Praise for Lilah Suzanne
BROKEN RECORDS
“TOP PICK! This excellent take on the celebrity-and-normal-person romance moves at a fast clip while satisfying at every turn.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Hollywood style meets Nashville charm in this sweet, sexy fling turned romance.”
—Publishers Weekly
BURNING TRACKS
“FOUR STARS… Burning Tracks is a deeply emotional work that explores love, loss, risk and the struggles of commitment and self-sabotage. In the first book, readers were introduced to a new love, but in this book, readers observe an established relationship. This makes Burning Tracks a fundamentally different read from its predecessor, both in tone and in what’s at stake for our heroines.”
—RT Book Reviews
Spice
“… Completely laugh-out-loud funny and the underlying romantic plot is the perfect backdrop for its sparkling characters, Simon and Benji, who are bound to induce a book hangover… Fresh, fun fiction at its best!”
—RT Book Reviews
“Suzanne keeps the humor warm and the sex real.”
—Publishers Weekly
Pivot and Slip
“4.5 stars… Balancing laughter with touching emotions, this novella is a great first effort.”
—Carly’s Book Reviews Blog
Copyright © 2017 Lilah Suzanne
All Rights Reserved
ISBN (trade): 978-1-945053-23-8
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-945053-40-5
Published by Interlude Press
www.interludepress.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and places are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, either living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Book Design by CB Messer with Lex Huffman
Cover Illustration by Victoria S. with CB Messer
Cover Design by CB Messer
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“Always be true to yourself, what you believe, and where you came from... you’ll need those roots sooner or later.”
—Dolly Parton
Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
1
Grady’s earliest memory of his mother is watching her leave. It wasn’t the first time she dropped him off at Memaw and Granddaddy’s house, and the remembered moment itself is unremarkable: He’s standing by the road; a cloud of dirt from the driveway into the trailer park lingers hazily in the air; he can see the taillights of her car lit red at the stop sign. The right one blinks a signal, the car turns, and she’s gone. Memaw came to collect him soon after, and he doesn’t recall what he did next—whatever rambunctious five-year-old boys like to do. Maybe he got on his bike and tore around the neighborhood, training wheels be damned. Or maybe he found a squirrel to harass with a makeshift slingshot of forked stick and rubber band. Maybe Memaw plunked him down in front of their old jumpy television.
Sit down for five seconds, Grady. Land’s sake! she’d say, with a look rather similar to the one Nico has when Grady comes around to the aisle where Nico is browsing for home decor. Grady had wandered off when he spotted an old gramophone on display.
“There you are.”
“Here I am,” Grady confirms, dropping a kiss onto Nico’s cheek. Nico leans into him with an easy, comfortable affection that grounds Grady, makes him feel wanted and safe. Grady takes a clear glass bottle from the shelf filled with clear glass bottles of all shapes and sizes and colors and asks, “Do we need apothecary jars?” The label on the jar reads: Green Pain Pills.
Nico takes the jar and turns, holding it up so it catches the sunlight streaming through the plate glass windows in the front of the boutique. “I mean, we don’t not need apothecary jars.” He tips his head and narrows his eyes, assessing the jar before putting it back on the shelf. Nico is determined to fill their new home with things that represent them; it’s sweet, but, for Grady, unnecessary. Nico expresses himself visually: his clothes, his hair, the elegant yet assertive way he holds himself. Of course he’d want knickknacks and furniture and art that speak to the life they’re building together. For Grady, it’s less tangible, not a particular thing he could put on a shelf. It’s two toothbrushes in the holder, the sound of a familiar car pulling into the garage, the lingering scent of Nico’s cologne in their bed, the way Nico brushes a peck to Grady’s lips before he leaves: never a goodbye, always a see you later.
“Did you find something you wanted?” Nico moves on to a display of antique paperweights. One looks like a crystal ball.
“Oh, yeah.” Grady lifts his eyebrows and quirks his lips. Nico shakes his head at that, picks up the crystal ball paperweight, and passes it slowly from hand to hand. “I knew you were going to say that and yet—”
“And yet you still asked,” Grady finishes, teasing, “Why, I think you may even like it.”
Nico hums. He puts the paperweight back. “I suppose I must, considering that I am marry—” He snaps his mouth shut, then glances around to be sure no one overheard him. They’re alone in the store, but still Nico mouths the end of that sentence: “Marrying you.”
And, lord, but does that thrill Grady to his bones, silent or spoken or acted out with charades. He’s marrying Nico, they’re getting married, he and Nico are marrying each other. Grady can tell his own smile is goofy, and Nico has one to match. In the quiet corner of this very unusual store, they can be openly giddy—for a moment.
The front door to the shop swings open, and a large group of people comes clamoring inside. He and Nico go back to browsing separately: Nico at a wall of picture frames; Grady at a table with porcelain doll parts spread across it. He picks up a pair of arms with a price tag of seventy-five dollars. What would Memaw have to say about such things? Grady sets the arms back down, nothing good, he bets. Boy, would she ever love Nico, though.
“The invitations should be ready by now.” Nico strides past him, already heading to the door. “We should go pick them up, then straight home. I want to get started right away.” Nico’s shoulders are high and pulled back; his words are crisp. When it comes to wedding planning, he goes into full-on taskmaster mode.
“Yes, sir,” Grady drawls, happy to follow along.
Back at home, after painstakingly addressing a stack of envelopes, Nico is low on patience and not very pleased with the derisive snort he gets in response when he asks where he should send an invitation for Grady’s mother.
Grady doesn’t remember crying over his mama leaving back then or any other time. It was normal, the calamity she brought to their lives, and no one in that trailer ever talked about it. Memaw and Granddaddy didn’t know any more than he did about where she was going, what she was doing, or when she’d
be back. So they carried on as usual, and it’s only in retrospect that Grady’s connected the dots between her leaving and his getting in trouble at school or at home or, later on, turning tail and running whenever his personal relationships got difficult. He’s still fighting that reflex now.
“Even if I did know where she was, she wouldn’t show,” Grady explains in the office of their new house.
Nico is at the old-fashioned rolltop desk in a state-of-the-art ergonomic chair. The realtor described this house as city-sleek-meets-rustic-charm, and that about sums it up for the house and everything in it, including them. Nico taps a neat pile of robin’s-egg blue envelopes even neater. “Okay, but don’t you think she’d at least want to know? Whether she shows up or not? We’re keeping everything so hush-hush, she won’t find out otherwise.”
She gave him two birthday presents during his entire life: A metal Tonka truck and a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots. The boots she brought in person when he was nine. She took him to McDonald’s for lunch and let him pick anything he wanted to eat, and then he opened the present right there in the plastic booth. He remembers bouncing around as if he were filled with his soda’s fizzing bubbles, giggly and giddy, as he admired the boots. When he looked up to thank her, she shook her head.
“You look just like your daddy,” she told him. “God help us all.”
In the office, Grady gives up trying to get comfortable in the oblong molded-fiberglass rocking chair—he still has a hard time wrapping his brain around furniture that’s really decoration and decoration that’s really furniture—and stands behind Nico.
“I don’t know where she is,” he repeats, instead of providing an answer to the question of whether or not his own mother would care that he’s getting married. He doesn’t know. She very well may not, and that’s something Nico can’t quite understand.
“How about your dad?”
Grady laughs, and Nico gives him a sharp look that is less irritation at Grady and more dismay that Grady’s own parents truly do not care one whit about him. “Sweetheart,” Grady says and rubs at the tense pull of muscles across Nico’s shoulders. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s not necessary. I’ll have my family there. Clem, Flora and Gwen and Cayo, my band, Spencer.” Nico’s shoulders pull tighter at Spencer’s name. “Your mom and dad and brother,” Grady continues, massaging the knotted tendons at the base of Nico’s neck. “Soon they’ll be my family officially. I’m not sad or upset about anyone missing.” Other than Memaw and Granddaddy, but of course that’s a different kind of missing.
Nico’s shoulders relax. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Grady’s fingers drift up Nico’s neck to brush the shells of his prominent ears. They’ve been wedding planning for hours now, hunkered down in the office checking things off lists, and it’s making Grady restless. But when he bends to caress Nico’s neck and ears with his lips, Nico catches him by the chin.
“Hold that thought. If I don’t get these invitations addressed and out today, I will lose it.”
Grady pouts and stands up. “Anything I can do?”
Nico uncaps a pen with decisive force. “You can stand there and look handsome.”
“Done.” Grady wanders to the bookshelf. In the corner he spots a ukulele that went missing a few weeks ago and strums a bit of his new single.
Once in a life, a boy comes along
And blows your world apart
It would have been better if she had just disappeared. His grandparents were dedicated and loving, even though he had been dumped on their doorstep. They didn’t have much, but he never went without, never felt lacking or unstable. Then his mother would blow into town like a storm—or, more rarely, his father—and he’d be shaken to pieces. And the very worst part is that when Mama was present, not just there, but sober, she was wonderful.
With a love that burns so bright
His mama was infused with light: bright and fun, at least she was when things were on an upswing in Lily’s life. She took him to Pigeon Forge once, just the two of them, to Dollywood. They ate ice cream and went to the shows and on all the rides, the big scary ones, too, where she held his hand so he wouldn’t be afraid. He remembers singing and laughing and raising their hands up high on the peak of a roller coaster. At age eleven, Grady knew what it felt like to be Icarus.
It shines a light
Through the cracks of your broken heart.
He always got burned, yet he never could convince himself that he was soaring headlong into the flames. This time, he’d think, this time she’ll stay.
Grady’s song trips into a minor key, so he sets the instrument down; there’s nothing more depressing than a sad ukulele solo.
“Actually,” Nico says, addressing an envelope in his careful, precise handwriting. “If I could see your contacts list… I don’t have addresses for your band members.”
“Then can we be done?” Only half paying attention, Grady thumbs through his contacts, then drops his phone onto the desk and slumps over it with a pleading look.
Nico cocks his head and arches a sharp eyebrow; it’s dead sexy. “Good things come to those who wait.”
Grady lets his voice slip low and dragging, “I do like the sound of that.” He slinks closer, but is thwarted again when Nico leans away, intentionally out of reach.
Six months out, and Grady is fed up with wedding planning. He’d suggest they elope, only Nico’s mother would be heartbroken, and Grady would never forgive himself for hurting that dear, sweet angel who loves him like her own. Besides, there is the honeymoon to look forward to: a private bungalow in an isolated tropical paradise that Grady’s half-convinced they may never leave. That suits him just fine; he can make music anywhere, anytime, for anyone.
Two weeks later, the RSVPs are trickling in. They’ve kept the invitation list small, limited to people they can trust to not spill the beans to a tabloid, or in other words, not Spencer.
Grady has a meeting at his record company to finalize the new album; he’s running out the door when an overnight envelope tips into the doorway. He doesn’t think much of it until he starts to fling the letter inside for Nico to deal with and catches the name on the return address.
Clay Dawson.
2
“Hey, Nico?” Grady taps the thick envelope on his open palm while he waits with one foot inside the door, one out.
“Yes?” Nico enters the foyer fiddling with a tie knotted at his throat and his shirt still untucked.
Grady taps the envelope one last time, then holds it up in accusation. “What is this?”
Nico’s fretful fingers pause on the perfectly done knot of his tie, and he arches one eyebrow. “That… is an envelope,” he says, deadpan. “Is that all? Would you like me to identify the color of the sky for you as well?”
Normally Grady loves Nico’s cutting sense of humor; a cantankerous icy facade that hides the warm, kind inside, in the same way that each piece of his fastidiously chosen outfits is another link in his chainmail. Once he painstakingly chooses cufflinks or a collar-chain or the perfect Eldridge knot, Nico can face any challenge. Grady loves Nico’s layers, loves even more that he gets to strip him of them, clothing and otherwise. But right now, Grady is really literally running out the door, and Nico is up to something.
“This is from Clay Dawson. My uncle. Why does my uncle have this address?” Any contact Grady had with his uncle was through his manager Vince.
Nico’s mouth forms a little “o” shape, and, purposely avoiding Grady, he turns to the mirror in the entryway to finish tying his tie. He knows why, and he knows that Grady knows why, and they keep butting up against this, don’t they? Nico decides what’s best and doesn’t give Grady a chance at an opinion. Every step of the way on this relationship, Grady had to prove that he really does want this and he really does know what he’s doing. Nico is worth the patience; he’s worth Grady�
��s struggle against his own instinct to cut and run because that would be easier, for both of them. It’d be easier still to drop the conversation, ditch the letter in the trash, and walk out the door. Grady moves his other foot back inside and lets the door fall closed. “You sent him a wedding invite.”
“No.” Nico smooths his eyebrows in the mirror, casual-like. “Technically I sent your father an invite. You don’t have his address, but I assumed Uncle Clay would get it to him.”
Grady flicks the letter onto their sideboard. It lands halfway on the specially commissioned copper dish that holds Nico’s keys and wallet, a pack of gum, and three nickels. “I don’t—I’m gonna be late for a meeting. I can’t deal with this right now.”
“Grady—”
He shoves the door open; he plants both feet on the porch this time. “You know, every once in while I may actually know what’s best. My father is bad person, Nico. I don’t mean like he’s a bad tipper or he litters in the park. I mean lying, cheating, and stealing from everyone he knows. I mean prison. Dangerous, Nico.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Nico does look genuinely remorseful. He didn’t know because Grady hasn’t been entirely forthcoming about his past. He wants to leave it there, in the past, where it belongs. Whatever anger was reaching a boil in his blood simmers down; he never can stay angry with Nico for long. He doesn’t have time to settle things between them in any conclusive way, though. He really is running late. So he deflates, sighing and crooking his finger to beckon Nico closer until Grady can pull him in by the tie.
“I just got that knot right,” Nico protests, but definitely does not protest the kiss Grady lays on him, responding eagerly with parting lips, bending his long, lithe body into Grady’s.
Grady pulls away with regret, darting in for one last parting peck on Nico’s soft lips. “I really have to go. We’ll talk about this later. In the meantime, do not contact any more of my estranged relatives, if you can manage it.”
Nico nods, then lifts his chin. “Okay, but what about estranged friends? Estranged coworkers?” He wiggles grasping fingers in the air. “There has to be some kind of meddling I can do.” Grady’s mouth slips into a smile—he never can help it—then he jogs down the steps. “We’ll talk later.”
Blended Notes Page 1
