Chapter Seven
Zander read his biographer’s polite-yet-firm text reminding him of their interview and pocketed his cell. A warm breeze stirred his hair and created diamond-shaped patterns in Jared’s kidney-shaped swimming pool. Reclining the sun lounger, he tipped his Stetson over his eyes.
Elizabeth was definitely taking this project more seriously than he wanted her to.
Generally it didn’t take long to train people—girlfriends, colleagues, employees, family—not to expect too much of him. He had the process down to a fine art. Agree to the rules and then break them. Little disappointments leading to a growing realization and then a resigned acceptance that relying on him was a bad idea. At which point everyone relaxed into a relationship devoid of unrealistic expectations. No hurt feelings, no drama.
A squawk beside him made him lift his hat. He adjusted the sun umbrella to angle shade over a bouncer contraption that reminded Zander of the scary pod in The Matrix—if it had been padded in a jungle fabric of friendly monkeys and parrots.
“Better?” he asked the baby.
It stared at him with brown eyes as round as the turning keys on its daddy’s bass guitar.
“So,” he said, sensing it expected something more of him, “you’re a baby. How’s that working out for you?”
Its lower lip began to wobble.
“No crying.” Zander squeezed the monkey toy clinging to the handle of the bouncer, making it squeak. Squeak? The manufacturers clearly weren’t interested in encouraging zoologists.
The wobble spread to the baby’s chin and dimpled cheeks and Zander glanced anxiously toward the house. How long did taking a toddler to the john take? Scanning the bouncer for another toy, he saw a switch on the frame and flicked it on. The whole thing vibrated like a bed in a cheap motel, startling him into a laugh.
A sob escaped the baby, then another, deep and heart-wrenching.
Surrendering to the inevitable, Zander unbuckled the straps and tentatively settled the infant on his lap. What was its—his—name? “Rocco, it’s okay. You won’t be a baby forever.” His voice caught Rocco’s attention, the sobs turned to shudders. Zander patted the tiny shoulders. “You know that nothing looks more ridiculous than a badass rock star with a drooling tot, don’t you?” How long since he’d last held one? Not since his teens, when his neighborhood had been full of kids minding kids, or having them.
Unexpectedly the baby smiled, a wide gummy smile that disconcerted Zander so much he smiled back. “Yeah, you’re cute, I’ll give you that. But don’t get complacent. You’re the smallest kid in the sandpit of a rock marriage now.” Jared and Kayla thought they could keep it real, but Zander had seen too many couples fall apart under temptation and adulation.
Gurgling, Rocco grabbed the chain around his neck and shook it vigorously.
Zander had warned Jared before offering him the job, but the younger man had waved his caution aside. “Kayla and I are solid,” he’d said with such Eagle Scout naïveté that Zander had seriously considered going with his second choice.
But the guy was a genius on bass and had a sexy geek vibe that would appeal to a younger demographic. And Zander always put the band’s interests first.
Carefully, he removed his chain from the baby’s surprisingly strong grasp. “If you want a remotely normal life make good friends with your grandparents and for God’s sake, stay tight with your big sister, someone to share this fuc…sideshow madness with.”
Rocco made a grab for Zander’s hip flask on the adjacent table and he slid it out of his reach. “So enough about you, let’s talk about me.”
Still straining for the flask, Rocco whimpered and it occurred to Zander that he might be thirsty. He couldn’t see a bottle in the bouncer. What the hell. He gave him the flask, steadying it against the rosebud mouth. “It’s water, but don’t tell anybody.”
“Mommy doesn’t like you holding him,” said a high bossy voice and Rocco’s big sister Madison staggered into view, her small feet slid low in Mommy’s stilettos, the heels slapping her sturdy calves with every step. She was a cacophony of color in a pink bathing suit, purple goggles, a rainbow bathing cap and puffy lime-green water wings.
Zander grinned.
She scowled. “Are you here to take Daddy away?”
“Nope, there’s another week before we tour.”
The chocolate button eyes behind her goggles remained hostile. “I wan’ him to stay home.”
“Daddy’s gotta work to pay for those shoes,” Zander said. “Does Mommy know you’re wearing her Jimmy Choos?”
Glaring, she clip-clopped away as fast as she could toward the house.
“I won’t tell,” Zander called but the little girl only lurched faster.
He looked at the baby on his lap. “I definitely need to work on the under-five demographic. But we’re cool, right?”
Rocco gummed the top of Zander’s hip-flask and a trail of drool slid down the engraved silver. Yuk.
Zander had spent the last hour patiently talking Jared out of taking his wife and kids on the next tour leg. “It would be exhausting and frustrating for all of you,” he reiterated to Rocco but the baby began fussing again, little high-pitched squeaks and grumbles. Wait, what was keeping Jared if his four-year-old was roaming free? Shading the baby’s bald head with his Stetson, Zander strolled toward the house, pausing at the patio doors to take his flask from the baby and tuck it into the back pocket of his jeans.
“So what you’re saying,” said an unseen female, “is that you don’t want us to come now.” Kayla. Dammit, he’d intended leaving before Jared’s wife came home. “I thought we were in this together.”
“We are.” Jared’s voice.
“Then what’s the problem suddenly?”
“There are huge demands on my time besides performing. After shows we don’t get back to the hotel until two a.m. and we’re too wired to sleep until four, so that means sleeping through the mornings. In the afternoons there are interviews and sound checks. Most of the time, you’ll be alone with two little kids to entertain. And how will they cope with constant traveling?”
Zander smiled. Almost word-perfect. Moving out of earshot, he looked at the baby. “Normally I’d run at this point, but I’m guessing I can’t leave you on the doorstep?”
As if offended by the suggestion, Rocco screeched. The arguing ceased abruptly. Zander strolled through the living room and into the kitchen. “Your baby wants something,” he said. “Best I can tell, it isn’t me.”
“Jared left him with you?” Surrounded by half-unpacked grocery bags, Kayla shot a reproachful look at her husband.
Zander grinned. “What was he thinking?”
Her cheeks reddened. “I didn’t mean—”
Passing Rocco to his daddy, he waved her explanation aside. “Babes or babies, I can’t be trusted with them alone.”
She smiled. Despite the mommy uniform of trainers, yoga pants and baggy T-shirt that hid the few extra pounds only women obsessed about, she still nailed the former homecoming queen’s smile—all dazzle and congeniality. Considering she’d signed Jared up for Rage’s auditions, Zander had expected her to be more stoical about their separations.
“What do you think about me and the kids coming on tour?”
“Has Jared explained that the band has to come first?”
“Yes, of course, only—”
“Then it’s nothing to do with me,” Zander said smoothly and turned to Jared, who was dropping a tender kiss on his baby’s downy head.
Zander was surprised by a slight pang. Except he didn’t do pangs. Or kids.
“I’ll leave you to handle it,” he said to Jared, his tone that of a general to a lieutenant. Quell the uprising.
* * *
Strolling to the conservatory, Zander glanced at the tabloid Dimity had thrust at him on his arrival. From her frown, he expected something nasty. Instead he was pleasantly assailed by his biographer’s booty. She wasn’t a woman he associated with leopard print; it must be the contradiction that momentarily made him think, hot. Then he saw she was trying to cover up all that creamy flesh and reverted to his original assessment. Terminally conventional, for all her intriguing hints of wild times.
“Cute swimsuit,” he said casually, throwing the newspaper on the glass coffee table beside her. “I hope you bought it.”
She didn’t look up from the laptop on her knees. “No need to be kind.”
“I’m never kind.” He’d thought her rigid posture was due to pissiness at his lateness; now he realized she was humiliated. “You must have factored in press interest when you took this job.”
“I expect to be photographed when I’m with you, but not by myself. And not like this.” Elizabeth moved her teacup and saucer over the photo.
“Look on the bright side.” Zander sprawled in a wicker chair opposite, dropping a couple of the floral cushions to the floor. “You weren’t naked.”
She bit her lip. “Shall we get to work?”
Zander frowned. “Don’t let it matter, Doc. It’s not personal.”
Glancing away, Elizabeth said lightly, “Not personal to imply I have a fat ass and no boobs?”
“And if you were skinny with big tits, they’d have suggested you were anorexic with implants. It’s not personal.” The wicker frame dug into his shoulders and he retrieved one of the cushions. “I’ve had more face-lifts than Joan Rivers—God rest her—and enough hair implants to cover a Yeti. Wonder where all those socks disappear to, the ones that get lost in the washing machine? They’re stuffed down my pants to give me a bigger dick.”
She laughed.
Better. “These guys make their living spinning stories of excess, drama and broken dreams.” He propped his boots on the edge of the table. “Learn the rules and you can turn that to your advantage. Get publicity for a tour, a new album,” he grinned, “a memoir. Think of the relationship as—what’s our word again? Sympathetic. No, that’s not it.”
“Symbiotic.”
“There you go. This was probably a one-off anyway, simple opportunism.”
Elizabeth looked hopeful. “You think so?”
“A crush on me is boring unless you start haunting Victoria’s Secret and sex shops.”
“I’ll revise my shopping plans.”
Zander grinned.
Elizabeth figured now was as good a time as any to begin their overdue interview and switched on the recorder. “You’re a sex symbol.”
“Thanks for noticing.”
“What’s it like being objectified?”
“Easier for a guy, we’re allowed to age. And even hungover with a three-day beard we’re still considered hot.”
“Just how vain are you?”
“Nowhere near as bad as I used to be.” Shrugging off his leather jacket, Zander dumped it over the arm of the chair and added ruefully, “Probably because I need too much work these days to stay pretty.”
“Specifically what is that work?”
He resettled into the cushions. “Haven’t you bounced back from embarrassment?”
Elizabeth looked at him steadily. He’d been late, very late. Again. She was through going easy on him.
Zander’s grin faded slowly as he appraised her. “Daily workout, regular facials,” he said abruptly. “My brows have been shaped and a deep frown line Botoxed here.” He touched the upper bridge of his nose. “Despite speculation, I was actually born with this mouth. I’m on something to keep my hair thick. It may fall out if I stop… I’m too scared to find out. Tattooed eyeliner to make my eyes pop.”
“They do pop,” she said. Looking into them too long made her giddy, but Elizabeth wouldn’t tell him that. He had the most beautiful eyes, eagle-fierce, and when his gaze intensified she felt like an ant under a magnifying glass. Warm becoming uncomfortably hot.
Elizabeth cleared her throat. “You don’t consider a beauty regime unmasculine?”
“Not as long as I’ve got a big dick. That sock story? All wrong. I don’t understand guys who worry that their masculinity will be compromised with a dab of moisturizer.” He pulled his silver flask out of a side pocket of his discarded jacket, looked at it, then opened a drawer under the coffee table and replaced it with another. “A real man should be able to seduce a woman while wearing a tutu and tiara—actually that’d be fun.” Unscrewing the top, he toasted her.
“Is your health regime the reason you’ve given up alcohol?”
Zander paused mid-swig.
“I know that’s water,” she added before he could deny it. “The amount you drink, you’d be in a coma if it was hard liquor.”
“Don’t underestimate a rocker’s capacity.” He hesitated. “I’m giving booze up for the tour because alcohol dries out the voice.” He anticipated her follow-up question. “The flask’s a decoy. I don’t want anyone asking if I’m having trouble with my vocals.”
“And are you?”
“Not if I adopt clean living.” He touched the shape of the nicotine patch under the sleeve of his white T-shirt. He wore it in different places every day; on a hip, a shoulder, an arm and, God help her, she never missed the outline. “No smoking, no booze, no drugs.”
“All the vices.”
He gave her a lazy smile. “Not quite. But don’t mention any of this in the book. People don’t read rock memoirs for health tips; they want to know how it feels living with unlimited access to fast cars, faster women and mountains of cash.”
Elizabeth jerked upright, bumping the table. Tea splashed into her saucer. “Gluttony!”
“Excuse me?”
“We structure chapters around the seven deadly sins.” Grabbing a pen and notebook from the table, she wiped a couple of drops of tea away and began writing. “It will give the material shape and riff off your trademark irony.”
“Keep talking.”
“Gluttony. The overconsumption of rock stars, and why you’re so bent on finding success again when you’ve already had a stellar career.” She jotted it all down. “Lust—groupies and girlfriends…that reminds me.” She looked up. “We haven’t talked about Stormy.”
Zander played with his flask. “Stormy is a generous, caring woman who’ll always have a place in my heart.”
That sounded rote. “The media speculated that you cheated on her.”
“It’s because I didn’t want to cheat on her that we had an open relationship. It worked well for a long time.”
For whom? “What changed?”
“Stormy was ready to start a family, I wasn’t. She ended it.”
“Really?” Stormy’s escapades since the breakup didn’t suggest a woman ready to settle down. She’d been dating a string of shady men and charged with physical obstruction for drunkenly haranguing a cop who’d pulled her date over for speeding. “General consensus suggests you broke it off.”
“Hell no, she kicked me to the curb. Expand on your seven sins idea,” Zander said. “I like it.”
Encouraged, Elizabeth returned to her list. “Pride—clearly your arrogance.”
“Clearly. Don’t forget my vanity.”
She scribbled it down. “Anger—the breakup of the band; sloth…” Tapping the pen against her chin, she frowned at him. “You can hardly be accused of laziness unless we count a laissez-faire approach to relationships. Maybe we can lump sloth in with lust. Envy is the toughest, since you have everything you could possibly want. We’ll come back to that.” She returned to writing. “Let’s end with the virtues.”
“Faith, hope and charity?” His voice was unholy with amusement.
“Actually you’re forgetting prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude, but we’ll stick to the big three.” Ignoring his skepticism, she ticked them off on her fingers. “Faith—what sustains you, what you hope for the future, and charity…some of your causes, perhaps?”
Zander shook his head. “Most of the charities I support prefer my donations to remain anonymous.”
“Why?”
“They don’t want to alienate conservative donors.”
“That’s harsh if they’re taking your money.”
“Hey, I agree with them. Unless a celebrity profile directly benefits a cause, contributions should be anonymous.”
Interesting that he was discreet on this and a publicity whore on everything else. When she pointed that out, Zander shrugged. “Exploiting people in need for cheap publicity sticks in my craw. My family’s been there—broke, desperate, vulnerable. When Dad was diagnosed, Mom gave up teaching and worked nights at Walmart so she could take him to treatments. Our standard of living fell real fast. Sometimes pride is all you have left and to have some jerkwad put his arm around your shoulder for a photo op—” He forced a smile. “Even I wouldn’t stoop that low.”
Elizabeth said casually, “Remind me how old you were when your father was diagnosed?”
“Thirteen and Dev was nine.”
“Your mother has said in interviews that she was forced to leave you alone a lot. You took care of him.”
Zander rummaged in his jacket pocket, produced a tobacco pouch, and started rolling a cigarette. “It was toughest on Mom. She needed to look after Dad, she was trying to look after us, as well as keep a roof over our heads while all our savings went south. And I was hitting my teens, getting attitude.” He paused to lick the cigarette paper. “Dad had always been the disciplinarian—tough but fair—and with the brakes off I started roaming the neighborhood, Devin in tow.”
Picking up a silver lighter, he absently flicked the flame on and off. “I was offered my first joint by a friend’s father—a small-time grower—when I was fifteen.”
“Your dad died a year later?”
“Yes.” Zander watched the flame with the fascination of an arsonist.
“Were you with him at the end?” she said wistfully.
With slow deliberation, Zander placed the cigarette in his mouth and lit it. The tip burned red as he sucked smoke into his lungs and held it, eyes closed. Five seconds passed before he exhaled. He looked at her through the blue-gray haze, his expression unreadable. “Let’s just say it was a shit time for my family and leave it at that.”
“I didn’t mean to hit a nerve.” Elizabeth sipped her tea to give him a moment; it was cold and bitter. “My dad died away from home when I was nineteen,” she explained. “Life changes forever doesn’t it?”
Zander dropped the cigarette under his heel and extinguished it against the slate floor. “What happened?”
“He was doing a stint as a military chaplain in Timor-Leste and was caught in an ambush.”
“I’m sorry. At least we had time to prepare for Dad’s death.”
“Can you prepare?”
“No. Mom fell apart after his death. Suffered months of depression.” Zander seemed to recollect himself. “This is off the record.”
“Of course.”
“I quit school and went full time at Dairy Queen. She was furious when she found out, but by then I’d missed too many classes to re-enroll.”
“Leaving school to support your family was a selfless gesture.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” Zander said dryly. “But my grandparents had been begging Mom to bring us to New Zealand and I could see all my dreams for the band slipping away. I’d have done anything to stay in LA.” His mouth curled in a cynical smile. “The friend’s dad who was a small-time marijuana grower? I supplemented my income by becoming one of his couriers. When Mom grew suspicious about the extra cash, I told her the money came from gigs.”
“Why do you always mock yourself every time there’s a suggestion you might have been…” Elizabeth searched for the right word. “…good?”
“Do I?” His light tone didn’t match the bleakness in his eyes. When his cell rang he answered it with relief. “Jared… Uh-huh.” Zander straightened in his seat. “Kayla’s mother will come on tour?” he repeated slowly. “To help with the kids and as company for Kayla? Yeah, your wife is a frickin’ genius. It’s a win-win for everybody.”
Elizabeth wondered if Jared heard the irony and hid a smile. “Problem?” she inquired when Zander ended the call.
“Ever heard of Buffalo Calf Road Woman?”
Intrigued, she shook her head.
“She was a Cheyenne who reportedly fought next to her husband in the Battle of Little Bighorn.”
Elizabeth’s historian’s ears pricked up. “Custer’s Last Stand.”
“Her tribe’s storytellers credit her with knocking Custer off his horse before he died.”
Understanding where he was going with this, she started to laugh.
Zander said moodily, “Damned if I’ve just been knocked off my horse.”