Hey everyone! I am so happy to announce that Rock God, Hearts of Metal Book 3 is out in the wild! Here is the blurb!
THEY’RE EVERYTHING
THEY DON’T KNOW THE OTHER NEEDS
HE’S THE BEST THERE IS
Dante Deity is revered by everyone who knows anything
about heavy metal music, and he’s respected by everyone else. Rich, handsome,
and successful, he has a voice like velvet-wrapped lightning and an ability to
juggle numerous philanthropic ventures and still crank out hits. When he’s on
tour, music is his life. When he’s taking a break, he’s thinking about his next
tour—or working on a project that helps him forget he’s alone. In front of him
lies his next endeavor.
SHE’S READY TO BE MORE
Shayna Gray is fleeing her past. Tragedy, infidelity,
heartbreak: the twenty-five year old has suffered it all. She was strong enough
to run, however, like a spunky heroine from one of her novels, and soon she’ll
be flying…just as soon as she can walk again. But this time, she has help.
Unlike her abusive ex-husband or her bullying mother, the man standing before
her is determined she succeed. In fact, Dante commands it. But while his
intensity and generosity can easily win her heart, to gain her trust a man must
first prove she’s something worth worshipping. Even—or especially—a rock god.
You can get it on:
Writing about a romance author and a rock star was a ton of fun!
And here's an excerpt for you to check out!
Dante and his band were nearing the tour bus
when he heard a scream. The terror and desperation of the voice made his
hackles rise. Whoever had made the sound was close. Really close.
His bandmates and the band security guards
paused then quickened their steps toward the bus. Dante shook his head. That
just wouldn’t do.
He headed around the corner of the building.
“What’re you doing, man?” one of the security
guards demanded.
“Hey, the bus is the other way,” Zander, his
drummer, called out.
Dante ignored them and came upon a sight
right out of an action movie. Two thugs decked out in gold chains and
basketball jerseys were advancing upon what at first looked like a little girl,
but as she scrambled to her feet and wiped the blood from her chin, rage
glinting in her dark eyes, he saw that she was a full-grown woman.
Fury welled up in Dante’s chest. Whatever was
happening here, it definitely wasn’t cool.
“Hey, assholes!” he yelled. “Leave her
alone!”
The girl’s attackers glared at him, and Dante
suddenly felt silly. This wasn’t an action movie. He wasn’t a superhero or a
martial arts expert. As a lead singer, he didn’t even have a guitar to hit them
with. His microphone stand might come in handy, but it was in the truck with
the rest of the gear.
At least his interruption had helped. While
the thugs were gaping at him, the woman took advantage of their distraction.
Dark eyes blazing, she swung her backpack and struck the closest guy upside the
head. There was a loud clunk and the
guy went down. Whatever was in there must be hard.
Dante started forward again, and the other
attacker’s eyes widened before he fled. A surge of triumph washed over Dante,
but then he saw that the security guards and his band had come onto the scene
behind him.
“If they’d been armed, I’d have sued for
hazard pay,” one of them growled.
Julian grunted. “Get over yourself. This is
your job.”
At the sight of the approaching muscle, the
other thug got to his feet and ran away. The woman limped toward Dante and the
others, panting with exhaustion, her chin bleeding.
“Thanks for saving me,” she gasped.
“No problem,” Alex replied, as if he were
responsible.
Dante rolled his eyes at his guitarist and
placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder, ignoring the reek of dirt and old sweat
emanating from her. Clearly she hadn’t had a bath in some time. “Are you
alright?”
She looked up at him with rich brown eyes
shadowed with dark circles of pain and fatigue…and something else: a drowning
grief that seemed to spear his soul.
“I’m fine,” she said in a hollow voice.
She didn’t look fine. Her cheeks were ashen,
and her large dark eyes were glazed and heavy-lidded with blatant exhaustion.
Not drugs, though. He’d seen enough of that to recognize the symptoms. No, this
looked more like he might after a week in the studio, with constant work and no
sleep. What had she done to put herself in that state?
As Dante scrutinized her, the woman babbled
on. “Did you guys enjoy the concert? I could hear it from out here. The band
sounded great.”
She thought they were just concertgoers.
Dante exchanged amused looks with his bandmates.
“It was a good show,” he agreed, hiding a
smile. “Hey, do you need a—?”
“Could you tell me where the nearest homeless
shelter is?” she interrupted. “It’s raining and…” Her eyes rolled up into her
head and she collapsed. He just barely caught her.
“Oh, that’s just great,” Zander groaned.
“She’s a bum. Put her down, Dante, before you catch something.”
“Fuck you,” he replied to the drummer,
lifting her fully into his arms. For some reason she didn’t strike him as a
bum, despite her grimy hair and filthy clothes… Something about her cried out
that recent circumstances had put her in this state. “I was gonna offer her a
ride anyway. The least we can do is take her to a shelter. Can one of you guys
grab her backpack?”
Once he had her settled upon a plush bench
seat on the bus, Dante tried to wake her up, but she just mumbled and her head
lolled to the side. He quickly realized that a shelter wasn’t the best option.
Her forehead burned with fever, and her shoes, or what was left of them, were
stained with fresh blood. He removed them as gently as possible, which was
difficult as her feet were swollen. The remains of her bloody socks came off
easier, revealing broken, bleeding blisters. He cringed from both their rancid
smell and her whimpers of pain.
Zander drew back. “God, that smells!”
“Shut up and look at this,” Dante growled,
though his drummer had a point about the odor. His own eyes were watering. “She
needs to go to the hospital.”
Rising from his bench, he repeated that edict
to the driver. When he returned, Alex breathed, “Jesus. What happened to her?”
“I don’t know,” Dante said, just as impatient
to get answers. Had she escaped some psycho kidnapper? Gotten high on something
and wandered through the desert? Run away from an abusive husband…?
“Get a cold cloth or something. Maybe we can
revive her and she’ll tell us.” He gently shifted the woman on the seat so that
her head was in his lap. Her hair was so grungy that it had started to form
dreadlocks, but at least it didn’t smell as bad as her feet. Then he had
another thought. “And we should probably check her backpack and see if she has
any ID.”
As he reached for the backpack, Dante
realized just how fascinated he was with this woman. This sudden mission to aid
her had chased away the ennui that always crept up on him between tours and
recordings. Helping this poor lady would be a new project, albeit a brief one:
only a few hours tops. That was probably for the best, though, as it would be
quite a bit more intensive than fostering cats.
Careful not to jar the woman, he opened her
backpack. “Jackpot,” he said cheerfully to the others. “There’s a laptop. She’s
no vagrant.”
Dom carefully pulled out the laptop and
opened it. “No good,” he said. “The screen’s busted, and the case is cracked
from bashing that son of a bitch’s head in. And, how do we know she didn’t
steal it?”
Dante sighed. “Good point.”
He rummaged through the rest of the backpack,
taking out dirty clothes, a power cord and a makeup bag that contained no
makeup but several flash drives. It was a shame the computer was broken. There
was likely tons of information on each.
He looked around. “Any of you have a laptop
handy?”
The others shook their heads.
In the backpack, Dante’s hand lingered on a
small powder blue blanket adorned with teddy bears. Unlike everything else, it
was relatively clean. Why this and not something more practical? Shrugging, he
shoved the rest of the stuff back in the bag. Then he felt a hard lump inside a
shirt.
“Bingo,” he said, pulling out a wallet.
The face on the driver’s license matched that
of the comatose woman—well, sort of. The Oregon resident, class-D driver Shayna
Jones, age twenty-five, looked like an airbrushed model compared to the filthy,
banged-up lady on his lap. Only the dark eyes, height of five-two, and cute,
upturned nose confirmed that they were one and the same person.
His gaze lingered on her picture for a while
before he went through the rest of the wallet. There were an insurance card, a
bank card, a Portland library card, and some grocery store cards. That was it.
No cash, receipts, or family photos. In fact, the little photo sleeve was
reduced to a dangling scrap of clear plastic like it had been torn out…
Actually, a picture hid there in a rear slot.
Dante slipped it carefully free, frowning as he realized it was ripped in half.
Shayna smiled back at him, holding a newborn baby that was all dimples and
eyes. A man’s hand gripped her shoulder, but the rest of his image had been
torn away.
Was that
who she was running from? Where was the baby?
Dante frowned as he put the wallet in his
pocket. The library card looked fairly new, so she couldn’t have been away from
home too long.
Julian handed him a wet cloth, and Dante
gently placed it on Shayna’s forehead. She gave no response, but at least she
was breathing.
Carefully, Dante cleaned the dirt off her
face, delicately blotting at the raw wound on her chin. Her brows tightened and
her breath hitched, but she still did not awaken.
The bus lurched to a stop in front of the ER
building at the hospital. “We’re here,” the driver called.
“I’ll take her in and get a cab afterwards,”
Dante said as he slung her backpack over his shoulder. He lifted Shayna,
frowning again at her lightness. Between the workouts he got onstage and
regular swimming, he was fairly fit, but holding her was too easy. It didn’t
take a rocket scientist to figure out that she’d missed too many meals.
“You mean, you’re not just gonna drop her
off?” Dom asked incredulously.
Dante shook his head. “I want to make sure
she’s okay.”
The keyboardist looked bemused.
“White-knighting again? You’ll still show up at the after-party, though,
right?”
“I don’t know,” Dante said. “Maybe.”
The inanity of it all made his head hurt.
Here they were talking about a party when there was an unconscious and bleeding
woman in his arms. Yes, this was Sacramento, and yes, comatose people,
violence, and drug overdoses were regular sights in the world of heavy metal,
but still, the coldness of his bandmates disturbed him. Had they all become so
jaded?
At first, the ER staff were indifferent to
him and his charge. Besides the usual gunshot wounds being a higher priority,
Dante looked liked a miscreant with his long hair and stage attire of leather
and chains. But then other people with less pressing issues seemed like they
were being helped.
With a frustrated groan, Dante glared at the
woman behind the counter who’d handed him a form he’d barely been able to fill
out. “How much longer are we going to have to wait?”
“Sorry, sir,” she replied. “We need to check
on her insurance before we can put her in the queue. It won’t be much longer.”
Dante sighed. He didn’t do this often, but…
“Do you know who I am?”
“No, sir.”
Just then, the other receptionist hung up the
phone, looked at him, and gasped. “Oh my God, you’re Dante Deity!”
The first receptionist frowned. “Who’s Dante
Deedy?”
The second rolled her eyes. “Only the king of
metal. He was on the cover of Rolling Stone last month. We can’t keep his
friend waiting. Do you have any idea how much money he donated to this hospital
last year?”
The first receptionist shrugged. “Don’t know
him. I just listen to pop.”
“Oh. Well, he’s the guy who married Coll—”
Dante sighed. “Forget about what I said. It’s
not important. Shouldn’t you be attending to this young woman, regardless of
whether her insurance is valid?”
“Exactly. It’s our jobs,” the second
receptionist said, nodding while the first paged a nurse. Then she looked up at
him. “Can I have your autograph?”
As Shayna was wheeled off to be treated,
Dante signed autographs for both receptionists—and for a few of the other
waiting patients who knew him. He should have left then, but something
compelled him to stay and make sure she was well taken care of. To talk to her
and maybe hear in her own words what had happened. And to find out who she was.
For some reason, that seemed imperative.
For
the next few hours he flipped through magazines and even managed to doze in the
uncomfortable ER seat. A nurse awoke him with a gentle tap to the shoulder.
“She’s awake, and she wants to thank you.”
“How is she?” Dante asked.
The nurse frowned at him over her clipboard.
“I’m afraid I cannot disclose medical information without the patient’s
consent, but you can ask Shayna.”
Dante rose and followed the nurse. He stopped
her just outside of the hospital room. “What are you going to do with her now?”
The nurse shook her head. “If she’s homeless,
as you suspect, we’ll have to direct her to a shelter, but what she really
needs is at least a week of rest and plenty of food and fluids. And that is all I’m allowed to say unless she gives
me permission to tell you more.”
“I’ll take her home with me.”
The words were out of Dante’s mouth before he
thought. But, once he spoke, conviction filled his pores.
A person to rescue, something broken to fix,
a mystery to solve.
“That is beyond kind of you,” the nurse
replied with wide eyes. “But it will have to be up to the patient.”
Dante nodded. “I guess I’ll just have to
convince her.”
