Breaking the Ice (25 page)

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Coming in April 2015:

DOWN THE SHORE

A rock-and-roll romantic comedy.

Livia Chadwick is a photographer by day and a self-proclaimed rock slut by night.

Her dating life is a lackluster parade of evasive jerks and

her boss is an unrelenting nightmare of a human being.

What else can a girl do but rent a beach house with her girlfriends

And blow off a little steam every weekend? 

But hey, she’s from Jersey. Barhopping down the shore all season is sort of mandatory.

All is going according to plan… until she meets Jack.

Jack Tanner is a contractor-turned-musician in a small-town cover band

suddenly thrust into the limelight.

He’s already had enough of the rock-and-roll lifestyle, and groupies have never been his thing.

Then again… there’s a gorgeous brunette in the audience tonight, checking him out with the most incredible green eyes he’s ever seen.

She's looking for a fling.

He's looking for forever.

It’s gonna be one helluva summer.

Set in the summer of 1995, DOWN THE SHORE takes the reader on a tour through some of the Jersey shore’s hottest hot spots over one, sleepless, flannel-clad summer.

It’s a look back to a time when the music was groundbreaking, the rock clubs were king,

and bar bands ruled the world.

READ WHEN YOU’RE IN THE MOOD FOR:

Sexy, funny, romantic, beachy, and nostalgic.

Add it to your GOODREADS TBR here
:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18809569-down-the-shore

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LIVIA

Friday, May 26, 1995

   We had to cross over the crowded dance floor in order to shortcut to the other side of the large club. Jack was trying to carve out a path for us both when I saw him inexplicably reach his hand behind him and blindly grab for mine. I just as inexplicably put my hand in his, and had the oddest feeling as we wove our way through the crowd.

  
I became enigmatically aware of how…
electric
it was to hold his hand, even though I barely knew the owner of it.
Our palms were flattened against one another’s, our fingers intertwined... It was as though we’d performed this act naturally a million times over, not just for the first time one minute ago. The thought left me baffled, but fascinated nonetheless.

   Before I knew it, he led me over to the payphones situated near the restrooms. He gave my hand a quick squeeze before releasing his hold and ducking into the men’s room.

   When Jack let go of my hand, I was surprised at the loss that washed over me. What the hell was that? I didn’t even know the guy and he had me sweating from simply holding his hand? I couldn’t even imagine what holding his dick would be like. I’d probably pass out.

   I had to dig through a ton of junk in my purse to find the number for the beach house, but it finally appeared and I made the call. Even though I wasn’t in the main part of the club, it was still loud, and I burrowed into the alcove as much as I could while covering my free ear with my hand in order to hear.

   Samantha answered.

   “Hey, Sammy! What are you doing there? I thought you were sick.”

   “I was. But I slammed down a few Sudafed and managed to catch the girls before they left. Where are you?”

   “Tradewinds,” I shot back. “Came to see a band.”

   “Any good?”

   “Yeah, actually. They’re fantastic.”

   I glanced up to find Jack leaning against the wall having a cigarette, waiting for me. Fuck. He heard that.

   “So, I’m going to assume you’ll be spending the night elsewhere?” Sam chuckled at her dig, but it wasn’t like I could take offense. My girls knew me too well.

   “Well, yeah, but not because... We ran into Monty. We’re crashing there tonight.”

   I thought Jack would’ve headed back to our friends, but instead, he just stood there watching me as I talked to Sam. His eyes were squinted as he blew smoke through those delectable lips, and I felt my stomach drop. It was unsettling, to say the least, and I made myself turn away.

   “Lucky bitch. Tell him we said hi.”

   “I will.”

   Before I could get another word out, I suddenly felt the length of Jack’s body pressed against my back.
What the hell?
It caught me by surprise, to say the least.

   I figured he was just screwing around, trying to be funny by distracting me from my phone call, but my heart leapt in my chest anyway. He chuckled against my hair, swiped some away, and lowered his lips to the back of my neck, my skin shivering at the touch. The whole time, I was trying to have a human conversation with Sam, no easy feat while this god was ravaging me from behind. I guessed he wasn’t planning on wasting any time before getting this party started, and that was fine by me. I was more than game.

   I snapped back to the real world when I heard Sammy taunt, “Well, have fuuun!”

   As if that wasn’t the understatement of the night. How could a hot rock star against my body be anything but fun? I offered a quick
“
I’m about to,” before giving Sam a rather abrupt goodbye and hanging up, my body completely rebelling against all common sense. My knees went weak, and I braced my hand on the wall above the phone, pressing my backside against him.

   At that, he gave out a snicker and whispered against my ear, “
Oh, so you wanna play, do you?
”

   Oh, hell yeah I did.

   There was an electric current running through my body as he turned me in his arms. He had his hands at my waist, running slowly up and down my sides, and a
just-kidding-around
smile playing at his lips.

   He might’ve been kidding around, but I most certainly was not.

   I took a quick look down the hall before backing him against the wall, sliding a hand up his chest and meeting his eyes. I could see the surprise in his, because he had no idea who he was dealing with yet.

   “Do I want to play? I thought you’d never ask,” I shot back, watching a sly smile eek across his lips. Lips that I was about to devour.

   I brought my palms around behind his neck, grabbed a handful of that dark hair in my fist, and pulled. He was taken aback by the aggressiveness, but I didn’t wait for him to figure anything out before rising on my tiptoes and meeting his mouth with mine.

   His body stiffened at that, obviously caught off guard, but it didn’t take him long to warm to my advance. Our lips were perfectly matched, our bodies fitting effortlessly against one another’s. I felt his muscles relax as he returned my kiss, and soon enough, everything went insane.

   His hands slid around my waist as he pulled me closer against his body, and well,
what do we have here?
It seemed Mr. Happy had decided to join us.    

   Jack turned us
around to slam
my
back against the wall, and holy shit, I thought I was going to die. Our lips met again and there was a pounding in my ears beyond the blaring music, making me dizzy.
His mouth opened, and I could taste his smoky, salty flavor, smell the shaving-cream scent of him, invading my senses, causing me to grip the shirt at his chest and hang on for the ride.

   Or maybe I needed to take him on one.

   I pushed off the wall and backed him through the nearest doorway… which turned out to be a storage closet. But there was a lock on the handle, so I took advantage of that before kissing him again. The smell of bleach and stale beer permeated my senses as we touched and tasted one another, the heat
escalating off the charts.

   Just as my hand slipped down to cop a feel, he asked, “Hey, whoa. Liv. What are you doing?”

   The dark was pretty blinding, but I still managed to meet his face, a scowl on mine. “What do you
think
I’m doing?”

   He grabbed my wrist and placed my hand at his waist. Trying to cover for my pounding heart, I slid my palms around to the small of his back, up his spine, across his shoulder blades, and went back in for another kiss. His hair was brushing against my cheek as his tongue invaded my mouth, and before I could stop myself, a slight moan escaped from my throat.

   I’d been with lots of guys before, but something was different with him and I couldn’t quite figure out what it was just yet. He was hot as hell, which was normally my only prerequisite for hooking up with somebody. But this guy had totally upped the ante. He wasn’t just a rock star. He was a rock GOD. And from the first second I saw him on stage tonight, I knew I was going to wind up here at some point. Well, not here in a freaking closet for godsakes, but here in this guy’s naked grasp doing the horizontal happy dance.

   Or, I guess, vertical, in this case. TMI?

   My hands went back to his jeans, ripping at Jack’s fly, but before I could even get the first button undone, he braced his hands at my shoulders and nudged me away. “Whoa, whoa. Take it back some.”

   Still in a daze, I asked, “What?”

   “This isn’t happening. Not here.”

   Since when did a rock star give a shit where I did him? “I locked the damn door. No one’s coming in here.”

   “You got that right. No one’s coming
in here
. We can do better than this.”

   Was he serious? He started this whole thing, and now he was trying to put the brakes on? I was suddenly struck with the absurd thought that he really was only kidding around when he attacked me at the pay phones. No freaking way was that possible. Was it?

  
I crossed my arms as my sight adjusted to the dim light, eyeing him up and down.
“Is this the part where you try to convince me you’re a gentleman? Trying to pretend that you want this to be ‘special for me’? Because trust me, Jack, I’m not looking for ‘special.’ I’m not asking you to work that hard. You can drop the wooing bit.”

   “
Every
girl is looking for special.”

   “Not this girl.”

   He crossed his arms, mocking my pose. “Then what are you looking for?”

   “Fun,” I shot back without hesitation. He eyed me in disbelief, so I added, “Do you have a problem with that?”

   “Maybe I’m done with fun.”

  
What is with this guy?
“What’s your game, player?”

   “No game. Why?”

   “You come on like gangbusters, but then the second you find out I’m into it,
bam!
Light switch off.”

   That made him chuckle. “Oh, you’re a real maneater, aren’t you? My mother warned me about girls like you.”

   “You’ve never met a girl like me, pal.”

   “Wanna bet?”

   We were staring each other down, and I was trying not to let him see how humiliated I felt. There I was, practically throwing myself at his feet, and he was
turning me down
. Rejection can suck a bag of dicks.

   He lowered an eyebrow and sighed, “Look, Liv. I’ve done this too many times to know that nothing good ever comes out of a situation like this.”

   “Out of what? A one-night stand? Who says I’m looking for anything more than that to come out of this?”

    “Who says I’m
not?
” He let out an exasperated breath and ran a hand through his hair. “Look. I like you. Can’t we just, you know, get to know each other? Do
you
have a problem with
that
?”

   Yes. He was messing with my whole M.O. I didn’t do the ‘getting to know you’ thing with rock stars. I had mind-blowing sex with them and went on my merry way. Why was he making this so difficult? “I don’t date musicians.”

   “And I don’t fuck groupies.”

  
We stared each other down, caught in a heated standoff. Who the hell did he think he was?

   “First of all, I’m not a
groupie
. I’m a music-loving girl with a healthy sexual appetite who knows how to say ‘thank you’ properly.”

   “Thank you for what?”

   “For being talented as fuck, you fuck!”

   That brought an unreadable smirk to his lips. I didn’t have the patience right at the moment to try and explain anything more than that to him, so I continued with my rant. “Secondly, you’re not fooling anyone with this chivalry bit. You’re a red-blooded male with a working cock that rose to the occasion the second my lips hit yours.”

   Why the hell is he just standing there smiling at me?

   I shook off his smarmy face and lined up the kill shot. “Thirdly… Since you don’t fuck ‘groupies,’ feel free to go fuck
yourself
.”

   At that, I stormed out, leaving him standing there gawking at my retreating form.