Southern Rocker Showdown Read online

  But she couldn’t stop thinking about the song. When she mentioned it to Imogene and the stern vocal coach had nothing bad to say about it, Lacy realized that she had to meet this challenge if she wanted to connect with her audience.

  These were her thoughts, her dreams and her regrets.

  Jonah was torn between “Need You Tonight” and “Faith.” He wanted to send a message, too. But he also had an image to maintain. He was gaining popularity every single week thanks to his sex god persona. Girls began to gather at the studio entrance just to get a glimpse of him as he rode in for work each day.

  Sydney channeled Debbie Gibson, while Courtney opted for an inspirational Michael Jackson anthem.

  It seemed as if every contestant was willing to step outside of their box that week. All except for Harper, who dug her heels in and chose a Mariah Carey song, even though she didn’t have the chops to pull it off.

  It became clear over the course of the week that she planned to compensate for that by playing to her strengths. She barely legal and barely clothed… and barely sang as she sashayed all over the stage with impressive dance moves meant to make up for any other inadequacies.

  Penelope Crane, the house gossip, had a field day with that, trying to spread dissention among the remaining contestants by ripping a wannabe like Harper to shreds.

  They nearly came to blows Sunday night in the spacious living room. Everyone was exhausted after four days of intense rehearsals. Since it was the last week of quarterfinals, everyone was determined to make it into the final sixteen. With every week they stayed, even more was on the line. There was no good time to leave the show, naturally. But some weeks mattered more than others. Making it to the semifinals meant they were all one step closer to making the final twelve, who ultimately toured the country and got a heck of a payday for doing so.

  So no one took any time off. They rehearsed every spare minute of the day. Harper was in the corner, working through her routine, and Penelope made the comment that it really didn’t matter how well she danced since she was going to blow the vocal anyway.

  Harper was dripping sweat as she spun around to face the older brunette. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means go back to Jersey, that’s what it means.”

  Penelope’s tone was cool, but Harper’s response was not. “I’ll go back to Jersey when I’m good and goddamned ready to go back to Jersey. And I guarantee it’ll be long after they send your ass home.”

  “Talk to me on Wednesday,” Penelope shot back. “Oh wait. You won’t be able to. You won’t be here.”

  Harper advanced on her but Tony Paul was quick to grab her around her tiny waist and lift her away from the older woman. “Come on now. You want to get kicked out of the show because of her?”

  Lacy watched as Tony Paul defused the situation, guiding Harper outside of the house before she could tear into Penelope with her perfectly manicured nails. Penelope, however, hadn’t even bothered to move. “Some people just can’t stand the truth,” she commented to no one in particular.

  Later Lacy found Tony Paul sitting alone in the grass, facing the Los Angeles skyline. She had gone out to take advantage of the hot tub, since every muscle she had was aching from learning their new dance number. She spotted him and turned right back around.

  “You don’t have to leave,” he said quietly.

  She turned back to face him. “What are you doing?” she asked, in spite of herself.

  He stood. “Meditating. I still think it’s crap, but I figured what the hell? It’s a lot better to be out here where it’s quiet.” He glanced her over. She was wearing a bathing suit and had wrapped herself in a big, fluffy towel. “But if you want some alone time, I get it.”

  This time when he started past her, she was the first to comment. “What you did in there tonight,” she started. What was she trying to say? “It was decent,” she finally said.

  He chuckled. “Surprised?”

  “Yes,” she answered at once.

  He sighed. “I just get her, that’s all. I know what it’s like to make a permanent decision based on temporary emotions.”

  She averted her gaze. There was no way she could stand it if he brought up Cody. “Well. It was nice. I guess that’s all I wanted to say.”

  He shrugged away the compliment. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not like she’s going to win.”

  Her brow furrowed as she stared up at him. “Why do you say that?”

  “She’s the weakest female contestant,” he said simply. “Besides,” he added softly, “you’re the one to beat this season.” She was speechless as he left her alone in the yard.

  “He doesn’t know when to quit, does he?”

  She turned to find Jonah standing behind her in the shadows, having just returned from the studio. “So it would seem,” she said before she headed to the hot tub.

  He followed her. “I just wanted to say good luck tomorrow. I’ve heard the rehearsals. I think you’re going to blow everyone away.”

  “Ditto,” she said as she looked him over. A soft, knit shirt stretched over his amazing chest, while his jeans hugged him closely. It was no longer sex on display. She found this only made him hotter. He had truly transformed into a stud. He was confident. He had swagger. And she knew damned well he had the goods to back it all up. It took all of her willpower not to throw herself into those powerful arms.

  He smiled, which only made it worse. “I get to go out there and have fun. You’re the one with something important to say. I hope he hears it,” he added.

  She chortled. “Yeah, I don’t really have luck in that department,” she said. “They never hear because they were never listening.”

  His voice was husky. “Their loss.” A moment stretched on between them as they said nothing at all. When he turned to leave, she said, “Good luck this week.”

  He turned back, stared at her for a moment and then nodded. He left her alone, afraid to destroy the one moment of friendship they had shared in the house.

  But as he headed upstairs, his hope was renewed that they could salvage something between them.

  He dreamed about her all night long, never knowing that just down the hall, she dreamed of him too.

  On Monday night, Harper went first. She had all the confidence in the world as she walked out on stage. She wore a short skirt and thigh-high boots, along with a shirt tied in the front. She opted for pigtails, despite her full makeup. She looked like the perfect blend of innocence and sensuality. Her strategy probably would have worked had she not blown the epic note at the end of the song, which shattered her voice just like a plate glass window. The judges weren’t forgiving, suggesting that she should have focused more on her vocals than her dancing. Allison was the hardest on her, practically raking her over the coals that she leaned so heavily on her sexuality that week to squeak through. “It’s lazy,” Allison told her bluntly.

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree,” Harper responded. “I’m sure the crowd liked what I did.” She smiled wide for the audience, who responded to her accordingly.

  “I guess we’ll see,” Allison murmured.

  Lacy went next. She stood in the middle of the stage in front of the microphone, wearing a long black sweater and leggings tucked into suede boots. Her hair was pulled back and her makeup was minimal. Just that afternoon, they realized that too much black makeup would only trickle down her face. She had yet been able to make it through that song without crying, especially when a crowd of backup singers, namely a choir from a nearby elementary school, joined in.

  Her voice cracked as well, but the judges all stood when she finished. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. “That’s how you open a show,” Vanni grinned. He had wanted to run up on stage and hug her. “I don’t know if any contestant this season, male or female, knows themselves as intimately as you do. You’re not afraid to go to the dark places. You’re not afraid to feel. You’re not afraid to be vulnerable. It’s a lesson that some of your cas
t-mates have yet to learn.”

  Allison nodded as she followed. “Your audience knows when you’re pulling a fast one on them. With you, we get heartbreaking sincerity week after week. You keep doing that, and you can really win this thing.”

  Lacy’s heart jumped in her throat. “Thank you.”

  “There are some things auto-tune can’t fix,” Ryder agreed. “You either have ‘it’ or you don’t. Your maturity and experience showed this week, Lacy. Bravo.”

  When she headed backstage, she was met by Harper, whose face wore both anger and humiliation. “Good job,” she sneered.

  Lacy said nothing as she pressed on through the rest of the girls waiting to take the stage. She had other things to worry about, like what her mother might have to say when she saw her that night at the after-party. She hadn’t exactly been subtle in her song choice, which sang about things unsaid between father and child. She knew her mother would see this as a betrayal. Lucas made his choice when he abandoned them all those years ago. He opted for music over family. It was Jules who stuck in there, taking care of the both of them, often with two, full-time jobs. It was Jules she owed the most to, not her missing dad.

  Like she predicted, Jules was quiet. Too quiet. Finally Lacy could bear it no longer. “Go ahead. Say what you’re going to say.”

  Jules took a deep breath. “I guess I just don’t get how you can romanticize Lucas after all this time.”

  “I don’t romanticize him, Mama,” she said. “I know who he is, flaws and all.”

  “So why sing that song?”

  “I can’t change his leaving us,” she answered simply and softly. “Any more than I can change how hurt I am because he did. He was a shitty dad, but he was still my dad.”

  Jules nodded, though she really didn’t understand. She had never known her father either, which was why she had tried so long to hang onto her marriage so that Lacy could. They had never really talked about it. After Lucas left, it became a forbidden topic. It just hurt too much. For the both of them.

  Harper ended up leaving the party early. Tony Paul went with her. Lacy assumed that he was just going to get her in the sack one more time just in case she went home that week. Lacy just needed a break from all of it, so once again she cornered Vanni to ask if she could go home with her mother. “Is everything okay?” he asked, true concern written in those dark brown eyes.

  “Nothing a hug from my little boy can’t fix,” she said with a hopeful smile.

  He wanted to remind her that if she came clean about her being a single mom, she could see Cody a lot more often. Cody would be the official season mascot and she’d probably walk away with the title. Her story was as heart-wrenching as her strength was admirable. But he understood that she wanted to protect her child. After all that he had nearly lost because of fame, he could never ask anyone else to risk more than they were willing to lose.

  It was a choice each one of them had to make. He sighed. “You’re making me break a gazillion rules here, Lacy.” But when he met her gaze, he knew he couldn’t refuse her. “Come on. I’ll drive you over there.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Really?”

  He smiled. “Yeah. After your song tonight, it made me want to rush home to my family, too.” He glanced around at the others at the party. Most were too busy to worry about what they were doing. In fact, everyone was so exhausted that most had cleared out early. Even the families had called it an early night, including Lacy’s mother. “Meet me outside in about ten minutes.”

  She nodded. She tried to be as inconspicuous as possible as she gathered her belongings. As she turned toward the door, she came face to face with Jonah. “Are you okay?” he asked. He knew how much that performance had taken out of her.

  “I’m good. I’m just tired.”

  “Me, too,” he confessed. “Maybe we can catch a car back to the house.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. She couldn’t risk his knowing about Vanni’s granting her a special favor. Being seen in public with a judge was expressly forbidden. No one wanted the integrity of the show questioned, that a judge was showing preferential treatment for one contestant over another.

  Granted she probably could have taken a car with Jonah and just had the driver take them to the housing complex, but it would just complicate things even more. She wanted as little attention as possible going back to her mom’s place, simply because she didn’t want any attention drawn to Cody. If Jonah went with her, and he likely would, he’d want to spend time with his family as well.

  It was just too risky.

  Not to mention that if he had wanted to stay with her in that double bed, she might have been inclined to let him. She didn’t regret her choice of song that she sang that week, but she had definitely paid an emotional price for it. She felt lonely and vulnerable, in desperate need for arms to hold her. She needed love to salve her wounds. The love of her little boy was safe harbor.

  The love of Jonah Riley was not.

  She shook her head. “I just really need to be alone, Jonah. I’m still processing through a lot of stuff.”

  He nodded. He took a deep breath and asked her what he had feared all week. “Did you sing that song for Tony Paul, Lacy?”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  He shrugged. “Because he could hear it and your father couldn’t.”

  Her mouth clamped shut. She had never considered that someone else might draw that conclusion. If Jonah could, did that mean that Tony Paul did? Had that somehow inspired his change of heart? “It was just a song I needed to sing, Jonah. It’s as simple as that.”

  He didn’t know what to say. They lived in the same house. They worked in the same place. They saw each other every day, even interacting once a week during the group number. And yet she might as well be on a different planet. He simply couldn’t reach her. It hurt him more and more every single day. “Lacy,” he started, but she shook her head.

  “I’ve got to go,” she mumbled before she raced through the crowd and disappeared out the door.

  Vanni was waiting for her in his sleek sports car. It smelled like his cologne when she climbed in, closing herself behind the darkly tinted glass. He peeled from the curb before anyone could see. He didn’t even say anything until they had put a few city blocks between the car and the hotel. “Did anyone see you leave?”

  She thought about Jonah with a sinking feeling in her stomach. “No,” she answered softly. “Thanks for doing this. I hate to put you out.”

  He gave her that sexy smirk with a shrug. “What’s life if you’re not living at least some of it on the edge?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Bullshit,” he said. “You’ve been living on the edge since I first met you tending bar in some dark nightclub.”

  She laughed. “I was so locked up back then. I wouldn’t have even started singing again if it weren’t for you.”

  “Nah,” he dismissed easily. “You were born to do this. You could no more give up music than forget to breathe.” She suspected he was right. “I didn’t start my career until late, so I was paying my dues in bars a lot seedier than that when I was old enough to know better. If you’re meant to do something, you’ll find a way to do it. You went to work at Southern Nights looking for a reason to sing. If it wouldn’t have been me, it would have been someone or something else. I promise.”

  There was one question she had been dying to ask him for a while. “Why did you ask me to sing that first day?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Something in your eyes, I think. Like a caged animal poised to break free. I guess I wanted to see what it was. I could have easily asked you back to my hotel.”

  She chuckled. “Yeah, right. You were crazy about Andy back then.”

  He laughed too. “Yeah, but I was too stupid to appreciate it. I was such a typical guy back then. I screwed everything up for years because I just couldn’t open my eyes and see what I had. It was just too easy to believe the hype.”


  “And now?”

  “And now my family keeps me grounded. You’re kind of lucky, you know. You already know what’s important.”

  She nodded. Cody was the only thing that mattered. She cared about him more than she cared about herself. She almost said as much to him but when she turned her head, she saw him stare intently into the rearview mirror. “Is there a problem?”

  “We’re being followed.”

  She glanced back behind them, out the tinted back window. “What? By who?”

  “Well, it’s been a while but I’m going to go out on a limb and say PING.”

  “Shit,” she breathed as she scooted down in the passenger seat.

  “Don’t worry,” he said as he took the next right. “I’ve done this before.”

  Ultimately they drove for about forty-five minutes, down every side street in Burbank, before he finally hit the Ventura Freeway. He didn’t stop until he reached Malibu, which he seemed to know intimately. The lights behind them disappeared, so he pulled into a secluded parking lot and killed the lights. “I guess we’re taking the scenic route,” he said as he directed her attention toward the swell of the Pacific Ocean. He turned on the radio. “Technically we won’t start recording weekly songs until the semi-finals,” he said as he leaned back in the seat. “But I really think you could make a single out of what you did tonight.”

  She shook her head. “It was enough to get through the performance, honestly.”

  He leaned his head on the headrest. “So tell me about dad.”

  “Not much to tell. He bailed when I was fourteen. I haven’t heard from him since.”

  “Don’t be too surprised if you do,” he warned softly. “My dad split so early in my life that I didn’t even remember him. But he sure turned up when I hit the big time.”

  She shuddered. She couldn’t imagine. “I doubt Lucas would do the same. Not now. Not everything that has passed.”

  He shrugged. “Don’t be so sure. Surprising things can happen when you sprinkle enough time on regret.”

  “He doesn’t regret leaving,” she corrected.

  “Of course he does,” Vanni murmured. “How could he not?”