by Nadia Lee
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Titles by Nadia Lee
About Nadia Lee
Copyright
Flirting with the Rock Star Next Door
Nadia Lee
Chapter One
Emily
I stared at the blank screen and huffed out a frustrated breath. I’d already floundered around for a week, writing nothing because I’d been blocked worse than a sinus during hay fever season. Fear was pounding at me, my veins throbbing in my head.
One star, this book sucks.
One star, I can’t believe anybody with a brain would read this.
One star, quite possibly the worst book ever.
The actual reviews left on my last book. Mom had told me to ignore them and cheer up because the book had also received over six hundred five-star reviews. But of course the crappy ones always hit the hardest.
And now they were hanging over me like a dark miasma, sucking up all my creative energy. Just what the hell was so terrible about the last book? And how could those reviews have appeared so fast after the book went up on Amazon? They were like a freakin’ guerilla hit squad.
Now I had two weeks to hammer out the last fifty thousand words. It was already seven in the evening. Another day almost wasted.
Crap.
My phone started ringing, distracting me from my mental diatribe against my creativity—or lack thereof.
It wasn’t one of my writing pals, because they knew better than to call when I was working to meet a deadline. So it could only be…
Mom.
Dread curdled in my belly. We chatted once a month to discuss my social media stuff because she managed my accounts for me. I paid her a set amount every month so she’d feel more financially independent and assertive. She needed that, living with my dad, who, well… Calling him a control freak would be kind. “Asshole” was starker, but much closer to the truth.
But this wasn’t a scheduled call. And if Mom wanted to show off some nice stuff she got while out shopping, she usually just texted pictures.
So this could only be about the longstanding marital drama. I wished I could ignore it, but it was likely an emergency that would give me one more reason to hate Dad.
“Hi, Mom,” I said, keeping my voice sympathetic despite the impatience and annoyance for being write-blocked bubbling inside me. I told myself I wasn’t doing anything productive anyway, so what would be the harm in spending some time to console her?
“Hello, baby! Am I interrupting anything? What am I saying? Of course I am. But I had to call.” Mom sounded breathless, but not with rage over discovering that Dad was cheating on her again. She seemed to be brimming with something akin to excitement plus indignation.
“Is something wrong?” I started praying for the miracle of divorce. That would be the happiest ending for Mom. I’d have to buy her a membership to some dating app to celebrate. Hook her up with some hot young men she could flaunt in Dad’s face.
“No! I figured out who’s behind the One-Star Hit Squad!”
The angst over my deadline vanished, and I nearly jumped to my feet. The One-Star Hit Squad was the name Mom had given to a group of about fifty or so reviewers who left me one-star reviews as soon as my book was published. They’d started to target me immediately after one of my books made the Wall Street Journal bestseller list for the first time. Why was anybody’s guess. They weren’t the people I’d given early review copies to, so they couldn’t possibly have read the book so fast, unless they’d quit after a couple of chapters. And they certainly weren’t leaving reviews that meant anything, objectively speaking. “One Star, This book is stupid” was as meaningless as a review could get, but it hurt my release week to have all those terrible ratings. And it hurt me creatively when I was trying to write, because those comments stayed in the back of my mind. I’d been countering them by having more people on my own review team, people who loved my books. But it had never occurred to me that there might be someone orchestrating the haters.
“Who?” I demanded.
“Your father!”
My head started to spin while I grappled with this bombshell. Of all the possibilities, this one had never crossed my mind.
“I was looking at the credit card statements, and he hired a virtual assistant to do some contract work,” Mom continued, correctly interpreting my silence as incredulity. “That’s not like him at all.”
Not at all. He liked to hire hot women he wanted to fuck. You can’t really leer at a virtual assistant.
“So I was going through his tablet,” Mom said, her voice vibrant with petty pride. “He forgot to take it with him today, and his password is his birthday.” She laughed a what a dumbass laugh. “He hired her to gather up reviewers to post fake reviews on Amazon for your books. I read their emails.”
He’d left an electronic trail. But then, of course he would. He was that arrogant. Shock began to turn to fury. “Can you screencap them all?” I needed the evidence so I could use it to have my revenge. I didn’t know exactly how yet, but something would present itself.
“Already done. I emailed them to you before I called.”
“Thanks.” If he’d been here, I would’ve punched him. Then run him over with my car a couple of times.
“He wants to win.”
The damned bet. I ground my teeth as the fury spiked and made the veins in my head throb. He’d wagered I’d fail, and I’d wagered I would top the Amazon Kindle chart. I had until the fifth of May to do it or admit failure and suffer public humiliation. So he was determined to see me beaten…apparently by any means necessary.
“Even if it means destroying my career.” And hurting me. I swallowed the bitter thought. “Is he home now?”
“No. He’s working overtime.”
Yeah, sure. If I believed that, I was some alien slug from outer space with nothing but air for a brain. A real pneumo-cephaloid. “Okay, I’ll deal with him later. Look, I have to go. I’ll have more time to chat after I turn in this book.”
“Sure. You go win, sweetie! I know you can do it!” Mom hung up.
I glared at the phone for a moment, breathing s
lowly to try to control the raging fury in my chest. It didn’t help. I wanted to wrap my hands around my father’s neck and strangle him, force him to his knees and make him say he was sorry. But since that wasn’t a viable course of action, I decided to call.
He answered on the fourth or fifth ring, sounding slightly out of breath. “Hello?”
A female murmured in the background and disgust twisted around my belly like a thorny vine. Who was he screwing now? His assistant? A client? Some random woman he’d picked up at a bar?
“Did you hire fake reviewers to trash my books?” I demanded.
“Oh. It’s you.” He sounded completely unconcerned.
What I wouldn’t do to wipe that irritatingly smug dismissiveness away! “Did you? And don’t even think about lying! I have evidence!” I quickly checked my email. Mom’s message with screencaps sat on the top of my inbox. The sight of it caused an internal tug of war between confidence and anger.
“Calm down.”
“How am I supposed to calm down?!”
“Jesus. Are you PMSing?”
I inhaled as another surge of fury swelled within me. He did not just say that! “You’re cheating to win the bet!”
“What ‘cheating’? We never agreed I couldn’t do that. If you don’t remember, call Holly Stein to explain the details of our contract.”
Holly, the attorney we’d hired to make sure everyone kept their word, had copies of the ads that would go out the weekend after the fifth of May. She was also in charge of an escrow account with enough money to cover the bills from the newspapers. Neither Dad nor I trusted each other.
He added, “Or—if it’s hard to think from all the hormones—ask your lawyer. He vetted it. And it isn’t like the reviews said anything that isn’t true. Romance is the dumbest thing to waste your life on, and its so-called readers are so illiterate and stupid that they can’t see what they’re reading is trash.”
Oh my God. Grandma’s egg had to have been expired when this man was conceived. “Romance is not trash!”
“Well, what’s the word for something that’s unrealistic, badly written and basically just porn for bored women who have nothing better to do with themselves? I think ‘trash’ is good.”
“At least they aren’t fucking other people while they’re married!” I yelled as my vision went hazy red.
He laughed. He didn’t feel a smidgen of guilt that he wasn’t faithful to Mom. Nor did he care that the woman he’d just screwed might hear my shriek. “If they read less, maybe they’d have more time to screw around. I can’t wait to see the ads you’re gonna have to take out, admitting I was right. What papers did we agree on again? Oh yeah… the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today and L.A. Times. It’s not gonna be cheap! But if you don’t want to fork over your hard-earned money, you can always just tell me I’m right and post what you’re supposed to say in the ads on your author website. I’ll be nice and tell Holly we can cancel the whole deal. Get our escrow back.”
My hand was wrapped around my phone so tightly that my whole arm was shaking. “Over my dead body.”
“I’m only doing this because I’m your father and I care about you. I don’t want to see you waste your money like that. All the good things that have happened in your life are because of me—because I made it so.”
My ass, he cared about me! He only cared about himself. And he was pissed off that I wasn’t doing something he approved of—being a respectable corporate drone he could proudly bring up in public. Everything was about his self-image and selfish desires. It had gratified him to brag to everyone that I’d graduated at the top of my class at UVA…and that I’d gone to Harvard. But he told me the only reason I’d been able to attend those universities was because he’d hired tutors—which I hadn’t needed—to prep me for the SAT and GMAT.
And that was just a sliver of what he took credit for. As far as he was concerned, all my accomplishments were due to him, and it enraged him that I’d chosen a path he disapproved of.
“It’s going to be absolutely delicious,” I said between clenched teeth, “seeing you spend money to take out full-page ads admitting you were wrong—and that romance is the most wonderful, smartest reading choice for the most intelligent and discerning women. I’m going to frame those ads, take pictures of them and run a social media ad campaign targeting all your buddies and clients!”
He laughed. “Big talk, but you have to win first. Your last three books peaked at four, five and seven on the chart. The trend doesn’t look good…for you.” He hung up.
I struggled to suck air in around the iron ball of anger lodged in my chest and ignore the hot tears gathering in my eyes. It wasn’t that I was hurt; Dad was always like this. I was simply furious. Determined. Ready to show him he was wrong.
Shaking, I stared at the half-finished manuscript. Staying home and trying to type something up wouldn’t work. I needed to put on my big-girl panties and use the thermonuclear option.
I took off my glasses and put in contacts. Then I grabbed my keys, slipped on some running shoes and left. There was work to do.
Chapter Two
Emily
I ran along the only trail in my small town, which, naturally, was located at the opposite end from my house. Well, “ran”… What I was doing was more like a jog. A very slow jog because, like most writers, I wasn’t an athlete. And I was a clumsy writer at that—ten minutes in I’d snagged my pants on a bush and heard something rip. Plus I’d lost a contact lens somewhere on the dirt trail and hadn’t been able to find it, even with my phone light. Maybe I shouldn’t have switched from glasses to contacts before leaving the house, but I hated how the frames slid down my nose when my face got sweaty. I told myself it was okay to lose the contact because I still had my left one. It was enough to see with, especially if I squinted a little.
I pushed my body even though it wasn’t designed for anything more strenuous than speed-walking toward beer. I wasn’t stopping until my head was full of ideas. And not just any ideas, but good, usable ideas that would ensure I could finish my book in the next two weeks, then edit and publish it by May fifth.
Without a book to promote, I couldn’t win that bet with Dad. And the idea of losing was just… I shuddered.
I’d rather jump headfirst into some medieval torturer’s largest and most disgusting pit of vipers.
My head works in mysterious ways. When I push my body to its limit, my mind finally gives up being blocked. Probably my subconscious knew I’d jog until I collapsed if it didn’t do what I wanted. As I jogged, snippets of dialog and scenarios and scenes swirled in my head like a confetti storm, enough to make me slightly dizzy. Or maybe the lightheadedness was due to the fact that I couldn’t suck in enough air to sustain my out-of-shape body’s sad attempt to run.
Also, I hadn’t had much to eat. And my refrigerator didn’t have much to live on while I holed up to work on my book.
Not good.
Wars aren’t won based on which general is the smartest. They’re won based on who has the best supply lines and provisions. I had two weeks to go to finish my book and send it to my editor, and nobody can fight on an empty stomach.
I drove my car from the trail to Sunny’s Mart, parked and marched inside, snagging a huge cart along the way. I knew exactly what I needed and where to find it.
First, white wines from Virginia. The store had blended whites from Jefferson Vineyards, and I loved them, having discovered the brand while attending the University of Virginia. I took all seven bottles, then moved on to the section with flavored beers from the local brewery, Hop Hop Hooray. They made the most amazing raspberry and Virginia apple beer. The only problem was that their stock was limited. They usually sold them at their own bar and restaurant in Kingstree. I almost never went, because going out meant I had to people. (People was most certainly a verb.) Kingstree was a lovely, sleepy little town in Central Virginia, but people could be so…friendly and overly talkative, to put it kindly.
T
hat fact should’ve been in the real estate brochures, I thought morosely. It might’ve made a difference in my decision to move here. I’d only wanted to settle down in a small town after living in D.C. because a tiny population meant very little human interaction, a delight to my small hermit heart. Or so I’d assumed.
I told myself the town had a well-stocked grocery store, so I should be happy. And I would be, as long as it had… I scanned the beer section, and—yes!—Hop Hop Hooray sat on the shelves. Woohoo! Doing a little victory shimmy, I grabbed the entire stock of Triple-H beer and placed it in my cart. Along with two bottles of decent whiskey, just in case. Then I went down the snack aisle and cleaned out the Animal Crackers section, too.
Now for some ice cream…
I prayed that Sunny’s had just gotten a shipment from Bouncing Cows. It was a local dairy that only used organic milk from grass-fed cows to make ice cream. Once you had it, you could never go back to eating the mass-produced stuff. And out of all the flavors they offered, my absolute favorite was Bouncy Bare Monkeys. It had dark chocolate chunks and mini-marshmallows in the smoothest, richest chocolate ice cream ever. It was a kind of crack that the rest of the country hadn’t discovered yet. It tasted like a fever dream of tiny little angels copulating on your tongue.
Saliva pooled in my mouth. Just like Hop Hop Hooray, Bouncing Cows never made enough for my taste. If they did, I would’ve started every day with a big bowl of their Bouncy Bare Monkeys.
I maneuvered my cart around the corner, and Ah-ha! There it was.
I inhaled, feeling an almost Tantric bliss. It seemed like an incandescent shaft of heavenly sunlight was illuminating the freezer in front of me. The special jumbo tub! And there was only one left!
Closing my eyes in silent thanks, I opened the door, wrapped my hand around the tub and pulled.
It didn’t budge.
I scowled and opened my eyes. Another hand was on the carton, the long, strong fingers latched around the lip of the lid like demon claws from the darkest depths of hell.
Snarling, I turned around, then closed my right eye and squinted so I could see the would-be thief better.