Mogul by Ginger Voight

been his M.O. for a long time. And
he made peace with it in his own mind that as long as he made no
promises to anyone, he really wasn’t harming anyone but himself.
Anyone who got involved did so at their own risk.
    He couldn’t be responsible for everyone,
right?
    Only now he was responsible for everyone. He
was responsible for Yael, and the commitment he made to the band.
He was responsible to Holly, who carried his child and faced so
many challenges both with her health and with her finances – even
her security.
    He glanced at Andy. In a perfect world he’d
only be responsible to her. But he’d made sure their world was
anything but perfect. He had carved out his own rules that suited
his own purposes at the time, thinking that would patch up the dam
some day when it threatened to burst.
    Now everything was leaking and all he could
hope for is that none of them drowned.
    Andy moaned in her sleep. She did that a lot
now. She never shared the nightmares that had begun to interrupt
her slumber a few weeks ago, so Vanni didn’t know what kind of
dragons he was fighting as he rubbed her back and crooned to her to
soothe her.
    Her eyes fluttered open, and then focused on
him. “You’re back,” she said as she pulled into a sitting position.
“What took you so long?”
    He swallowed hard. He hated feeling like the
bad boy about to get a lecture and sent to his room without supper.
He hated knowing that this woman, whose love for him validated him,
would be angry with him about anything. It left him feeling
vulnerable, and he hated that worse than anything in the whole
world.
    But he had to tell her.
    She had to know.
    “I was with Holly,” he said simply.
    She crossed her legs and her arms, creating a
barrier between them with nothing but her angry body language. “I
see.”
    His first impulse was to leap into the many
excuses he had rehearsed to himself on the way home. He figured he
could put the emphasis on the emergency visit, to prove to Andy her
anger was unjustified. But Vanni knew it was unfair to her to do
that. He had done what he had always done; erred on the side of
asking forgiveness rather than permission. “I also went to see her
the other day.”
    “After I asked you not to,” she reminded.
    He nodded. “I had to see for myself, Andy. I
had to know.”
    Andy jumped from the couch to stomp over to
the kitchen, where she withdrew a bottle of juice. “And what did
the drama queen have to say? What lies did she sell you this
time?”
    “She’s not lying, Andy. She’s pregnant. And
it’s mine.”
    “Wonderful,” she spat. “Maybe you’ll get some
kind of group discount at the hospital. Or should I say ‘groupie?’”
Vanni didn’t answer so she forged on. “And what kind of proof did
she offer, Vanni? Some discarded pee stick?”
    He shook his head. “I felt
her stomach,” he confessed. Her mouth gaped open as she stared at
him. He actually touched another woman? He touched that woman? Vanni forged on. “Then,
today, I took her to the hospital. They did an ultrasound. I
confirmed it with the doctor. It’s not a con.”
    Andy gulped back any tears over the huge lump
in her throat. She had stopped listening after hearing he had put
his hands on another woman’s body. “I see,” she said again.
    He rose to his feet and walked over to where
she stood on the other side of the counter. “I fucked up, Andy.
Again. And I don’t know what to do.”
    Her eyes were rimmed red with unshed tears as
she glared at him. “What do you want to do?” she asked, though she
feared the answer.
    He reached for her and pulled her stiff body
towards him. “I want to marry you. I want to have a family with
you. I love you. That hasn’t changed and it’s never going to
change.”
    “But?”
    “But I can’t forsake her or her baby – my
baby – and you know why.” Then, unintentionally, he threw her own
words back in her face. “Would I be the man that you love if I
could?”
    She hesitated only