Rock Star: The Song (Book 1 of a Bad Boy Romance)

C
opyright
© 2015 by Kate Ward

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Rock Star: The Song
is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

F
or my Family

R
ock Star
: The Song

Rock Star: The Contest

Rock Star: The Deal

A
ll of the
Rock Star books are stand-alone reads, however, you may find they are best enjoyed in the following order so that you can see the change of the characters over the course of the series.

For more on the author visit
www.katewardbooks.com

S
mall town
, coffee store owner, Meghan Sullivan is struggling to keep her business afloat. Just when she doesn't think things could get any worse, they do. A large coffee franchise opens across from her.

Forced to make deliveries to compete, she receives a call to a secluded cabin where she finds herself face-to-face with the dangerously sexy, rock star, Chase Bryan.

Famous but damaged, Chase Bryan has been given one last chance to write a chart-topping, comeback hit or else he'll be dropped by his label.

After a video surfaces online of Meghan singing and the music industry wants more, sparks fly as Meghan and Chase are thrown together to write the song that will either draw them together or tear them apart.

I
t was
the perfect love song in every way but one: I wasn’t singing it.

Now it only pained me to hear the words, to hear his and her voice singing in harmony. That was the most gut-wrenching part of it all. The song had soared its way to the number one slot on iTunes within a matter of hours. Social media was abuzz with fans sharing it around the world. Every radio station from coast to coast had it in rotation.

It’s said that when you hear your song on the radio for the first time, it’s overwhelming. Some do a happy dance, others cry but most sit slack-jawed, unable to comprehend the surreal moment. Oh, it was overwhelming, surreal even, and tears were streaking my cheeks, but for all the wrong reasons.

I wanted to hate him.

I wanted to switch the radio off, and scream.

But I couldn’t. I felt paralyzed, unable to know how to respond.

Truth be told, country rock star Chase Bryan had drawn me into his world with a hook that could have come straight out of one of his songs, and I could still feel him tearing at my heart.

Why me? I had asked myself that a thousand times.

I never saw him coming. I wasn’t anyone special.

Maybe that’s why I found it so difficult to let it go.

Perhaps that’s why I sat frozen, unable to get out of my truck as he stood waiting for me outside my coffee shop.

I
nitially it wasn’t
an odd request. Deliveries had become a daily routine. However, what was peculiar was it was the same order every day over the past two weeks; a large coffee, banana chip muffin and one of our toasted cheese sandwiches delivered to a secluded cottage where the owner never came to the door.

Outside, there was always more than enough money to cover it, and a small note indicating that I could keep the change. When the bill amounted to $5.25 and they left a twenty-dollar bill each day for two weeks — I would say that was rather peculiar.

Especially since no one did that in Lakeside.

People were downright nasty without their morning cup of java. If anything there was an air of entitlement from most town folk. At times it was as if the coffee I sold should flow like water and be freely available, along with my muffins. Hell, and for some of the men, they thought my ass was a side dish.

Truth be told, the Steamy Beans Coffee House had taken a nosedive over the past year and delivering had become a last resort. I’d never had to go to such extreme measures before and I was pretty sure I was the only coffee house in Lakeside, Oregon, perhaps even the world that delivered coffee. Or at least the only owner dumb enough to do it.

Since the new “coffee house that shall not be named” opened up, bringing with its large franchised air of hipster sophistication, locals had begun coming up with all manner of excuses to not get their cup of joe from us.

Some even crossed to the other side of the road when they saw me coming, just to avoid being questioned.

What ticked me off even more, was that they had the nerve to open their business directly across from me. It was almost like they wanted to rub it in. They had a drive-through, cozy couches, a fireplace and the latest jazz music playing in the background. We had hard stools, candles and a local band called the Dancing Jelly Babies that frequently gave out-of-tune renditions of “Stairway to Heaven” despite having half-eaten muffins tossed at them.

One thing was for certain, I was damn sure I wasn’t going to go down without a fight. The café had been the family business since I was knee-high.

I filled an order while my employee and best friend Sophie held back the roaring tide of customers — which was exactly two. Bernard, our local hobo who frequently would visit us like a lost puppy looking for any leftover muffins that we planned on throwing out, and Spike, Sophie’s boyfriend, who spent hours lingering around the shop like a fly searching for a pile of manure.

All three of us had grown up together in Lakeside. We had attended the same school, shared the same dreams of getting out of town and spent most evenings and weekends together. It was an odd friendship. Two girls and one guy, but it worked. Sophie’s parents ran the library in the town. It was small, but carried some of the best classics. It was through our love of books that we had bonded. I had met her after my grandparents had taken me there one Saturday. As they spent hours reading, I wandered the long rows of shelves searching for books about adventure and love. It was at the end of one of those rows that I found Sophie smoking a cigarette. Her head perched on a window, blowing out wafts of grey smoke.

Apparently she would steal a cigarette once a week from her father’s pack when he only had a few left, or when he’d had a little too much to drink. She said that was the best way to avoid detection. Take one too soon and he usually could tell. Take one on a day when he was sober, and he was liable to have a reason why he knew there was one missing.

Yep, she was a quite a firecracker. One that frequently got me in trouble. As the only girl in my family, I always felt like she was the sister I had never had. She introduced me to makeup, and boys. When I say boys, I mean Spike. The kid’s house was beside mine.

He had been infatuated with Sophie from an early age, however, he spent more time with me than her. Why? Well, I know it wasn’t his choice, his parents were good friends with mine.

“Sophie, hold down the fort while I deliver these,” I said, pushing a fully loaded paper cup into a tray and balancing several muffins and a bag of goodies in one hand, all the while snatching up the keys to my truck in the other.

“How is our mystery customer?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t know, I still haven’t seen him.”

“But it is a him?” she smirked.

“Your guess is as good as mine. The woman who phoned through the initial order didn’t say.”

“It’s not a woman,” she said matter-of-factly.

“How are you so sure?”

“Men love man caves.”

I shook my head smiling as I backed out the door, nearly dropping the entire order on Mrs. Robson; who I might add was another fellow weirdo but an overly enthusiastic supporter of my flailing enterprise.

“Oops, excuse me,” I said.

“And so you should, you could have killed me.”

“Huh?” I muttered, holding the door open with my back.

“There was a woman who dropped an entire cup of coffee, and sued…” she began her usual rant. Some days I felt like shoving a muffin in her mouth, and wheeling her on over to my archenemy across the road. I didn’t need the headache, or her verbal diarrhea, and her charitable amount of two dollars a week wasn’t liable to get me out of the red.

Instead, I smiled politely and nodded until she could see that she wasn’t going to get a free coffee. As batty as she was, she was a smart cookie who knew how to get what she wanted. However, today I was in no frame of mind to deal with it. I waited until she took a breath and then interrupted her.

“Well, I must be going. Nice speaking with you. Have a great day,” I said before pursing my lips together to hold back the words I really wanted to say.

* * *

R
ita’s Cottages
were about ten minutes outside of the main town, which by all accounts was quite far being as the town was made up of very little. If you blinked, you would have passed through it. I liked to think it amounted to no more than a collection of stores where a four-way stop separated the town. Besides that it contained very little: two gas stations, a grocery store, a hardware store, three public schools, a library, satellite police station and now two cafés.

We were not a tourist town, hell, you would have to be out of your mind to vacation here. Sure, we had a river that ran into a beautiful lake that offered locals ice skating in the winter and water sports in the summer, that was if you were one of the lucky few to have cash to spend on toys. But beyond that, it was like no man’s land. The sort of town you ended up in if you had taken a wrong road. I would often joke with lost travelers seeking directions that the movie
Deliverance
was based on our town, swallowed in forest that spread for miles. You could see the color drain out of their skin. The moment Spike let out an oink sound, they were out the door faster than a chicken on a June bug, but not before I had sold them several bottles of water and a full stock of food and coffee. I told them they wouldn’t want to be getting stranded without ample supplies.
Oh, good times.

Yeah, in many ways Lakeside was cottage country. Most town folk either held down farms, or traveled to the closest town forty minutes away for work.

The winding roads leading up to Rita’s place were shrouded in tall green pines and oaks. Eventually the oaks would turn deep shades of red and yellow, causing the whole town to look like a quilted blanket. Steep banks on either side of the road led down into darkness even on the sunniest days.

When I arrived, everything looked the same as it did each day. I pulled up my truck in front of cottage seventeen. There were twenty-one in various places along Highway 2. Each one offered more than enough privacy to anyone looking for a short getaway. They weren’t lavish by any means, but she had each lot backing onto Coopers Lake and had stocked them with kayaks and the latest in home comforts. Word had it, that Rita had earned her wealth in the Florida real estate market, before cashing out, buying these and retiring to Martha’s Vineyard.

Now all the upkeep and maintenance of her little cash funnels had gone to local handyman Tom Warren. He was a large grizzly fellow that blended in with the forest. I don’t think I had ever seen him outside of his military camo gear.

After two weeks of delivering the same order to cottage number seventeen, and never seeing the guest, curiosity got the better of me. Tom became all-tight lipped when I inquired. He simply replied that he wasn’t at liberty to discuss it, and he preferred not to get into it any further.

Walking up the same five wooden steps to the wraparound porch, I was surprised this time to find the door slightly ajar. Usually the curtains were closed and the door was firmly locked. Today however I could hear music coming from inside. As usual I decided I would just leave the breakfast order, and take the money.

I gazed down. However, this time the money wasn’t there.

I gave myself a mental check, I was pretty sure they had placed a daily order for one month. Three weeks had passed, that I was certain, because I remembered a wedding I had attended the day before the order.

Standing there slightly baffled, I gave a short rap on the door. Being as it was already ajar it opened slightly. Inside, I could see male clothes perfectly laid out on the bed, as if someone was arranging what they were going to wear for the day. But there was no sign of anyone.

“Hello?”

No answer.

“Um, I have your breakfast. Hello?”

I didn’t feel comfortable stepping inside. Not that I gave a rat’s ass what Tom thought, or Rita for that matter. But it had been a nice steady stream of income over the past few weeks and I didn’t like the idea of it all vanishing.

Regardless, I peeked my head inside and gave one more, louder knock on the door with the back of my hand, before stepping inside and placing the tray down.

It was a simple cabin. A leather couch, a love seat and breakfast bar. The floors were made of oak. The entire place smelled like lemon, as if someone had used an excessive amount of polish. In the corner was a Taylor acoustic guitar, a pad of paper and pen. As I moved in further I noticed the bedroom door was open. A king-size four-poster bed that looked as if it had been carved in one piece took up the entire room. The kitchen was immaculate. For someone who had been there for two weeks, they sure knew how to keep a place clean. I knew it wasn’t Tom doing the cleaning. Most days that guy looked as if he had crawled out of an industrial garbage can.

I hadn’t been inside more than a few seconds or so, when I saw him.

Or, I should say it. Holy smoke, the guy was stark naked.

I swear it was like witnessing a car crash. You desperately want to look away but you can’t help but stare. I do believe my jaw dropped and I may have stared for what may have been an uncomfortable amount of time, before averting my gaze.

All that ripped muscle, bronzed skin and water dripping off him was a sight I wouldn’t be able to shift from my mind for quite some time. Not that I would want to forget it even if I could.

As he entered through the sliding door, he noticed me and just stood there. He didn’t even attempt to cover up. What the hell did he think this place was? A nudist retreat?

“Ah, awkward.”

“Sorry,” I said, stumbling over the corner of the bed as I backed up, trying not to snag a second glance at his body.

“No, it’s OK really.”

“Oh… it’s more than OK, believe me,” I replied.

What the hell was I saying?

“I see you brought breakfast.”

“Yes. It’s…” words spilled out as I tried to shield my eyes from his manhood. “Do you mind putting something on?”

“Yeah, um.”

With my eyes closed I heard him shuffle into the bathroom, then come out again. The music turned down before he spoke. “OK, we’re all good.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. I have a towel on.”

I wasn’t sure how that was any better, but nevertheless, I returned my gaze back to him. Though this time I found myself looking at his rock-hard chest and arms.

“What were you doing?”

He thumbed over his shoulder. “I couldn’t resist it. I thought I would take a dip in the lake.”

“How was it?” I asked, trying to make small talk.

“Cold.”

Could have had me fooled
, I thought. The size of his manhood flashed before my eyes.
There was no shrinkage going on there.

“You do know they have showers here.”

He smirked, and I felt my body twinge inside.

Leaning against the door, he only added to the heat that I was feeling in my cheeks. I wasn’t sure if he was expecting something or amused by the predicament I had found myself in. Sophie said most guys thought if they showed their tackle, women would immediately gobble it up. If he had that in mind, he would be sorely mistaken. Not this girl. Well, at least for now.

After another awkward pause he spoke again.

“By the way, those are outstanding.”

I thought he was pointing to my tits, but then I realized he was gesturing towards the breakfast.