Southern Rocker Showdown Read online

  She was, but the young girl named Sydney Lambert was way more pliable. She responded well to Imogene’s suggestions. Lacy hated to admit that it actually did make her song sound better.

  But Sydney was also fourteen, still barely a child. Lacy had earned her stripes and paid her dues. She had earned the right to say that she knew what she was doing, after years of paying in blood, sweat and tears. She knew who she was. She knew what she wanted to do. She was done being fitted like some paper doll with the expectations of others. She was going to win playing the game her way or she wouldn’t win at all. That was just how it was going to be.

  When she got back to the house, she ended up running into Tony Paul. He was dressed in swimming trunks and heading toward the pool. He wore a big smile for her as she approached. “So how was practice? I hear the musical director is a hard-assed bitch,” he confided as he leaned closer. She recoiled away from him instantly. “Hard to beat Mama in that department, though, isn’t it?”

  “I think your mother may have met her match,” Lacy mumbled. She sidestepped him, but he grabbed her arm anyway.

  “Hey, if you’re done for the day, maybe you could join me in the pool. I hate to swim alone,” he added with a playful pout.

  Really? Well, I hate raising a child alone, she thought to herself. He was just damned lucky there were too many eyes and ears in the house for her to say what she was thinking right to his hateful face. “Let me go,” she gritted between clenched teeth.

  “Come on now,” he cajoled. “It doesn’t have to be this way. We were friends once. We can be friends again.”

  Friends?! “We were never friends,” she informed him coldly. “I was an idiot and you were a lying sack of shit. The end.”

  “I never lied,” he corrected. “I meant what I said whenever I said it.”

  She scoffed. “Is that what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night, Tony Paul?”

  His hand dropped away from her arm. “I know I made mistakes, okay? But we’re here. We have a second chance. We can do things differently this time around.”

  “There is no this time around,” she shot back. “We are here to compete against each other. That’s it.”

  His voice softened. “It doesn’t have to be. That’s all I’m saying.” His eyes swept over her. “Don’t you remember how it was between us?”

  She shivered. She never wanted to remember how it was between them. Just thinking about him made her skin crawl. She had lain with a snake, pure and simple. It was her own stupid fault she got bit.

  But she would not get bitten again. That much was certain.

  She stepped toward him, the look in her eye lethal. “Let me tell you something right now, Tony Paul Hollis. I don’t care what you think happened between us in the past. You and me, we’re done. If you touch me again, I’ll castrate you in your sleep, I swear to God.”

  “Is there a problem here?” Jonah asked from the doorway, leading toward the kitchen. Lacy rolled her eyes. She couldn’t spit in any direction in this stupid house without hitting someone who had done her wrong. It was as though they sought her out to torment her. At this point she wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.

  “I took care of it,” she muttered to Jonah before pushing past him and taking the steps toward the second floor two at a time. He looked at Tony Paul, who offered him a good-natured shrug.

  “Women. Am I right?”

  He hoisted a towel over his shoulder and headed outside toward the pool. Jonah glanced back up the stairs. His mouth set in a firm line as he followed Lacy. By no surprise, her door was shut when he got there. He knocked. “Lacy,” he called softly through the door.

  He stood there for long moments while she contemplated answering. Finally she wrenched it back and glared up at him. “Can’t you fucking leave me alone?”

  “No,” he said simply and honestly as he took her into his arms and pulled her close. He molded those soft curves against him as he lifted her up and pressed her against the wall. “You haven’t figured that out by now?”

  He stared at her mouth, which was wreaking havoc on her nerves. In that moment she hoped Imogene was right and she would get sent packing after only one week. About one week was all she could stand in this house of horrors. It only fortified her resolve to play by her own rules. If she was going to put up with all this bullshit, she was going to curve her own path her way. “Let me go, Jonah.”

  His eyes locked on her full lips. He offered an absent shake of his head as his lips descended towards hers. “Never,” he murmured before his mouth closed over hers.

  The shock of his kiss rooted her to the spot. She had told herself for months that she had simply been mistaken, that she couldn’t have fallen in love so fast with someone she barely knew. But his touch called to her. His kiss branded her. Though they now shared a house with more than twenty other people, everyone disappeared in an instant the moment he pulled her into his arms.

  She still wanted him. Her soft moan when he penetrated her lips to deepen the kiss only proved it. This was both good news and bad news for Jonah. She still cared, she had to. That gave him the willpower he needed to end their embrace now, before it ended them.

  He dragged his mouth away with difficulty. Everything within him wanted to carry her over to that small twin bed and make love to her like he had so many times in his mind. But they weren’t just playing house here. They were fighting for something far greater than the both of them. They were fighting for a future for their families. He loved her too much to jeopardize her journey, much less his own.

  He wasn’t Tony Paul, and there was only one way to prove that to her. He had to do what Tony Paul was incapable of doing: putting Lacy’s needs ahead of his own. Jonah released her and turned away while he still could. She watched him escape down the hallway toward his own room, which slammed behind him.

  At the pool, Tony Paul had already forgotten the altercation with Lacy as he swam lazily toward twenty-year-old Maddie Mercer. She was the epitome of a California girl. Her hair was honey blonde with platinum highlights, and her skin was bronzed from growing up under sunny skies. Her body was lithe from years of athletic training. She had auditioned with him, so he knew her backstory. She was a gymnast who suffered a traumatic head injury when she was a pre-teen. It left her with dizzying vertigo that robbed her of her Olympic career.

  But she was a pistol, one-hundred-percent. She wasn’t one to stay still. She began training other gymnasts and stayed active, despite her limitations. She skied, she swam, she ran – basically everything that her doctors told her that she couldn’t do.

  When her passion turned to singing, she was no less determined. She had been classically trained and leaned toward musicals and stage productions, many of which she had already produced in and around the valley. Scouts had found her there, in some small production of a musical she had written herself, about her own self-discovery as a lesbian. She approached Fierce with the spirit of an Olympian from that very first audition.

  All that, however, meant little to Tony Paul as compared to how she looked in her hot pink bikini as she sliced into the pool. He wore a smile as he swam nearby, his eyes traveling over her with appreciation. She was way too pretty to dig chicks. Clearly she hadn’t met the right guy yet.

  “Nice dive,” he said as he floated nearby. “You can always tell an athlete by her form.”

  She fought the urge to roll her eyes as she glanced his way. She knew the type. Nothing had ever come hard for him. She could tell during the auditions that he thought that made him something special. But there wasn’t anything special about some soft, rich, white guy who thought he was God’s gift to the world. In her experience, most of them felt that way. “Thanks,” she dismissed easily.

  “Brr,” he smirked with an exaggerated shudder. “Got a cold chill all of a sudden. Did you feel that?” She rolled her eyes and turned away, but he put his hand on her arm to stop her. She glared at his hand, incensed by his touch. “Hey, come on. We’re all fri
ends here.”

  She scoffed openly. “How in earth are we friends? Name one thing we have in common.”

  He gave her a wink. “We both like chicks.”

  She sighed and swam away. She didn’t stop until she was at the other end of the pool, where she got out, grabbed a towel, and headed into the house.

  “What’s her problem?” Tony Paul said, mostly to himself. He was surprised when he got an answer from the sunbathing beauty just a few feet away, lounging on a chaise.

  “Fuck if I know,” the raven-haired beauty remarked. She wore dark sunglasses, so he couldn’t see her eyes. But he got the feeling her eyes were closed all the same. He glanced over her petite body, which was proudly on display with the teeny tiny two-piece she wore. She was deeply tanned, much like the beach beauties he had gotten to enjoy in the tropics.

  He swam over to her side of the pool, leaning on the sides. “I don’t think we’ve met. Tony Paul Hollis.”

  She turned her head towards him. She lifted up to perch on one elbow. “Harper Clark,” she said.

  God, she was tight and firm in all the right places. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. His body responded immediately as he scoped her figure. “And where have you been hiding yourself, Harper Clark?”

  “Jersey,” she answered simply. “You?”

  “Texas,” he responded with the amount of pride that answer deserved. She made a face anyway.

  “You don’t sing that awful country crap, do you?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Frustrated rocker at heart. How about you? Any cheesy ballads I need to look forward to?”

  She sat up straighter. “Yeah, right. I’m a dancer.”

  “I can see that,” he murmured.

  She wore a self-satisfied smirk that he made no bones about checking her out. She was used to that kind of reaction from men. Only the best guys got a chance, though, and she had heard through the grapevine that he had many of the qualities she looked for in a man. The size of his bank account alone excused the size of his waistband. She ambled over to the side of the pool where he floated, before sitting down next to his strong arms and submerging her sublime legs in the water. “Why are you wasting your time on that carpet muncher anyway?”

  He smiled. “I guess I like a challenge.”

  “Yeah, well good luck. That chick is totally closed off. I share a room with her and she’s completely single-minded. It’s all about winning for her. It’s kind of ridiculous, really. It’s not like she really has to try or anything.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She let out a breath of exasperation. She couldn’t believe she had to explain it to him. “Didn’t you ever see the show? It’s all about the story. Normal people like us, we’re the misfits here. People like her? The audience will eat it up. They’ll keep her around week after week until she has a spot for a nice, cushy tour. I mean, she’s a washed-up Olympian. You think they’re going to send her packing right away? Who knows? They may even let her win. Audiences dig that kind of sentimental crap.”

  He digested the information. “The story, huh?”

  She nodded. “The story.”

  He swam closer, putting his arms on her legs. “And what’s your story?”

  “I don’t need a story,” she said. “I’m the best.”

  His hands spread out over her satiny skin. “Really? Care to prove that?”

  Her eyebrow arched. “Depends. What do you have to offer me?”

  He smiled wide. “A lot.”

  Her voice dropped. “A whole lot?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he confirmed with a short nod. “Everything is bigger in Texas, haven’t you heard? Why don’t you come into the pool and see for yourself?”

  She thought about it for a moment. She considered playing hard to get, but until they got to the live shows, there was no telling how the voting audience would lean. She had to act quickly if she wanted to get her hooks into this guy. She already knew that his mother owned the hottest nightclub in Austin, not to mention one of the largest mansions. She eased herself into the pool, positioning herself between the hard wall of concrete behind her, and his solid wall of flesh in front of her.

  He wasn’t kidding. He had a lot to offer.

  He ground himself against her as he wore a smile. “What do you think?” he asked as he leaned closer, his breath against her neck.

  She ran her hands down his back to cup his ass under the water. “I think we may need a place with a little more privacy.”

  He chuckled. “First thing’s first. How old are you, Harper?”

  Her chin tipped. “How old do I look?”

  He took off her glasses. She wore heavy makeup around her eyes, but her face was flawless. She was a brand new rose that had begun to bloom. Despite that, there was a knowing gaze in those dark eyes. She knew what she wanted and she knew how to get it. “Twenty,” he guessed, hoping he was right. He couldn’t wait to take a bite out of this peach.

  “That old?” she responded with a pout. He started to pull away but she grabbed his ass and pulled him back. “I’m kidding. I turned eighteen three weeks ago.”

  Barely legal, he thought. His favorite kind of legal. But he had been burned before. There was no way he’d take this girl at her word. “And I should believe you, why?”

  She gyrated against him. He sported a massive erection she couldn’t wait to wrap her hands, and other things, around. “Why would I lie?”

  He shrugged as he loomed over her, his eyes intense as they stared into hers. “That depends on your story, doesn’t it?”

  She laughed. “Touché.” She leaned closer. “Tell you what. We can head upstairs and I’ll grab my driver’s license. Once you see I’m legit, maybe we can talk about stories then.” Her hand wrapped around to brush against his hard-on. “Or make up new ones. Either way.”

  He pressed her into the concrete with his body. “You certainly think like an eighteen-year-old,” he murmured. He moved away and hopped out of the pool.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Upstairs,” he answered over his shoulder. He made it to the back door before he turned back. He adjusted his package as he did so. “Don’t you have something to show me?”

  She grinned as she climbed out of the pool and followed him into the house.

  Chapter Four

  Jules lugged the third bag of trash from the back door, across the stone path cutting through the spacious, meticulously manicured backyard toward the private alley. She never realized how much trash they accumulated, but they also had a lot more to consume now than ever before. She was raised to be frugal and use everything twice before she threw it away… most times she threw nothing away. It was the byproduct of never having the money to replace things that were torn or broken. She simply learned to make due.

  Now she had everything she could possibly need right at her fingertips. She had gone through a roll of paper towels without even thinking about it, and just like magic another roll appeared. She filled bag after bag of trash before she knew it. She found herself obsessively cleaning her new townhome top to bottom. It was the only thing that seemed to take her mind off of the Hollises living right across the street. She lived like a prisoner in her own home, although admittedly it was a nicer place than she’d ever lived before.

  But she never had to be lonely, considering Vi and Leah Riley visited her practically every day. It ended up being a godsend for Jules, who was afraid to take Cody outside anywhere near his other grandma. She trusted the Hollises about as far as she could throw them. There was no way they were getting close to Cody until Tony Paul signed that paperwork relinquishing his rights. Until then, as the primary parent of record, Lacy was the one who called the shots on who had access to her son.

  The Hollises were never a part of the deal, by their choice.

  So Leah would come over and keep an eye on Cody if Jules had to run to the store or head out to do any of the new tasks now expected of her. Like Lacy, she got her
very own stylist, who gave her a makeover that very first week. She cut and styled Jules’s drab brown hair, adding some burgundy highlights that took years off her face.

  They spent one afternoon shopping for clothes, new items she could wear for the live performances. Since she was supposed to be camera ready at all times, her typical getup of jeans and a button-down top wasn’t going to cut it. Instead, Clementine Pomeroy, the “fat and sassy fashion guru,” as she introduced herself, traipsed Jules through every eclectic boutique in Hollywood for fashionable, pre-worn clothing. They were going for what she called, “Budget Chic,” which took a lot of the stress out of the process for Jules, who was terrified they’d turn her into some show poodle. She had never worn one designer label in her life. Putting her in fancy clothes would have made her feel awkward and out of place, especially sitting seats away from the stylish and well-to-do Hollises.

  Fortunately for Jules, Clementine sensed this immediately. She used her innate gift to read people, getting beyond want they needed to what they wanted, to create her plan of attack with her reluctant client. Within a week, she transformed Jules into a brand new woman. From her hair to her new garb, she looked about ten years younger. “Forty’s the new twenty,” Clementine had chirped happily as she lopped off Jules’s long hair, layering it to give it body and finishing off the style with bangs of all things. But that was Clementine. She was bawdy and unapologetic, who plowed ahead and did whatever she wanted to do no matter what anyone else thought about it. She encouraged Jules to celebrate being a vibrant, strong woman, picking clothes for style over comfort, as well as accessories that were both fun and functional.

  Truth be told, Jules enjoyed the time she spent with Clementine. The unusual girl was around Lacy’s age, but seemed wiser than her years. She was also funny, wicked smart and completely driven. She was always on the go, juggling the gig with the Fierce families with a stage production, as well as a partnership in her own nightclub.