Red Hot Bikers, Rock Stars and Bad Boys

by Cassia Leo

  Dane smiled. He’d asked Stella to send him clothes, but Bud had insisted on providing the outfit, remembering his own day out, when Clarice had sent a brand-new suit.

  And so his father had sent some pinstriped gray number, white shirt, tie, and all. Stella was going to bust out laughing when she saw it. But he could look forward to her stripping it off him, piece by piece.

  They left the housing unit and took the path to the administrative offices, now as familiar a walk to him as the path to school as a kid. Today the red-and-white stripes of the squat building stood out bright and fine. He’d never be looking at the back side of those walls again.

  They turned down a new corridor, one he’d never been on. Dane had expected to meet up with Stella in visitation. The hall was long and empty except for a figure at the end, a broad woman. As they approached, he recognized Maggie. No more shoulder pads or helmet hair, just a simple suit and a sleek head of gray. She still wore soft pink lipstick.

  “Good-bye, Dane,” she said. “I asked to be the one who brought you out.”

  Maggie had been kicked upstairs years ago, moving from caseworker to supervisor. Dane nodded at her. “Thank you.”

  “These are the best days.” She laid a small box on top of the larger one he already held. “Your things from storage.”

  He remembered the spiked belt and watch chain. Things he’d worn the last day with Stella. They would enjoy looking at them again.

  Maggie led him toward a doorway at the end, spilling light in through a bar-less window.

  “Your paperwork is all in order,” Maggie said. “Your new job starts on Monday.” They reached the door, and she squeezed his arm. “I’m very glad to hear Stella is coming to get you.”

  Dane felt his throat thicken. If it weren’t for Maggie, he might never have written Stella. Never gotten to this day. “Thank you” was all he could manage.

  She pushed open the door. The light was blindingly bright. He blinked several times, trying to adjust, and he thought at first he might be seeing a mirage. His Harley, looking just as good as 1984, better probably, as they’d crashed it just before his arrest, and on it, Stella, in, of all things, a full-on wedding gown.

  “You’re looking kind of sissy for a ride like this,” she said. She held one helmet in her lap, and a second one dangled from a handlebar.

  “You’re looking like you might get caught in the wheels.”

  She hitched up the dress, revealing how the hem was tucked into her underwear. “Not gonna happen.”

  “I’ll just take those.” Bud stepped forward and relieved Dane of his boxes. Clarice gave him a quick hug.

  Dane scarcely noticed them as he slid a hand up Stella’s thigh and tucked the dress more tightly up around her legs.

  “Looks like we’d better get on to the church,” Clarice said. “Then dinner to celebrate?”

  Bud pulled her back, smiling broadly. “I think we’ll take a rain check on the dinner. Tomorrow, maybe.”

  Dane paid them no mind. They could wait. He straddled the Harley behind Stella. His own license had expired years ago. “You know how to drive this thing?” he asked.

  She shoved the helmet at him. “When I jump creeks, I don’t end up in the dirt.”

  She stomped on the starter, revved the motor, and he held on to her slender waist in the beaded gown. Bud, Clarice, and Maggie waved as they cruised toward the guards, who opened the gate, and they sailed past the guard towers onto Capitol Avenue, ready for whatever came next.

  ***

  Stella & Dane was my very first romance novel. Now that I've written -- gulp -- FIFTEEN more under various pen names, I look back on this one and think about what I'd do differently. But if you like emotional reads, I have several that hold a little more tightly to traditional romance timelines (with no twelve-year wait!) Start with my USA Today Bestselling series that begins with Forever Innocent.

  Warning: If you teared up with Stella, you're going to need a WHOLE BOX of tissues for this one.

  FOREVER INNOCENT

  Book One of the Forever Series

  See FOREVER INNOCENT at:

  Kobo

  About Deanna Roy

  Deanna Roy is the author of multiple USA Today bestselling books, including the Forever series, as well as books under her pen names Annie Winters and JJ Knight. She is a fierce advocate for mothers who have lost babies, and writing on this topic is her life’s work.

  Website | Mailing list | Facebook | Twitter | Tsu | Goodreads

  Table of Contents

  Red Hot Bikers, Rock Stars, and Bad Boys

  Forever Ours by Cassia Leo

  Resisting by Chelle Bliss

  Randomly Ever After by Julia Kent

  Stella & Dane by Deanna Roy

  Every Breath You Take by Blair Babylon

  Cold Fusion by Olivia Rigal

  The Storm and the Darkness by Sarah M. Cradit

  Rock Candy by Daizie Draper

  Wuther by V. J. Chambers

  Three Nights With A Rock Star by Amber Lin and Shari Slade

  Revik by JC Andrijeski

  Disclaimers and Copyright Notices

  Every Breath You Take

  Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie

  and

  Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan

  by Blair Babylon

  Every Breath You Take

  Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie

  and

  Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan

  by Blair Babylon

  EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE © Malachite Publishing LLC 2015

  What happens when a Rock Star in Disguise meets a Billionaire in hiding?

  Georgie doesn’t know who she is dating.

  At a high society wedding, Georgie Johnson is introduced to Alexandre de Valentinois, a hereditary duke of nothing who flies around the world on his private planes and describes himself as “one of those despicable, idle rich men.” Yet, when pressed, he sings at the wedding in a gorgeous, clear tenor that tugs at Georgie’s soul, and miraculously, he calms her paralyzing stage fright so she can accompany him on the piano, even though she thought she had left her classical music career behind when she went into hiding.

  But Alexandre has a dark side. His name is Xan Valentine, and he’s the rock star front man for Killer Valentine. He’s famous, but his paparazzi-dogged lifestyle might expose Georgie and get her killed.

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  AFTER THE MIDNIGHT FIGHT

  Xan Valentine

  Xan Valentine walked down the steps of the tall tour bus into the early-morning dark, gathering his long hair behind his head and scanning the hotel parking lot. The bleached ends of his hair fluttered in the breeze at the fringes of his eyesight, and he cleared his throat. The clamping pain in his throat staggered him as those muscles flexed.

  In the lonely night at the back of the hotel’s parking lot, a black sedan flashed its headlights twice. Fetid diesel exhaust from the growling tour bus stung his nose and throat, leaving a taste like asphalt in his mouth and a jangling tone between D and D-sharp ringing in his head.

  The heavy garment bag he carried dragged on his shoulder. The monogram AV glinted in the parking lot’s lights, the white stitching bright against the black leather. He grabbed the handle of a large, abnormally thick guitar case with his other hand. Between his black velvet sleeve and the black guitar case, his pale hand floated in the darkness, ghostly, like a bad horror movie.

  Jonas, the band’s manager, had walked down the steps behind Xan and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “It’s only a few small shows.”

  Xan swallowed to moisten his throat and rasped out, “No such thing as a small show.”

  The hoarseness in his own voice scoured his throat and drowned out his cultivated English accent, and he sounded more American than ever. Appalling.

  “Yea
h, there is such a thing as a small show, and the next three were small shows.” The sodium parking lot lamps made Jonas’s green eyes glow like a cat when Xan glanced sideways and down at him. Jonas said, “Rest your voice this weekend. Go find a cabin in the woods. Play your guitar, if you want. Read a book. Binge-watch movies. Don’t talk. Don’t shout. Don’t sing. Don’t make a damned sound until you have to warm up your throat for the show in Miami next week.”

  “I could have done them all,” Xan grated out, forcing his voice. His throat felt like rocks were grinding his flesh in there. “We shouldn’t have cancelled them.”

  “You’ll feel better in a few days,” Jonas said. “The whole East Coast leg will go better if you rest.”

  Xan walked away, his frock coat costume billowing behind him as he strode over the asphalt and between the cars to the black sedan waiting in the back of the lot. The chrome handle chilled his hand when he grasped the back door’s latch.

  He looked back. The tour bus, black and anonymous to confuse the fans who didn’t do their research, hulked under the lights, and the other members of Killer Valentine filed off and staggered into the hotel after the long drive from the last venue and the vicious shouting match on the bus.

  Xan Valentine opened the car door, slid into the back seat, and disintegrated into a thousand dark fragments.

  CYBERSTALKING

  Georgie

  Saturday morning, after Georgie had practiced her piano for three hours in the dark, deserted music building and then had run twelve miles in under two hours and showered and was still panting but clean and cold, she lounged on the couch in the study room of her cozy college dorm room, engaging a little harmless cyberstalking.

  The laptop resting on her knees showed a video of a beautiful blond woman, her bright green eyes snapping with happiness on her wedding day.

  Georgie smiled at the image, wishing that somehow her own smile could be transmitted through the ether and that Flicka would feel her best wishes. These pictures were almost-real time, taken about an hour before, but Flicka was at her wedding reception at the Louvre in France, and Georgie was sitting on a stiff couch in a college dormitory room in the Southwestern U.S. while the morning desert sun beat through the old windows onto the political science, sociology, and pre-law-type textbooks stacked on her desk.

  Six years had passed since Georgie had hugged Flicka good-bye at Boston’s Logan airport, when Flicka had flown back to her Swiss boarding school and Georgie had returned home to Connecticut, where in ten hours, overnight, her whole life had broken apart like a sinkhole had gaped under her and swallowed everything.

  Georgiana Oelrichs had been destroyed in those few, terrible days. Georgie Johnson had arisen to take on her responsibilities and debts, and they were legion, in the long months and now years that followed.

  Her cup of black coffee steamed beside her. The bitterness of dark-roasted brew lingered on her tongue and filled the room with a comfortable scent. She had a different life now, a smaller life, but it was good. Everything she wanted and needed was growing around her. Slowly, it was growing slowly, but she was creating her own salvation.

  Someday, she would make amends to everyone.

  Georgie—stronger now, harder now—could forgive the baffled teenage girl she had been, but older-wiser Georgie knew that she was the only one who would forgive that brainwashed little twit, so she stayed away, hid in the Southwest under a new name, and cyberstalked people who had been her friends, desperately hoping they were happy.

  Flicka’s sparkling grin certainly looked happy as she caught the dark eye of her new husband, Pierre Grimaldi, Prince Pierre, the presumptive heir to the princely throne of Monaco.

  Wow, the two of them were gorgeous together. They would probably make beautiful little prince and princess babies.

  Flicka had married her prince, and Georgie smiled at her from thousands of miles away. When they had met, Flicka hadn’t mentioned to Georgie for two weeks that she was a princess, Her Serene Highness Friederike, Prinzessin von Hannover und Cumberland, et cetera, probably because they had been hanging out in the dorms and strolling the sun-drenched wildflower fields that smelled like lavender around the Tanglewood Music Center, so busy dishing about Chopin and Rachmaninoff and Bach and reminiscing about the radiant tones of great pianos they had played.

  And learning. And playing their pianos. And learning more. And practicing. And studying. And living deep in music.

  Music had been Georgie’s whole life back then, and Flicka’s whole life, and just seeing Flicka’s shining face on the laptop screen was enough to make Georgie’s fingers dance on the rough couch upholstery beside her leg.

  Her fingers picked out Chopin, of course. They had both worshiped Chopin, though Georgie now tended to prefer Rachmaninoff.

  Indeed, Georgie almost closed the laptop to go back to the music department to practice more, which she still did every day out of some deep-buried longing, when another couple behind Flicka and Pierre caught her eye.

  Oh, God.

  No, no.

  In the dim light of the wedding reception, the young woman’s fiery auburn hair flowed around her shoulders, and the camera’s light flashed off the man’s bright blond hair and startling blue eyes.

  Oh God, no.

  Georgie swallowed down a sour taste on her tongue as her two worlds began to slam into each other like planets colliding.

  If her college suitemate Rae Stone and their employer—whose real name she didn’t even know due to the unusual structure of the business—were at Flicka’s wedding, Murphy’s Fucking Law was about to kick Georgie’s ass.

  Naive little Georgiana Oelrichs would have scurried away right then and hidden, changed her name again in shame, and cried herself to sleep.

  Georgie Johnson swallowed hard and gripped the sides of the laptop, firming her courage, before she opened a text app on her phone.

  She knew that Rae was in Paris, and Rae had texted from her phone’s new number so Georgie could get in touch with her if anything went wrong.

  This sure as Hell counted as something going terribly, horribly wrong.

  Georgie slid her thumb over the screen, texting, Did I just see you on TV at that freaking royal wedding in Paris?!?!?!? W/ The Dom? WTF?!?!?!?!?

  A small part of her deeply believed that Rae would text back that she didn’t know what Georgie was talking about, even though that woman in the picture was definitely Rae, and Rae was in Paris at that very moment.

  Her phone buzzed in her hand.

  Rae: U have passport?

  That wasn’t an answer. There was nothing to be panicking about yet.

  Georgie swiped through the wedding pictures on the laptop, looking for more.

  She found more.

  Lots more.

  Rae smiled in all of them, sometimes a slightly terrified smile, sometimes a real laugh when she looked at the blond man beside her.

  The blond man wore his usual closed expression, somewhat serene, somewhat cold in his dark blue eyes.

  Her skin prickled with chill. Georgie set the laptop aside, held her phone more firmly, and walked to the bedroom, shutting the door behind herself so that no one walking on the sidewalk outside could see how pale she was through the windows.

  Rae had asked about a passport.

  Georgie sat on her twin bed and typed with shaking fingers, Yah.

  And she waited, hoping that Rae wouldn’t say that she was at Flicka’s wedding but afraid to ask again. She stared at the framed prints on the walls, not really seeing the pastels, wanting to crawl under the bed and stay there.

  On the other side of the door, in the study room area, a door-slam echoed, and a woman’s voice rang out, “Georgie!”

  That raspy little shout sounded like Lizzy, her roommate.

  Georgie prayed that Lizzy’s return meant something good, because otherwise she was going to shake the shit out of her. Lizzy had gotten herself involved with a creepy, creepy, creepy-ass Creepster McCreepakuddy, and th
at did not begin to convey the revulsion that Georgie had built up over the many years for Mannix fucking Bonfils. No matter what Georgie had told Lizzy, she wouldn’t even try to escape his creepy clutches.

  Her phone buzzed her palm again.

  Rae had texted, Throw some clothes in overnight bag. Get a cocktail dress or 2 from the DH. NOT SLUTTY. Plane tix will be at Lufthansa counter for 8PM flight tonight.

  No way. No fucking way was she going to Paris and risk seeing Flicka and all those people.

  She had to get out of this somehow.

  In the back of her mind, Georgiana Oelrichs whispered, Run.

  Georgie thumbed the phone. Have class next week.

  Rae texted back, Will be home Monday morning.

  Fuck.

  “Georgie! Georgie!” the woman outside the door yelled.

  Georgie stood and went to the study room. Dealing with Lizzy would give her some time to think. She opened the door. “Just a sec!”

  She stole a glance at Lizzy, barely looking away from Rae’s texts on her phone. Thank God, Lizzy was wearing normal khaki pants and a blouse instead of that indecent, half-naked lingerie crap that Bonfils insisted that she wear everywhere to break her down yet some more, the creep.

  Georgie said to her, “Tell me that you finally left Mannix fucking Bonfils.”

  Lizzy ran across the tiny dorm room and flung herself onto Georgie, pushing her back against the door frame even though blond little Lizzy was an elf of a person and might weigh eighty pounds if her backpack was stuffed full of books. She would never get used to how demonstrative Lizzy was at the slightest provocation.