Rockstar Romance Boxed Set (12 Book Bundle New Adult BBW)

by Emme Rollins

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Four weeks later

  “Dex, get in here. You’re going to miss the call.”

  There was a crash and then a string of muttered curses before he appeared, holding what looked like the remnants of a broken vase.

  I shook my head. “Another one?”

  “I think this is the last one, small saving grace.”

  “Put it down and come over here. Everyone’s waiting.”

  He placed the jagged shards carefully on a box, which amused me. He’s managed to destroy every delicate thing in the apartment, but was now learning to be careful. For someone who could play a bass and a woman’s body with incredible dexterity, when it came to packing up his father’s things, he was useless. Some of it was the fact that he hadn’t had more than a single glass of wine with dinner since we got to Bristol, but I couldn’t help but wonder if there was some other unconscious psychological reason for his recent butter-fingers status.

  Before I could think about it too much, the screen on my tablet flashed and then changed. From what I could see, the conference room was full. Mostly suits, square guys who’d probably never seen a rock concert. But there, at the end of the table, looking bored, was the rest of the band. It was good to see their faces somewhere other than the television and gossip magazines.

  “Hullo all,” Dex said chirpily. He knew the label was worried, and for some reason decided that talking like he’d become a Stepford bass player was the solution.

  “Dex, thanks for taking time to make this call,” Ryan said. “We know you and Rebecca are still settling your father’s affairs.”

  That much was true. What they didn’t know is we’d just returned to Bristol after spending ten days camping. With no distractions or temptations, it was the perfect place to hide after the funeral. No reporters’ questions or festive pubs to lure him.

  But no one else needed to know that, and we both just nodded.

  “Great,” Ryan continued. “Now that we’re all here, I’ll turn this over to Frank.”

  One of the suits smiled and stood up. I could see Rick sneering behind him.

  “Hey gang,” the man said lamely. “So glad to get everyone together for a chance to chat. As you know, since I was put in charge of this management team, I’ve been developing a three year plan to make Dream Defiled not just the talented group of guys you are, but to secure your place in music history. We’re firing on all cylinders over here, teams working around the clock.”

  I struggled to keep from giggling at his long series of clichés, leaning away from the webcam.

  “We all know striking while the iron is hot has to be our top priority. Because of that, we’re moving some scheduled items around. Instead of sending you all into the studio for the rest of the year, we’re moving up the next tour.

  “But this won’t be the seedy club spots I know you all adore. We’re going arena this time. Ten thousand seats. Thirty cities. Then we’ll release a live album and concert film on DVD, and streaming to capitalize on the success of the tour. By the time the next album of new material comes out, you boys will be millionaires, and Dream Defiled will be a household name.

  “Questions, anyone?”

  Dex and I just sat there, mouths hanging open. But, ever the front man, Joe managed to form words. “That all sounds great, but are we really ready to headline something like that?”

  “Excellent question, Mr. Hawk. The answer is, yes. With the plan we’ve got cooking, every show will sell out.”

  “How?”

  “Easy, we’re sending you out with two other amazing acts. The first, Playology; I think you’ve done shows with them before.”

  Joe nodded. “Yeah, a big festival this spring.”

  “Great. Their album is doing well too, and you’ll rise together.”

  “Uh-huh. But that still…”

  “I wasn’t finished. Your tour will also feature the first solo performances of Julia Clark since she was a tiny thing playing state fairs.”

  Julia Clark. She was some kid television actor slash singer slash dancer or something. I vaguely recalled seeing her mentioned in an email, and had looked her up. She’d spent her teen years, post TV, in a girl group that was really popular in Eastern Europe, but hadn’t made much of an impact in the States. It seemed like a weird fit for the boys, but I trusted that the label guys knew what they were doing. She was certainly famous enough to fill stadiums. Online, I’d been able to track almost every move the girl made from birth. Three years after she’d left the public eye, she still hand hundreds of active fan sites, and a lawsuit pending against some scumbag who stole one of those cherry-pickers the phone company uses in order to take pictures of her bedroom. If that was the level of fame Dex and the others were headed towards, I wasn’t sure it would be a good thing at all.

  But then I looked over at him. He was ignoring the meeting, and watching me. He grasped my hand, and bumped his leg against mine. I relaxed a bit, thinking about all of the wonderful times we’d shared.

  Like I’d told him in our darkest hour, we were strong enough to make it through anything. Life, sex, work, death, demons. Fame didn’t stand a chance at getting between us.

  THE END

  Get Ready to be ROCKED!

  * Go out on the road and fall in love with the men of Dream Defiled *

  Also Available:

  Joe & Liss

  Rocked, Rocked On the Road, Rocked to the Core

  Big Girls. Hot Guys. Steamy Romance.

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  Wait, no. That’s Batman.

  Clara is a just a regular gal living in the Mid-Atlantic region. She loves writing sexy stories about flawed people doing exciting things. When she’s not writing she enjoys talking to strangers in bars and marathon-watching TV shows everyone else has seen already.

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  HARD ROCK ARRANGEMENT

  (THE LONELY KINGS #1)

  By Ava Lore

  Chapter One

  I excel at only two things in this world: the first is feeling sorry for myself, and the second is housework. The first inspires the second, and my whole family knows it. This makes it difficult to hide my feelings, but it doesn't stop me from trying. If I can't clean out in the open, then I have to do it stealthily, after everyone has gone to bed. I'm like one of those shoe-making elves, except instead of making shoes I scrub the crappers.

  Even crapper-scrubbing elves, however, sometimes give themselves away. Bright and early one Monday morning, one week after I had showed up on my older sister's doorstep and begged for a place to crash, Rose stumbled out of her bedroom in search of coffee and found me on my hands and knees on the kitchen floor, grinding borax and lemon juice into the grout with a toothbrush. I'd forgotten that she had to go into work early this morning, and I started guiltily when she cleared her throat.

  “Rebecca...” she said, crossing her arms and sounding just like our mother.

  I was caught red-handed, but I still tried to cover things up. “Haha!” I said. “Just getting some housework done.”

  “I see that,” she replied. “I appreciate the effort. And yet I can't help but wonder what you aren't telling me. What time did you wake up to clean? Don't look at the clock.”

  Dammit. “Five-thirty?” I hazarded.

  “I see,” she said. “You mean five-thirty last night, yes? Because it's only five o'clock right now.”

  Double dammit. “Sorry, I meant, er, four-thirty.” I tried to meet her eye while I lied my ass off, but unfortunately Rose is not like me, always thinking the best of people and getting shit for her
trouble. Rose is the go-getter sister, the one that doesn't take crap from anybody, the one who went to law school and is now an excellent lawyer who mows down all who seek to oppose her. I'd always hung back and tried not to screw things up.

  That's why Rose landed a sweet job as an associate at a prestigious law firm here in LA, dealing in entertainment industry contracts and I was a shiftless—and now homeless—bartender whose last known residence was a studio apartment in San Diego. So while I can smell vodka on someone's breath, Rose can smell a lie from a hundred yards away. Sometimes she can even sniff one out over the phone. I didn't stand a chance.

  I only lasted a few seconds before I dropped my gaze. “I didn't go to bed last night,” I muttered. “But it's okay! It's the least I can do since you're letting me stay here rent free!”

  Rose shook her head. “Rebecca, I let you stay here free because you are my little sister and I'd be a terrible person if I didn't. I don't need you to clean my apartment.”

  I couldn't stop myself from saying it. “Actually,” I said, “you, uh, kind of do.”

  She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose, and I knew it was all over. She knew I was in a Bad Spot, and now she was going to help me in her usual go-getter Rose sort of way.

  "Rebecca, I'm afraid it's time for you to get a fucking job," she counseled.

  Yeah. That's Rose.

  “I'll get a job,”I said. “I promise.”

  Rose dropped her hand and stalked across the floor. Bending over, she grabbed my wrists and hauled me to my feet. “No you won't,” she said. “I know you. We are going to find you a job now. Whatever shitty personal thing you're working your way through, it will help if you have something else to think about. And stop cleaning!” She grabbed the toothbrush out of my hand and tossed it in the trash and I felt a pang lance through me.

  “Hey,” I protested, “I was using that!” My despair at losing my precious toothbrush was very real. I'd been in the zone. I'd been about to conquer the forces of entropy. I didn't need a job, I needed a Nobel prize, or at the very least some grant money.

  Rose didn't care. "When was the last time you showered?" she demanded, steering me into her room. "The last time you had a decent meal? The last time you talked to someone besides all those dumb parents on Supernanny? They can't hear you, you know. They're in the TV."

  I opened my mouth to reply, but honestly I couldn't think of the answers to any of those questions, and Rose's face told me she knew it.

  “See? You need something to take your mind off things. Therefore you are getting a job today.”

  Defeated, I let her have her way with me. Rose sat me down in front of her computer, pulled up Craigslist, and found every listing in the downtown LA area for a bartender. Then, because those listings were slim, she looked for 'housekeeper' and 'maid'.

  "What?" I said in protest. "What makes you think I'd be a housekeeper?" I preferred my own messes, or the messes of those I was well-acquainted with; the thought of having to deal with the filth of strangers made me itch.

  Rose rolled her eyes and ticked off her fingers. "Because A, judging by how fanatically you clean my apartment, you'd be good at it, B, the pay is better than fast food, which I don't think you'd get into anyway, and C, it doesn't pay as much as tending bar, but it's an honest living."

  Says the woman with a law degree, I thought, but I sucked on those sour grapes in silence.

  With a click of her mouse, Rose sent no fewer than ten job openings to her printer, seven of which were for a maid or housekeeper. Then she shoved me into the shower and supervised me while I got dressed to make sure I was actually going to drag my carcass out of the apartment.

  As I pulled on clothing appropriate to a bartending gig—which were totally inappropriate elsewhere—she typed numbers, information on companies, and addresses into my phone. When I was dressed to my satisfaction, she pressed fifty dollars into my hand, gave me a bus schedule and a file full of the printouts and shoved me out the door.

  I stumbled into the light of the rising LA sun. It was going to be another beautiful day in southern California, and I was pretty sure it was going to just go downhill from there.

  “Have fun!” Rose called from the doorway. Then she went back inside and slammed the door.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She meant well. To Rose, the right job could cure, in one fell swoop, my broken heart, my wrecked life, and my degenerate homelessness, though she only knew about the last bit. I hadn't shared the other parts with her. I'd burdened her enough already. Still, she suspected. She wouldn't pry, but the cleaning gave me away.

  I can't help it. I want there to be a place for everything and everything in its place, and since I clearly couldn't achieve that with my personal life I had to make do with ordering my surroundings. I mean, you can't clean the toilets often enough, I always say...

  Okay. Maybe I did need a job.

  With a sigh, I shoved the file folder into my messenger bag, checked the bus schedule, and started down the street, determined to, if not find a job, then to at least try.

  After all, who knew? Maybe the right job would cure all my problems.

  I walked into the rising sun.

  *

  When I opened the door to the lobby of office suite 305—my final application of the day— fifteen well-coiffed heads whirled around. Fifteen pairs of shrewd eyes narrowed as they scoped me out. Fifteen noses lifted higher in the air when they processed what they saw. Then a tiny bit of tension melted away from fifteen pairs of smartly dressed shoulders as, almost in unison, the other applicants turned back around, dismissing me from the competition for the job.

  It was a bit unnerving, to tell the truth, but I really should have twigged to the fact that somewhere, somehow, some wires had been crossed. After all, every single applicant was dressed in some variation of a business suit. Pressed, prim, and utterly proper in dark fabrics, white shirts and polished shoes. Each one had a shiny leather briefcases with gleaming brass buckles, and some of the briefcases even had those little spinny numbers on the locks.

  Me? I wore a sparkly black- and silver-striped tube top, skinny jeans from the sale rack at H&M, a ratty pair of Chuck's that I'd had since my senior year in high school, and an old white polyester tuxedo jacket passed down to me by my grandfather from his '71 wedding. The buttons had long since fallen off the sleeves, so I wore them rolled up to my elbows. It was my bartending uniform. You had to look somewhat hip to land the good gigs at places where rich yuppies liked to go, so it's safe to say I was severely underdressed compared to everyone else.

  So yeah, that should have tipped me off. Unfortunately I had been awake for almost thirty-six hours at that point, so my only thought was, Holy crap, all this for a lousy part time housekeeping job? This economy sucks.

  ...I'm serious. I was tired.

  Besides, I had just been witnessing first hand exactly how terrible the economy was so at the time the situation made perfect sense to my sleep deprived brain. I'd been on my feet all day, running all over downtown LA looking for a job I didn't really want. I mean, I needed a job—that much was obvious—but after a whole morning of job hunting I remembered why I'd been so reluctant to do so in the first place. Job hunting is brutal. And I'd recently been through the wringer. Subjecting myself to the Rejection Roulette was just cruel.

  I'd had no luck at all yet. I'd spent the morning riding the bus and walking from place to place getting rejected, so by the time I walked into suite 305 I was tired, bruised in spirit, and in no mood to get scrutinized by a bunch of yuppie wannabe housekeepers.

  Still, the place seemed like it might be a nice place to work—you know, if I managed to not get laughed out of the building upon first contact with HR. I didn't even know the name of the business I was applying to—the notes in my phone said it was a software consulting firm—but I had to admit it looked swank as hell.

  The lobby was decked out in cool, modern furniture, all sleek lines and irregular curves a
nd angles that ended abruptly. The couches and chairs were pastel pink with lime green accent pillows, and the walls had been painted in cream and turquoise stripes, as if the sixties had vomited all over an Ikea. Large frosted glass doors with brushed steel handles stood at the entrance to the rest of the office, and next to them the secretary, a middle-aged woman with bottle-blond hair and steely gray eyes, sat at a hammered steel desk typing away at a slender computer that probably cost more than my last car.

  As I stood just inside the entrance, trying to muster the courage to sit down next to one of these intimidating strangers, the secretary looked up. Raising an eyebrow, she peered at me from over the top of her dark-rimmed glasses.

  "Are you here for the job screening?" she asked me. Her tone of voice was incredulous.

  A few titters rose from the other applicants, and I had to fight down a blush. "Um, yes?" I said.

  She raised the other eyebrow. "You sound uncertain."

  Oh, god. I was uncertain. I wanted nothing more than to turn around and run back out the heavy glass doors. How could I have known this was a position that required a business suit? I didn't even own a business suit. I hoped I never owned a business suit.

  But if they're laughing at you now, my brain whispered, imagine how much they'll laugh at you if you turn around and walk out.

  The thought paralyzed me. My defensive reflexes rose up and took over.

  A bright smile slid over my face and I shook my head. “No, I'm sure!” I chirped at the secretary. “That's what I'm here for!” And with a bounce in my step that sent my boobs jiggling in their tube top I turned and took the last remaining seat. I set my messenger bag down between my feet, then bent over to look for my cell phone within its cavernous depths. This also had the bonus side effect of hiding my flaming cheeks.