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

by Emme Rollins

  “Is my dining companion here yet?”

  “I’m afraid not, Ms. Hall.”

  Figures. He really might stand me up.

  I lift my chin and follow the maître‘d to the table he had reserved for us. It’s situated in a quiet little corner, away from the main thoroughfare. The table is lit with a single candle and decked with a vase of fresh flowers. Gleaming silver cutlery is laid on neatly folded white napkins.

  The maître‘d draws my chair and fusses over me as I sit down.

  “Would you care for some drinks while waiting for your companion, Ms. Hall?”

  Why not? It might be a long wait. I’ll give Kurt Taylor thirty minutes. If he doesn’t show up, I’m out of here.

  “Yes. Can I see the menu, please?”

  “Certainly.”

  The maître‘d goes off. A waiter arrives with the drinks menu and I take my time perusing it. Now, what shall I drink to drown my sorrows?

  “Are you ready to order, Ms.?” the waiter says.

  “Yes. Give me a margarita, please.”

  “Very well.” He walks off, and the entire restaurant quivers again, causing my empty wine glass to slide an inch to the right. No wonder not many people are dining tonight. Many of them are bound to be throwing up in their cabin toilets.

  I lean back. I consider letting my hair down and relaxing. I take out my cellphone to note if I have any missed calls. Naturally, I don’t encourage anyone to call me when I’m out here at sea, seeing as the costs would be astronomical. I consider starting a round of ‘Plants vs Zombies’, when a presence at my table registers itself.

  “I’m here. Bet you thought I wouldn’t show up, right?”

  Kurt Taylor seats himself without being invited. My jaw drops, and I quickly shut it again. He is resplendent in a white dinner jacket and a black bow tie. His pants are black. I never knew he would look so good. Wait. I remember him at our prom. He looked good enough to eat too, especially when he was crowned prom king.

  His auburn hair is neatly combed but left to trail in a tousled mane all across his broad shoulders. It is certainly a lot longer than I remembered it. I seem to be remembering a lot of how it used to be between the three of us – Kurt, Adeline and myself.

  The rage bubbles within me again and my fingers curl around the stem of my wine glass. A few diners from the other tables around us turn to glance at Kurt Taylor in admiring recognition. He soaks all this in.

  The waiter comes to our table again, smiling.

  “Would you like to have the menu now?” he says.

  “Yes, please,” Kurt replies. “And bring me your wine menu as well. What’s the most expensive wine you have on the house?”

  Uh oh. I can sense where this is going.

  “That would be the Chateau Haut Brion Pessac-Lognan, sir. From Bordeaux, sir.”

  “What year is it?”

  “1982,” the waiter replies without missing a beat.

  I’ll bet he thinks Kurt Taylor is going to pay for it and that this is a normal date.

  Argggh!!

  “Bring a bottle of it,” Kurt says with a wave.

  Yeah, I’ll bet he’s used to doing this a lot too. Money would be nothing to him now, and I’m still scrounging along in my beat-up Ford and my shared apartment. I glance at my menu. The particular red he named is $600 a bottle!

  As the waiter leaves, Kurt slyly glances at me.

  “You’re buying, aren’t you?” he says. “That was the deal.”

  I grit my teeth. “Yes,” I hiss.

  “Good.” His fingers dance over the menu. When the waiter returns, he says, “I’ve made up my mind what I want for dinner tonight.”

  I cringe. How much of my monthly paycheck is this going to cost me? This is the Captain’s fault. He doesn’t know Kurt Taylor the way I do. Kurt Taylor is selfish, self-absorbed and vainglorious. He thinks the world revolves around him.

  Kurt announces, “For starters, I would like the lobster bisque with foie gras on the side.”

  Figures. He orders two starters – both the most expensive on the menu.

  “For the entrée, give me the Wagyu tenderloin, medium rare, with potatoes gratin and creamed spinach on the side.”

  I glance at the price and my heart sinks. I don’t even know where Wagyu beef is from, but it sounds expensive.

  “And throw in a tub of your Beluga caviar,” Kurt adds. He looks at my drained face and says, grinning, “I’m hungry tonight.”

  OK, I think I’ve just lost my appetite for the next three days.

  The waiter turns to me. “And what would you be having, Miss?”

  “Uh, just a salad would do.”

  “On a diet, Miss?” The waiter’s eyebrows move mischievously.

  “Yes.”

  Kurt remarks, “You were always a little on the large side, Rebecca. Good to know you’re making an effort to thin down.”

  I glare at him. My fists bunch under the table.

  “What sort of salad would you like, Miss? We have a classic Caesar’s, with or without a choice of chicken, and an Asian salad with oranges and Thai sauce.”

  “Asian, please.”

  “Very good, Miss.”

  The waiter knowingly retreats.

  I am left alone with Kurt Taylor, who leans back in his chair and grins wolfishly at me.

  “So, Rebecca. What brings you this side of the world?”

  KURT

  To be honest, I’m really not that hungry. I’m a little queasy from the gently rocking motion of the ship. It’s a big ship, and so the waves must have been huge to rock us like that.

  But it’s so delicious to see Rebecca Hall being taken down a peg or two. She was getting too full of herself, telling me off like that. And she looks gorgeous tonight. She has always been on the heavier side in high school, as I used to remind her. But she was always pleasing to look at.

  Scratch that. She’s more than pleasing right now.

  In fact, she’s downright hot.

  My groin stirs uncomfortably underneath my dinner jacket. The jacket is not even mine. I didn’t bring anything nice to dine in during my incarceration here. I honestly didn’t think I would be invited to any tables, and I was hoping to keep the terms of my sentence as quiet as possible.

  So I borrowed the jacket, shirt and bowtie from Manny across my cabin. We are pretty much the same size. Manny works in engineering. He’s only too happy to lend me his stuff (“from my prom, just in case I get invited to chow with the Captain,” he tells me) for a signed autograph and a photo for his girlfriend.

  I have to loosen my bowtie a little as I am getting a little hot under the collar. Rebecca still is on the plump side, but her curves are very apparent. I’ve always liked women a little bigger anyway. There’s more to grab and grope. Could never go for the stick thin Kate Moss types who always look as if they are going to slip through the grating on the drains and fall into some subterranean sewerage tunnel.

  But why am I finding Rebecca Hall so damned attractive tonight?

  Am I delusional? Do I want to have a death wish? I think I would be safer in a pit of female praying mantises.

  I’m not even sure I know how to make small talk with her. How do you do anything ‘small’ where Rebecca is concerned?

  (OK, bad joke.)

  Because my balls are twitching uncomfortably within my pants, I have to be extra ruthless. When in the full flush of libido, go for the offensive.

  The waiter comes back with the Chateau Haut. Frankly, I haven’t the faintest clue about wines. I just selected the most expensive one on the menu. He offers me the cork.

  “What am I supposed to do about this?” I demand.

  Rebecca’s mouth curls into a slight smile.

  “Would you like a whiff of it, sir?”

  “A whiff?”

  “You’re supposed to sniff at it,” Rebecca says acidly.

  Oh, right. Forgive me if I haven’t been trained in the fine dining arts. I have been too busy making and r
aking in the moolah, and before this, I have been a small town hick.

  I wave my hand, feeling my cheeks heat up.

  “No need. I trust your taste, man,” I say to the waiter.

  “Very good, sir.”

  He pours a little wine into my glass for me to sip. At least I know how to do this, but Rebecca is watching me carefully, like a shark in the water, waiting for me to trip up and embarrass myself further. So I opt for an even further offensive.

  I hold up my wine glass, salute Rebecca, and down the fruity red liquid in one gulp.

  “To apologies,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

  She doesn’t say anything as the waiter pours her a full glass of wine.

  When the waiter has left, she says, “I suppose you’re enjoying yourself.”

  “A paid dinner with an old nemesis? What could be better?”

  She glares at me. “I’m not the villain here. It’s you.”

  “Oh, so we’re talking heroes and villains now? How superhero-ish.”

  “You know what you did.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what I did, because I don’t think I did anything wrong.”

  I fold my arms across my chest and sit back.

  Yes, this is the matter between us. The elephant in the room. It sits there on the table like an omnipresent weight. The air between us is choked with tension.

  Rebecca is the first to speak. She raises her vivid green eyes to mine.

  “You left her,” she says flatly.

  REBECCA

  “I didn’t leave her,” he says hotly. “We agreed to part amicably. It wasn’t any of your business.”

  Yes.

  Adeline.

  The three of us. Best friends forever, or so we swore all those years ago.

  “It was my business, thank you very much,” I insist. “She was my best friend.”

  “Look, Rebecca, I know she was your best friend. But people change. People want different things.”

  I shake my head. “It wasn’t just the fact that you left her. It was why you left her.”

  His complexion mottles. He looks as guilty as hell.

  I press my advantage. “Oh yeah, Kurt. You know exactly why you left her. Everything changed, didn’t it? That night?”

  His face blanches.

  Oh yeah. We both know what happened that night all right.

  *

  We were the Three Musketeers, only two of us were female and one of us was fucking the other. Kurt Taylor and Adeline Frost were the golden couple. They were both beautiful, popular and destined for greater things.

  Or so we thought.

  Kurt and Adeline hooked up when they were both sophomores. Kurt was a natural athlete, the kind who was good at whatever sports he tried his hand in – which was basketball in his case. He was tall for his age and as nimble as someone much smaller. Adeline wasn’t a cheerleader but a basketball star herself. She was in the girls’ team. They were both good enough to have won basketball scholarships if they wanted to go to college.

  I was the token class geek. Well, I didn’t wear glasses or braces or anything, but I was on the large side and I mugged like crazy for my exams because I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere on a sports scholarship. The only hope I had was an academic one. Neither of my divorced parents had enough money to send me anywhere but a community college.

  But I wanted a lot more than community college. I wanted to do psychology, and that necessitated a move out of our little town.

  I knew our friendship wasn’t going to be as close-knit as it was forever. Each of us was going to move away to different colleges, different lives. Sometimes I envied Kurt and Adeline. They had each other, and I was kind of the odd one out. The lamp post. Adeline never made me feel that way when the three of us were together, but I got the feeling that sometimes Kurt wished he could have more time alone with Addy.

  But it wasn’t to be. Addy treasured our friendship above everything else, and she tried to get me involved in everything. It was as though we were a threesome, only we technically weren’t.

  Anyhow, it was the night of our final SATs. It was time to celebrate. Kurt’s grades were always mediocre, and so he wasn’t expecting too much. But Adeline thought she did very well for a change. Of course, she had me as a study partner.

  Adeline was driving the car. She was the only one of us with a halfway decent car. I didn’t have the money to get one, and Kurt had a banged-up number that probably wasn’t worth as much as its weekly gas consumption.

  We were delirious with joy. With the SATs finally over, a burden was lifted off our shoulders. Our fates were in the wind.

  “The night is ours!” Adeline whooped. “Where do we want to go?”

  “I heard the Lasseters are having a party,” Kurt remarked.

  He was in the front passenger seat and he had his arm around Adeline’s headrest, as always. His incredibly long arms made for easy grabbing.

  I sat at the back, of course, watching their two heads turn to each other’s to gab. Adeline’s hair was a sleek, shiny silhouette while Kurt’s was a wavy shimmer. They were both so compatible it was stunning to watch, except that I always nursed this little kernel of jealousy in me.

  I never told anyone about it, of course.

  I wasn’t sure if I was jealous of Kurt being with Adeline, or Adeline being with Kurt. Kurt being with her took her time away from me. Time we used to spend doing stuff together – just the two of us. And the fact that she got a boyfriend before I did rankled deeply in me, although I never told her.

  Of course she would get a boyfriend before I did. She was prettier, slimmer, better than me at everything except schoolwork. But I was hoping against hope that she wouldn’t get a boyfriend until she went off to college.

  Though, of course, she did.

  And Kurt was the kind of boyfriend I simultaneously despised and desired. I know. It was a dichotomy.

  He was a long-haired jock, as stereotypically dumb as stereotypical jocks could get. He was callously handsome, carelessly popular without even trying. The type of guy who seemed to coast through life on his good looks and devil-may-care attitude. He was as bad as bad boys came. And before he arrived on the scene with Adeline, he had an honor’s roll call with girls as long as his arm.

  Kurt had quite a reputation all right. Maybe it was bigger than he deserved, but he was rumored to have slept with dozens of girls and with some of their sisters and mothers too.

  But when he met Adeline, she touched him in some way that he wasn’t touched before. There were girls who were prettier and smarter, but somehow, a spark developed between him and Adeline that neither of them had experienced before. It was as if the cosmos collided and conspired for them to be together.

  Maybe that was what I was jealous of. I was jealous of my best friend having that kind of connection with someone who wasn’t me.

  And I was jealous that Kurt didn’t find me attractive.

  I was kind of competitive against Adeline that way.

  I said to the two of them, “The Lasseter brothers always do coke. There could be a raid.”

  “That’s what makes it hot,” Kurt said. His profile was grinning in the dark as he half-turned to me.

  “Suit yourself,” I retorted. “But I don’t want to be hauled out of jail by my parents so close to graduation.”

  “Me neither,” Adeline said. Her looks were a contrast to mine. Where I was redheaded and green-eyed, she was dark-haired and dark-eyed. She had gypsy blood and a touch of the exotic.

  “So where do we go?” Kurt said. “Maybe we can stop at a Seven-Eleven and get a couple of beer cartons and have our own party.”

  “A couple of beer cartons?” Adeline laughed. “I don’t think we can go through that much between the three of us.”

  “OK. One beer carton. A six-pack.” Kurt reached down to pull up his T-shirt. He jerked a thumb to his abdomen. “These . . . are an eight-pack.”

  “Show-off,” I immediately s
aid.

  We all laughed.

  “OK, but I’m the designated driver,” Adeline said.

  “You have no choice since you won’t let anyone else touch your father’s old junk,” Kurt shot back.

  “Excuse me? My father won’t let you near his cars with a ten-foot pole since you crashed your own car fender into a fire hydrant.”

  “Which flooded the town square,” I crowed.

  “You didn’t have to tell him about it,” Kurt complained.

  “Tell him about it? Everyone knew about it. It was the front page news,” Adeline said.

  “Yeah, in our town, a cat getting rescued from a roof makes the front page news,” he deadpanned.

  Anyhow, we ended up in a Seven-Eleven (yes, there was actually one in our one main street town, could you believe it?). Adeline parked and skipped down to get the six-pack.

  “Stay here,” she said to the two of us. “I’m the only one who has the ID.”

  She was right. She had just turned eighteen.

  “I’m sure I pass for eighteen,” Kurt said.

  He was right too. He looked older than his age. It was that height and the fact he cut quite an imposing figure with his huge frame.

  “Uh uh, Kurt, everyone knows you. I’ll be a while, guys. I have to use the little ladies’.”

  She slammed her car door on us and jauntily walked towards the direction of the brightly lit Seven-Eleven. She had her red jacket on. The wind blew her dark hair backwards. She was a whip of a figure – a pretty young woman perched on anything she could have in the world.

  There was an uncomfortable silence between me and Kurt, as there always was whenever Adeline left the room and sucked out all the camaraderie with her.

  Kurt turned around. His face was in half-shadow, lighted up by the distant fluorescent glow from the Seven-Eleven entrance. He was remarkably beautiful, like a sculptured piece of flesh. His longish hair brushed his shoulders, which were clad in brown leather. Underneath his jacket, he wore a plaid shirt.

  “So, Ms. Smarty-Pants. Decided which college you want to apply to yet?” he said casually.

  “Don’t call me that. You know I don’t like that.”