Blame it on the Bass: Heart of Fame, Book 6

by Lexxie Couper

  Levi rolled his eyes. “Jesus, I forgot how twisted you are. Josh is right, you’re a sick man.”

  Nick’s laughter trailed him as he walked from the living room.

  Levi stared at the bottle of scotch, his heart thumping fast in his ears. What would he do if Corbin didn’t answer his call? Or reply to his text?

  Raking his hands through his hair once more, he huffed out a slow breath. “Then I’ll hit the karaoke bars,” he muttered, turning from the Chivas. “What else have I got to do?”

  Thirty minutes later, after Lauren told him he wasn’t allowed to go numerous times, disapproval warring with worry on her beautiful face, Levi climbed up into Nick’s private helicopter and buckled himself in.

  He really wasn’t a good flyer. The rest of the band gave him a hard time about it often. Still, letting Nick take him home was better than paying a cab for the six-hour drive to Sydney.

  The flight back was a quiet one. They discussed the band’s so-far futile search for a replacement lead singer, the country’s current prime minister, Josh’s knee injury and the woeful state of the economy. Normal, run-of-the mill conversation. It wasn’t until they’d landed on Sydney’s domestic airport helipad that Levi realized Nick hadn’t mentioned Chloe once, nor Lauren.

  The deliberate omission touched him. Damn, he missed the guy being a regular part of his life.

  “Okay.” Nick killed the chopper’s engine, removed his headphones and turned to Levi. “I’m going to get us a car and see you—”

  Levi shook his head. “No. It’s all good. I’ll grab a taxi from here.”

  Nick frowned. “You sure?”

  “Yeah. You need to get back to your family.” Levi unbuckled his seat harness. “You have no idea how grateful I am for your ear, Blackthorne. And while I’m probably going to have the biggest fucking hangover tomorrow, and quite possibly the worst headache later this evening, I don’t regret driving up to see you. I couldn’t bear to stay a minute longer, but I’m glad I got to experience that one brief moment in your home, with your family. They are awesome, and Chloe is gorgeous, and when my stupid heart finally heals—whether Corbin is with me or not—I’ll come back to get my car in a few days and bounce her on my knee then, okay? Cuddle her and breathe in her baby smell and be the best damn pseudo uncle an aging rock star can be. Deal?”

  For an answer, Nick reached out and wrapped him in a tight hug. “Deal.”

  Levi allowed himself a stolen moment of just being held by his friend. Nick’s heat warmed the chill in his soul, and then—with a chuckled grunt—Levi disengaged. “All right, Blackthorne. That’s enough. You’ll get me all hard.”

  Nick thumped his fist against Levi’s shoulder, his grin playful. “I got you all hard years ago, Levistan. You just couldn’t deal with being my bitch.”

  “True. True.” Levi smirked. “But holy fuck, mate, could you imagine the sex?”

  “Get out of here, you demented bastard.” Nick shook his head as he flicked a switch on the helicopter’s control deck marked Radio Comm. “Before I take you back to Murriundah with me and hook you up with the school’s new principal. He’d be perfect for—”

  With a laugh, Levi flung open his door. “I’m outta here.”

  He leapt down from the helicopter’s cabin. “Take care, Nick,” he said. “And hug your baby daughter every chance you get, okay?”

  Nick nodded. “Shall do, mate. Kick Corbin in the arse for me.”

  Levi let out a wry snort. “You better believe I will.”

  With a smile, he slammed the door shut, gave it a short, sharp rap and then hurried away from the chopper.

  He felt better. The pain and empty grief still filled his chest, but the familiar roar in his head had gone. He felt better. Ready to confront Corbin, to talk to his lover, to fix the growing chasm between them.

  Two hours later, the chasm remained.

  Corbin didn’t answer his phone. Nor did he reply to Levi’s text.

  Levi paced their waterfront apartment, ignoring the view of the sinking sun over Sydney’s famous harbour, a sight that usually helped him find his calm. When he’d called Corbin, the dial tone had sounded twice, only to be diverted to Corbin’s voice service.

  Levi listened to the man he loved tell him in a recorded message he wasn’t able to take the call right now, but to leave his details and Corbin would get back to him ASAP.

  Staring at his feet, Levi scrubbed at the back of his neck. The phone had run long enough for Corbin to see who was calling before rejecting the connection.

  Before rejecting him.

  At the voice message’s beep, Levi opened his mouth.

  And closed it. What did he say that hadn’t already been said? How many times did he have to leave an unanswered message before he accepted the life he’d had, the best life, was over?

  Killing the call without uttering a sound, he tossed his phone onto the low black leather sofa he and Corbin fucked each other on every damn weekend.

  Fuck this.

  Head roaring, he stormed into the apartment’s main bathroom and yanked his beard trimmer from the bottom drawer.

  Fuck this sitting at home wallowing in self-pity.

  Fuck walking around his home where everything made him think of Corbin, their life together and the plans they’d made.

  Fuck it all.

  Ten minutes later, the dark blond growth covering his jaw and chin and upper lip clipped closer to his skin, his hair combed back off his face, his teeth cleaned, he strode from the bathroom, snatched up his leather jacket from the hook on the back of the door and left the apartment.

  There was a new karaoke bar three blocks away. He hadn’t checked it out yet, but the Sydney Morning Herald had given it a really good write-up a few months ago. He’d go take a look, maybe order a burger, another drink and scope out the talent. Maybe, if the mood took him, he’d get up on the stage and belt out a song or two. It had been a while since he’d sung just for the hell of it. If the bar had Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love A Bad Name”, he’d let it rip. What better song to punish the man you loved when he wasn’t there with you?

  His regular disguise of a New York Yankees baseball cap and blue-lens sunglasses firmly in place, he strode the short distance to the bar, hands shoved in his pockets. He was never mobbed like Nick or Samuel when out on the streets, but Sydney still loved its famous residents and he knew a few of the local paparazzi were out and about in the city at the moment, hunting prey. The worst of them, an unethical prick called Carl Holston, had already hounded him a few times. Thank God, Ryan Gosling was in town at the moment promoting his latest film. Gave the rest of the celebs breathing room.

  The chilly autumn wind bit at his face as he pushed the karaoke bar’s entry door open, a last-ditch effort to make its presence known. Behind him someone shouted, a faint noise lost to both the wind and the atrocious rendition of “Sex on Fire” coming from within the bar.

  A smile pulled at Levi’s lips. Everyone in the world loved singing, whether they could do it or not. And for tonight, he was going to hear some of them. Lose himself in their warbles, their off-pitch notes and cracking croons.

  He highly doubted he’d find a replacement for Nick tonight—hell, he was beginning to think it really was impossible to find a new lead singer for the band—but that wasn’t why he was here. He was here to escape his grief and pain. To escape the angry roar in his head.

  Finding a seat in the deep shadows of a booth, he ordered a drink from a passing waitress—hair of the dog—and then settled in, ready to listen to those losing themselves in song.

  He sat up straighter, his mouth falling open a little, when a petite woman with long blonde hair and a mischievous grin on her full lips stepped up onto the stage. A woman who nodded at the karaoke controller, raised the mic to those lush lips and started singing Nick Blackthorne’s “Glass Houses” in a voice not quite amazing but damn near close.

  A woman who wore her snug denim jeans, thigh-high black boots and black
satin corset like she meant it.

  Levi blinked, his stare fixed on the woman on the stage.

  Holy shit, she was his high school girlfriend.

  Chapter Two

  Sonja Stone was a fan of old-school hard-rock power ballads. The kind that made you throw back your head and belt out the lyrics in spectacular fashion. The kind that made you pour your every damn emotion into those sung words. The kind that never went out of fashion, no matter what the DJs tried to say.

  Old-school rock sung by sexy-arsed rockers. Rockers, not kids in skinny jeans and pastels. Rockers. Men. The kind whose balls had dropped years ago. The kind that sang about love and sex because they’d actually experienced it. None of these pubescent boy bands who wouldn’t know what real heartache was if it bit them in the arse. None of these volatile rappers who sang about beating women and shooting cops. Rockers who sang rock music. Real music.

  Of course, this taste in music had nothing to do with the fact she’d dated a bass player for the last few years of her high school life, a bass player who’d gone on to become one of the best in the world. Her love of rock had started long before then. Her twenty-two-month turbulent relationship with Levi Levistan had just kind of…cemented it, that was all.

  It wasn’t like she pined for him. Not really. And the reason she always selected Nick Blackthorne songs when she hit the karaoke bars had nothing to do with the amazing bass line throbbing through them and everything to do with the fact Nick Blackthorne’s music was incredible rock full of raw simmering emotions on a volcanic-eruption scale.

  Which was handy, given the only time she did do karaoke was when she needed to blow off some serious steam. Like she did tonight. Holy fuck, she wanted to kill her boss.

  Big time.

  So instead of running the risk of spending the rest of her natural life behind bars, she’d stormed out of her office at Hot Nights Publications, Australia’s most successful publisher of scorching-hot erotic romance, gone home, donned her karaoke gear and made her way to her new favourite singing haunt, Do Re Me.

  Which was where she was now, singing a Nick Blackthorne song—her fourth of the evening—singing away all the frustration of having her git of a boss tell her the only way he’d offer a contract to the amazing submission she’d read that day was if she submitted to him. In the bedroom.

  God, he was never ever going to let her forget that one stupid office Christmas party where she’d had one drink too many and let him kiss her under the mistletoe. With tongue. Urgh.

  Following the words of “Glass Houses” on the large screen behind her, she began the chorus. Damn, she loved this song. Loved belting it out, uncaring of what the rest of the bar’s crowd thought of her voice—which wasn’t too bad. Loved the meaning behind the song—trust is hard to repair when shattered by hypocrisy and communication is vital in any relationship. How many boyfriends in her past had broken her heart because they went berserk when she checked out another guy nearby, or commented on a bicycle rider’s lycra-clad butt as he rode past them, even though said boyfriend was constantly eyeing out other women?

  The chorus swung into the last verse and, closing her eyes, Sonja pulled out all stops. The last verse was the most powerful, a wretched pleading for understanding when all love was lost.

  She didn’t need to watch the lyrics change colour on the screen to know what to sing. She knew the words to this song off by heart.

  Knew them. Lived them.

  And as always, when she sang her whole body thrummed with an elemental charge. It was the closest she ever got to arousal these days. Too many men had left her wanting. Only singing good rock seemed to do it for her now. When she finished this song, she’d hurry home, fire up her vibrator and bring herself to orgasm. Two if she was lucky.

  The words of the song tore from her throat, slid over her tongue. She gripped the mic, moved in time to the music, pressed her thighs together and lost herself to the moment. Fuck, that was an incredible bass riff, right there. Levi Levistan had always known how to give a song a throbbing vein.

  When the last of the music faded away, the bar broke into raucous applause. Sonja opened her eyes, grinned at her audience and flipped out a cheeky curtsey. The karaoke crowd in Sydney was a tightknit community who supported each other’s escape in singing. Sonja was one of their own and their response to her rendition of “Glass Houses” added to the carnal ache in the pit of her belly.

  Awesome rock, an appreciative crowd and quality sound. Sonja’s idea of—

  A man stepped up to the stage, trim beard, blue-lens sunglasses and a baseball cap doing nothing to hide who he was. “Care to do a duet with me?” he asked, smiling up at her.

  “Holy fuck.” The expletive fell from Sonja louder than she’d intended, caught by the mic and amplified around the bar.

  Levi Levistan chuckled. “I’m pretty certain those were the same words you said to me the last time we spoke.”

  Sonja stared down at him. Words refused to form in her mind.

  “When you dumped me?” he offered with a smile. “The night before the year-twelve formal?”

  As if she could forget. She’d cried for close to a week after she’d walked away from him and spent the time she wasn’t crying taking it out on her mum, her dad, her brothers, her best friend. Almost two years of on-again-off-again dating, the hottest sex she’d ever had—ever—combined with the most conflicted arguing about damn near everything, and finally she’d had enough. Levi was every girl at school’s fantasy, quite a few of the teachers’ as well, going by the looks they gave him when they didn’t think anyone was watching, but she couldn’t take not knowing what was in his head or his heart any more. She’d called it quits the night before he was to graduate and all he’d done was clench his jaw and give her a silent nod.

  A nod.

  She’d shoved his chest with all the strength in her body and demanded he show her some kind of emotion. When he hadn’t, when he’d just looked at her with those dark, dark eyes of his, she’d thrown up her hands, cursed at him and stormed away.

  Relationship over. For good.

  And now here he was. Looking at her once more, blue lenses not even close to diminishing the impact of his direct dark gaze.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Who is it, Sonja?”

  The shout from the shadows of the bar jerked Sonja’s stare up from Levi.

  “No one,” she shouted back, shielding her eyes with a steady hand from the bright lights illuminating the stage. “Old boyfriend, is all.”

  “Is all?” Levi’s humoured echo of her dismal drew her attention down to him again. Lips twitching, he cocked an eyebrow. “Is all?”

  Sonja nodded. “Is—”

  “Shit, that’s Levi Levistan!” The instant the stunned shout filled the bar, a scowl fell over Levi’s face. He tensed. His jaw bunched and his nostrils flared.

  Sonja remembered how much he’d hated being the focus of attention back at high school. She’d often suspected that was why he’d become a bass player rather than lead guitarist, why he’d let Billy Collins be the front man of the garage band the two of them formed at sixteen. As a rebellious, pimply fourteen-year-old girl with tissues in her bra—oh, the naive innocence of youth, believing bigger boobs would solve all her problems—it had puzzled her why such an amazing guitarist who looked so fucking hot hung behind a lesser performer. And then, a year later, she’d met his parents and understood.

  Well, as much as a young teenage girl with a happy family life could. It would take another ten years or so for her to fully appreciate what living with such passive-aggressive criticism did to a person’s psyche, why he’d never been capable of truly opening up to her. By then Levi Levistan was Nick Blackthorne’s famous bass player, dating models and actresses and other performers, and Sonja was a broke university student looking for any kind of job to pay back the debt her degree in English Lit had accrued.

  “Levi Levistan?” a different voice called from the oth
er side of the bar. “Really?”

  “Is that really Levi Levistan?”

  “That’s Levi Levistan, right? The guy that just won an Oscar for that DiCaprio movie?”

  “Levi Levistan?”

  “Who’s Levi Levistan?”

  “Do you really think it’s Levi Levistan? Wanna get his autograph?”

  “Quick, get a photo!”

  “Reckon I should kiss him?”

  “Are you sure it’s Levistan?”

  The excited whispers in the bar grew to a rumble louder than a chorus in less than a heartbeat. A flash fired somewhere nearby. So did another one. The tension in Levi’s body grew absolute. Sonja stared down at him, remembering the ache in her chest she’d experienced at the breakup. Remembering the explosive rapture of their sex, his kisses. Remembering the way he used to make her come, over and over again, with the mastery of his hands, his tongue.

  She let out a wobbly breath, extended her right hand to him and grimaced. She was going to regret this. She could tell right now. “Come up here and sing with me, Stan,” she murmured, using the name she’d called him throughout their entire relationship.

  He gazed up at her, gratitude and relief pulling at the discomfort in his face. He wrapped his fingers around hers and, as it had the very first time he took her hand in his, in the school yard during lunch when she’d been fifteen and he’d just turned seventeen, her pussy constricted and throbbed with instant, impatient need.

  Sonja scowled. God, she really was going to be giving her vibrator a workout when she got home from this.

  Without a word to Levi, she gave his hand a sharp tug.

  He vaulted up onto the stage with minimal fuss, his movements fluid and far too sexy for Sonja’s peace of mind. Straightening beside her, he brushed down the fronts of his thighs with two slow swipes, his dark eyes never releasing hers.

  “Old boyfriend, is all?” he repeated on a whisper, teasing her earlier dismal.