughty little song to life.

Despite all the warnings, from Iris and everyone in the band, and every bad experience I’ve had the last few years, I can’t seem to resist this temptress. Worse, I don’t want to. I cop a feel of her ass before I plant a kiss on the tip of her upturned nose. But with a wink, I release her and disappear through the crowd before I can’t pull myself away at all.

I head off to find Iris and Jasper. This is the reason I’m here, and this has to remain my focus, rather than seducing some groupie.

I’ll secure the gig first,
then
I’ll take Andy back to my hotel room.

I can’t think of a better way to celebrate, especially when Jasper says the words I’ve been waiting to hear for years. “I’d love to sign you, but I need a hit song to get behind. You bring me that and I’ll put you in the studio tomorrow.”

Iris practically squeals where she stands. I nearly squeal myself. After all these years, after all these false starts, I finally sank the basket.

Well, in a manner of speaking, anyway. I still have to write a hit song. I glance across the room at Andy, where she sits chatting with Alana. No doubt she’s warning her about me.

She totally should. Because I totally want her.

I realize in that moment I haven’t felt this captivated by a woman in a long, long time–possibly ever. With Lori and Pam, even Sasha, I was trying to hold on to the guy I always was. With Tina, I was trying to wedge myself into the person I thought I wanted to be.

With Andy, it’s all brand new. She’s smart, she’s accomplished, she’s beautiful and she’s funny–she’s the whole package. And that appeals to a whole new Vanni. I’m kind of excited to find out who that is.

Before I can figure it out, she disappears to her hotel room. Predictably, it only makes me like her more.

I get Andy’s number from Iris, to thank her for flying in for the show and helping us get some national exposure. I know when she gives it to me that she thinks I’m full of shit, and, of course, I am. Thanking her for what she was doing is merely an excuse… a reason to connect with her and talk to her.

Truth is I can’t stop thinking about her. When we all leave the club at closing time, I send Miss Foster a text, inviting her to New York to see the band. “
Shirts optional. V
.”

I dream about her that night, where I’m showing her my city in a hansom cab. I taste her lips in my dream, which makes it that much harder to wake up.

The next morning I find her text.
Sounds like fun. I look forward to it.”

As do I, baby. As do I.

When we head back to New York, I try to sort my fevered thoughts on paper, through lyrics, like always. It all comes back to the moment I first saw her.

The curve of her face, a wisp of her hair, I knew when I saw her standing there, I wanted her…

I’d never been hit by a thunderbolt before, but that was what Andy Foster had turned out to be.

Seeing her, wanting her
,
what I’d give for just one kiss…

Who knows what might have happened had Tina not intercepted me that first night so long ago? I probably would have had her then, but I knew instantly that wasn’t the Vanni someone like her would have deserved. No girl did, except maybe Tina, who had assembled me like Frankenstein’s monster into the rock star she wanted me to be… a rock star that wasn’t going anywhere.

Does she know how I feel/ How much I want this to be real…

It got me thinking about fate, and how one moment can alter an entire course of action.

An angel from a dream
I can’t claim…

Fate hasn’t always worked out in my favor. But what if it had decided to throw me a bone just once? What would I say to my soul mate, if I only had a split second to tell her how I feel?

Someday I’ll wake from this dream and hold my angel in my arms. And she’ll know all along I’ve wanted her.

Within a few days I have the lyrics. Within a week, we have the song. Within the four minutes it takes to listen to it, we have our first major contract with a legitimate record label.

Dreaming in Blue, and Giovanni Carnevale, had officially arrived.

Whether anyone else in the band can figure it out or not, I know that Andy is the reason why. It
was
fate that we met that night. We gravitated towards each other because we were supposed to, no matter what dire warnings the people around me might say.

It’s almost like she was wrapped up in a box somewhere, a hidden present in the attic, just waiting for me to find her and set her free.

Okay, maybe I’m romanticizing, but hey. I’m Italian. I’m supposed to be a hopeless romantic. It’s in my blood. And thanks to that one night in Philadelphia, so is Andy Foster.

I know what you’re thinking. Here we go again, right? Me chasing my dick after some fantasy girl when I should just keep it in my pants and work hard to impress Jasper, to do anything he wants in order for Dreaming in Blue to get the shot we all deserve.

Let’s face it. I’m no winner in the romance department, not by a long shot. And Andy’s too good for me, I knew that the moment she told me to put on my shirt rather than fall at my feet and beg me to take her to my hotel. She’s an ordinary girl, and, if the last few years have taught me anything at all, ordinary girls need more than I can ever provide. It’s the price you pay for an extraordinary life, which I want more than I’ve ever wanted
any
woman. I couldn’t give it up, not for Lori, Sasha
or
Pam. Even I can admit how much better off all those girls are without me. They want marriage and kids, and I work best with those relationships that require none of that. Deep inside I know I’m my father’s son, only instead of booze, I overdose on music, attention and sex. Ordinary girls, good girls, demand that I be better than some character on a stage, and I’m not entirely sure that I’m capable of that anymore.

To be frank, the idea scares the ever loving shit out of me.

Why I want them, why I need them, why I can’t stay the fuck away from them remains a mystery to me.

But Andy did stand apart from Lori, Pam or Sasha in one very important way. She had proven to be my most successful muse, connecting this enticing creature forever in my brain with my biggest break. Dreaming in Blue is about to rocket into the stratosphere, and I really don’t think that would have happened without her. I honestly don’t know what that means, if anything at all. I don’t know where it’s going or what’s going to happen. All I know is every time I think about her, I smile. I feel better than I have in a long, long time.

And I truly can’t wait to see her again.

Ginger Voight is a screenwriter and bestselling author with more than twenty published titles in fiction and nonfiction. Her nonfiction works cover everything from travel to politics, while her works of fiction range from romance to the paranormal, as well as dark “ripped-from-the-headlines” topics, such as those featured in her book
Dirty Little Secrets
.

Ginger discovered her love for writing in the sixth grade, courtesy of a Halloween assignment. From then on, writing became a thing of solace, reflection, and security. When she found herself homeless in L.A. at the age of nineteen, she wrote her first novel in longhand on notebook paper while living out of her car.

In 1995, after she lost her nine-day-old son, she worked through her grief by writing the story that would eventually become
The Fullerton Family Saga
.
In 2011, she embarked on a new journey: to publish romance novels starring heroines who look like the average American woman. These “Rubenesque romances” have developed a following thanks to her bestselling
Groupie
series. Other titles, such as the highly-rated
Fierce
series,
tap into the American preoccupation with reality TV, giving her contemporary stories a current, pop-culture edge.

Ginger isn’t afraid to push the envelope with characters who are perfectly imperfect. Rich or poor, sweet or selfish, gay or straight, plus-size or svelte, her characters are beautifully flawed and three-dimensional. They populate her lavish fictional landscapes and teach us more about the real world in which we live, through their interactions with each other, and often through gut-wrenching angst. Ginger’s goal with every book is to give her readers a little bit more than they were expecting, with stories they’ll never forget.

For more, please visit
gingervoight.com
. Follow Ginger on Twitter (
twitter.com/gingervoight
) and “like” her author page on Facebook (
facebook.com/gingervoight
) for all the latest news on her public appearances and new releases.