by Sarah Grimm
WRECKED
Blind Man’s Alibi #1
Sarah Grimm
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
COPYRIGHT © 2016 Sarah Grimm
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author.
Shrek ® is a trademark of Dreamworks, Inc
Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me © UMPG
Words and Music by Elton John and Bernie Taupin
Cover Art by Kari Ayasha, Cover to Cover Designs
Published in the United States of America
This book is dedicated to Amy Lillard for putting up with my insecurities. AJ Nuest for loving Gary as much as I do. And for my family for listening to me talk about these characters as if they were real.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
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
About the Author
Other Books by Sarah Grimm
February 15
I dreamt of an angel last night. An angel of fair skin and long auburn hair with a white gown made of delicate lace and gossamer wings that took my breath. Her arm was outstretched before her, a key dangled from her fingers. Not a car or a house key. Not a key of gold or fancy jewels. A silver key about an inch in length and of plain design. A simplified skeleton key.
I awoke before I could take her offering and immediately began to sketch my angel. To capture on paper the image so clear in my mind. But somehow I have lost the memory of her face – the angle of her cheeks or the shape of her lips – and only that key remains. That silver, uncomplicated form hanging from a basic chain. Why was she offering it to me? What did it represent? I’m afraid to speculate, for deep down, I believe I know.
I saw my oncologist yesterday. My treatment isn’t working, just prolonging the inevitable. And so I made the decision to opt out of further treatment and accept my fate. Then I dreamt of an angel, and a key.
ONE
April 3
“Sorry, but sucking off a narcissistic asshole who’s so damn drunk he can’t recall the words to his own song is not my idea of a good time.”
His bark of laughter echoed in the empty hall. “You really are a ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”
God, what a terrible idea this had been. Hoping to put some distance between them, Emma Travers quickened her pace, only to stumble over the uncustomary height of the heels her best friend Alison had convinced her to wear. Her ankle screamed in protest, forcing her to skid to a halt. Balancing precariously so she didn’t face plant on the concrete, she struggled against the zippers, finally succeeding in pulling the rhinestone studded stilettos from her swollen feet. She barely resisted the urge to turn around and throw them at the head of the man who’d pissed her off faster than a Bugatti Veyron went from zero to sixty, and instead tossed them aside and continued her escape in bare feet.
“Come back and see me sometime, Emma,” Joe Campbell, lead singer of the British alternative metal band Blind Man’s Alibi, called out to her.
Fat chance!
“I could use a bit of sunshine in my life.” The murmur hit her ears like a shout, and stopped her in her tracks.
Well, shit.
Emma remained rooted in place, unable to decide if he was for real or filling her with pretty words in order to get her to stay and sleep with him. He sounded sincere enough, but the only way to know for certain was to face him. Something she really didn’t want to do.
Not that he was painful to look at. Oh no, Joe Campbell was extremely pleasing to the eye, a fact he knew too well. One, she was certain, he used to his advantage whenever an occasion presented itself. Like tonight, when she’d gone against character and accepted his invitation backstage after the show.
One glimpse of the man who stood alone in the room she’d been unceremoniously delivered to and Emma went hot all over. Unable to speak, she’d allowed her gaze to take a long, slow journey over his body. His torso was bare, giving her an unobstructed view of hardened pecs, a flat washboard stomach and muscles that rippled and shifted, making the Chinese dragon wrapped around his left upper arm and onto his chest seem alive as he slipped his left hand into the front pocket of his jeans. Dear God, those jeans! The way they hung on his lean hips, the top button undone like he’d just pulled them on. They rode so low there was no mistaking that underneath them he was commando. Her gaze had locked on the obvious bulge behind his fly and, for a moment, she’d actually considered dropping to her knees before him and taking a taste.
Then he’d opened his mouth. What was that saying? Elvis has left the building. She was outta there.
With a deep breath for courage, Emma turned around and was greeted by the same image of the man as before. Except that the whiskey bottle he’d held in his right hand and lifted to those delectable lips too many times to count, was nowhere to be seen. Oh great, and the hulking brute who’d brought her backstage stood leaning against the wall to Joe’s right.
Gary, she was pretty certain he’d introduced himself as Gary, held his arms crossed before him, head tipped toward the floor in a pseudo relaxed pose designed to give the impression he hadn’t just heard every damn word they’d said. He blew the image to shit when he lifted his head and winked at her. Winked! Was everyone in the music industry completely bonkers?
Emma did her best to ignore the brute and focused on the singer. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”
“What did you expect?”
Good question.
“I guess I hoped the stage show was just that, a show, and that there was a decent guy behind all of that. Maybe I wanted to believe the ‘I’m too sexy for my own good’ attitude was just publicity.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” His tone didn’t sound regretful at all. He strode toward her, moved with such a fluid grace Emma’s heart thumped in response. His long legs closed the distance in half the time it had taken her to get this far. She made herself stand her ground as he stepped in close, closer than she’d yet allowed him to get. Close enough she caught the subtle hint of soap on his skin and whiskey on his breath. “You’re right about one thing, I’m an asshole. But it wasn’t the alcohol that caused me to lose my words tonight, Emma Travers. It was you.”
His chin-length brown hair was nearly dry now and hung over his eyes as if windblown, though nary a wisp of air blew from the vents above. Eyes she was surprised to learn were two different colors—one brown, the other a mix of brown and green. “You excel at telling a girl what she wants to hear, I’ll give you that.”
His gaze didn’t flinch. “How can you doubt the truth? You were there, front row center. Close enough to touch me.” The soft timbre of his voice warmed her even more than the heat radiating off his skin. He fell silent, unmoving, as if he were waiting for something. What, she wasn’t certain. Unable to meet his gaze,
she lowered hers and found herself transfixed by the movement of his Adam’s apple as he spoke. “All you had to do was reach out.”
An image of hands pawing and clutching at him whenever he’d trekked too close to the edge of the stage flashed through her mind. She swallowed hard, her mouth going dry, and shook her head. “Is that what you wanted me to do? Grope you like the other women in the audience? Do you actually enjoy that?”
“Not particularly.”
“Yet you expect me to believe that, for some unknown reason, you wanted me to touch you?”
“You stood out from the crowd. Not singing, not screaming, just standing in the front row. It was impossible not to notice you. I wondered why you were at the show, You didn’t seem to be having a good time. Then you smiled at me…my mind blanked.”
What the hell was she supposed to say to that? Thanks for noticing me?
“I was feeding you lines and you just stood there, staring.” Much the same way as she was doing now. Christ, he was beautiful. Her fingers itched with the need to trace his lips, his mustache, the little hairless spots on the outside of his bottom lip and that sexy as hell strip of facial hair that went from the center of his full lower lip down, to blend into his short trimmed beard.
Her throat went dry as dust. “Why me? I’m not actually supposed to believe you saw me and lost your place, am I?”
“That’s what happened.” His words were matter-of-fact, meant to be believed. “You know it’s true, you were there.”
Emma shook her head.
“Contrary to what you think, I was not too drunk to remember the lyrics. You see, I’m an accomplished drinker. I’ve been at it a long time. Long enough to know that forgetting the words to one of my songs is about as never-going-to-happen as forgetting how to please a woman.”
“Why?”
“Why what, Sunshine?”
“Why are you a practiced drunk? Is that all you do, spend your free time partying?”
“Interesting. You don’t question my forgetting how to please a woman?”
“Hah! You could probably pull that off if you were comatose.”
A rumble of appreciation emanated in his chest. The corners of his mouth kicked up into a smile, one so powerful it stopped her lungs altogether for a few seconds. Arrogance blazing in his eyes, he lifted his right hand.
The calloused tips of his fingers glanced off her cheek as she caught his wrist. “It’s time for me to go.”
“Stay.” His deep voice combined with his intent gaze spread warmth throughout her body.
She forced herself to look away. Her eyes trailed a path down his right arm, over the bulge of bicep, the bend of his elbow, to where her hand circled his wrist. Beneath her thumb, which was busy making slow, gentle sweeps across his skin—When exactly had it started doing that?—a tattoo drew her attention. Measures of music circled his wrist once, twice, three times before ending in a large, red and black abstract G clef on the outside of his forearm.
“Tell me why you came backstage to find me if you weren’t interested in, how did you put it, ‘Sucking off a narcissistic asshole’?”
She felt bad for about ten seconds, then recalled the insulting way he’d treated her when first she’d entered his room.
“Why did you come backstage, Em?”
Shock? Curiosity? Because I can’t wrap my mind around why someone like you would choose someone like me?
Emma wasn’t sure if that was what he wanted to hear. She was certain he had no interest in knowing ever since the day her oncologist had informed her there was nothing more that could be done, she swore to pack as much living as she could into the time she had left. To squeeze every last drop of juice out of life.
She kept all of that to herself, instead releasing him and taking a step beck. With a deep breath to center herself, she met his gaze. “I’ll stay.”
He flashed her a crooked smile.
“But no more alcohol.”
“Done.” He turned and motioned toward the room in a way that told her she was to take the lead.
Emma snatched her shoes off the floor. As she skirted around the man who made panties drop across the globe, she told him, “Just so you know, I’m not sleeping with you, no matter how many pretty words you throw my way.”
“You keep telling yourself that, Sunshine. Maybe you’ll even begin to believe it.”
Christ, she was something. This spitfire who drew him like moth to flame.
She wasn’t at all his type. He wasn’t attracted to pixies with short blonde hair and compact bodies. But the sight of her looking up at him from the audience had been like a one-two punch to the gut. His mind blanked, and for a full minute he couldn’t have drawn oxygen into his lungs to save his soul. It should have scared the shit out of him, except it hadn’t.
She exuded a confidence that wasn’t vain, and something else, something Joe couldn’t name. Happiness? Light? Vibrancy? Whatever it was, she lit up the fucking arena with it. Filling him with a sudden, overwhelming, and desperate desire to soak it up. Desire so strong he’d actually sent Gary to find her and invite her to join him backstage. Neither of them believed she would do it and, for some mind-numbing reason, that had scared the shit out of him.
Which was when he realized he was a bloody nutter. Who did that? Had one look at a woman and saw the answer to the downward spiral their life was on? No one sane or rational, that was for damn certain.
In a move intended to dull the unnatural connection he felt for a woman he’d never met, he’d been a third of the way through a bottle of his favorite Irish whiskey when she’d stepped into his dressing room. She’d hovered just inside the doorway and introduced herself—Emma Travers—a name befitting her all-American girl appearance. His reaction to her was swift and violent and told him in no uncertain terms that the whiskey hadn’t dulled a bleedin’ thing.
She’d stared at him through turquoise eyes set in a face that was porcelain pale. Eyes that revealed her every emotion as they’d scorched a trail over his body, snagging for a long moment on his groin before returning to his face.
She wanted him. To a man like him, she was an open book. Still, something had him tipping the bottle and sipping of the whiskey instead of her lips as he’d longed to do. The women he chose to be with had an edge, a gleam in their eyes that screamed they were just as eager to be used as he was to use them. Emma Travers had a purity to her that bordered on innocence.
She was a breath of fresh air. Sunshine to his darkness.
He could probably snuff the light out of her in no time.
A sense of decency reached out and grabbed him by the balls. She deserved better than him. And so he’d done everything possible to drive her away. In no time at all, she was back out that door and down the hall so fast his head spun. Yet even though her leaving was for the best, he couldn’t help but follow her so he could watch her walk away. Imagine his delight when she’d shown enough spine to verbally strip the skin from his bones on her way out.
Damn. His cock had snapped to attention and laughter—his long lost friend—bubbled up before he could swallow it back down. Sunshine and sass: now that was a truly irresistible combination.
“Pretty confident aren’t you?”
Emma’s voice pulled Joe out of his head. He followed her into his dressing room, closing the door behind him. “What’s that, Sunshine?”
The question was barely past his lips when she turned. The hand holding her shoes smacked into the center of his chest, the pencil heels stabbed him like knives. “Is that really necessary?”
Small silver hoops with clear stones decorated her ear lobes. Her left upper ear also sported three silver rings—each slightly different from the other. A tiny tear drop gem adorned the cartilage at the opening of her ear, tying everything together.
“Joe?”
“If the door is left open it will only invite others to join our conversation and I would prefer that not happen.” He looked down at the shoes boring a hole in his pec
. “Now, can we dispense of these instruments of death?”
“How did you know I considered beaning you with them?”
She had? Fuck. If that didn’t bring another snort of laughter. “I was referring to the spikes digging into my flesh.” He curled his fingers around her wrist and pulled her hand away from his chest, releasing it at her side. “You were going to throw them at me?”
“You were rude.” She was staring at his left pec, where the head of the dragon that circled up his bicep and over his shoulder rested. Mouth open in a roar, teeth bared, and forked tongue hanging out.
“I was.” He wondered if tats turned her on or off? “He doesn’t bite.”
“What?” That brought those entrancing eyes back to his. “I’m sure the same can’t be said about you.”
He allowed his gaze to take a long, slow journey over her body. His cock rose to take a peek, too. “You might like it.”
She arched an eyebrow then turned away, but not before he caught the whisper of excitement in her eyes. The killer heels remained in her grasp as she moved about the room, trailing her free hand over everything—the back of the couch, the side of the whiskey bottle he’d left on the table. She caressed the fabric of the shirt beside it between her thumb and forefinger before moving on with one last brush of her fingertips.
His gaze skated down her back and landed on her perfect ass. Covered in body hugging denim, the material cupped her like a lover, showing off curves that would bring even the strongest man to his knees. Sheer ivory silk trimmed in black rhinestones stirred with her every motion, teasing him with glimpses of the lace bra beneath it. His fingers twitched. She was temptation personified.
Too bad she’d made it abundantly clear that finding relief for the ache in his balls was not in his immediate future.
“No doubt, I would.” She came to a stop in front of the giant bowl of rainbow condoms. Her hand dipped in, and she filtered them through her fingers as she lifted it back out. “Though I’m not sure I could stand the competition.”
