by Amelie Bloom
Stuck with a Rock Star
A Romantic Comedy
By Amelie Bloom
©2020 by Amelie Bloom. All rights reserved.
All names, places, and events in this book are creations of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Other Books by Amelie Bloom
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Sneak Peak of Stuck with the Manny
Other Books by Amelie Bloom
Stuck with You Series
Stuck with a Rock Star
Stuck with the Manny (Coming Summer 2020)
Stuck with the Professor (Coming Summer 2020)
Stuck with a Liar (Coming Summer 2020)
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Eight weeks before my wedding to my high school sweetheart, things have taken a disastrous turn, and a high-maintenance rock star is to blame.
I’d planned to give my two weeks’ notice, then never again lay eyes on the Blue Lotus Boys’ front man, Jax Fitzroy.
Instead, I’ve been coaxed into hiding out in a remote mountain cabin with the 12th sexiest man alive, according to Famous Faces Magazine.
This wasn’t part of my carefully calibrated plan, but I’ll do my duty as Jax Fitzroy’s personal security one last time before I quit this job for good.
I’ll lay my life on the line to protect Jax from homicidal stalkers, mountain lions, and even himself, but I have a few conditions of my own, the most important of which is that this all stays strictly professional.
The only problem? I can’t seem to stop thinking about that one time we kissed.
Chapter One
“Abby, you absolutely cannot give notice right now!” Lilith wailed. “Why do you always do this to me?”
To be fair to Lilith, it was the 3rd time in as many years that I’d threatened to quit on her.
I got why she wasn’t taking me seriously, but this time I really meant it. My reasons for quitting were different this time.
I held the phone away from my ear before I sustained permanent hearing damage and let Lilith go on yelling at me in the hopes that she’d work her wrath out of her system.
Normally, Lilith is remarkably unflappable. She hasn’t been Jax Fitzroy’s manager for the last decade for nothing.
It was the upcoming Blue Lotus Boys’ world tour that had her on edge, but I had no intention of playing any role in the crazy that’s involved in playing thirty cities in thirty days.
Instead, I planned to hole up in my apartment and finally give my wedding to Hugo the time and attention a significant life event deserves.
I’d been planning on giving notice for weeks, anyway. My teach-yourself-self-defense online courses had long-since eclipsed my earnings from being a junior bodyguard on Jax Fitzroy’s security detail. I’d become something of a social media sensation if I do say so myself.
I could pay my bills and put money aside for the wedding. It was time to move on from the bodyguard game and stop living my life at the beck and call of Jax Fitzroy and the Blue Lotus Boys.
“I’ll give you a raise,” Lilith said in a milder tone. “You name your price.”
She sounded calmer, albeit no less desperate, but I knew she wasn’t authorized to give raises. My salary came out of the security team budget, and Hugo oversaw that.
Yes, I worked for my fiancé, but before he was my boss, he was my boyfriend. And no, it wasn’t common knowledge.
Lilith didn’t have a clue that Hugo and I were a long-time item, at least I hoped she didn’t.
That was just one more reason I was eager to quit before the wedding, although Hugo didn’t agree with me on that point. He’d discouraged me from “letting go of a sure thing.”
“I know why you’re so desperate to get Jax out of town, but why does it have to be me?” I asked Lilith. “Why do I have to be the one to get stuck at some off-grid cabin in the woods to look after the health and safety of the most high-maintenance man on earth?”
“I wouldn’t call Jax high-maintenance.”
Lilith had a point. High maintenance wasn't quite the right word to describe Jax. It was not that Jax was willfully difficult, it was just that if there was any way to get lost or sick or injured, he’d manage to do it, and don’t get me started on his propensity to misplace and break his belongings.
As far as the ability to defend himself against any sort of physical threat, the man couldn’t beat his way out of a wet paper bag.
Jax might be a prime specimen of male beauty, but he fell more at the eighteenth-century gentleman-poet end of the spectrum: all soulful green eyes, curly black hair, and skin that looked like it had never seen sunlight.
Now that I think about it, scratch eighteenth-century gentleman-poet. Jax most closely resembled a beautiful half-starved vampire.
“Alright, we’ll just say Jax is fragile if that makes you feel better,” I told Lilith, “but I don’t see why his fragility is my problem?”
“But Jax requested you. He’s absolutely set on you going with him.”
“I’m sorry, Lilith, I really am, but you’re going to have to inform our favorite porcelain figurine I’m unavailable.”
“Tell him yourself,” said Lilith and hung up.
I sat there on my couch for a few seconds staring at the phone in disbelief. Lilith really must have been feeling the strain. She was not the type to hang up on people.
I texted Jax.
I can’t come with you to Tahoe. Please request somebody else
I read it over a couple of times before I hit send. Jax wasn’t going to like my refusal to go with him to Tahoe one bit. I had a feeling he was going to like the fact that I was giving notice even less, especially when it finally dawned on him that I meant it this time.
I hit send and waited. Three dots appeared and then went away. A few seconds later, the dots were back, then disappeared a second time. Immediately after that, my phone rang.
“I don’t want to discuss this by text,” Jax said. He didn’t even bother with the preamble of a greeting.
“Alright, but there isn’t much to say. I won’t be able to go to Tahoe with you.”
That was a lie. I was able to go. I just didn’t want to.
“I don’t want to have this discussion over the telephone,” Jax said. “Come over and tell me in person.”
“I fail to see why physical proximity is necessary for this discussion.”
“You can keep all the distance you want, but I want to have this conversation face-to-face.”
Jax believes he has some sort of power to mesmerize others into giving him his way. I’d like to think that’s just him being delusional, but he usually does get whatever it is he wants.
Jax thinks it’s his great p
ersonal charm that gets him whatever his little heart desires, but I’m more of the opinion that it’s because practically every person in his orbit is reliant on him for a paycheck. Even his mother gets a monthly allowance from him. We’re all dependent on him in one way or another. It’s no wonder the power has gone to his head.
“You should probably know I’m—” I wanted to inform him I was quitting, but it was too late. Jax had already hung up.
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting on the back patio of Jax’s palatial Hollywood Hills mansion, keeping the expansive mahogany dining table Jax uses for poolside dinner parties between us.
I stared at the sparkling surface of the pool and tried to come up with a gentle way of breaking it to Jax that I was terminating my employment.
For once, Jax wasn’t turning on the charm. Not once during the past three years I’d spent on Jax Fitzroy’s security detail had he seemed more sincerely desperate. The look on his face had me downright dreading the prospect of informing him I was giving notice.
Jax was already agitated, and all I’d done so far was balk at accompanying him to his uncle’s backwoods cabin in the Sierra Nevadas.
“I absolutely refuse to spend the next two weeks until we leave on tour holed up in a remote mountain cabin with Sven,” Jax said. “I just can’t do it.”
“And I refuse to spend the next two weeks holed up in a remote mountain cabin with you,” I shot back. “Besides, what’s wrong with Sven? He’s very good at his job. He won’t let anything happen to you.”
Jax rolled his eyes at me and huffed through his nose.
Sven is one of my fellow bodyguards. Sven is good at his job, but he only speaks in monosyllables. He carries around with him a whiff of stale sweat, garlic, and despair.
It wasn’t hard to understand why Sven wasn’t Jax’s first choice, but I was having a little trouble understanding why I should be Jax’s only other acceptable option.
“What about Jon?” I asked.
“Just had a baby.”
“What about Michael?”
“Broke his arm a few days ago.”
Michael did have a broken arm. I’d forgotten about that.
“What about Hugo?”
“What about you?”
Chapter Two
Usually, when Jax wasn’t getting his way, he reverted to puppy dog eyes. He’d turned combining adorable vulnerability with an audacious awareness of his own sex-appeal into an art form. He did not become the frontman for the Blue Lotus Boys for nothing.
Unfortunately for him, unlike his scores of raving fans, I was immune to his act. I knew when he was playing a character, and when he was being real. Right then, Jax was genuine, hence the absence of puppy dog eyes.
I didn’t like the nervous energy in the way he was kicking at the table leg, or the way he was picking at the cuticle on his left thumb so viciously it was starting to bleed. I didn’t like the tension in his jaw or the twitch in his right eyelid.
Jax was usually only like this in the hours leading up to a concert.
Once he made it on stage, Jax was all swank and sexual energy, but that was at the expense of having thrown up the meal Lilith always insisted he ate.
I asked Lilith, once, why she kept bringing Jax food before concerts since he invariably couldn’t keep it down, but she insisted it was all “part of his process.”
I sometimes wondered about Lilith’s judgment, although I certainly couldn’t argue with her dedication. Her entire life revolved around Jax. She fussed over him like he was the son she never had, although she had six children of her own, and dozens of grandchildren.
Jax had that effect on people. Even I felt more protective of him sometimes than was probably professionally called for.
“I wouldn’t want to spend the next two weeks stuck at a remote mountain cabin with Sven, either,” I told Jax, “He’s not what one would call a sparkling conversationalist, but I don’t see why I have to do it. In my opinion, you don’t need a trained bodyguard to go with you. Anyone will do. Miss Stabby is hardly likely to track you down up there.”
“Miss Stabby?”
I shouldn’t have let that drop. That’s what Jax’s security team had taken to calling Jax’s latest (and scariest) out-of-control admirer. For a few seconds, I’d forgotten that Jax didn’t know quite everything I did. Lilith generally tells him only enough to justify her decisions.
Sometimes, I think Lilith is a little overboard in her belief that the world is teeming with mentally unstable obsessive types who are perpetually teetering on the brink of madness and pose a clear and present danger to Jax.
In this particular case, however, I had to acknowledge that her concern was reasonable.
“It’s probably best for your peace of mind and belief in the fundamental goodness of human nature if you aren’t fully informed on the perverse desires of Miss Stabby,” I said. “My point is that if only you, your uncle, and Lilith knows where you’re hiding out, you’ll be perfectly safe. You could go all by yourself if it comes right down to it.”
“I can’t spend that much time on my own. Besides, what if a bear gets me?”
I toyed with offering to retrieve the jumbo can of pepper spray I kept under my driver’s seat, but Jax would probably just end up spraying himself in the face with it.
Then I considered suggesting that this was an excellent opportunity for Jax to develop greater resourcefulness and independence, but I restrained myself.
Jax doesn’t do well on his own, and that’s not just because he can’t boil an egg without scalding himself.
I had to remind myself that Jax was nothing like me. I was genuinely looking forward to spending days on end in the peaceful solitude of my apartment, but then I’m a hard-core introvert.
Jax? Not so much.
“Why don’t you ask Lilith to go up there with you?”
“I can’t spend weeks cooped up in the same space as Lilith,” Jax said. “I’d come out the other side stark raving mad, and you know it. Can you imagine? I’d have a printed schedule. She’d count my calories and calculate my macros for me. She’d probably label all my underwear with days of the week.”
That wasn’t too much of an exaggeration.
“You could stay in LA? We could beef up your security. We may be short-staffed, but I’m sure Hugo could find some new hires.”
“You just admitted that I’m being stalked by someone my security team has collectively christened ‘Miss Stabby.’ I fall asleep at night wondering when the woman who gifted me with decapitated rats and vials of her own blood is going to come in through the window.”
Chapter Three
I didn’t think Jax knew about the decapitated rat and the vile-of-blood necklace Miss Stabby had left outside his front gate. I certainly hadn’t told him.
If we’d known the identity of who had been leaving those loathsome gifts, Lilith could at least have filed for a restraining order on Jax’s behalf. Although, I’d learned from bitter experience that restraining orders aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on when you’re dealing with an insane person.
Thus far, Miss Stabby was shaping up to be about as insane as they come, based on the letters and gifts we’d been intercepting.
Unfortunately, so far, Miss Stabby had managed to elude identification. We’d caught her on the security camera several times, but she’d been wearing a series of increasingly bizarre masks. This last time, it’d been the head portion of an Easter Bunny costume.
The only thing we were reasonably sure of was that she was a female, based on her size and the way she moved, but beyond that, we had very little to go on despite staking out the front gate numerous times.
Miss Stabby invariably managed to sneak in the “gifts” when Jax was out, and then we’d have to contrive some way to distract him from seeing them on our return. I suspected that Jax had caught on and was pretending to know less about the situation than he actually did.
The note accompanying the last disturbing offerin
g (the decapitated rat) strongly hinted that it was Miss Stabby’s greatest ambition that she and Jax should enter the afterlife together as “united souls.” Those were her exact words.
I feared it was only a matter of time before Miss Stabby tired of simply leaving threatening gifts and letters hanging from the front gate and decided to scale the fence.
It wasn’t hard to get over that fence. I’d checked. It took me about thirty seconds, and although it would take a normal person significantly longer, it was totally doable.
Miss Stabby would still have to breach the security system to get into the house, but Jax was continually setting the alarm off himself. The local police department had issued us with an ultimatum regarding false calls, so the system wasn’t even activated half the time.
The thought of Miss Stabby breaking into the house bent on spiritual oneness (dead or alive, if her letters could be taken literally) made me waver.
I had been counting on quitting to devote all my newly freed-up time to planning the wedding. I’d been keenly anticipating the opportunity to sit on my duff, read Bride magazine cover-to-cover, and perhaps finally settle on a dress.
I dreamed of making a complete tour of local caterers and sampling every single one of their menu options, making endless alterations to the seating chart for our reception dinner, and finding a florist who could reproduce my dream bouquet (white ranunculus and baby pink peonies interspersed with asparagus ferns and antique roses).
“Have you run this by Hugo?” I asked Jax. “It doesn’t have to be Sven, you know. Or Lilith. There are other options. Hugo has lots of connections. He could find you someone reliable from the outside.”
Jax gave me a look. He hated dealing with anyone new, and I couldn’t really blame him.
“You and Hugo seem awfully close,” said Jax.
Chapter Four
When Jax said Hugo and I seemed awfully close, it was a statement, not a question, which made me wonder if he knew Hugo and I were far more than simply coworkers.