by Jessie Cooke
I put my arms around her, lightly, just in case she wanted to push me away. Instead, she leaned her head into me and I breathed in the smell of her. God I missed the way she smells and the way she feels…I missed every fucking thing about her.
“I still love you Rose.”
She let go of a sob and said, “I still love you too.”
If Blake could see me, he would really think I was a pussy. My eyes were filled with tears. “Can we try this baby? Please? Things are different now…”
“Baby steps,” she said into my chest. I took her face in my hand and pulled her head up so I could see her.
“As long as we’re stepping baby.” I brought my mouth down to hers and she stood on her toes to reach me. As we kissed I remembered something the chief said to me the day he cut me down out of that tree and I was cussing and spitting at him like a wild animal. He said,
“Someday you’ll fall in love and that day I want you to remember this day and thank the puha (power) of the sun for allowing me to save you.”
When Rose and I reluctantly broke the kiss so that we could breathe, I looked up into the east and said, “Thank you sun puha. Thanks Chief!” Rose was looking at me like I was crazy, so I kissed her again.
Excerpt from Blake
Chapter One
I was lying in bed this morning having me a dream about an angel when my damned phone started playing Axel’s tune. Well, to be honest it’s not a tune…I missed a call from him once so he installed his own caller tune. It says, “Answer the fucking phone Cowboy before I fire your ass!” It repeats over and over until I turn it off and each time it gets louder. I reckon I have to give the man credit, it works.
So now here I sit in Axel Maxwell’s office at nine a.m. on a Saturday morning. Does this guy ever sleep? I’ve been here since eight and I was beginning to get a little bit ticked off. But I knew if I left, that would be the end of my career, so I sat on my skinny ass and read the people magazines. Man, those Hollywood people have some dramatic shit going on in their lives. I was somewhere in the middle of reading an article about one of the Kardashian girls when I heard a bang inside the office. It sounded like a gunshot, so I jumped up and ran in there, literally right into the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. I bowled her right over and landed on top of her. She felt nice. I reckon knocking her down during our first meeting wasn’t gonna be the way to her heart…but right then and there, I knew I wanted to find it.
“Shit! Fuck! Get your ass off me! Fuck! What are you doing?” The pretty girl underneath me had a mouth like a sailor. I found it oddly arousing. I could hear Axel laughing from somewhere above us as I tried to untangle our limbs and stand up. When I was finally off her and back on my feet, I reached a hand out to her. She looked up at me with her beautiful brown doe eyes and said, “I don’t need your help, just get the fuck out of my way!” I took a step back and looked at Axel. He was rubbing a hand through his neatly trimmed beard and watching her struggle to get off the floor in that tight skirt she was wearing. Again, I’d have to admit that it was strangely stimulating.
“You sure you don’t want any help?”
“I’m sure Bumpkin, and quit staring at my ass!” Axel laughed again. I decided to hold mine in until the little polecat got up. I didn’t want my eyes scratched out.
After a good three minutes, she managed to get to her feet. Her skirt was flipped up on the bottom and I could see the tops of her juicy thighs. She wasn’t stick skinny like all the other girls I see come in and out of here, this one had some meat to grab onto. Me and Axel watched her smooth down her skirt and then with a “Humph!” She tossed her pretty blonde hair over her shoulder and marched out. That tickled Axel again and he laughed a good one before telling me to sit down.
“So, Blake you’re in contact with Kyle?”
“Yeah, we talk.”
“You know his new wife is expecting any day now?”
“Yeah he told…” I don’t reckon I’ve finished a whole sentence since I met this man. He straight up told me one time that I just talk too danged slow. Only I’m sure he said, “Too fucking slow.” He loves that word.
“He’s not going to finish the tour.”
“Yeah, he said something…” Kyle was going to take at least a year off with his family. He said he didn’t care if Axel fired him, sued him, or ruined him. I want a love like that.
“I guess there’s some stupid fucking law that says I can’t fire him for this either.”
“I don’t reckon you’d want…” He’d have to be an idiot to drop Kyle and I know he’s not an idiot. That guy is so talented and so famous another producer would pick him up before he hit the ground.
“Anyways, I’m pulling Bailey in for the California leg if she loses some of that ass by then.”
“Who’s Ba…?” Bailey. Who’s Bailey?”
“She’s twenty years old…I mean come on, a twenty-year-old should be able to drop a few pounds faster than she picks them up, right?”
“I don’t know much….” Hell, I don’t pretend to know anything about women and their weight. I always get it wrong and piss somebody off.
“Anyways, she was pissed and threw herself a hissy fit quite literally, but she’ll get over it if she wants to work.”
“That was Ba…?” The dream I’d just had the pleasure of smashing to the floor was Bailey?
“I want the two of you to do some promotional shots together this week. I also have an interview set-up with Margo Lily, do you know who that is?”
“No, I….”
“She’s a reporter for the New York music review.”
“Oh, that’s…”
“So be at the studio first thing on Monday morning. She’s the best. She’ll give you and Bailey the exposure I need you to have before she jumps in on the tour. Dress sharp because she’ll be taking a lot of photos. Remind her to stay above Bailey’s waist unless she absolutely has to go below the belt. Maybe we can photo-shop it or something so her ass doesn’t look so wide.”
“I’m sorry, I…” I don’t think her ass is wide at all…or at least not too wide. That girl was all hot from head to toe.
“Nah! Don’t be sorry. It was fun watching her drag her thunder thighs up off the floor. I’m not usually into fat girls, but that was kind of hot. Anyways, I was going to introduce the two of you before you mowed her down. You’ll have to introduce yourself on Monday. The girl has the voice of an angel and the vocabulary of a gangster rapper. How’s that new apartment working out for you?”
“Good…I…” I love it, but I miss home like crazy.
“Good, good! Okay, be there Monday morning. Anything else?”
“No, I reckon…” he picked up his phone and put it to his ear and motioned me out the door. I walked out in a daze…the way I usually do when Axel calls me in. Some days are worse than others. I reckon today, somebody forgot to put his Ritalin in his Cheerios. I smiled to the empty room, all of a sudden forgetting about Axel. I get to go on tour with my dream girl…Damn I love this life!
“You should invest in cologne that doesn’t smell like you just came off the farm.” I was walking into the studio building on Monday morning and that’s what I was greeted with. Bailey Clark stepped up behind me and said hello by insulting my cologne. My Mama bought me this cologne.
I decided to let it go and I flashed her a smile and looked down at her. My six-foot-two frame towered over her. She was wearing heels that had to be six inches and she was still barely five four or five. “Good morning Miss Bailey.”
“Miss Bailey? You really are a bumpkin, aren’t you?”
“I reckon I am, but I haven’t ever claimed to be anything else. We weren’t properly introduced the other day, I’m Blake James.”
She smiled, but it wasn’t a happy or friendly smile. It still made her face look even prettier. “I know who you are. You’re Axel’s ‘golden boy.’ He paired you up with Kyle Case to get your name out there…and I have to admit, it worked. The man is brilliant. He’s
claiming that you’re more of a rocker than a bumpkin…and I’ve heard the music, not bad. Axel is an asshole, but he’s brilliant.”
“Thanks, I think.” She grinned for real then, and that smile made her brown eyes sparkle. She was too damned pretty to be so mean. I couldn’t help but wonder what must have happened to her in her lifetime to make her that way. I pulled open the heavy metal door and held it, waiting for her to go inside. I thought she was going to protest it at first but finally she went in with a heavy sigh like it took everything in her to let me be nice.
We walked down the long hall to the studio side by side without talking. When we got there, she pulled the door open before I had a chance to. I put my hand on it way over her head and with a wink I said, “After you.”
“Always the gentleman, are you, Bumpkin?”
“I do my best,” I said. “My mama raised me to treat ladies with respect.”
She half-rolled her eyes and stepped into the room. The outer room of the studio is big and pretty much wide open other than the desk with all the cool sound equipment right in front of the glass and the wet bar that stretched out along one wall. Today there was a couch and a recliner set up in the center of the room. It was sitting on top of a plush, white carpet. I guess it was in honor of our reporter guest who was already sitting in the recliner. There were two men with her. One was adjusting the big lights behind the couch and the other one was standing up against the wall by the emergency exit looking like a secret service agent.
Margo jumped to her feet when she saw us. The first thing I noticed about her was how white her teeth were when she smiled. It was one of those smiles that you couldn’t see without smiling back. Even Bailey was smiling and it once again did amazing things for her pretty face.
“Hello! I’m so happy to meet the two of you!” Margo Lily said as she approached with her hand out. Margo was tall…probably five nine or ten. She had legs that went on forever and even though she was probably in her late thirties, she was hot. I watched as Bailey continued to smile prettily and shook the woman’s hand. “Bailey Clark! Look at you.” The woman was looking her over almost in a judgmental kind of way. What the hell is wrong with everyone’s eyesight? She finally said, “You look a lot different than you did when you won.” When she won? Won what?
Bailey’s smile faltered, but she caught herself quickly. “That was over two years ago. I was still in high school.”
“Well, maturity looks great on you,” Margo told her. It didn’t sound sincere. I wondered if Bailey caught that. Then she turned her attentions on me.
“You must be Blake James.”
“Yes ma’am, it’s a pleasure.” I took her hand and she chuckled and held onto it just a little bit longer than she should have, scraping a finger across my palm as she let go.
“Ma’am? Please, it makes me sound like your mother. Call me Margo, please.”
“It’s a pleasure, Margo.”
Bailey was already sitting on the couch. I waited for Margo to go take her seat, but instead she picked up a camera and before I’d even sat all the way down, she started snapping photos. I was caught a little off-guard but Bailey was smiling and tossing that golden hair over her shoulder like a pro. I thought about what Axel said about telling Margo to shoot her up high. There was no way I was touching that one. Besides, I thought she looked perfect on top and bottom.
Margo took a bunch of pictures and then she sat down and said, “Why don’t either of you have a publicist or an agent or a security officer trailing along beside or behind you?”
I looked at Bailey and when she didn’t say anything I said, “Axel takes care of PR and he doesn’t hire artists with agents. He wants to deal one on one with us.”
Bailey smiled. “He wants to control us,” she said. Margo was recording the conversation, but she also had a notebook in her hand. I was pretty sure she just made a note of that.
I cleared my throat and said, “He does like to be in control…but he does a lot for us and we’re a select few that are lucky enough to be chosen by him.”
“We’re his meal tickets, nothing more.” Jesus! Bailey was living dangerously.
Margo looked pleased as she wrote something else into her notebook. What the hell is Bailey thinking? Axel “The Axe” Maxwell would not be happy. “What about security? Does Maxwell not allow you to have bodyguards either?”
“Nah, we have them…I do anyways. I don’t cart them around everywhere I go though. Kyle Case taught me a lot about handling small crowds, and I’m not all that famous yet anyways.”
Margo smiled. “I think you underestimate yourself Blake. What about you Bailey…no bodyguards?”
“I’m like Blake,” she said with a tight smile. “I’m not that famous yet.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re both saying yet because you’re so young and talented. Bailey, how old are you, doll face?”
“I’m twenty, almost twenty-one.”
“And you, Blake?”
“I’m twenty-three,” I told her.
“And we know that Bailey took the world by storm two years ago, on ‘Fresh New Voices,’ and I’ve heard the stories about Axel finding you singing in a bar, Blake. Have you always wanted to be a singer?” Fresh New Voices! That’s what she won! I used to watch that show all the time before Axel plucked me out of Texas.
“I never really thought about it until I was a teenager. People started asking me to sing at weddings and parties after they heard me do the National Anthem at the rodeo one year.”
“The rodeo huh? So, tell us Blake, are you a real cowboy?”
“I guess that depends on your definition of a cowboy, ma’am…I mean, Margo. I was born and bred on a ranch. I spent lots of time rounding up bulls and branding calves and riding horses. I even thought I might want to be a professional saddle bronc rider at one point…so I reckon you could call me a cowboy.”
“What about a girlfriend?” I was trying to believe she wasn’t ignoring Bailey outright, but I could see her out of the corner of my eye, and she didn’t look happy.
“No ma’am, no girlfriend.”
Margo ran her dark blue eyes over me like she was memorizing every line. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make the little bronc in my pants buck a time or two. “A lot of women will be happy to hear that. So, what was it like touring with Kyle Case? I bet that got pretty wild.” She crossed her legs and as she did, I caught just a glimpse of black lace underneath her short skirt. I glanced at Bailey again. She looked really pissed now.
“Kyle’s a good guy. Things didn’t get wild while I was with him. I reckon going through rehab and getting married and settling down has a lot to do with it.”
“I reckon,” she said. It wasn’t like she was making fun of me, it was more like she said it, endearingly. I could almost feel the tension coming off Bailey. “So, you come from a small town in Texas, off a ranch…New York must be a bit of a culture shock for you.”
“Yeah, it was at first. I like it here now…but it’s nothing like home.”
She finally looked at Bailey like she just remembered she was there and she said, “I guess New York isn’t much different for you than Chicago…the Mafioso just have different names.”
Bailey jumped up off the couch. “What the hell is this?”
Margo smiled, “I’m sorry Bailey, but you didn’t really think you could get famous without people finding out who your father is…did you?”
Read Blake Here!
Acknowledgments
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and events are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to people, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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