Rampage (A Night Fire Novel Book 4)

by Watkins, TM

  The horror stories of mothers and their overbearing nature especially if it was a son, yeah I had heard them all. I dreaded the loathsome thoughts of having a mother-in-law, but Lola Cooper was better than I could have hoped for. Once she had finished trying to crack the bones in my back with the death grip she called a hug, she left us to continue our conversation. Which was good because I suddenly remembered that I had to ring Devlin.

  “Okay so, I told Devlin no love scene.”

  He nodded quietly.

  “He's making them redo the contract. What do you think?”

  “Did you really run away to be with me?”

  “Did you want to see my stuff in the car?”

  He grinned as he shook his head, Okay, so at least he believed me. I mean, it is kind of glaringly obvious, one look in the windows would say that.

  “I told Devlin that I was coming here with my stuff. Whether I keep the house depends on what happens now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I don't want you to think that I haven't let go of LA because I haven't sold it, so I will. Unless you want to keep it, you know like a base for when we visit my parents.”

  “Or when you do movies.”

  His face was solemn but I wasn't going to accept it, just in case he was faking it to make me happy.

  “Evan, I...”

  “No it's okay, I get it. This is your career, just like music is mine. It's finding the happy medium. And I can't stop you from doing what you love, it's wrong. Mom made me see that. You know..” he shrugged one shoulder. “She said, what if she made you give up music, would you do it for her? And I was like, yeah of course but the thought still stung like hell. So, I'm okay with the movies so long as there’s no love scenes.”

  “I'm glad you stood your ground.” I wrapped my arms around him.

  He grinned as he pulled me onto his lap.

  “So is Devlin.”

  “Really?”

  My phone rang from the depths of my bag. After finding it I cringed, it was Devlin.

  “Speak of the devil....Hello, I know I said I'd ring.”

  “That's alright Harmony, I have the contract but there's no one at Evan's place.”

  “Oh, we're at his mother's. Wait, are you in Vegas?”

  “I am, I have a few things to discuss with you.”

  “Ah, hmm, hang on.”

  I covered the speaker and looked at Evan who has managed to get himself rather comfortable on the lounge beneath me.

  “Devlin's outside your house.”

  “Okay we can go there now, be about five minutes.”

  “See you in five.”

  The five minutes was more like ten. Saying goodbye to his mother took up most of those ten minutes and the drive took about two. The house was very similar to his mothers, although his was on a grander scale. It was still the sleek minimalistic lines, very modern looking.

  We sat in the lounge room as Devlin sorted through his bag, finding the documents he wanted. I had never met him before, my interactions were always with Bill. Devlin was tall, beach blonde hair that was perfectly brushed from one side to the other, chocolate brown eyes and tanned skin. He wasn't my type of guy but he was certainly good looking. And of course, he was all business, the dark blue double breasted suit, the white shirt and matching blue tie.

  “Okay, so in the negotiations they suggested two courses ahead. They are very much interested in keeping you on this movie and happy so they hope that this will be what you like.”

  “Go on.”

  “Option one is scene cut, everything else as normal. Option two is scene intact and Evan playing the male lead.”

  “Sorry?” I gasped as Evan choked on his beer.

  I patted him on the back as Devlin flicked his fingers over the edge of the script.

  “Harmony, you have to read the script to understand why it is important to them. The scene makes a world of difference to the whole movie.”

  “How?”

  “She gets pregnant. The whole movie revolves around it, the half cast child. They want to show the love between the human and the vampire that creates a child. Their reasoning is that you can't just have one scene, 'oh hey you're a hot chick let's go and have fun time under the sheets' and then the next is 'oops sorry the condom broke'. I know what we discussed...” he sighed. “And as I said to you I would prefer that this scene didn't happen either but I understand it now that I have read the script in its entirety. I understand where they are coming from. So as option two goes, this is how it sits. There is no nudity, that one I don't even need to discuss with you, that goes without saying. The next is that as it stood previously, this is only kissing under bed sheets, lights down low.” he waved his hand frowning at the script. “It says it all if you want to read it. Now it comes down to how desperate they are to have you and this scene.”

  Devlin grinned as he pulled a piece of paper out from his briefcase.

  “I have never seen anything like it.” he chuckled as he pulled out yet another document. “If you accept option two, they will double your earnings, they will match it for Evan and they will move production to here – in Vegas. It will be a closed set for the scene, it's final cut will have both of your approval before it goes to print. They will pay for all of the expenses associated with the junket. That's overseas too, for the both of you and as a final sweetener, Night Fire will be given first offer to record the entire soundtrack. Then as part of the press junket, they will have Night Fire tour with you, doing gigs and what not.”

  “Are these people nuts?”

  “I know right?” he laughed again. “Take it tonight, read it, both of you. Tomorrow we should meet for lunch, I'm staying at the Bellagio, so we can meet in the restaurant. Now, I will leave both of the options to read, there is a few things I might have missed. Anyway, read over it, I will see you two at twelve tomorrow.”

  Devlin was ready to see himself out but Evan quickly followed, leaving me a little stunned as I sat on the lounge staring at the mountain of documents and scripts in front of me.

  Ten minutes after Devlin left the doorbell went off. I frowned, wondering if he had left something behind. Evan was on the phone to someone so I wandered to the door and opened it. A tall, pregnant woman stood in front of me. Her long black hair was pulled back into a pony tail, two young children at her feet. The youngest was a boy with the same black hair as her, the girl had large ringlets of brown. Both of them seemed to be close in age.

  “Hey, not interrupting am I?”

  And then she pushed the door open and wandered into the house. The children followed quietly and I stood at the doorway rather stunned.

  “Sorry, who are you?”

  “Eden.”

  I wanted to say that wasn't nearly enough for an answer but Evan appeared with a mighty grin on his face.

  “Hey there little rockers.”

  He scooped them up into his arms and I couldn't help but wonder if I was faced with an ex-wife and two of his kids, maybe the next one on its way.

  “How come you're here?”

  “Really?” she asked, her tone rather dry. “You've been ignoring my calls for the entire weekend Evan. Don't you think that I deserve at least one call or maybe a message? Have we not had the discussion about keeping in contact before?”

  “Yes.” he groaned.

  I watched the conversation as it moved back and forth. The boy struggled out of his arms but the girl was content to stay where she was. He walked around the room, stopping by a glass cabinet.

  “Hudson.”

  The child turned to Evan's direct tone, offering a cute grin that said that he wasn't really up to no good.

  “Daddy said you're not to touch glass.” the girl said.

  Well that settles it then. Not sure why he didn't tell me he had kids. Or that he was still so accountable to the ex.

  The woman walked over to the child to pick him up, allowing me a moment to question Evan.

  “Are these kids
yours?”

  “What?” he grinned with a crinkled smile.

  I pointed to the one in his arms, she had been resting her head on his shoulder. Suddenly she sat up with a bright smile.

  “Daddy.”

  Her arms went out to the man behind me, I almost gasped at the ominous presence he held. The man took her into his arms and walked into the entry. He looked vaguely familiar and then it dawned on me. Band member. Wow, talk about getting it really wrong.

  With the little girl in his arms, I could see the serious resemblance. Both had lush brown hair and pale brown eyes.

  “Okay so I guess I should uh.. you know.” Evan cleared his throat. “Harmony this is Fraser and his wife Eden and their kids Sahara, Hudson and yet to be decided.”

  His fingers waggled at her stomach, the mound was rather large. Considering the size of her husband, I could understand why. The poor thing probably birthed monster sized children.

  “Thanks for the wedding invite jack ass.” Fraser grumbled.

  “We were drunk.”

  “Your mother was pissed.”

  Evan scoffed at Eden's statement.

  “She was not. She's cool with it.”

  Her eyes narrowed at him, a cold stare directed solely at him.

  “No Evan, she wasn't. I had to listen to her as she cried because you are so god damned selfish that you forgot about the woman that raised you by herself. It's one thing to forget about your friends but to forget about your own mother and blaming alcohol is pathetic.”

  She handed Hudson to Fraser.

  “Take them to the car, we're going to be late as it is.”

  He nodded and said nothing more as he walked out of the house. Eden watched as he walked away then turned back to Evan.

  “You know how much family means to certain people, how loudly their needs resonate. I expected better from you. I expected you to be considerate of others but I guess I expected too much. Make this right Evan, fix this. I've worked too damned hard to get his life on track to have you fuck it over in a weekend. There's a compulsory meeting in half an hour. Don't be late or I'll find something blunt to impale you with.”

  Eden walked out of the house without another word said, I stood rather shocked and bewildered.

  “What's she talking about?”

  Evan sighed as he leaned on the door, closing it.

  “We fucked up big time.” he sighed. “Jaxon and I, we were out on the town Friday night to drown our sorrows. Saturday was a bad day.”

  I frowned, unable to understand why. It seemed pretty good to me.

  “Ten years ago we were doing a charity gig in New York, back here Fraser's brother murdered their parents.”

  It was like the air was sucked out of my lungs. The poor thing, no wonder he was so doom and gloom.

  “Every year on the anniversary we keep him company, he's got like one aunt who lives in Utah and us. That's it, no other family. But this year because it was ten years Eden was doing this thing at the cemetery for him. She'd had these pictures put in the headstones, even managed to convince the aunt to come down for it.”

  He sighed as his head rolled back to stare at the ceiling.

  “I was there, they just don't know that. I couldn't do it. Not just because I was sober and realized how much I had wronged them by not telling them about us but the whole concept of what they were doing.”

  “Honoring life can be a beautiful thing Evan. These people are your family, there's nothing wrong with feeling pain when one of them passes. You are right though, you did fuck up big time and you need to fix it.”

  Evan smiled with a lot of pain, one that made me pull him into my arms.

  “I've never met my father, don't want to either. Fraser lived across the road from us when we were kids, his father was awesome. He built a tree house that surrounded the tree with massive ramps that we could skateboard on. It consumed most of the yard. Florence said that he did it to get out of yard work but it wasn't the reason. It was because he loved his kids. Not just the two that he had but the others that seemed to hang around a lot as well.”

  His grip around my waist tightened as his head rested on my chest. For all that he had a playful nature, I now realized there was one broken and lost little boy.

  “We came back from New York, the funeral was a couple of days later. No one heard a peep from Fraser so Jerry our manager went to his place. The whole thing was gone. No tree house or ramps, not even a tree. The house had almost been gutted, Fraser had spent the entire time drunk and taking things out to the back yard. Jerry found him pouring gas over it all, he'd only just made it.”

  I knew what he meant by that, I didn't know the kind of grief that would make a person act like that but having lost your entire family could push a person to the limit.

  “Walls were punched in, some were ripped off completely. Carpet ripped out, tossed onto the pile that was already high with the furniture. The only room that remained intact was his asshole brother's room. Personally I would have started with that room but not Fraser. No one was allowed to touch it. Even when Jerry got people in to fix the mess he'd made, they still weren't allowed to go in there. Eden helped him.” he sighed wearily, lifting from my body.

  “He changed that room from a nightmare into a room for Sahara. Then when Hudson was born he set about making the yard better for them. Eden calls it therapy and I think she's right.”

  I nodded and hugged him again, thinking that I might have misjudged Eden.

  Chapter Twelve

  We had discussed it, over and over again as we drove to this clubhouse, whatever that was. Evan drove as I read out the relevant part of the script. At the end of the ten minute trip we had decided it wasn't as bad as what we had made it out to be.

  The hope was that it would be a romantic scene, done with reasonable taste. I noted that Devlin's stock standard virtue clause was in there. It was the one that I maintained my morals and that the director would ensure that there would be nothing untoward happen within the film that would jeopardize my public persona. That was Devlin's way of saying I had to have clothes on under the sheets and the most that anyone would see would be some hot and heavy kissing.

  The key to this scene working was the illusion that something was happening, inferring that this couple got down and dirty but never actually showing it.

  Evan couldn't understand why they would want him to do the male lead. He thought it was all because of me, that they wanted me and they had to 'put up with' him. He wasn't overly impressed but was swayed somewhat by the thoughts of getting the entire soundtrack for the band. That he did like.

  The clubhouse was a converted warehouse that the band used as a headquarters of sorts. It turns out that Eden is in fact the personal assistant to the band, she'd been with them for four years now and in that time had done a fair amount of things.

  She'd straightened Fraser's life out, got him into therapy and helped him deal with the negativity regarding the past. Evan said that everyone else who had tried had failed. Their manager Jerry had been making appointments for Fraser for years, which Fraser would conveniently forget about. He tried to deliver him personally to the appointments but was met with excuses. What finally convinced him was the love of a good woman and a child that needed a stable father.

  We walked into the shadows of the warehouse, to the right of the doors was a vast and empty area. Evan led me past the stage to a set of doors. I glanced up to the glass wall above us, we were being watched. I could hear the sounds of children, a lot of children.

  I hadn't done much research into Evan or the band. There were five male members, they'd been friends for years. They were from Vegas and refused to move anywhere else. That was the grand total of my knowledge.

  We walked up the stairs, a young man passing us with a nod.

  “Hey Nate, this is Harmony.”

  “Hi.” he grinned and turned onto the next set of stairs.

  “Nate is Jerry's son. He's a whiz at the mixing board.”


  “And he's better than Brad too.”

  “Unlikely.”

  I turned to the sound of another male, following Nate's path.

  “Brad, Harmony. Jerry's other son.”

  “Hey.” he nodded with a grin.

  They were pretty much the same in the smile department, it could have a girl swooning. The two brothers didn't look the same. One had black hair the other brown. One was a narrow build the other had a built frame like Evan.

  “Hey Kaylee.”

  I hadn't even had a chance to move, yet I was faced with another person. She was really young, dark auburn hair pulled back with bright green eyes.

  “This is Harmony.”

  “Hi.”

  “Everything okay?”

  Her eyes darted to me, flinching for a second. It made me wonder why. What was I missing here?

  “It's fine. Thanks for the invite dickhead.”

  Kaylee continued down the stairs, muttering something about killing parakeets.

  “She doesn't kill birds.” Evan said as he frowned at where she had once been. “Kaylee helps Eden out and well, you've met Eden so you can probably understand. Pregnancy hormones.”

  He shrugged with a smile and a light laugh as we continued to walk up the stairs.

  “We've all offered to pay for a vasectomy but Fraser said that no one is touching his monster.”

  “Maybe he wants lots of kids.”

  “Probably, only problem is they're still living in the family home and it's only got three bedrooms. He'd have to move and I don't think he's going to do that any time soon.”

  I nodded as we turned for the final time, ahead of us was a child gate and a lot of children. Twin boys stood at the gate, their little hands wrapped around the poles as they watched us. Evan had been holding my hand, I was curious about something so I pulled it back.

  “What do you think about having kids?”

  He shrugged.

  “Whenever you want. It's you that has to think about your career. Me, I'm just their for the fun at the start and the dirty diapers at the end.”

  “Really?” I asked, rather shocked.