About the Author
Lilah Suzanne has been writing actively since the sixth grade, when a literary magazine published her essay about an uncle who lost his life to AIDS. A freelance writer, she has also authored a children’s book and has a devoted following in the fan fiction community.
She is also the author of the Interlude Press books Spice, Pivot and Slip, and Broken Records.
BLENDED NOTES
Coming in 2017 by Lilah Suzanne
Grady Dawson’s future looks bright. He has finally left behind his difficult childhood and tumultuous young adulthood. He’s at the top of his music career and planning an intimate wedding with Nico, his stylist turned lover turned love of his life. He has a close-knit group of friends who have become family: Gwen and Flora who are raising a sweet little boy named Cayo, fellow country star Clementine who always has his back, and former assistant Spencer who keeps things interesting. Until his past suddenly shows up on his doorstep, the news of his upcoming nuptials gets leaked to the media, and if that weren’t enough, when his record company starts making demands that challenge Grady’s integrity both as an artist and as a person, the foundation Grady has built his new life on starts to crumble fast. Can Grady continue making music if it means comprising his convictions? Can he have a future if he’s still haunted by his past? And will he have to make the ultimate choice between his private life with Nico and the public demands of his career?
1
Grady’s earliest memory of his mother is watching her leave. It wasn’t the first time she had dropped him off at Memaw and Granddaddy’s house, and the remembered moment itself is unremarkable: He’s standing by the road; a cloud of dirt from the driveway into the trailer park lingers; he can see the taillights of her car lit red at the stop sign. The right one blinks a signal, the car turns, and she’s gone. Memaw came to collect him soon after, and he doesn’t recall what he did next—whatever rambunctious five-year-old boys like to do. Maybe he got on his bike and tore around the neighborhood, training wheels be damned. Or maybe he found a squirrel to harass with a makeshift slingshot of forked stick and rubber band. Maybe Memaw plunked him down in front of their old jumpy television.
“Sit down for five seconds, Grady. Land’s sake!” She’d say.
He doesn’t remember crying over Mama leaving then, or any other time. It felt normal, the calamity she brought to their lives, and no one in that trailer ever talked about it. Memaw and Granddaddy didn’t know any more than he did about where she was going, what she was doing, or when she’d be back. So they carried on as usual, and it’s only in retrospect that Grady’s connected the dots between her leaving and his getting in trouble at school or at home or, later on, turning tail and running whenever his personal relationships got difficult. He’s still fighting that reflex now.
“Even if I did know where she was, she wouldn’t show,” Grady explains, in the office of their new house.
Nico is at the old-fashioned rolltop desk in a state-of-the-art ergonomic chair. The realtor described this house as city-sleek-meets-rustic-charm, and that about sums it up for the house and everything in it, including them. Nico taps a neat pile of robin’s-egg blue envelopes even neater.
“Okay, but don’t you think she’d at least want to know? Whether she shows up or not? We’re keeping everything so hush-hush, she won’t find out otherwise.”
She gave him two birthday presents during his entire life: A metal Tonka truck and a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots. The boots she brought in person when he was nine. She took him to McDonald’s for lunch and let him pick anything he wanted to eat, and then he opened the present right there in the plastic booth. He remembers feeling as if he were filled with his soda’s fizzing bubbles, giggly and giddy, as he admired the boots. When he looked up to thank her she shook her head.
“You look just like your daddy,” she told him. “God help us all.”
In the office, Grady gives up trying to get comfortable in the oblong molded fiberglass rocking chair—he still has a hard time wrapping his brain around furniture that’s really decoration and decoration that’s really furniture—and stands behind Nico.
“I don’t know where she is,” he repeats, instead of providing an answer to the question of whether or not his own mother would care that he’s getting married. He doesn’t know. She very well may not; and that’s something Nico can’t quite understand.
“How about your dad?”
Grady laughs, and Nico gives him a sharp look that either means something very, very good or very, very bad. It’s fifty-fifty. “Sweetheart,” Grady says, and rubs at the tense pull of muscles across Nico’s slim shoulders. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s not necessary. I’ll have my family there. Clem, Flora and Gwen and Cayo. My band. Spencer.” Nico’s shoulders pull tighter at Spencer’s name. “Your mom and dad and brother,” Grady continues, massaging the knotted tendons at the base of Nico’s long, graceful neck. “Soon they’ll be my family officially. I’m not sad or upset about anyone missing.” Other than Memaw and Granddaddy, but of course that’s a different kind of missing.
Nico’s shoulders relax. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Grady’s fingers drift up Nico’s neck to brush the shell of his prominent ears. They’ve been wedding planning for hours, hunkered down in the office checking things off lists, and it’s making Grady restless. But when he bends to caress Nico’s neck and ears with his lips, Nico catches him by the chin.
“Hold that thought. If I don’t get these invitations addressed and out today, I will lose it.”
Grady pouts and stands up. “Anything I can do?”
Nico uncaps a pen with decisive force. “You can stand there and look handsome.”
“Done.” Grady wanders to the bookshelf. In the corner he spots a ukulele that went missing a few weeks ago and strums a bit of his new single.
Once in a life, a boy comes along.
And blows your world apart.
It would have been better if she had just disappeared. His grandparents were dedicated and loving, even though he had been dumped on their doorstep. They didn’t have much, but he never went without, never felt lacking or unstable. Then his mother would blow into town like a storm—or more rarely, his father—and he’d be shaken to pieces. And the very worst part is that when Mama was present, not just there but sober, she was wonderful.
With a love that burns so bright.
Lily was infused with light: bright and fun. She took him to Pigeon Forge once, just the two of them, to Dollywood. They ate ice cream and went to the shows and on all the rides, the big scary ones too, where she held his hand so he wouldn’t be afraid. He remembers singing and laughing and raising their hands up high at the peak of a roller coaster. At age eleven Grady knew what it felt like to be Icarus.
It shines a light.
Through the cracks of your broken heart.
He always got burned, yet he never could convince himself that he was soaring headlong into the flames. This time, he’d think, this time she’ll stay.
Grady’s song trips into a minor key, so he sets the instrument down; there’s nothing more depressing than a sad ukulele solo.
“Actually,” Nico says, addressing an envelope in his careful, precise handwriting. “If I could see your contacts list… I don’t have addresses for your band members.”
“Then can we be done?” Only half paying attention, Grady thumbs through his contacts, then drops his phone onto the desk and slumps over it with a pleading look.
Nico cocks his head and arches a sharp eyebrow; it’s dead sexy. “Good things come to those who wait.”
Grady lets his voice slip low and dragging, “I do like the sound of that.” He slinks closer, but is thwarted again when Nico leans away, intentionally out of reach.
Six months out and Grady is fed up with wedding planning. He’d suggest they elope, only Nico’s
mother would be heartbroken, and Grady would never forgive himself for hurting that dear, sweet angel who loves him like her own. Besides, there is the honeymoon to look forward to: a private bungalow in an isolated tropical paradise that Grady’s half-convinced they may never leave. That suits him just fine; he can make music anywhere, anytime, for anyone.
Two weeks later the RSVPs have been trickling in. They’ve kept the invitation list small, limited to people they can trust to not spill the beans to a tabloid, or in other words, not Spencer.
Grady is heading to a meeting at his record company to finalize the new album; he’s running out the door when a certified overnight envelope tips into the doorway. He doesn’t think much of it until he starts to fling the letter inside for Nico to deal with and catches the name on the return address.
Clay Dawson.
To Be Continued
ALSO FROM
LILAH SUZANNE
BROKEN RECORDS
Los Angeles-based stylist Nico Takahashi loves his job—or at least, he used to. Feeling fed up and exhausted from the cutthroat, gossip-fueled business of Hollywood, Nico daydreams about packing it all in and leaving for good. So when Grady Dawson—sexy country music star and rumored playboy—asks Nico to style him, Nico is reluctant. But after styling a career-changing photo shoot, Nico follows Grady to Nashville where he finds it increasingly difficult to resist Grady’s charms.
ISBN (print) 978-1-941530-57-3 | (eBook) 978-1-941530-58-0
Buy Now: IP Web Store | Amazon | Apple iBookstore | All Romance eBooks | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble
SPICE
In his Ask Eros advice column, Simon Beck has an answer to every relationship question his readers can throw at him. But in his life, the answers are a little more elusive—until he meets the newest and cutest member of his company’s computer support team. Simon may be charmed, but will Benji help him answer the one relationship question that’s always stumped him: how to know he’s met Mr. Right?
ISBN (print) 978-1-941530-25-2 | (eBook) 978-1-941530-26-9
Buy Now: IP Web Store | Amazon | Apple iBookstore | All Romance eBooks | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble
PIVOT AND SLIP
Former Olympic hopeful Jack Douglas traded competitive swimming for professional yoga and never looked back. When handsome pro boxer Felix Montero mistakenly registers for his yoga for Seniors class, Jack takes an active interest both in Felix’s struggles to manage stress and in his heart and discovers along the way that he may have healing of his own to do.
ISBN (print) 978-1-941530-03-0 | (eBook) 978-1-941530-12-2
Buy Now: IP Web Store | Amazon | Apple iBookstore | All Romance eBooks | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble
One story
can change everything.
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For a reader’s guide to Burning Tracks and book club prompts, please visit interludepress.com.
Burning Tracks (Book Two: Spotlight Series) Page 21