Strong: A Stage Dive Novella (Stage Dive #4.5)(8)

I swore extra quietly beneath my breath. Guess spending time with a kid had already started to rub off on me. “Take your shrinking skills elsewhere. I do not need a therapist, Lizzy.”

“No? What about a friend?” And with that parting shot, she was gone.





CHAPTER THREE



A moment, that’s all it had taken. One short moment when I was deleting the bulk of my New York contacts off my phone and the child had disappeared. Of course the problem was, the great room where we generally hung out to watch dog cartoons on repeat and spread his huge collection of toys far and wide didn’t have a door. Instead, it joined a hallway running the length of the house. The same hallway I now ran along looking for the short evil one. And we all know where he got the evil from. That’s right, his mother. Not my side of the family. No way.

“Gib?” I called, looking into rooms as I passed. “Gibby, where are you?”

For two and a half days we’d gotten along okay, my nephew and I. Mostly due to my bribing him with his favorite foods. Chocolate chip cookies (made by the housekeeper who came in during the day, Greta), chicken nuggets, and grapes. A not completely unhealthy diet. After all, the five food groups were all roughly represented. Today, however, no amount of bribery worked. Gib was in a foul mood for some reason and hell bent on taking it out on me. Reminded me of a few years back when I’d been working for a big time fashion model and she’d thrown a next-season Louboutin at my head. Lucky me, we’d been the same shoe size. So it served her right that I caught the shoe and took its mate as an unspoken apology for the incident.

But back to child wrangling.

From the not-so-far distance, the sound of voices, the strumming of a guitar, and the tapping of a drumbeat drifted this way. It was like a rock ’n roll siren call. Especially to a two-and-a-half-year-old who pretty much wanted to hang out with anyone but me. “Oh no.”

On account of the left hand side of the house where the studio and band practice area, games room, home theater, wine room, gym, sauna, and second kitchen (because didn’t everyone need a second kitchen?) were located having its own entrance, I’d happily missed out on the bulk of all of the Stage Dive comings and goings. Even Sam lived in the two-bedroom pool house out back with Adam the musical genius. Apart from my needling head doctor of a sister-in-law and idiot brother, I’d pretty much kept to myself. Because there was nothing wrong with alone, no matter what Lizzy said. Alone was perfectly fine and actually quite safe. Especially given the bulk of the people who tended to visit the house.

And there they all were.

Jimmy sat sprawled on one of the leather sofas, watching his brother David, sitting on a large amp opposite him, tune a guitar. Mal, the blond-haired maniac, sat behind a drum kit, keeping up a relatively quiet though steady beat. And Gib was in his father’s arms, safe and sound. Thank God.

I tightened my slightly sloppy ponytail and stood taller. Jeans and a tee wasn’t my usual slick day wear. But at least there were currently no food groups represented in my hair.

“But you’re supposed to hang out with Aunty Martha. We talked about this,” said Ben with a frown. “What if she gets lost? She hasn’t been here that long. She doesn’t know the house like you do.”

“Aunty Martha there.” Expression decidedly unconvinced by the argument, Gib pointed at me, standing in the doorway.

I lifted a hand in greeting. “He got away from me.”

Mal snorted, the jerk.

Ben just nodded. “Yeah, I noticed. He’s like Houdini when he gets an idea into his head that he wants to be somewhere else. Kind of impressed you kept him occupied for as long as you did, actually.”

Phew.

“Keeping track of children isn’t as easy as it looks,” said Jimmy with a small smile. Not a smirk, however, which was interesting. It might have almost been kind. Marriage and fatherhood must have mellowed him plenty.

“I’m finding that out,” I said.

David just jerked his chin at me. Not awkward at all.

With an electric guitar in his hands, the new kid, Adam, stood waiting nearby. He looked a little wide eyed at the company he was keeping. Fair enough. Any no-name baby rocker like him would give up valuable parts of their anatomy to be hanging out with Stage Dive.

“What did you think?” he asked Ben, gaze hopeful yet braced for the worst.

Mal cleared his throat. “So you’d label that maybe a standard sort of rock, pop, soul, with a dash of Americana-type sound, yeah?”

Adam just blinked. “Ah, well—”

“Don’t get me wrong. While there’s nothing particularly fresh or interesting about what you’re doing, you don’t completely suck. Not completely,” said Mal, all seriousness. “I hope you can find something to cling to in that, son.”

“Ignore him,” groaned David. “Unless you want to hit him with something. That’s fine too.”

“Hey!” Mal held up his drum sticks, making the symbol of the cross. “Stay back, fiends. I’m a ninja master with a set of sticks in my hands. I could take you all down without even raising a sweat.”

A hand rubbing tiredly over his face, Ben nodded in agreement. “Definitely ignore him. God knows we do. Your sound is fine, Adam. In fact, it’s damn good. That’s why you’re here.”