Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor) Read online

  Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor)

  Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor)

  Midpoint

  EPILOGUE

  MAROONED WITH THE ROCK STAR

  (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor)

  By Dawn Steele

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright 2013 by Dawn Steele

  This title was previously released as ‘Wrecked’ by Aphrodite Hunt

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Dawn Steele is the New Adult romance pen name of Aphrodite and Artemis Hunt. Aphrodite Hunt, Artemis Hunt and Dawn Steele have had 23 books in the Top 100 Amazon Erotica, 1 book in the Top 100 Amazon Romance, 12 books in the Top 100 of the overall Barnes and Noble store, 1 book in the Top 100 Amazon New Adult, and 1 book in the Top 100 Amazon Paranormal Shifter Romance category.

  Dawn believes that true love will conquer all, even if the circumstances appear cagey at first glance. That is why all her books have ‘Happily Ever After’ endings, although she will tease you with twisty plots and subplots to make you think this will not be so in the beginning.

  Please sign up for her mailing list. She will update you whenever there is a new romance released under Dawn Steele, Aphrodite Hunt or Artemis Hunt.

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  KURT

  Fuck!

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, and double fuck!

  She’s coming towards me, dressed in a crisp white blouse and a blue skirt. She has a clipboard in her arm and she’s talking to this doddering old lady who looks as though she’s a hundred years old and smells of mothballs. She is talking very animatedly, waving her clipboard around as though it is a weapon, describing something in that extremely excitable way of hers that I remember.

  Rebecca Hall. That’s who she is. I have been trying to get away from her since high school, and I thought I succeeded, but here she is again – like a cold sore that wouldn’t quite go away.

  Fuck!

  And to see me like this?

  I’m not exactly in my best presentation. I usually come gift-wrapped in a package, with my tight leather pants that leave nothing to the imagination and my ripped shirt. Oh yeah. I do a lot of clothes ripping on stage to bare my torso with the magnificent faux phoenix tattoo on my back, marvelously etched with hidden meanings and secret symbolisms by the great Mephisto, tattoo artist extraordinaire, himself.

  But I’m not in my stage clothes right now. In fact, I’m in a janitor’s overalls. I’m pushing a mop with my hands and a bucket of dirty and soapy water threatens to slosh a little more over the edge each time the ship lists to one side – which is fairly often in these breakers. My usually glorious auburn hair, left to flow free and wild and untamed, is tied back into a subdued ponytail.

  Fuck!

  Let me count how many times I’ve said the word ‘fuck’ in the last five minutes.

  How I got to be in my present condition is a long story. And I do mean long – not to mention unjustifiable.

  I’ve got to get away from here.

  I can hear Rebecca’s voice as she comes closer.

  “And we have breakfast from six to ten thirty in Café Palais on the second deck. That’s right. You can choose your breakfast from a menu of American, Continental and Japanese.”

  The old biddy’s voice is considerably lower in decibels. In fact, she’s so old that I kind of expect her to slip through the cracks of the ship’s deck and fall into some boiler room. Do they still have boiler rooms here? I notice that she has some hearing aid attached to her ear that is probably malfunctioning, which may be the reason why Rebecca is practically shouting at the top of her voice to make herself heard.

  “A Japanese breakfast consists of rice, some seaweed and miso soup. Miso . . . it’s spelled M-I-S-O.” Rebecca enunciates each letter carefully. “I’m not sure what’s in it. Maybe you can ask the chef?”

  Shit.

  She’ll see me. I quickly turn my back on her and pretend to be extremely engaged with the mop. I make furious circles upon the deck. She can’t come too close because I have put up two ‘CAUTION: CLEANING IN PROGRESS’ signs at the periphery of the area I am supposed to clean. The wooden boards squeak with my vigorous cleansing. That part of the floor is going to be spotlessly shiny, I’ll bet.

  “No, I don’t think Japanese food will give you the runs, Mrs. Caldwell. Their food is known to be quite clean.” Pause. “Yes, it’s known to have quite a lot of MSG, but I don’t think MSG will give you the runs. If anything, it will make you thirsty.”

  Their footsteps come closer – the clickety-clack, clickety-clack of heels on hard flooring.

  Then:

  “Say, are you Kurt Taylor?” says an unfamiliar voice to my right.

  Oh no.

  I swivel around, mop trailing a splash on the deck. A boy of around fourteen is standing inside – not outside, mind you, but inside – my circumference of cleaning safety, and he’s tracking his shoes all over my clean floor. I don’t know whether or not to be more outraged about this or the fact he has blurted my name out to all and sundry.

  In particular, Rebecca Hall.

  The two women stop to stare at me.

  “Kurt Taylor?” says Rebecca in a funny voice.

  “No, I’m not Kurt Taylor,” I mumble.

  “You are Kurt Taylor,” the boy insists. “You were in that music video with Scarlett Johannson. She was kinda cool. You’re kinda cool too . . . but today, not so much. What are you doing mopping the floor on this cruise ship? Your latest album sunk or something?”

  Not good.

  Rebecca Hall approaches me with a funny look on her face. She is all fiery green eyes and red hair, just the way I remembered her. When was the last time I saw her? Four years back? During high school graduation? She probably went to college, unlike me.

  Gawd. She’s as pretty as ever. Pity I never liked her, and she never liked me either.

  “You are Kurt Taylor,” she says in a high-pitched, extremely angry voice. She has seen my face now. “I’d remember you anywhere.”

  I’d remember her anywhere too, though not for the usual reasons. I suppose everyone will know sooner or later why I am on this cruise ship doing menial duty. Mrs. Caldwell and the rest of them old biddies will see to that.

  I say to no one in particular, “OK, I’m Kurt Taylor. Big deal. So you’ve seen me.”

  The boy’s eyes go round. “Wow, this is so cool! Can you wait right here and I’ll run to my mother to get a magazine or somethin’ for you to autograph?”

  He dashes off. Thank God. I don’t need a gaggle of admirers surrounding me. Although Rebecca Hall wouldn’t exactly be considered one of my admirers by a long shot. Quite the opposite.

  Rebecca stomps right up to me without preamble.

  “Hey,” I say, “watch the floor. This is a no go zone.”

  “This is what I think of you.”

  Her eyes are flashing oh-so-prettily and her nostrils are flaring. There are two pink splotches on her cheeks, and she looks as healthy as a horse. She is a big girl too. Tall and large-boned and well-padded. I know I made her sound like a horse, but she isn’t really. I always found her rather attractive, even
though she’s a little on the plump side.

  Before I can say or do anything, she picks up my half-filled pail up and flings the dirty, soapy water all over my head.

  SPLASH!

  *

  Zzzzzzip.

  Rewind.

  How did I get into this mess in the first place?

  KURT

  I don’t want to talk about how I met Rebecca Hall right now. You would have to go back to high school to know our history together, and it isn’t what you think. We have never dated. We have never even made eyes at each other, except to roll them.

  No, my history with Rebecca Hall is far too complex and painful. It was back when I was another person – someone I didn’t want to be. I’m not that person anymore, and I’m not so sure I’m proud of myself for what I did back then. But I figured it was the right thing to do for me, you know.

  Rebecca obviously didn’t think so.

  I’d rather talk about how I got to become a rock star. Yup, that’s me. Kurt Taylor. Lead singer of the double platinum rock band, Red Velvet. They were already an established rock band on the scene for ten years, when their lead singer suddenly died of an OD.

  It was front page news. Atticus Ford, 29, was found in his bathtub, dead from an overdose.

  This was extremely sad and speculative news for everyone in the newspaper and tabloid reading world, of course, including their online permutations of TMZ and Deadline Hollywood. But for me, it was life-changing. Not because Red Velvet asked me to be their lead singer overnight.

  No way.

  I actually had to go through fifteen rounds of auditions to be in a reality TV show so that America’s rock audience can vote me in to be the next lead singer of Red Velvet – which is named after the cake, so I’ve been told.

  I didn’t even win the reality TV show, called American Rock Star, outright. Nope, I got second place. But karma would have it that the winner actually broke his spine right after the final show due to a tumble off a brand new Harley that he had bought immediately, and Red Velvet needed someone to cut a record and go on tour right away.

  So I was called in.

  I am lucky that way. At least, I was lucky then.

  All this happened during the year I was supposed to go to college. Now, I’m no valedictorian. I didn’t graduate with any honors, and my GPA was a measly 2.5. A college would be hard pressed to offer me anything but an athletic scholarship . . . for basketball, which I was fairly good at. But when this gig came up, I passed over the measly one offer I had for college, and headed to New York to become part of the velvety ensemble.

  I was famous overnight, and I didn’t do anything much except to strut onstage and win the audience over with my sex appeal.

  Believe me, I had – have – plenty of sex appeal.

  I have a good voice with a slight hoarseness to it, but the American audience apparently lapped it up, attributing sexiness to my mild throaty defect. I look really great in tight leather pants, especially when you see me onscreen or on YouTube, where my final song was downloaded over two hundred million times – thirty million more than the actual winner, who has a marvelous voice but lacks my body and considerable charm.

  So the next two years were filled with promotions and cutting records in studios (only no one really cuts vinyl records these days, it’s all gone digital now) and whirlwind tours and hiring a PA to tweet for us every day. I was the front man for the band. The sex idol. The face they put in front of Letterman and Conan O’ Brien and the scary quartet in ‘The View’.

  I was exhausted during those first two years, you can imagine.

  If you think a rock star is all sex and drugs and groupies, think again. In the first two years, I was trying to make my mark, and so I had very little energy left for sex. I didn’t want to warp my head in drugs, and neither did the band members. They very soberly and wisely remembered what happened to Atticus Ford, whom the fans were already deeming irreplaceable.

  And so I had to prove myself to the band and the diehard fans at large who were intent on hating me for the simple reason that I was not Atticus Ford.

  OK, they cited a whole lot of other reasons for hating me:

  I was not even as talented as Atticus Ford’s little finger

  The slight hoarseness in my vocals were better suited to a country ballad singer than a rock star

  If I thought I could make up for my lack of talent with a whole lot of gyrations onstage and sex moves, think again. I was not Atticus Ford and I didn’t even have a modicum of the man’s charisma.

  (OK. I geddit. I’m not Atticus Ford.)

  (You should see the amount of hate comments I got on my official video channel on YouTube.)

  So I had to work doubly hard just to make the grade. I could honestly say no one worked as hard as I did in the band. I learned new dance moves, and practiced them until they were perfect. I took singing lessons from an ex-opera singer who now suffered from morbid obesity.

  I hired the most expensive choreographer in the business to make sure I looked good on stage and on our music videos. It was easier for the other band members. They played drums and acoustic guitars respectively, while an orchestra supported us in the background. I had no instrument to croon with and fondle.

  And so, unlike Atticus Ford, who largely jumped up and down the stage and seized everyone’s attention with his sheer charisma, I improvised with dancing.

  Naturally, the haters were on to me again.

  They said:

  I couldn’t dance

  I couldn’t dance to save Atticus Ford’s life, and that was why he was still dead and not spotted in Vegas like so many dead celebrities

  I should just stop trying to be Atticus Ford, because I was never going to replace him.

  But I wasn’t trying to replace Atticus Ford. I was just trying to carve out my own identity and my own niche. My manager told me I should grow a skin thicker than the bark of a rainforest tree, and I should just stop reading my YouTube comments.

  It was harder than weaning myself off Candy Crush, which I played during our tour downtime hours.

  Anyhow, the haters didn’t stop me from trying harder to prove myself. I studied the art of music and took my turns at writing songs for Red Velvet. Two of those songs were rock ballads with an Eagles tunesy country rock tone to them, and they became Top 10 Billboard hits. One even stayed in the Top 100 for 34 weeks. Another one was a Queen cover I did – ‘It’s a Kind of Magic’. That shot to No. 1 and stayed there for two weeks.

  The haters were silenced. I could do it on my own.

  So all that took four years. And during the last two years, after I had my own hit with a song that was penned my own hands, both music and lyrics, I let myself indulge a bit.

  Oh yeah.

  I didn’t swear off sex indefinitely.

  I merely took a hiatus.

  REBECCA

  Kurt Taylor!

  I don’t believe he’s here!

  I don’t believe how I am thinking about him in exclamation marks!

  I am a tempestuous, impetuous person, and my blood was boiling over in a quick simmer – like a kettle spilling over – when I threw the pail of dirty water at his face. I remember that face well. That deceptively handsome face, with his mouth twisted in a sneer whenever he favored me with a glance. Or sometimes he would give me a quizzical look, as if he couldn’t make up his mind where I stood with him.

  Well, he certainly got the brunt of my anger. And he deserved every bit of it.

  I hate him.

  (There, I actually said it without an exclamation mark.)

  I hate, hate, hate, detest, loathe Kurt Taylor, and I wished the earth – or in this case, the ship’s deck – would just open up a hole and swallow him.

  The reason why I hate him so much makes me heartsick. Every time I think of it, a knife twists in my chest, and a burning pain spreads down to my gut and up my throat, flooding my brain with things I’d rather not think about.

  Kurt Taylor stands
there on the sun deck of the Princess Alexandria, staring at me. His jaw has dropped, and his hair is plastered on his forehead in wet, straggly strands. He always did have the most marvelous hair, which he keeps long, even in high school. I envied him that hair, especially since mine is mostly unmanageable without a ton of mousse.

  His hair.

  I mustn’t think of his hair. There was many a time in high school that I caught myself staring at that hair. In some classes, I sat behind him, and I was staring at his glossy auburn looks, which are slightly wavy at the back. At that time, it was shoulder-length. Even then, I had the compulsion to twine my fingers around it, just to see how silky it felt.

  Now, his hair is longer than shoulder-length, but he ties it up with a band into a ponytail.

  Mrs. Caldwell next to me says “Wow!” in that excitable, whispery voice of hers. Her eyes sparkle as brightly as her cataracts would allow.

  “You got him good!” crows the kid who has come onto the scene. He’s the one responsible for me recognizing Kurt Taylor. So I owe him one. Or not, depending on how you look at it.

  I drop the now empty pail onto the deck beside me. It strikes the floor with a clatter. My chest is heaving and my arms ache from lifting that heavy load.

  The kid turns to Kurt Taylor.

  “Aren’t you gonna hit her with that mop?” he demands gleefully.

  Kurt Taylor doesn’t acknowledge the kid’s advice, thank goodness.

  Instead, he closes his mouth, probably because soapy water is running down his face and hair and getting into it. The front and shoulders of his shirt is completely drenched. He is wearing some plain blue overalls which remind me of the kind our high school janitors used to don.