Free The Rock Star Next Door #1 by Starla Cole Page A

his head, waiting out the drum solo. His pants were so damn tight, she could see muscles bulging as he moved. He probably had a thousand girls throwing themselves at him now. He hadn’t even been with one yet when she lived at home. Their mothers had been friends, so she knew these things.
    She glanced at the girls near her, all screaming and holding out their arms for him. Jesus. This was sort of bizarre. He had come to her once, when he was sixteen and she was nineteen, on a rare visit home from college. He was upset over some girl who wouldn’t go out with him. Jewel had told him then the right one would come along. To just be patient. He didn’t have to wait anymore. He had his pick.
    One of the guys near her caught sight of the laminated all-access pass around her neck. “Two hundred dollars for that,” he yelled over the music.
    Jewel clutched it and shook her head. She stuffed it down her shirt. Imagine. Someone paying to go see this pipsqueak who used to pee in her mother’s rosebushes. She wanted to laugh out loud.
    Rage caught her eye several times as he sang the next several numbers, as if to make sure she was there. Jewel smiled and waved although truth be told, her overseas flight and mad dash through the airport to find the driver Rage had sent were catching up with her.
    During a bass solo, Rage walked off stage for a moment. Not long after he returned and started singing again, a beefy security guard came up to her. “I’m to escort you back now,” he said.
    Jewel nodded and followed the man. As much as she loved watching Rage sing, she was ready to sit down somewhere. I’m an old lady at twenty-two, she thought.
    The guard walked her through the chains at the sides of the stage, beyond the reveling fans, and they followed a corridor until the sounds of the concert were a dull echo.
    He opened a metal door. “You can wait here in Rage's dressing room. Help yourself.”
    A buffet table full of food was like a mirage. Jewel hadn’t eaten in fourteen hours, at least nothing more than the crackers and cheese the flight attendants had passed out, having waved off the unsightly chicken dinner they’d tried to foist on her.
    She grabbed a plate and piled on fruit and bread and veggies and dip. She sank onto a corduroy sofa and ate greedily. The concert was piped in and she heard Rage saying good night. They’d do at least one encore, she figured, so she had time to eat a little and locate a bathroom.
    And, apparently, wait to find out why Rage was so hot to have her fly all the way from London to California to attend his concert.

2. Rage: Fate

    Rage snatched a towel from a roadie whose name he couldn’t remember — this was all so damn new — and led the band down the back hall. He hadn’t planned on a second encore but Metal and Crash were so pumped, jacked sky high on adrenaline and no telling what else.
    Now he had to meet the press and no more got halfway down the corridor when lights started popping. He smiled and raised his arms in the air, flashing what he assumed was a suitable rock ’n roll look.
    “Stop! Right there!” A super hot photographer in tiny jean shorts and a halter top dragged a camera to her face. She clicked a few more times and then pulled the lens away to wink at him over bright red lips, her honey blond hair pulled into two tight spriggy ponytails.
    He’d never seen a photographer who looked like THAT. Normally he might have stopped to give her some attention, but not tonight. He was anxious, both for the press, and the reviews, and for Jewel, who he knew was waiting for him somewhere in this rat maze. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought her yet, not the first night, but he’d wanted her. He needed the edge seeing her would give him.
    Rage waved at the girl and moved on down to the Green Room, still thinking of his old neighbor. He’d thought she wasn’t going to make it when her chair stayed empty as the opening band finished up. He’d managed to crank up the energy