You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology (6 page)

Which was why Zander had insisted his bandmates work on a Plan B, pulling what strings he could from New Zealand—setting up informal meetings with producers, and making his home recording studio available so they could work on new songs.

She knew, through the other guys, that they were also discussing how to set up a new band if the worst happened. Rage could not be Rage without its last original member and charismatic founder.

Kayla suspected Jared wasn’t sharing that because he didn’t think she was on his side anymore, career-wise, which wasn’t true. Something else they needed to talk about.

After Christmas.

Could she afford to wait that long? Did she want to? Jared had taken the first step and instead of matching it, she’d taken two back.

She needed an honest second opinion. And there was only one person qualified enough to give it to her.

“S
o what’s really
stopping you ditching duty for booty?” Dimity Graham asked with her usual let’s-cut-through-the-crap incisiveness, after Kayla filled her in on her dilemma. “We both know you can juggle multiple tasks.”

Zander’s PA was a bitchy WASP with hidden depths. She and Kayla had become friends on tour, which surprised the hell out of both of them. Dimity looked like most of the other beautiful skinny blonds in Tinseltown, but combined brutal honesty with a kind heart.

Suddenly realizing she was cutting her chicken burger into child-size bites, Kayla put down her knife and fork. “Fear,” she said.

It was too hard admitting to Jared she was having a crisis of self-confidence when he’d seen her as the capable one all these years—the tower of strength who was the woman he fell in love with. “Do I really want to re-open that can of worms? I feel as if we’re finally on an even keel.” Even if it wasn’t the glorious sloop their marriage had first set sail on, but a serviceable tug boat.
Is that what you’ll settle for?

“You want my opinion?”

“That’s why I’m buying you lunch.”

Jared had shooed her out the door, Rocco balanced on one hip, straight after breakfast. “Go. Do the stuff you need to do…presents, whatever. Then see a movie, get a massage. Have fun. Don’t come home until dinnertime. Adult dinner time. Eight o’clock.”

“Stop being so rabbity about this.” Dimity picked at her salad. “Navigating the rock world is tough, and I know the learning curve for you and Jared has been steep. He let fame go to his head and you’ve been hanging on for dear life, eyes closed, waiting for things to settle down. But you’re trying to apply brakes at the top of the roller coaster.”

“Do I have to state the obvious?” Kayla picked up a burger segment, only to put it down again. “Because I don’t want to
fall
.”

“So your strategy is to hang upside down for a while? You’ve still got to get down sometime. Open your eyes, release the brakes and start steering the ride. Take control. You’re not a passenger. Stop acting like one.”

Kayla stabbed a fry into some ketchup. “Because I’ve been so good at driving the rock ‘n’ roller coaster so far?”

“You were Miss Hometown something, ran committees for something, and—” Dimity waved vaguely “—ran a high school office, dealing with hormonal teens.” She looked at Kayla’s fries with hungry eyes. “Now you’ve done a few loops you’re smart enough to work it out.”

“I don’t know why that makes me feel better, but it does.” Kayla placed a few fries on Dimity’s plate, ignoring her friend’s token protest.

She and Jared had been so good at navigating failure, they’d never considered success would also require a skill-set. Getting her old life back wasn’t an option. She was in a new world with new rules and new challenges, and digging her heels in and saying, “I’m not playing” would get her nowhere.

“Forget Jared for a moment,” Dimity said, dipping a fry into Kayla’s ketchup. “What do
you
want?”

If their old life wasn’t available, what could their life be? What would work for her? “Our family life can’t revolve around his career anymore,” she said slowly, letting ideas form. “Maddie starts school next year. We need roots, structure, community. A life that Jared can slot into, not the other way around.” Her amorphous longings starting crystallizing into goals she could work with.

“If we have to live in L.A. I’d like to find a neighborhood where mostly normal people live mostly normal lives. Other mothers who aren’t fixated on womb cleansers and finding a real English nanny because God forbid they raise their own kids.”

Her tone gathered conviction as she thought of some of her new acquaintances. “I refuse to let my days become an endless cycle of dieting, gym, and fucking Brazilians.”

“Nothing wrong with fucking Brazilians,” said Dimity, making her laugh. It was so good having a genuine friend to share things with in L.A. She needed more of them. Another goal.

And Dimity was right. It was time for Kayla to start calling the shots.

“What I find hardest is the loneliness when he’s touring,” she admitted. “Raising the kids by myself.” She’d bottled up her feelings for so long, she had trouble opening up. Letting people in again.
Building up to letting Jared in
. “I keep telling myself to toughen up. I mean, it’s no different from wives whose husbands are in the military or the merchant navy, husbands who work on fishing boats or oil rigs.”

“It’s completely different.” Dimity stole another fry. “Those guys aren’t having their ego stroked 24/7. They’re not exposed to drugs or adulation, to groupies and sycophants. Everyone’s in a unique situation, and that’s
your
reality. Rock stardom and a young family will take work, and sacrifice. And it’s work you and Jared have to do together.”

“When he starts traveling to gigs again, I’ll need to find something I can do at night, when the kids are asleep. Something that gets my brain working, maybe a part-time job.”

“Good for you,” Dimity said. “Now hold onto that positive because we have a little unpleasantness to get out of the way.” She took a copy of Musique magazine from her bag and pushed it across the table. “It won’t be in the stores until next week, but I wrangled an early copy.”

Jared was on the cover, pictured mid-performance. It was a striking shot—his body curved over the bass guitar in a moment of frozen grace, the whipcord muscle of his forearms in sharp relief, and his dark hair falling forward over eyes closed in ecstasy. The headline was in French.
Les futures stars du rock. Simone Dumont en fait l’exposé.

“Shall I translate?”

“Just tell me she respected our kids’ privacy.” Kayla had fought hard for that.

“She respected their privacy. No sneaky photos included, no personal anecdotes. Just a generic lie saying how
charmants
your
enfants
are. As though any children are charming.”

“And the catch?”

“She doesn’t disparage you,
exactly
, but you’re portrayed as a simple soul, an ingénue in Paris kind of thing.”

“Small-town girl doing the best she can?” It was true. Ignoring the magazine, Kayla returned her focus to her neatly sectioned burger, took a bite. “Does she mention having the hots for my husband?”

“Of course not, she’s far too cerebral for that. It’s actually wonderful publicity given the shit we’ve been dealing with lately. Simone may be a
salope
, but she’s a great writer.”

Kayla concentrated on swallowing what felt like a golf ball. “That’s all that matters, that we get some real benefit from it.”

“Hold that thought.” Dimity flicked through the pages. “It’s very hard to take a bad photo of you,” she said. “She must have really trawled for this.”

“Oh, great.” Steeling herself, Kayla pushed her plate to the side and accepted the magazine. The picture was from her high school yearbook, taken at a Halloween party in the school gym. She was dressed in a voluminous clown costume and blowing out her cheeks to camera. Next to her Jared was a dark-haired James Dean.
Really? A bad photo was the best Simone could come up with? Amateur
.

“What does the caption say?” Calmly, she returned the magazine to Dimity. “Hootie and the blowfish?”

For too long, she’d allowed herself to be intimidated and undermined by people whose values she couldn’t respect. It stopped now.

“Walker is sweetly loyal to his wife, Kayla, whom he met in high school,” Dimity translated. “The couple are trying to live a normal life with their young children, but rock marriages are notoriously unstable.”

“Thank you.” Kayla retrieved her cell. “That makes me even more determined to prove that French ’ho ’ho ’ho wrong. Excuse me a sec.”

She texted Jared:

Hey, Bob, it’s Betty. Can’t stop thinking about you. Maybe we could fit in another date before Christmas. I’ll text you details of where and when in a couple of days.

Her cell chimed an incoming text a minute later.

Yes.

Funny how empowering a single word could be.

Smiling, she looked up to see Dimity chewing through the last of her fries.

Dimity looked at her, then at the fry in her hand and dropped it. “I am
so
sorry.” She wiped grease off her fingers like it was blood on a murder weapon. “I thought you were finished.”

“I am now.” Since she had returned from New Zealand where Zander was convalescing with his Kiwi love, Elizabeth, Dimity had been jumpy and distracted. Very distracted, if she was stuffing fries down her diet-conscious throat. “Are you missing him very much?”

“What…who?”

“Zander. You guys worked together a long time.”

“Oh, him. No. We still work via Skype most days.”

So, something else then
. Kayla tried again. “You look pale, are you sleeping?”

“Just wired from working too hard.” Dimity gestured for a waiter to take their plates away. Kayla knew she was flat out organizing advance promo for the release of
In Bed With A Rock God
, the confessional Zander’s fiancée Elizabeth had written. “I just had a
brilliant
idea.”

“How many is that today?” Kayla asked. Brilliant ideas were Dimity’s stock in trade, so commonplace her friends took her genius for granted. As the waiter cleared their table, Kayla ordered a piece of chocolate cake, two coffees, two spoons.

“Six…but that’s not important.
I
could give you part-time work.” Dimity smirked as Kayla refocused. “Scheduling, confirming interviews, proofing press releases. And since you’re in the band family, I don’t have to worry about screening sensitive material.”

“I’d
love
that.” Kayla got up and hugged her. “I’m not cut out to be a rock star’s arm candy.”

“You’ve got to find a way to get over that incident in Paris,” Dimity said. “That security guard was an ignorant cretin.” She waited until Kayla had retaken her seat. “This industry is full of shallow people who think skin-deep is the right weight—don’t buy into it.”

“You’d have way more credibility if you were less obsessive about your own diet,” Kayla said dryly.

“It’s because I don’t have a healthy relationship with food that I appreciate someone who does,” Dimity said. “Have you ever told Jared what happened?”

“No, and I’m not going to.” She got hot and embarrassed even thinking about it.

“If you two are trying to reconnect, you need to talk about it. It’s really affected you.”

“Tell me again about the dotterels you saw in New Zealand,” Kayla said.

“If you want to change the subject, say so.” Dimity was all offended dignity. “What did you think of Joy Bar last night? I’m thinking of booking it for our Christmas party.”

Kayla shuddered. Like she was ever going there again. “Wait, how do you know that’s where we had our date?”

Dimity sat back as the waiter delivered their coffees and Kayla’s cake. “I recommended it to Jared, and booked the restaurant. It’s polite to cancel, by the way. They were pissed you didn’t show.”

Because we were otherwise occupied.
“Are you telling me he didn’t even organize our date?” She paused, caught in a memory.
But honey, I put it on the fridge calendar. All you had to do was…

“It’s a shame you never saw the dessert I ordered.” Dimity sipped her coffee and eyed one of the spoons on the chocolate cake.

“And the sexy strangers idea…was that yours, too?” This was beyond humiliating.

“No, but it sounds interesting.” Dimity picked the spoon. “Spill.”

*

The moment Kayla
left the house, Jared phoned a cleaning service. The short notice cost him, but not as much as the dress, which had been more for his benefit, than Kayla’s anyway.

He spent thirty minutes tidying in preparation for the cleaner’s arrival, Rocco tottering after him pushing a toy lawnmower and Maddie locked down playing games on Jared’s cell.

When the cleaners arrived, he bundled up the kids and hit the stores so Maddie could buy Mommy’s Christmas present. She wanted to spend her own money, and sat firmly in the quantity-beats quality-camp, so they went to the dollar store. He also organized his own private present, again distracting his daughter with his cell. He couldn’t have her blabbing.