Satellite of Love (21 page)

He slid into her with one long stroke. Clinging to him, she sobbed. He buried his face in the curve of her neck. Through his lips, he could feel her racing pulse. Her skin tasted so good. So fine and soft. She wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him deeper into her. Nothing mattered but this woman. This moment. This life.

She called out his name and clenched around him, wringing his climax from him. It blindsided him, stealing breath and thought.

When sense came back, he was still lying on her with his face pressed into her neck and she was touching his hair.

“I must be crushing you,” he whispered. Raising his voice took too much effort and would have shattered the still peace of the bedroom.

“No. You’re fine.” She spoke in a whisper too. “You always make me feel like the center of the universe.”

“Maybe I’m amazed you let me love you and I have to put on a good performance to make sure you keep coming back.”

She chuckled. “I’ll keep coming back.”

“Good.” Very good. No matter what he had to do to keep her, he’d do it. Quit the band, sell his house and go into business with his brother. Or stay in the band and set her up like a queen.

And get a car with a bench seat. Bucket seats sucked for making out in.

* * * *

Maureen peered into the cup of “tea” that had been delivered to their table. The swampy green color didn’t look like any tea she’d ever had, but it had been served in a clear glass cup and it steamed like tea. The massage she’d just come out of hadn’t been like any massage she’d ever heard of before either.

“So how do you feel?” Connie asked.

“Good.” She frowned, trying to find the lie in that. Nope. No lie. “I feel lighter.” The spa experience was strange, but she could see the draw. She also liked the company. Jason’s sisters had gone out of their way to make her comfortable.

“You look great,” Tessa said. “Doesn’t she look great?”

“Those midwest winters are really hard on the skin.” Connie picked up her tea.

Tessa shot her sister a dark glare before turning back to Maureen. “Not that yours was bad. You have great skin.”

“No, that’s not what I was saying.” Connie put her tea down without tasting it. “What I meant was it’s the end of winter and your skin always takes a beating in the winter. You do have great skin. I’d have never guessed you were thirty-four.”

Tessa closed her eyes and groaned. Connie blanched.

“How did you know I was thirty-four?” Maureen asked. She sipped her tea. The bitter flavor complimented her mood. Up until now, she’d enjoyed her time with Tessa and Connie. Almost enough to forget they were checking her out.

Tessa held out her hand. “You have to understand, Maureen. It’s my job to do a background check on you.”

“A background check.” Maureen took another sip of the tea. She liked it. At the moment, better than spying Tessa and loose-lipped Connie. How much did they know? Did they do an FBI check? Her bank records? Outstanding warrants or traffic tickets? Pull her teaching license paperwork to find out if she had any affiliation with terrorist groups? Good luck digging up any dirt. There wasn’t any.

“Nothing really invasive. Just public records.” Tessa gnawed her thumbnail.

“It really is nothing,” Connie said. “You’ve got to understand, rock stars have two kinds of wives.”

“Connie!” Tessa wailed.

Maureen sat back in her seat. Tessa had leaned forward like she wanted to reach across the table and snatch her sister bald. Connie cocked her head and curled her lip. For about five seconds neither of them said anything.

Then Tessa slouched back in her seat.
 
“Fine.” She took a drink from her tea, breathed a heavy sigh and shook her head. “Rock stars have two kinds of wives. There’s the party wife. Usually married young and at the height of success, or at least the first success. She tends to take our boy for a wonderful ride and then take him for everything she can on the way out the door. Party wives never last.”

“Bonnie has had her hooks in Brian for how many years now?” Connie raised one eyebrow.

“Yeah well, I still expect to see the back of her.”

“You hope to see the back of her.”

“Same thing.” Tessa sneered. “Anyway, party wives are to be avoided. They’re a cash drain. Sandy likes them to be stopped at the girlfriend stage before they do any real damage and I swear they end up being half my job.”

“Didn’t do such a great one with Desiree.” Connie pushed her empty teacup away.

“She slipped through, but I’ve turned Bear away from three, Marc away from two others and Jason and Ty away from one each.” Tessa ticked them off on her fingers. “My average is still good.”

“You didn’t turn Jason away from Stella.”

“She played a very convincing game. I thought she actually liked him for his personality. I should have known nobody would like our brother for his personality.”

Connie nodded. “You see, Maureen, we needed to know if you’re rock star wife type two.”

“Which is?” Maureen asked.

“The permanent wife.” Tessa folded her hands on the table. “The permanent wife usually comes along when our rock star is over forty and settled. The career has leveled off. He’s matured to the point where he’s more interested in regular meals than rock and roll all night and party every day. She’s in for the long haul.”

“And what kind am I?” Maureen asked. Couldn’t hurt to be plain about things. Subterfuge made her head hurt.

“You are definitely type two.” Connie tapped her newly manicured nails on the table.

“We know that now, but when we first heard we didn’t.” Tessa started ticking off points on her fingers again. “You came out of nowhere. Rock stars mature, on average, about ten years slower than their peers so Bear is very young to be settling down. We’ve had to pull him off this particular cliff repeatedly. That last album tanked so he’s a little vulnerable. And, he’s Bear. He gets overexcited about stuff.”

They made him sound like a seven year old, but the fact that they’d
pulled him off this cliff repeatedly
didn’t sit well. How many times had Michael proposed?

“I’m really sorry about how all this sounds, but we had to do it. Nobody wants our guys to end up with a Heather Mills McCartney.”

“Who?” Maureen drained her teacup.

“Especially not with Marc in the middle of his divorce.” Connie spoke at the same time.

Tessa rolled her eyes and shuddered. “Thank God for Marc’s pre-nup.”

“What’s going on with Marc?” Maureen leaned her chin on her hand. She’d check that other name later. Pretty soon she was going to have to get a notebook.

“He married his little party girl five years ago against all advice and she started screwing around on him during the last tour. She was using her expense account to pay for her boytoy’s rent. Can you believe it?” Connie waved for the waitress.

“Oh, expense account.” Tessa sucked her teeth. “We’ll have to get you into the office to set that up. Is there a time you can come in?”

“I already have one.”

Tessa frowned. “What?”

“Michael gave me a credit card when I got here and told me it was my expense account. That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”

Connie picked up a baby carrot. “Bear set up your expense account already?”

“I can’t believe Helen didn’t tell me.” Tessa pouted. “I’m going to have a chat with Mrs. Wheals tomorrow. She should have mentioned it.”

“She probably meant to and forgot. She hasn’t been feeling too well.”

“What’s wrong?” Maureen asked. Twelve years of observing social structure in the microcosm of her classroom paid off. In this group’s pecking order, Connie and Tessa ranked high and winning them to her side would ease her acceptance. If they were gossiping about the others in front of her and giving her privileged information, they’d accepted her. Marc should rank higher, but Connie and Tessa might be able to cancel him out. She’d still need to sway a couple of other people to her side though to cancel out Michael’s brother. Two down, four to go.

* * * *

Maureen sat down in front of the TV. At noon she was meeting Brian’s wife Bonnie for lunch and shopping, but that left her two hours to burn before she had to leave.

The outing yesterday with Kim had been successful. Kim liked her immediately and the farmer’s market had been fun. Kim and Cal’s two kids were older than Brian and Bonnie’s, but they were home schooled so they had been along on the trip. Kim appreciated that Maureen could do on-the-spot math lessons in the middle of the market. Sadly, Kim was pretty low in influence.

Bonnie, however, had a lot of clout through Brian and wielded it like a club. Tessa and Connie had not had many nice things to say about her, which made Maureen wonder if she was something of a rival power. The few moments she’d had to talk to the other woman at the cookout hadn’t yielded much information. Bonnie was brassy and loud and complimented her on getting Bear to propose so fast. She’d announced that she’d spent a year working on Brian and then had to get pregnant to seal the deal. Her phrasing had made Maureen’s eyes itch. Reflecting on the conversation now, maybe this lunch wasn’t a good idea. Michael wasn’t happy about it.

The phone rang. She stared at it through another ring, debating answering. Then she grabbed it. “Hello?”

“Hi, Maureen? It’s Bonnie. Hey listen, I have a problem.”

Maybe she was canceling. What a shame.

“My sitter got the day wrong and I have a doctor’s appointment this morning. I have been trying to get in with this guy for six months. I need you to watch the kids for an hour or so while I go. Can you?”

Maureen bit her lip. This could be a good way to get a solid in with Bonnie and Brian while getting in some practice being a mother. Michael had put Brian’s address into the GPS navigation thingy this morning so she’d be able to go over there for lunch. “Sure.”

“Great. I’ll see you in a bit.” Bonnie hung up.

Maureen grabbed her purse in the way out the door. This could be a perfect situation. With Connie and Tessa on her side, that gave her two votes to Marc’s one. Adding Bonnie to the mix would give her Brian as well. Gaining full acceptance and cementing her reputation as wife type two would only cost an hour or so of babysitting.

Bonnie met her at the door. “I’m running late. Tess and Bub are in the living room playing. The sitter is going to try to come this afternoon and even if she doesn’t, the housekeeper will be here. Thanks again.” Bonnie slid past her and dove into her white Mercedes.

Maureen put her purse on the counter in the six square inches that weren’t cluttered with dirty plates, junk mail and empty food cartons. When she walked into the living room, Tess stood up from a tea party set on the glass coffee table and the baby started to cry. The living room was a sea of toys with two leather couches, one white and one black, floating amid them. How long had it been since the housekeeper had been here last? Christmas?

“Who are you?”

“I’m—” Everybody here called Michael Bear, but what did the kids call him? And how was she supposed to define her relationship to him? Did it matter? The kids looked about four and two. “I’m your Uncle Bear’s girlfriend.”

“Bubbie’s crying.” Tess put her little hands on her hips.

“I noticed. Any clue why?”

“He doesn’t like to be in his pen all the time.”

“Out. Out. Out,” Bubbie chanted, bouncing up and down.

Maureen studied the smaller child. Child psychology was a long time ago. “Well, we probably shouldn’t let Bubbie out of his playpen with all these toys lying around.”

“He tries to eat them. ’Specially my bobby shoes.”

Bobby shoes? Oh, Barbie shoes. Maureen tipped over a wooden block and noticed something brown mashed around the red letter B. “We should pick up all the toys and put them away.”

Tess surveyed the floor and then ran behind the white couch and dragged a huge gray plastic tub out. She scooped up toys with abandon, dumping them in the tub. The tub was clearly labeled
Barbie Dolls
in black Magic Marker.

Behind the couch, a pile of four more tubs were also helpfully labeled, in black Magic Marker. She toed over another toy, this one white plastic with a dark red smear on the side. Tess already had the first bin overflowing and was working on a second. “You know what might be fun?” Maureen said. “If we washed everything.”