Mia didn’t seem to care that she was going to get to dress up in the beautiful dress that Emmie and Layla had picked out for her last month. She looked up at me with a pout before climbing down from my lap and snuggling into her mother’s pillows. “Mo-ma.”
I rolled my eyes. Yeah, she was too much like her mother. And whether Emmie realized it or not, Mia was just as much a momma’s girl as she was a daddy’s girl. I jumped out of bed, anxious to start the day. By tonight Emmie would be my wife, and I was finding it hard to contain my nervous excitement.
Downstairs I found Jesse, Shane, and Drake already sitting at the kitchen table. There was a pot of Jesse’s special recipe coffee sitting in the middle while my three band brothers sat quietly.
“What’s up?” I questioned, going to the cabinet to grab a mug along with a box of Cheerios and a bowl for Mia, who was already climbing onto Drake’s lap.
“Just remembering the old days,” Jesse muttered, frowning down into his mug. His jaw was clenched and he kept averting his eyes.
“It seems like yesterday that Emmie was just a dirty little rag doll that we tried to take care of…” Shane sighed, a sound that sounded a little sad.
Drake arranged Mia on his lap so she could eat her breakfast and still hug him. I let my eyes linger on my daughter, suddenly understanding what was wrong with my friends. It was going to be hard for me when it came time for Mia to get married. I was already dreading the day when I had to hand my baby doll over to some nameless asshole.
For the guys—but especially for Jesse—that was what they were doing today. They loved Emmie in an entirely different way than I did. For them she was their sister, and in some ways their daughter. Jesse had always been the one that came the closest to being the only father figure that Em ever had. Today he was handing his little girl over into my safe keeping, even if she had already been there for years.
I reached over and clasped his shoulder. “I’ll take good care of her, man.”
Jesse clenched his jaw, looked away, and nodded his bald head. “Yeah…” he cleared his throat “…yeah, man. I know you will.”
An hour later people started showing up. The caterers started setting up in the kitchen while outside a tent was being set up on the beach. February was the wettest month in Malibu, and Emmie hadn’t wanted to chance being rained on. But she hadn’t needed to worry. The sun was shining brightly and the temperature continued to rise higher than normal.
I kept Mia inside. The guys and I played with her non stop trying to pass the hours away until it was time to start getting ready. The wedding wasn’t until six and the girls weren’t going to arrive until three. By that time I was expected to be in the guest house with the guys, keeping away from Emmie until she walked down the aisle.
At two thirty I ushered Mia outside and into the guesthouse. Four tuxes were already hanging up in the bedroom along with Mia’s dress. As the time slowly ticked down, I found myself taking on the characteristics of my band brothers. I started pacing, trying to burn off some of the anxiety. My fingers tugged at my hair as I alternated between fear of Emmie deciding that she didn’t want to get married after all and calm because I knew Emmie would never do that to me.
At three thirty Lucy walked into the guesthouse. She looked adorable in her silvery dress with flowers and little jewels braided into her dark hair. Lucy handed Jesse a folded piece of paper. “Dad, you aren’t answering your phone. Aunt Em said to give this to you.”
Jesse frowned and reached for his cellphone in his back pocket. “It’s dead.” Taking the paper his ever changing dark eyes narrowed and he crumbled the paper in his hands. “Okay. Tell Em I’ll take care of it.”
Lucy only nodded and rushed off to relay the message. My heart was beating me to death in my chest. “What?” I demanded. “What’s wrong?”
Jesse shook his head. “It’s nothing, man. Just a little disagreement with Rich. I’ll deal with it.”
I muttered a curse. We had fired Rich as our manager the second week of January. Our contract had expired on New Year’s Day and Rich hadn’t seemed to wonder why we hadn’t signed a new one. When he had realized that we weren’t going to, he had gone ballistic. OtherWorld had dropped Rich the year before, and now with Demon’s Wings doing the same thing, Rich was going to lose clients left and right. Rumors were already flying that he might have to file bankruptcy by the end of the year if any other big names fired him.
We hadn’t found a new manger to replace Rich because Demon’s Wings had always had one. Emmie had taken care of us practically from the day she moved in with us. After all those years of learning the ropes she had the know-how as well as the connections to make sure that Demon’s Wings stayed at the top of their game. Our record label hadn’t even batted an eye. They didn’t care one way or another who was managing us as long as we were selling albums and making new ones.
I hadn’t wanted Emmie working as hard as she had been for so many years so I asked her to hire help. Drake and Shane’s sister Natalie had been the perfect answer. She was going to college part-time and wanted a job. It was convenient that she lived on the East Coast because she could help Emmie take care of Drake’s needs when it came to America’s Rocker. Natalie was smart and efficient. A bonus was that she didn’t take crap off of Em, who could easily walk over a person without even realizing it. Emmie called the girl her right arm, not understanding how she had managed so long without her help.
“Rich is here?” I demanded, anger making me tense.
“He’s trying to get past the security gate,” Jesse told me, already reaching for his keys. When I started to follow him, he shook his head. “No. You are going to stay here. I don’t want to take the chance of things getting ugly like they did last month. That’s why Em asked me to take care of this.”
I grimaced, knowing he was right. In Rich’s rage he had done the one thing that would sign his death warrant. He had threatened Emmie. He had taken one menacing step toward her, and I had laid him flat on his back with a punch to his glass jaw. The guys and I had left him lying on the floor in his conference room at his office. That bastard was lucky I hadn’t done more than hit him. At that moment I had wanted to tear him apart.
His secretary had called the cops and the police had actually showed up here at the house. Rich had wanted to press charges against me. But when Emmie had told the cops what had really happened, they hadn’t tried to arrest me. Instead they had asked if Em wanted to take out a restraining order on Rich. Emmie had and when the tabloids had gotten their hands on that juicy little bit of information all hell had broken lose for Rich.