Rock Chick Reckoning

by Kristen Ashley

  It was Vance who cooled him off that time.

  Vance and Jules had been riding the wave of baby number three. At that time, Jules was due any day. She’d had a difficult first pregnancy, sick throughout it and nearly two days of labor, a lot of it hard labor, when she had Max.

  Jules had glowed through her second pregnancy with Sam though, and breezed through the delivery. The pregnancy with what would become Harry was like it was with Sam.

  Vance explained that to Lee and Lee sorted himself out and settled in for the long haul. Even though for him, and thus everyone around him, it was a tense long haul. Indy ignored this and carried on as always, which was to say, she was her usual crazy self which made Lee all the more tense.

  Indy had been the same as Jules when she bore and delivered Alison (named after Ally, but to keep it all straight, everyone, for some reason, called Indy and Lee’s Alison “Suki”). No problems during the pregnancy or delivery. But Lee took matters into his own hands after that and had what Ally described as “The Operation” in capital letters with the air quotation marks she always used when referring to it as she would lift her hands and jerk her index and middle fingers up and down.

  It was Indy’s turn to go berserk. Lee had had “The Operation” without consulting her and Indy wanted three kids.

  I had kept it between Lee and me but when Indy looked like she was going to hold a grudge for, perhaps, ever, I shared with Indy the episode in the waiting room while Indy was delivering Callum. Indy got over her tizzy pretty damn quick after hearing that.

  I smoothed my tee down over my belly and left my hands there.

  Soon, I wouldn’t be able to wear my jeans, which would suck.

  Other than that, my pregnancy with Gracie had been pretty good outside of the crippling migraines I had in the first three months which I had no idea, until Daisy confided in me after Tex confided it in her after Gracie was born, drove Luke straight to Lincoln’s Road House. There he and Lee would drink themselves to oblivion, talking drunkenly about how they should never have let the Rock Chicks “fuck with their heads” and getting into in-depth conversations about the pros (there were many) and cons (there were none) of adoption and Tex or Hank or Eddie would be called to drive them home.

  As I stared at my belly, I smiled. I didn’t mind being pregnant. I hadn’t lost all my pregnancy weight after Gracie. Not because I didn’t want to but about ten pounds to goal, Luke put a stop to all dieting by showing me in his unique way how much he liked my curves.

  I looked at Luke who was sitting on the side of our bed and pulling on a pair of boots.

  “I’m going to get fat again,” I told him.

  His head came up and he looked at me.

  “You’re pregnant. Pregnant is not fat.”

  “Pregnant is fat,” I retorted.

  Luke lost patience. “For fuck’s sake, are we seriously having this conversation?”

  “You know how I feel about being fat!” I snapped. I’d once been huge and I’d worked hard to lose the weight. I never wanted to go back there.

  Luke looked back at his boots. “I don’t care if you’re big as a house, just as long as you never cut your hair or lose your sense of humor.”

  I stared at his bent head like it had split open and a dancing mini-Luke popped out wearing a top hat and tails singing “Thank Heaven for Little Girls”.

  I mean, seriously, was he for real?

  “Luke?”

  His head came up then his eyes narrowed when he saw I was still not ready.

  “What?” he asked impatiently.

  Crapity, crap, crap. He was for real.

  “Nothing,” I muttered, turned away and started to pile on my silver.

  I really love him, Good Ava, my sweet little angel, said in my ear.

  You think we have enough time to jump him again before going to the concert? Bad Ava, my not-so-sweet little devil, asked in my other ear.

  Jeez, Bad Ava was such a slut.

  * * * * *

  Daisy was staring around Sports Authority Field at Mile High which was packed to the gills.

  “Do you believe this shit?” she breathed.

  I looked around the stadium. I believed it.

  The Gypsies had started out in Denver. This was a hometown gig. There was no way the people of Denver were gonna let Stella and her boys down.

  What I did find hard to believe was watching Stella on television. Now that was weird.

  Though she looked good on the red carpet, dressed rock ‘n’ roll cool but couture chic and hanging onto Mace’s arm while walking up to some awards ceremony.

  The Blue Moon Gypsies were huge. They were the new definition of cool. They were, as the magazines said, “Bringing rock back to its roots,” and it was true.

  They didn’t do slick, produced, music videos. Most of their videos were clips from concerts or them playing a song, live, on a sidewalk in Vegas (for which they didn’t get a permit so they got arrested which was also touted as bringing rock back to its roots but it wasn’t original, U2 had done much the same for their kickass “Where the Streets Have No Name” video) or they’d shoot the video while playing in a small, cool-as-shit but seriously dive club somewhere (thus making the club famous and jacking up their revenue).

  It didn’t hurt that Stella was gorgeous and the boys in the band not only weren’t hard on the eyes but they also drank a lot, screwed around a lot, got in trouble a lot and were generally just pure old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll.

  We had a roped off section, front and center. We also had backstage passes hanging around our necks.

  Stella took care of the Rock Chicks.

  The entire gang was there. Indy and Lee, Roxie and Hank and Ren and Ally (the Nightingale offspring’s parents, Kitty Sue and Malcolm, were watching Callum and Suki, Hank and Roxie’s kids Leah and Tex and Ren and Ally’s daughter, Katie); Jet and Eddie and Hector and Sadie (Hector and Eddie’s Mom, Blanca, was watching Jet and Eddie’s brood, Alex, Dante and Cesar and Hector and Sadie’s daughter Lola and newborn son, Gus); Jules and Vance (Jules’s friend May was watching Max, Sam and Harry); Daisy and Marcus; Sissy and Dom; Tod and Stevie; Nick; The Kevster; Ralphie and Buddy; Tex and Nancy; Duke and Dolores; Annette and Jason; Smithie and LaTeesha; Tom and Lana; Chloe and her husband, Ben; Roam and one of his (many) girls (this one was new, I didn’t know her name); Sniff (who was alone, for once) and Floyd, his wife, Emily, and his two daughters.

  Floyd was now The Blue Moon Gypsies’ Manager, though, on occasion (or more often than “on occasion”) Stella coaxed him onstage. Floyd wasn’t backstage during this gig, he was going to hang with the crew since it was a hometown show.

  We all hadn’t seen Mace and Stella in awhile though they kept in close touch or at least Stella did.

  At first, Mace stayed working for Lee while Stella and the band travelled, toured and promoted albums but they kept their home base in Denver. A few years ago, when her popularity moved outside The States and she’d have dates in Europe and Asia, Mace quit Nightingale Investigations and went with them.

  This worried me. Mace was action man. I didn’t see him as a member of an entourage.

  He wasn’t one for long.

  Some crazed fan had broken into Stella’s dressing room before a gig and did things that were so freaky and gross, Luke wouldn’t tell me what they were. Mace now oversaw the entire band’s security detail.

  There was never a repeat of The Dressing Room Incident as it came to be known, though none of the Rock Chicks, not even Indy (and Stella never spilled, no matter how hard Ally pushed it) knew what happened. But also he was so good at it and such a tough guy, badass, macho man that other rock stars and movie actors heard of him and now he was in high demand. He moved Stella and his home base to Los Angeles, started his own security business based in LA and had even more tough guy, badass, macho men in his employ than Lee did.

  The crowd was getting restless, beginning to chant and stomp. The Gypsies were half an hour late taking th
e stage (they were probably fighting, as usual).

  All of a sudden, Luke slid his arm around my shoulders and kissed the side of my head. I looked at him and my heart jumped when I saw his face.

  One could say my husband was pretty damned happy I was having his baby.

  “Don’t get all squishy on me. I married a tough guy, macho man. You get squishy, I’m gonna have to find someone else,” I told him.

  This was a lie. I’d seen Luke (almost) squishy a lot with Gracie and I didn’t mind it in any way, shape or form. He didn’t do baby talk or any of that crap but his soft, sweet looks for me were nothing on the way he looked at his daughter. I thought he’d be pissed he didn’t have a boy but he didn’t care at all.

  Luke wasn’t fazed by my lie.

  Instead, he said, “If you get those fuckin’ headaches again, I’m movin’ out of the house for three months and livin’ in the cabin in CB. I don’t even want to hear about them from Daisy or Shirleen.”

  I just stopped myself from smiling. “Vance refuses to take assignments out of state when Jules is pregnant. He won’t even miss a single day of her pregnancy,” I informed Luke, pretending to sound hurt.

  “I’m not Vance,” Luke informed me, not pretending anything.

  This time, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “No, you aren’t.”

  He bent his head and kissed my neck. I felt the thrill of it from neck to nipples.

  When he lifted his head and looked at me again, I asked, “Do you want a boy this time?”

  He answered immediately, “I want a healthy family. Mom, Dad, kids, whatever way they come.”

  I also answered immediately, “God, I love you.”

  He tilted his head and rested his forehead against mine. “Don’t get soft on me, I married a bitchy woman. You get soft, I’m gonna have to find me another bitchy woman.”

  I smiled at him and lied again, “Okay, I’ll try to be a bitchy woman.”

  He grinned at me, not halfway but full on this time. I felt that in my nipples too.

  That’s when the lights went low and the crowd went wild.

  I jumped out of my seat, ran forward, and, per usual, joined the Rock Chicks at the edge of the stage.

  Stella walked out and I held my breath at the sight of her.

  She looked great, didn’t even look like she’d had baby Tallulah only six months ago. She was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, a killer belt and a light blue, teeny little t-shirt that said “The Gypsies” in cool, electric-blue glitter script across the boobs.

  “I want one of those shirts!” Roxie yelled to no one.

  “Right on, sister,” Ally yelled back.

  Stella strapped on her guitar, walked up to her mic and she was so close, we could touch her boots.

  I’d seen Stella play a lot before she got famous and all the girls had caught every concert she did close to home after. Every time since she made it big, just like tonight, she pointed down to us, wrapped her hand around the mic and, first thing, told the crowd, “My girls are here tonight.”

  The crowd went wild. Indy, Ally, Jet, Roxie, Jules, Sadie, Daisy, Annette, Sissy and I jumped up and down and screamed like we were fifteen year old groupies.

  “Rock Chicks, wouldn’t live without ‘em,” Stella muttered into her mic with a smile down to us and the crowd roared again. Stella looked away from us to the arena. “Seeing as we’re home…”

  She didn’t finish, the crowd didn’t let her; they belted out a whoop that was deafening.

  When they calmed, she went on, “As I was saying, seeing as we’re home…” Another deafening whoop but Stella kept talking this time, “we’re gonna do it like we did it before. None of this new shit we’ve been doing, we’re going vintage.”

  The crowd went absolutely nuts.

  “Holy fuck, they’re gonna tear the place down,” Vance shouted from behind us but the Rock Chicks ignored him, mainly because we’d likely be right in on any “tearing the place down”.

  “Though, not that vintage,” Stella went on. “Just a little something I like that says it all.”

  Stella looked behind her to Pong at the drums then to her left at Leo and Hugo then to her right at Buzz and she nodded. Then Stella, Buzz, Leo and Hugo all stepped up to their mics in a line at the front of the stage.

  “This is for Kai,” she told the crowd and, since everyone knew Mace, being hot as he was and being famous in his past and being famous for what went down with Stella in Denver and being famous because those books came out and, well, again being hot, the crowd descended into bedlam.

  The minute she finished saying Mace’s name, the guitars and drums started. They started hard and they started loud and I felt the thrill of them in my toes, straight up my body to the very ends of my hair.

  Stella lifted her mouth to the microphone and started to sing Blink-182’s totally kickass, rockin’ love song, “All the Small Things”.

  The Rock Chicks banged our heads and jacked our hands in tandem with the beat, arms lifted high in the air and when the boys in the band took to their microphones and sang, Na na, na na, na na, na na na-na, na na, na na, na na, na na, na-na, we sang it with them.

  Stella had stepped back from her mic to jam, her own head banging with the “na na’s”. Then she riffed, dancing gracefully, swaying her body, so cool it was unreal.

  Then she stepped back to her mic to sing as everyone in the entire stadium sang with her.

  Leo, Buzz, Hugo and Pong went into the “na-na’s” again and we all danced and sang with them as Stella went off, working the stage, working the crowd, nodding and smiling to her fans.

  “Jesus,” Luke muttered behind me. I turned to him and his eyes were locked on Stella.

  He’d never been to one of her gigs except the ones where he was protecting her and all the Rock Chicks and he’d been kind of busy during those.

  “She’s the shit,” I shouted at him and his eyes moved to me.

  Luke was about to speak when something caught his eye and he looked up again.

  I turned back around and saw Stella at the mic. The music had slowed in order to own the crescendo and her eyes were looking to her right, not to Buzz but offstage.

  “Get out here, babe, I wanna kiss you,” she said into the mic but she most definitely wasn’t talking to the crowd.

  She stepped back from the mic, once, twice, her body facing forward, her head twisted to the side, all the while she played her guitar and then, all of a sudden, the smile on her mouth went radiant.

  I looked to my left and saw Mace was walking out onstage. His eyes were on Stella, a small smile on his face and he was shaking his head, walking slow, looking good (as usual).

  All the Rock Chicks and Hot Bunch stopped dead and stared as Stella swung her guitar behind her back, ran the rest of the distance between her and Mace and launched herself at him.

  He caught her, hands at her ass, her arms wrapped themselves around his neck, her legs wrapped around his hips, he tilted his head back, she tilted hers down and she kissed him.

  The crowd shouted, screamed, whistled, they were nearly louder than the music as Buzz, Pong and Hugo kept singing “na-na’s” and Leo took over the lyrics.

  One of Mace’s hands left Stella’s ass and went up her back and into her hair to cup her head.

  Then he broke the kiss and, with a huge smile on his face, he leaned over at the waist like he was going to drop her. Stella held on tight, threw her head back and let out a piercing, laughing scream that we could hear, even over the crowd, her hair swept the stage and her guitar hung off her back.

  They stood there like that, both laughing into each other’s faces, oblivious to the tens of thousands of people watching them, totally into each other.

  My heart went into my throat. I leaned back against Luke, his arm moved to wrap around my chest and we watched two people we both cared a lot about.

  They were in love, they were healed and most of all, they were outrageously happy.

  I thought, for
the rest of my life, I’d never forget seeing them horsing around and laughing onstage in front of a hometown crowd.

  I never wanted to forget.

  I didn’t have to worry.

  Someone caught them with a camera. Mace bent over holding Stella and laughing. Stella wrapped around him, her magnificent hair fanned on the stage, her guitar hanging off her back, her head thrown back, her neck arched…

  Her smile lighting up an arena.

  The picture was on page fifty of the next edition of Rolling Stone.

  ####

  The Rock Chick Series will continue with the story of Sadie and Hector…

  Rock on!

  ####

  About the Author

  Kristen Ashley lives in the beautiful West Country of England with her husband and her cat. She came to England by way of Denver, where she lived for twelve years, but she grew up in Brownsburg, Indiana. Her family and friends are loopy (to say the least) but loopy is good when you want to write.

  Kristen’s Mom moved her and her brother and sister in with their grandparents when she was six. Her grandparents had a daughter much younger than her Mom so they all lived together on a very small farm in a small farm town in the heartland. She grew up with Glenn Miller, The Everly Brothers, REO Speedwagon and Whitesnake (and the wardrobes that matched). Needless to say, growing up in a house full of music, clothes and love was a good way to grow up.

  And as she keeps growing up, it keeps getting better.

  Discover other Titles by Kristen Ashley

  Rock Chick Series:

  Rock Chick

  Rock Chick Rescue

  Rock Chick Redemption

  Rock Chick Renegade

  Rock Chick Revenge

  The ‘Burg Series:

  For You

  At Peace

  Golden Trail

  The Colorado Mountain Series: