Songbird (Songbird, #1) (39 page)

After fifteen minutes of the third degree and her disapproval, she agreed to let me pick up the keys that afternoon. I was expecting to have to go for lunch, but luckily for me they were busy, so the keys would be left in the entrance foyer for me.

I hung up the phone and exhaled, happy that the conversation was over.

“Did you know your voice changed when you spoke to your mother?” Riley asked, the light dancing in his eyes. “You suddenly sounded like you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”

Smiling, I gave him a hug, before telling him we could pick the keys up that afternoon, strategically avoiding mentioning that I
was
born with a silver spoon and all the trimmings.

We decided to invite Kelli and Cooper, and then thought it might be fun to invite Jason and Marcus as well. That afternoon, after doing a quick phone around and organising everyone, we headed over to my parents’ house in two cars to get the keys.

“Holy crap!” Cooper exclaimed, as I parked in my usual spot under a shady tree.

It was, by anyone’s standards, an imposing vision to behold. To enter the grounds, you had to key a six-digit security code into a keypad next to towering wrought iron gates. This allowed you to drive up the sweeping gravel driveway to the parking bays at the side of the house.

Although we were only there to pick up a set of keys, everyone jumped out of the cars to have a look around.

I made my way to the front door, and then rather embarrassedly, placed my thumb on a security pad so it could be scanned, and the door could be opened. I looked around, hoping that no one had noticed the
Mission Impossible
entry, but of course they had.

“Wow, that’s state of the art,” Riley said impressed, as the pad turned green and I pushed the massive entry doors open.

“Yep. You should see what you need to scan to flush the toilet,” I joked and walked in.

It was over the top. Living here in this house had always been so not me, it was ridiculous. It was probably one of the reasons I never came to visit; I just found the whole charade so pretentious.

We entered the foyer one by one, and I waited for the gasps to subside as I sorted through the antique bureau for the beach house keys. I turned to go, but there was no way we were getting out in a hurry. My five friends were already walking further into the house, mouths open in amazement, wanting to explore.

“Okay,” I said, trying to think of the quickest way to do this. “The tour starts now. Please remain with your group.”

Kelli laughed and lined up behind me, happy to play along.

“Please note your emergency exits are here, here and here,” I said, pointing to the main doors and towards the back of the house to the alfresco area and the laundry. “I’ll be happy to take questions as we proceed.”

We did a quick walk-through of the ground floor rooms, lingering only as long as we had to until we reached the conservatory, otherwise known as the music room. Still in the middle of the room was my black-lacquered grand piano, as commanding and beautiful as ever.

Riley came over to stand beside me. “You must miss having a piano to play whenever you want. There’s no room in your flat for something this size.”

I laughed. “This would fill my living room.” Then, I looked to Marcus. “Luckily, I have the piano at
Songbirds
to play whenever I want.” I was still so grateful to Marcus for giving me keys to the bar so I could come and go whenever I wanted.

We continued our tour, and climbed the sweeping staircase to the first floor.

“All right, to the left is my parents’ wing, so we won’t go down there.” Then, I turned to the right. “This corridor leads to my old wing of the house.”

There were more gasps and murmurs as we walked along the ultra-plush carpet until we came to my old bedroom. I swung the door open, and was suddenly yanked back to my childhood. It was exactly as it had been when I lived there, and it made me shudder.

Entering the room, I could feel my friends behind me, but no one made a sound. It looked like the room of a middle-aged man, not the bedroom of a little girl.

The furniture was all antique, dark and oversized, from the massive four-poster canopy bed that needed a step-ladder to climb into, to the director’s desk and wingback chair. The walls were still dark red patterned wallpaper, the drapes still heavy and dark grey. The giant open fireplace was stocked with wood, ready to be lit as it always was.

The floor-to-ceiling bookshelves were still filled with books that were more suited to that middle-aged man my mother had decorated for, than they ever were to me. There were no children’s picture books, no toys or frills or pretty things. The only hint that a little girl may once have inhabited the room was my doll, Katie, who sat dwarfed in the middle of my oversized bed.

“Fuck,” someone said under their breath behind me.

I turned around to see who had spoken, but I couldn’t tell. They all looked as horrified as I felt.

“This was your room, right?” Jason asked, looking around, puzzled. “Have they redecorated?”

I shook my head. “Yes, this was my room but no, they haven’t redecorated. This is what I woke up to every morning.”

“How depressing,” Kelli said, coming to put her arm around me.

“Let’s go,” Riley suddenly said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” He came over and took my hand protectively.

“Just a minute,” I said. Then I quickly raced over to the bed and climbed up the steps so I could reach Katie who was sitting all alone in the middle. I tucked her under my arm and climbed back down.

“Okay, now we can go.”

Riley, Cooper, Kelli and I travelled in one car, with Jason and Marcus in the other. I tried to push the image of my old room from my mind, but memories of feeling like a prisoner kept coming back to me, and I found it hard to relax and join in the fun. Luckily, I was the designated driver, as I was the only one who knew where the house was, so I could pretend to be concentrating on the road for most of the trip.

An hour and a half later, we arrived at Ocean Views.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Cooper said in awe as we pulled into the driveway.

Where the family home was ostentatious, to say the least, Ocean Views was like a beach house from a display magazine. Conjure up every cliché image of a beach house you can think of, and my mother had somehow managed to blend it together.

I showed everyone in, and we paired off into our rooms. Riley and I took the main bedroom, of course. It had an en suite that included a massive bath with ocean views through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Kelli and Cooper were next door to the left with a smaller en suite, which left Jason and Marcus.

“Okay, you can either share a room near us, or one of you can go to the unused part of the house,” I told them.

There was another section of house that was rarely used, and as a result, was covered in dust clothes, the beds included.

Jason and Marcus looked at each other and shrugged.

“We can share. That’s fine,” Marcus said with a dimpled grin.

So I showed them into the third bedroom on our right, with the use of the main bathroom to themselves.

We took a quick tour around the rest of the house, and opened up the rooms that we wanted to use.

There was a games room, and a state-of-the-art home theatre. We thought we might use them, so uncovered everything and opened the curtains and windows to air the rooms out.

The rest of the house we just poked our heads into. There was a music room with another grand piano—I couldn’t go on holidays and not spend a couple of hours a day practicing. There were also several living rooms, and another three bedrooms. They were all left closed up; they weren’t needed.

It was late afternoon, so the girls—namely Kelli, Jason and I—went to the little local supermarket to buy supplies, while the men fired up the barbeque and found some beer.

We had an easy dinner of burgers and steaks with salad before sitting around outside on the deck, drinking a few more beers, and talking about our childhoods.

There were a lot of questions about mine after seeing where I had grown up, and it was difficult at first, but I opened up to everyone about the childhood I felt I never had.

Riley told us a little more about his parents, and the violence he had witnessed at the hands of his father. He even touched on his mother’s illness and his brother, but left out any mention of Rebecca. It was good to see him talk about his family, and nice knowing that he felt he could trust everyone with his less-than-happy past.

Jason was the next to talk, and his was a touching story I had never heard. He told us how he had been bullied at school when he was younger, until Marcus moved next door and befriended him when they were both eleven years old. Jason looked at Marcus, and told us with tears in his eyes how meeting Marcus had changed his life. He had always known he was gay, and although he never came out and told anyone, it seemed the other boys at school could tell he was different and picked on him mercilessly. Marcus defended his friend, often getting into fights with the other boys, which made him an outcast as well. When they were both old enough to leave school, they did so together, and moved to Melbourne.

I was surprised to hear that Jason’s family still didn’t know he was gay, and that he had no plans to tell them. I wondered to myself if Marcus’s family knew about him.

Kelli and Cooper said almost apologetically that they actually had quite normal, happy upbringings. There was no violence in the home, and both sets of parents were still happily together.

Marcus, too, brushed over his childhood, just adding that his pretty much reflected Jason’s. There were the fights at school, and feelings that he didn’t belong. It wasn’t that he was unhappy at home; he just wanted to get away, and when Jason felt the same it was the logical solution for both of them.

Yawning, I rested my head on Riley’s shoulder, snuggling in to him. He leaned down and gently kissed my head before telling everyone that he was taking me off to bed.

“Would you like a bubble bath?” Riley asked once we were in our room.

I went to say no, I was really tired, but the look on his face changed my mind, so I smiled and nodded instead.

He ran the water and then pulled a bottle of Cristal champagne out of the little fridge that was beside the tub. He held the bottle up to me to check if it was all right to open it. I shrugged. I figured it was there to be used, so why not?

I lit the many scented candles that were around the lavish bathroom, and then sunk down into the hot water and sighed. It was heavenly.

Riley came and slid into the tub behind me, wrapping his legs around my hips and pulling me back so I was lying on his chest. He picked up the sponge and gently started washing me, then decided to forget the sponge and started running his hands over my body instead. His touch was electrifying, and I was soon wide awake again. I turned my head and he looked down at me with a slight grin on his face, but I could see he was not entirely with me by the look in his deep sapphire-blue eyes.

“What’s wrong, babe?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“Tell me, please,” I urged him.

He stopped running his hands over me, and shifted so I could see his face more clearly.

“I can’t give you all of this,” he said, indicating around him. “The house you grew up in, this house … I couldn’t even afford this bathtub.” He frowned. “I’m not good enough for you. You deserve more than what I can give you.”

I turned around so I was kneeling up, facing him, still in between his legs. He was looking down, and I held his face in my hands so he had to look directly at me.

“Were you at the same house as me today? Did you not see what a miserable place that was to grow up in? I don’t want that house, or that life; it’s just full of bad memories for me. I want a life that’s full of love and happiness and laughter—that’s what you give me. No money in the world can buy that, Riley.”

He sighed. “But how can you go from that to what I could provide?”

Looking down for a moment, I weighed up my options, deciding how to say what I knew I would eventually have to tell him.

“I have money, Riley. I have a lot of money.” I raised my eyebrows, trying to read his expression, but he just looked stunned, as if he didn’t quite understand the words. “I have a trust fund that I have never touched because it always felt like blood money, but if I needed to—if
we
needed to, we could buy a house, and anything else we wanted. What I can’t buy is the happiness part. That’s where you come into it.”