Good Girls Don't Date Rock Stars(45)

Gemma didn’t miss the sarcasm, and she was in no mood for it. “Come on, Travis,” she said, ignoring Sam’s curious face and resisting the urge to rush forward and inspect him for worse injuries. There had been a time when she wouldn’t have hesitated to berate him for his stupidity or curse the Coulter brothers, but now . . .

Well, she didn’t know where they stood now, but she knew he wouldn’t welcome her concern.

Turning her back on both of them, she headed back toward the front desk, gritting her teeth when she heard Sam say, “I think she’s mad at you. She’s been awfully grumpy this morning.”

“Please stop talking, Sam,” Gemma said without turning around.

“See? She’s as prickly as a porcupine. You should probably watch what you say,” Sam said. Gemma ignored both of them, but as she reached the front desk, she heard Sam confide, “I think it might be PMS, but I didn’t want to say anything in front of her.”


Giving him a fierce frown over her shoulder, she snapped, “Sam, if you don’t keep your opinions to yourself, I’m going to tell all the guys what book you asked me to order.”

Sam paled. “But you swore.”

“Then hush up and get us out of here,” she said, ashamed of herself but too frazzled to deal with it now. She would have to make it up to Sam later.

Travis laughed behind her, and the sound was achingly familiar. How many times had that laugh made her insides turn to mush? Out of the corner of her eye, she thought he might have winced and held his stomach.

It’s his own fault for driving off and picking a fight. Little boys start bar fights, not grown men.

Still, she felt responsible for his injuries. If he hadn’t been pissed beyond belief, he wouldn’t have driven off to Buck’s or felt like brawling. Leaning against the counter, she watched solemnly as Sam handed Travis some papers to sign and a bag with his stuff in it.

“You two think about that reception. You know how this town loves a good party.”



“NOT GOING TO tell me what an idiot I am?”

Travis felt like shit, but it was nothing in comparison to the gut-churning anger he was currently directing at the woman beside him. She hadn’t said anything to him about the fight on the drive back to his car. He almost wished she would tell him how stupid he was so he could at least pretend she was the Gemma he knew, and not a stranger.

It irritated him more that she didn’t look away from the road as she said, “No.”

“Huh. Well, I guess you wouldn’t want to. Might open a whole can of worms, and why would you want that? You never did like to do anything unpleasant. No confrontations. No standing up for yourself. No wanting to be the bearer of bad news. You just like to run away and bury your head in the sand while everyone else fights your battles for you,” Travis said. He knew he’d struck a nerve when her mouth thinned, so he continued, “You’ve always had someone to do all your dirty work for you. Me. Gracie. Mike . . .”

“All right, you know what? That’s enough,” Gemma said, flashing angry eyes his way before looking back at the road. “I didn’t tell you about my pregnancy because my stupid, romantic teenage brain wanted you to be free to choose to stay with me and not feel like I’d forced you into it. So when I found you with that girl in your trailer, I snapped and told you it was over, and all you said was, ‘Okay.’ Like no big deal, so forgive me if I didn’t just think, ‘Well, that’s okay. Just because he made a few halfhearted attempts to change my mind doesn’t mean he wants to be in my life for the next eighteen or so years.’ I broke up with you, Travis, but it was your choice to stay away. You could have come back to me at any time, if you really thought of me as much as you said you did, but you didn’t. You were too busy with your Fifis and your Candys and your other hundreds of groupie bimbos.”

Finishing her tirade on a shrill note, Travis watched her, red faced and gripping the steering wheel for dear life, and his mouth twitched against his will. “Just to be clear, I have not, nor will I ever, date a woman named Fifi, and there was only one Candy.”

“Whatever, Travis. I know I screwed up and I’m sorry, but at the time, I thought you would hate me, and eventually Charlie, for holding you back,” Gemma said, pulling into Buck’s parking lot. She shut off the car and turned to face him in her seat.

“I don’t want to feel defensive, or give excuses, but yeah, I needed a lot of help for those first few years. I depended on everyone around me until I was finally able to stand on my own two feet. For the last nine years, I’ve asked for favors, but I haven’t had to count on anyone to bail me out. I’ve worked my ass off to take care of Charlie and protect him. I dealt with the hard stuff and the confrontations. So, yeah, maybe I didn’t want to tell you ten years ago because I was afraid, but I didn’t tell you in Vegas because I was protecting my son.”

“He’s our son, Gemma. Ours. You didn’t have to take care of all the hard stuff by yourself, you chose to. Charlie could have had two parents,” he said, furious with her all over again.

“No, he would have had a full-time mother and a father he saw a couple times a year, when he wasn’t busy with album releases and concerts,” she said.

“That’s not fair. You don’t know what I would have done.”