Let it Burn: Sons of Sinners Part 2 (A Rock Star Romance) Read online

  Table of Contents

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

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  LET IT BURN

  Sons of Sinners Part 2

  Grace James

  © 2017 Grace James.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental. Some real locations or well-known buildings have been used to enhance the (fictitious) story-line but, where that is the case, the events that take place and the characters that inhabit said locales are purely fictitious. All opinions expressed in this novel are the opinions of the (entirely fictitious) characters and are not to be confused with the opinions of the (entirely real) author.

  Contact:

  [email protected],

  Cover by Addendum Designs.

  CONTENTS:

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

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  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This is the second book in the series. If you haven’t already read Sons of Sinners Part 1: Fight the Spark, I strongly recommend that you do so before you read this book!

  You can get a copy here:

  Sons of Sinners Part 1: Fight the Spark

  1

  He was trouble.

  I knew that from the start.

  He was one of those people who could never feel alive unless he was balanced on the edge of a blade, daring the devil to take him.

  Wild.

  Exciting.

  Totally untamable.

  He was the first guy that I ever truly cared about; the first guy to ever give me butterflies in my stomach; the first guy that could bring my body alive, just with the brush of his skin on mine –

  Connor Maxwell.

  I had a lot of firsts with him, but they weren’t all the good kind. In fact, a lot of them were pretty horrible. By far the worst ‘first’ I had with him was my first real taste of loss. And I don’t mean we broke up and I ‘lost’ him – although that did happen.

  No, I mean that we all lost him.

  For good.

  He was twenty-one, with his whole life ahead of him. His band, Sons of Sinners, was just months away from major success. And he died of a drug overdose in a dive bar in Las Vegas.

  My most terrible confession?

  Losing Connor wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to me.

  Because, by the time he died, my heart already belonged to someone else –

  Blake Maxwell.

  Connor’s older cousin.

  If we’re talking ‘firsts’, he really was it.

  My first love. The first man I ever truly trusted. The first and only man who ever had the power to completely destroy me.

  And he did.

  He walked out on me in the dead of night, just a few hours after Connor’s funeral, leaving behind nothing more than an eight-word copout note.

  He left Las Vegas the very next day and moved to Los Angeles with what remained of the band. He never contacted me. He cut me out of his life the way you would cut a tumor from a cancer patient – ruthlessly and without remorse.

  Then he went out and achieved his dream.

  He became a Rock Star.

  Sons of Sinners became the biggest selling rock band in the US – possibly the world. Platinum albums. World tours. Money. Fame. Women.

  And, through all of their success, Blake never once came back home.

  He made it abundantly clear that Las Vegas, and everyone in it, was nothing more than a prelude he’d rather forget.

  So, what do you do when the man you gave your heart to turns around and throws it back at you?

  You move on.

  What else is there to do?

  It took a long time, but I learned to be happy again. I was lucky enough to have great friends. I had a job that I loved and an apartment of my own. I dated. My life was good.

  So, of course, that’s when he decided to come back.

  2

  I threw my purse onto the battered leather couch in the corner of my office and took a sip of my iced latte, then I walked around my desk to open the blinds and crack the windows. The breeze that made it inside waged a poor counter attack on the late summer heat that invaded the building. The air-conditioning was ancient and temperamental, and I could hear clunks and stutters as it c
hoked on the desert dust and God knows what else that was slowly killing it. We didn’t have the money to fix it. Not this month.

  The Academy was an old art deco building, a former movie theatre, with a mixture of red brick and white columns making up the exterior. It looked old-school grand from outside, but that was offset by traditional-meets-cool-and-grungy inside. It was the perfect live music venue in my eyes; intimate and atmospheric.

  I set my cup on the desk and gathered my long, blond hair up into a messy knot on the top of my head. Connecting my phone to the speaker that sat on my desk, I started up my Work playlist. The office filled with a rocking guitar riff that was under my skin in seconds – the band were called Serotonin and they were local, up and coming, and had an original sound. I knew they’d go down well when they played my venue that night.

  I say ‘my venue’ – technically it wasn’t mine, but I ran it. And I thought of it as mine, so maybe that’s the same thing?

  Plopping down on my chair, I turned on my laptop, going straight for my emails. Running a music venue meant that I had to communicate with bands, managers and promoters almost non-stop, along with organizing the day to day running of the place.

  I was busy, but good busy – and I loved it.

  I had worked at The Academy for almost two years by that point, since I was a senior at UNLV. At first, it was just a part time bar job. The music store that I worked at before that, Realm Records, went out of business (it finally succumbed to Death by Musical Download) and I wanted to do something else related to music. A live music venue was perfect for me. You get to see bands for free while you’re working – what’s not to like?

  I didn’t work at The Academy for long before I realized that I could run the place better than Harvey, the guy who owned it.

  That came across a lot more big-headed than I meant it to.

  In my defense, I say it with love and Harvey would have agreed.

  Over the couple of years that we had been working together, he had become like a big brother to me. A slightly distracted, not completely competent big brother who you constantly have to check up on in case he electrocutes himself making toast. But, all that aside, he was completely in love with music. An unapologetic music nerd. Owning a music venue was his dream, something he had put into action when he inherited a huge chunk of cash on the death of his richer-than-hell grandmother and bought the run-down theatre that would become The Academy.

  The only problem was that he had absolutely no business sense.

  But that’s where I came in. I got my Bachelors in Business Administration from UNLV, so the business side was appealing to me and something that I was good at.

  I’m not saying we didn’t make mistakes – Harvey was only a few years older than me, and neither of us had ever run a business before – but we both had passion for what we were doing, and the end result was a music venue in the heart of Las Vegas that was just starting to thrive. We were almost at the point where we could start putting a little money back into the building to make improvements, rather than only managing to cover costs. Terms like ‘gross profit’ were starting to be mentioned in hushed voices – neither me or Harvey dared to actually say it out loud yet in case we jinxed it.

  I was immersed in my work, my latte long forgotten, when Hayley practically bounded into my office with a cardboard tray containing more take-out coffee, her long auburn hair bouncing along behind her in a high pony tail. As always, her happy go-lucky energy made my already good mood even brighter. Although we no longer worked together at Realm Records, she had remained one of my best friends.

  “My God, I love you,” I said on a sigh when she offered me a steaming cup; the sunlight streaming through the window glinted off the giant rock on her ring finger as she did so, making me squint a little.

  Yep, that’s right, she and Derren got engaged. Obviously. I mean, outside of a Disney movie, I don’t think there’s a couple more suited in the world than those two.

  Hayley cocked an eyebrow at my old, discarded coffee. “I’m going to start giving you this stuff intravenously, it’d save time.”

  I took a sip from my new cup and then leant back in my chair, sighing in satisfaction. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “Shouldn’t you be planning a wedding?”

  Since Derren asked Hayley to marry him seven months before, in front of an audience of thousands at the beginning of Sons of Sinners’ latest world tour, she had lived and breathed all things wedding.

  It was going to be epic.

  They had decided to get married on a secluded cliff top overlooking the Grand Canyon, in a spot close to Grand Canyon Village in Arizona, followed by a reception that sounded more extravagant than anything I’ve ever seen on any of those Most Expensive Celebrity Weddings of All Time shows that appear on TMZ or MTV.

  When Hayley let slip a few weeks before that the flowers were going to cost over a hundred thousand dollars, I nearly had a heart attack. I didn’t even know it was possible to spend that kind of money on flowers. Turns out they could’ve spent more, but Hayley didn’t want to ‘go overboard’.

  The thing about Hayley was, unless you knew she was marrying a millionaire, you would never guess. She hadn’t let the fact that she was now engaged to a mega-rich guitarist, who was one fourth of the most sought after rock band in the world, change her at all. She was still just her – super-friendly, more-energy-than-is-strictly-needed, funny, down-to-earth Hayley…who was right then scrunching up her face.

  “Ugh, I’m having a day off. The seating plan for the reception is starting to give me palpitations. You’d think Derren’s mom and dad could sit within spitting distance of each other this one time, at their son’s wedding, wouldn’t you? But nooooo, that’d be too easy!” She sighed. “Why can’t people just put aside their differences for one day?”

  I took a sip of my coffee as a flush of guilt coursed through me. I knew that Derren’s parents weren’t the only problem with the arrangements.

  Blake and I were a pretty glaring problem, too.

  Because, since he left Vegas three years ago, we had never seen each other; never spoken on the phone; never even sent so much as a text message…and now we were both going to be in Hayley and Derren’s wedding in seven weeks’ time.

  What made it even more awkward was the fact that I was the Maid of Honor and he was the Best Man. So, technically, we were supposed to walk down the aisle together and then sit within a few feet of each other at the reception.

  Honestly, I wanted to throw up every time I thought about it.

  I’d been trying to mentally prepare myself for months for the moment I’d have to come face to face with him again. I must have come up with a hundred laid-back, totally blasé comments (and, okay, I’ll admit it, a million tear-him-a-new-one put-downs) in preparation for when I finally had to talk to him again. I just hoped I’d remember at least a couple of them when the time came.

  “Hayls,” I started, “you do know you don’t have to worry about me and Blake, don’t you? Don’t change a thing for me, okay?”

  Her face softened. “Oh, God, I know. I wasn’t saying that to make you feel bad.” She walked around the desk and perched on the edge, just next to where I was still sitting on my chair. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable. I don’t mind making some changes for –”

  I cut her off quickly, “Please don’t worry about that. Not on your special day. I can be in the same room as him for a few hours. It won’t kill me. What happened between us is way back in the past. I’m over it.”

  I pretended I didn’t see the look of incredulity on her face as she said, “Okay, if you’re sure? It would make it simpler…”

  “I am,” I assured her, then quickly changed the subject before I had to actually contemplate what I’d just agreed to. Walking down the aisle with Blake? What was I thinking? Annnnd, cue nausea. “So, do you have Derren doing a bunch of wedding prep now he’s back?” I asked, pushing all of that down.

  Hayley laughed. “Yea
h, some. But he’s still pretty beat from the tour.”

  Derren had only just returned to Las Vegas a week before, after having toured with the band ever since the proposal. Hayley had been with him for some of it, flying out now and then to spend a few weeks on the road before coming back to Vegas to “live like a normal person for a while”. Then, when she missed him too much, she’d fly back out and meet the tour again.

  Her smile stretched as she continued with, “I watched him sleep for, like, twenty minutes this morning. How pathetic is that?”

  I grinned. “It’s not pathetic at all.”

  “It totally is, but thanks.” She laughed again. “Anyway, he’s gonna start writing for the new album today, so I thought I’d come finish the Wall of Fame. I’m still not a hundred percent happy with Connor. Something about his eyes isn’t right yet. Come look?”

  I nodded as I picked up my latte and followed her out of the room. I’d noticed that her hourglass figure was hidden under an old denim shirt that was covered with every different color of paint splatter you could conceive of. A former art major at UNLV, Hayley was now a full-time artist. She was regularly commissioned for big bucks to paint portraits. Most of them were music related in some way; her paintings of Derren and the other Sons of Sinners guys had even made it into magazines and a couple had made thousands at charity auctions. Luckily, she’d loaned out her talents to me for bargain basement prices (as in free) and she’d almost finished painting a huge mural in the main room of The Academy. She’d filled it with portraits of the most legendary bands in history, all merging together to create a vast multitude of rock-royalty. Singers hollered, guitars thrashed, drums hammered. The artwork was a tribute to rock; you could almost hear the music as you looked at it.

  On the part of the wall nearest to the stage, the image of Sons of Sinners dominated the view. The four members of the band were represented perfectly, down to the last detail. It looked more like a photograph than a painting.

  Although Connor was no longer with them, when Hayley painted the band, she had included him rather than Danny, the drummer who had replaced him. We’d both agreed that it didn’t feel right not to put Connor in the painting. Las Vegas was his city after all. He deserved to be a part of its musical legacy.

  “You really are amazing,” I said to her as we stood together, leaning against the bar and sipping our coffees, studying the mural.