Sound Effects

by L. J. Greene

  Under Paul’s watchful eye, EFI did its job promoting the band, and then some. In fact, at one point Rolling Stone would write about the phenomenon of Cadence “exploding onto the music scene.” Jamie laughed about that, saying that to the band it felt more like collapsing across the threshold. But there’s a certain attraction to the idea of overnight success. The reality of paying your dues on the club circuit for years and working menial jobs to make ends meet is a far less romantic notion. Still, it gave the band professionalism and perspective, two things that are essential in any long-term career in music.

  As for me, things changed pretty quickly. When the debut album was finished, Cadence hit the road for a lengthy promotional tour, employing a wet-behind-the-ears tour manager who made up in passion what she lacked in experience. And Jamie was right; I would not be the one to assist in testing the sound equipment, but God help anyone who divided tour manager by woman and thought they could short-change the band or crew on any contract stipulations.

  Music was in my blood, and I felt like I, too, had found my calling.

  On one of our breaks, we came home for a few of days to rest and recharge. I needed a haircut, and wanted a pedicure so badly it was all I could think about. When I finally got back to my apartment, groomed and no longer feeling like I had the toes of a sloth, I threw my keys on the table by the front door and called to Jamie. No answer, but Atticus came running in from the backyard with enthusiasm. He was covered in dirt.

  I walked out into the yard to find Jamie, dressed neatly in a button down shirt and slacks, and standing beside a large wood-framed vegetable garden that had mysteriously come into existence in the hours I was out.

  When Jamie saw me, he grinned proudly and gestured like a magician revealing his trick.

  I was stunned, just stunned. I truly think my eyes may have popped out of my head.

  The garden was beautifully crafted from reclaimed redwood, and positioned in the sunniest part of my yard. It was still mostly dirt, but Jamie had planted a number of herbs, and labeled stakes marking what was there. I noticed that he’d installed irrigation on timers and had a system of netting to keep out pests.

  And right in the middle of the planter was a decorative metal sign. Sow what you love, it said in large block letters.

  “Do you like the sign?” Jamie asked, eyes wide with anticipation. “I designed it myself.”

  It was a gorgeous aged-copper piece with scrolling detail around its border. At the top was a small copper bird whose body resembled a treble clef–just like Jamie’s tattoo. Jamie had made it to be decorative, but as was his calling, the words were chosen with precision and economy. Sow what you love. True for gardens, I thought, and also true for lives.

  “I love it,” I gasped in shock. A remarkable array of emotions clawed at my chest to get out.

  Jamie knew I had grown to love cooking, and that I was rarely able to cook while we were on the road. In fact, I looked forward to our breaks when I had access to a real kitchen and a generous number of pots at my disposal. This garden was an acknowledgement of that–truly the most thoughtful gift anyone could give me.

  “You did this all yourself?” I asked, gesturing to the planter. I could hardly believe he’d had time to make plans for this while on tour, let alone execute them in the hours I that was gone.

  But he pointed at his chest with a dimpled smile. “Manure spreader, hole digger and rock hauler, remember?”

  “Not any more, front man,” I grinned. “Now, you’re a recording artist.”

  Jamie’s eyes sparkled with pleasure, and the warm sunlight that flooded my yard lit his beautiful dark auburn hair like a flame. He was stunning standing there, so strong and peaceful and happy. We were home. But for both of us, home was not a place anymore; it was a person, and as I stepped into his waiting arms, it was like crossing a threshold.

  “From your lips to God’s ears, angel,” he murmured in his low Irish burr.

  His voice had always been the most powerful aphrodisiac, the way it melted over me, warm and tempting. It oozed into the cracks in my composure and broke apart any resistance.

  “Thank you for this.” I folded into his embrace, and let the earthy, masculine scent of his skin wash over me. Where the collar of his shirt was open, I pressed my lips to his neck, tasting his lively flesh with the tip of my tongue. A hoarse, guttural exhale rumbled through his chest, and I couldn’t help myself; I reached up and pulled his mouth down to mine.

  Soft lips crushed against my own. Lips that wanted, just as I wanted. He could not have hidden the way his body responded to that kiss, every part of him firm and demanding against me. He pulled me closer, so that the soft parts of my body just naturally fit with the hard parts of his.

  Then his full lips moved over mine, sucking at the bottom, coaxing me open. With a groan he took my mouth, tilting my head and sliding his tongue in deeper. Our breath became heavy and tangled. Teeth scraped over lips, nipping and taunting, insistent as the demands of love. I could not get close enough to his body, warm through the folds of his shirt, which I clutched tightly in my fists. I wanted to be engulfed by him–consumed completely. I just wanted to focus on the way he kissed me, like I was everything.

  But instead, he pulled back slightly, breaking our kiss, and then pressed his nose to mine. His breath was still coming in short bursts and his hands were clenched in my hair, but his eyes were open and never blinked. He looked like a Cyclops.

  “Do you trust me?” the Cyclops whispered.

  “With my life,” I answered without hesitation.

  He smiled sweetly, loosening his hands in my hair and reaching forward with his lips to brush mine tenderly. It wasn’t much of a stretch; we were less than an inch apart.

  “What about with your heart?”

  “That’s a given, of course.”

  I could feel his smile grow broad, pulling his cheeks to their breaking point and producing deep dimples on both sides of his face.

  “So then, we have a bit of unfinished business–a challenge, if you’ll recall.”

  “Okay,” I said with suspicion.

  Jamie released me from his hold and took a half step back. He put one hand on his hip and nervously rubbed his jaw with the other. Then, he steadied his thoughts and…

  “So, this bloke walks into a bar and sees the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in his life. No…wait,” he said, looking a little lost. “I forgot. He’s a musician. This musician walks into a bar and sees a woman. Well, she’s a lawyer,” he told me emphatically. “And she’s really lovely.”

  I raised my eyebrow.

  “Fuck,” he said explosively to himself. “I’m fucking this up, aren’t I?”

  I just shrugged. But if this was a lawyer joke, it was terrible. Honestly, just so terrible.

  Jamie dragged both hands across his head, causing his hair to shoot off in every conceivable direction, like a porcupine. I wanted to giggle. It was the most uncomposed I’d ever seen him–a man who was a born performer, but clearly not a born joke teller. His stories were a little iffy, as well.

  “I’m going to be honest,” I told him with a straight face. “It’s not going well so far.”

  The resigned look on his face acknowledged this, but Jamie was resilient, as always. He took a deep breath and forged on.

  “Okay. So. This musician, you see, he meets this lawyer. In a bar.”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  He wrinkled his brow. “Actually, I’m not sure it’s a bar.”

  I laughed. “You’re the worst joke teller. I have no idea if you will ever get to the punch line, but I swear to God, just watching you try to tell it is the funniest part.”

  He knew it, too. He closed his eyes and shook his head, while tiny dimples formed on his cheeks. Then suddenly, he dropped to one knee, and wiped the stupid grin right off my face.

  “So he says to the lawyer,” Jamie continued in a voice so calm it was stunning. “‘Will you be my wife?’”

  H
azel eyes rested on mine with a look of vulnerability and hope. He was the most expressive person I knew, absolutely incapable of artifice. And for a moment I just studied that gorgeous face that I loved so much: those beautiful soft eyes and chiseled jaw, the nose that had been broken once before, the little crooked tooth that gave his smile its character. He was crazy handsome–and sexy beyond words–but he was so very much more.

  I just stared at him, unable to form a coherent response. I didn’t even notice when he took my hand in his. I was trembling as something tight finally worked its way past my throat.

  “Is this a joke?”

  “Yes,” he answered, eyes wide with certainty. And then he realized my meaning. “I mean…no! Fuck! No! I mean, yes, it was a joke, but now it’s not a joke. Oh Christ, I am fucking this up.”

  He popped to his feet, now taking both of my hands in his substantial grasp. He looked comically ruffled, but I’m sure I looked comically stunned.

  “My beautiful Melody,” he said, regaining command of himself. “I love you.” And he heaved a great sigh of relief for getting at least that far. “You are my home,” he continued. “The only one I’ve ever had. You are the heart of everything I do, and everything I am as a man. You came into my life and made me whole. And I need you and want you with me forever. Please marry me…This is not a joke,” he added hastily.

  It seemed as if the world was suddenly made up of just the two of us. Like the only thing that carried any significance on earth was happening right here in my yard. My chest tightened, feeling far too small for everything I held for him inside it. Jamie was the ‘great’ in my life. He was love on so many levels.

  “Well, it happens to be the best lawyer joke I’ve ever heard in my life,” I said, now streaming tears down my face. “You win.”

  Finally, it was his turn to laugh.

  “We’re quite a pair, you and I.” And he took me in his arms again and held me tight.

  “Yes, we are,” I agreed, sniffling. “But it’s like I told you before, if you get into badness, I’m your girl.”

  “Is that a yes?” he said, pulling back to see my eyes.

  “It’s a yes.”

  Relief coated his expression and he cupped my face in his strong, rough hands, kissing me again with the promise of a lifetime.

  “Love you,” he whispered, like the words held his soul.

  In my mind’s eye, I reached back in our time together and retrieved the crumpled, worn out, but carefully preserved list of my favorite words that Jamie says.

  And love you was still at the very top, just exactly where it should be, framed in that long O of an Irish burr that I would never grow tired of listening to.

  It was the joy of my life, and one of many that now defined me.

  I had traded in the clack clack clack of my stilettos for the echo of kick-ass boots on a stage floor. In doing so, I had welcomed an entirely different set of sounds: that of airplanes and buses and travel cases snapping shut. Of laughter and the roar of the crowd and, of course, great, great music. But underneath it all was the sound of two hearts beating–not in time, but in their own distinct ways. One was slow and steady, a methodical, constant sound. The other was a bit faster, a bit more excitable and keeping pace with a life lived in endless awe. But that’s what harmony is, after all: two notes made better, a chord made possible, by the presence of the other.

  §§§

  Acknowledgements and Epilogues

  Whew! They say that even the tallest mountains can be climbed one small step at a time. That’s the way this book felt for me–a lot of tiny steps leading somewhere I wasn’t sure I could reach. With a few additional complexities than my first book, Sound Effects challenged me to do just a little more than I thought I could–to get things exactly right for the characters I had grown to love so very much, and to create a story that would be worthy of your time and investment in reading it. I hope you love it as much as I do.

  And this brings me to the first group of people I really need to thank for its completion. The funny/eerie/awesome thing about life is that over the course of writing Sound Effects, my first adventure, Ripple Effects, was finding its audience. And periodically readers would post kind reviews to Goodreads or Amazon, or send me messages via Twitter. And those posts always seemed to come when I most needed a little boost of confidence to push through a tough spot in the process. They were a big part of the reason I never lost steam. So to that small but mighty group of you–and it’s a pretty defined universe so you know exactly who you are!–I want to express my profound gratitude for your kindness and encouragement. Chapter 35 was inspired by you, and is dedicated to you.

  To Sarah at Books She Reads, you are certainly included in this first group, but I wanted to mention you specifically because I appreciate so much that you took a chance on a brand new author, posting the first chapter of Ripple Effects on your blog and writing a review. Thank you so much for your generosity, and for lending support to authors like me, who might otherwise be lost in the shuffle.

  As always, I want to extend a huge thanks to Joshua Jaden for his unbelievable cover art. His talent leaves me speechless every time. Although I write the books, he manages to bring them to life in way that exceeds all expectations. Josh, you’re a master!

  To Ashley at TCB Editing, I worked with you blindly for my first book, and sought you out specifically for the second. Your honesty and your thoughtful suggestions always make me better.

  To Polgarus Studio, I wouldn’t even attempt to do what you do so professionally and beautifully. I love that I never have to think twice about how to turn my stories into books.

  Finally, I want to express my gratitude to my amazing husband who would probably rather pull out his own teeth than read a romance novel, but who does so anyway, with surprising insight. (Although, that thing you keep telling me I should include? No. Just, no.) Thank you for respecting every facet of me, even the ones you never saw coming. I promise never to take up singing or interpretive dance.

  And now to the subject of epilogues…one of the coolest (and admittedly most challenging) things about writing Sound Effects was that Jamie and Mel are significant characters in Ripple Effects, which takes place in the present. As such, I had to go back twelve years to write their beginning, which also meant that I had to weave in the threads of their backstory and set them along the path to where they will eventually land.

  For that reason, Ripple Effects is a perfect epilogue to Sound Effects. While I aimed to leave Jamie and Mel in a very good place at the conclusion of this novel, for those of you interested in knowing how it all turns out, you can revisit these characters (and see a slightly older Danny in his post-cologne phase, finally ready to meet his better half!) in what I hope you’ll agree is a satisfying postscript to Sound Effects. If you like, you can check out the first chapter right here, just by turning the page.

  So I guess that’s it! As always, thank you for welcoming these characters into your hearts and homes, and thank you for taking this incredible journey with me.

  You’re magic!

  Come find me on Twitter: @authorljgreene, and online at www.ljgreenebooks.com.

  Science teachers are supposed to be nerdy, combed-over and, quite frankly, a little dull. They’re not supposed to be like him. And while he may be the ideal person to help 22-year-old Sarah Kyle nail her scholarship essay for Stanford’s master’s program, he may also be far more life changing than she bargained for.

  Daniel Moore is certain he would never date a former student. No question. Still, he’s not quite prepared for the schooling he’s about to receive from that four-chambered muscle in his chest that is suddenly adapting to an entirely new mandate. Yep, evolution is a bitch!

  Because life is only one part science; the rest is art. And life can turn on a dime; they both know that, all too well. In their own ways, they both live with the enduring effects–the ripple effects–of sudden loss. This powerful connection draws them together in the unspoken understan
ding of things that are just hard to explain. But will it ultimately prove to be the bond that unites them or the force that tears them apart?

  RIPPLE EFFECTS is a standalone dual POV adult contemporary romance that contains no twenty-something-year-old billionaires, no private jets and no bedroom accouterment. It does contain the first reference to dinoflagellates in women’s literature (full disclosure: this may not be true), an ardent love affair sparked by the misuse of a hyphen (that is true), and a heartfelt and generously humorous journey of self-discovery, forgiveness, and the restorative quality of love.

  Chapter 1

  Present Day

  Sarah

  Like ground zero for nerd chic, Charlie’s Bar & Grill on University Avenue stands as a mecca. It’s a funky kind of place, equally favored by the hoodie-clad Silicon Valley professionals, as by their similarly dressed student counterparts. It’s Friday night happy hour on the last day of Stanford’s spring semester finals, and the place is packed.

  “Here, take this,” Selene says, tossing back her long, dark hair, and handing me a very pink, very sweet cranberry cosmopolitan. “For the next three months, we have nothing to do but relax. And we’re going to start that tonight.” She raises her drink in a toast, takes a large sip, and melts into cranberry bliss.

  In truth, neither of us is without responsibility for the next three months, but I do understand the underlying sentiment. Selene Georgiou and I have been roommates for the past four years, and are heading into our final semesters of undergraduate study this fall. After that, we’ll be going our separate ways–she likely moving to San Francisco for a graphic design job and, me, likely continuing on at Stanford for my master’s degree in education. This is our last summer together, and neither of us is ready to face up to that reality just yet.