Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor)

This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
events, locales or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright 2013 by Dawn Steele

This title was previously released as
‘Wrecked’ by Aphrodite Hunt

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dawn Steele is the New Adult romance pen name
of Aphrodite and Artemis Hunt. Aphrodite Hunt, Artemis Hunt and
Dawn Steele have had 23 books in the Top 100 Amazon Erotica, 1 book
in the Top 100 Amazon Romance, 12 books in the Top 100 of the
overall Barnes and Noble store, 1 book in the Top 100 Amazon New
Adult, and 1 book in the Top 100 Amazon Paranormal Shifter Romance
category.

Dawn believes that true love will conquer
all, even if the circumstances appear cagey at first glance. That
is why all her books have ‘Happily Ever After’ endings, although
she will tease you with twisty plots and subplots to make you think
this will not be so in the beginning.

Please sign up for her mailing list. She will
update you whenever there is a new romance released under Dawn
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Fuck!

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, and double fuck!

She’s coming towards me, dressed in a crisp
white blouse and a blue skirt. She has a clipboard in her arm and
she’s talking to this doddering old lady who looks as though she’s
a hundred years old and smells of mothballs. She is talking very
animatedly, waving her clipboard around as though it is a weapon,
describing something in that extremely excitable way of hers that I
remember.

Rebecca Hall. That’s who she is. I have been
trying to get away from her since high school, and I thought I
succeeded, but here she is again – like a cold sore that wouldn’t
quite go away.

Fuck!

And to see me like this?

I’m not exactly in my best presentation. I
usually come gift-wrapped in a package, with my tight leather pants
that leave nothing to the imagination and my ripped shirt. Oh yeah.
I do a lot of clothes ripping on stage to bare my torso with the
magnificent faux phoenix tattoo on my back, marvelously etched with
hidden meanings and secret symbolisms by the great Mephisto, tattoo
artist extraordinaire, himself.

But I’m not in my stage clothes right now. In
fact, I’m in a janitor’s overalls. I’m pushing a mop with my hands
and a bucket of dirty and soapy water threatens to slosh a little
more over the edge each time the ship lists to one side – which is
fairly often in these breakers. My usually glorious auburn hair,
left to flow free and wild and untamed, is tied back into a subdued
ponytail.

Fuck!

Let me count how many times I’ve said the
word ‘fuck’ in the last five minutes.

How I got to be in my present condition is a
long story. And I do mean
long
– not to mention
unjustifiable.

I’ve got to get away from here.

I can hear Rebecca’s voice as she comes
closer.

“And we have breakfast from six to ten thirty
in Café Palais on the second deck. That’s right. You can choose
your breakfast from a menu of American, Continental and
Japanese.”

The old biddy’s voice is considerably lower
in decibels. In fact, she’s so old that I kind of expect her to
slip through the cracks of the ship’s deck and fall into some
boiler room. Do they still have boiler rooms here? I notice that
she has some hearing aid attached to her ear that is probably
malfunctioning, which may be the reason why Rebecca is practically
shouting at the top of her voice to make herself heard.

“A Japanese breakfast consists of rice, some
seaweed and miso soup. Miso . . . it’s spelled M-I-S-O.” Rebecca
enunciates each letter carefully. “I’m not sure what’s in it. Maybe
you can ask the chef?”

Shit.

She’ll see me. I quickly turn my back on her
and pretend to be extremely engaged with the mop. I make furious
circles upon the deck. She can’t come too close because I have put
up two ‘CAUTION: CLEANING IN PROGRESS’ signs at the periphery of
the area I am supposed to clean. The wooden boards squeak with my
vigorous cleansing. That part of the floor is going to be
spotlessly shiny, I’ll bet.

“No, I don’t think Japanese food will give
you the runs, Mrs. Caldwell. Their food is known to be quite
clean.” Pause. “Yes, it’s known to have quite a lot of MSG, but I
don’t think MSG will give you the runs. If anything, it will make
you thirsty.”

Their footsteps come closer – the
clickety-clack, clickety-clack of heels on hard flooring.

Then:

“Say, are you Kurt Taylor?” says an
unfamiliar voice to my right.

Oh no.

I swivel around, mop trailing a splash on the
deck. A boy of around fourteen is standing inside – not outside,
mind you, but
inside
– my circumference of cleaning safety,
and he’s tracking his shoes all over my clean floor. I don’t know
whether or not to be more outraged about this or the fact he has
blurted my name out to all and sundry.

In particular, Rebecca Hall.

The two women stop to stare at me.

“Kurt Taylor?” says Rebecca in a funny
voice.

“No, I’m not Kurt Taylor,” I mumble.

“You are Kurt Taylor,” the boy insists. “You
were in that music video with Scarlett Johannson. She was kinda
cool. You’re kinda cool too . . . but today, not so much. What are
you doing mopping the floor on this cruise ship? Your latest album
sunk or something?”

Not good.

Rebecca Hall approaches me with a funny look
on her face. She is all fiery green eyes and red hair, just the way
I remembered her. When was the last time I saw her? Four years
back? During high school graduation? She probably went to college,
unlike me.

Gawd. She’s as pretty as ever. Pity I never
liked her, and she never liked me either.

“You
are
Kurt Taylor,” she says in a
high-pitched, extremely angry voice. She has seen my face now. “I’d
remember you anywhere.”

I’d remember her anywhere too, though not for
the usual reasons. I suppose everyone will know sooner or later why
I am on this cruise ship doing menial duty. Mrs. Caldwell and the
rest of them old biddies will see to that.

I say to no one in particular, “OK, I’m Kurt
Taylor. Big deal. So you’ve seen me.”

The boy’s eyes go round. “Wow, this is so
cool! Can you wait right here and I’ll run to my mother to get a
magazine or somethin’ for you to autograph?”

He dashes off. Thank God. I don’t need a
gaggle of admirers surrounding me. Although Rebecca Hall wouldn’t
exactly be considered one of my admirers by a long shot. Quite the
opposite.

Rebecca stomps right up to me without
preamble.

“Hey,” I say, “watch the floor. This is a no
go zone.”

“This is what I think of you.”

Her eyes are flashing oh-so-prettily and her
nostrils are flaring. There are two pink splotches on her cheeks,
and she looks as healthy as a horse. She is a big girl too. Tall
and large-boned and well-padded. I know I made her sound like a
horse, but she isn’t really. I always found her rather attractive,
even though she’s a little on the plump side.

Before I can say or do anything, she picks up
my half-filled pail up and flings the dirty, soapy water all over
my head.

SPLASH!

*

Zzzzzzip.

Rewind.

How did I get into this mess in the first
place?

KURT

I don’t want to talk about how I met Rebecca
Hall right now. You would have to go back to high school to know
our history together, and it isn’t what you think. We have never
dated. We have never even made eyes at each other, except to roll
them.

No, my history with Rebecca Hall is far too
complex and painful. It was back when I was another person –
someone I didn’t want to be. I’m not that person anymore, and I’m
not so sure I’m proud of myself for what I did back then. But I
figured it was the right thing to do for
me
, you know.

Rebecca obviously didn’t think so.

I’d rather talk about how I got to become a
rock star. Yup, that’s me. Kurt Taylor. Lead singer of the double
platinum rock band, Red Velvet. They were already an established
rock band on the scene for ten years, when their lead singer
suddenly died of an OD.

It was front page news. Atticus Ford, 29, was
found in his bathtub, dead from an overdose.

This was extremely sad and speculative news
for everyone in the newspaper and tabloid reading world, of course,
including their online permutations of TMZ and Deadline Hollywood.
But for me, it was life-changing. Not because Red Velvet asked me
to be their lead singer overnight.

No way.

I actually had to go through fifteen rounds
of auditions to be in a reality TV show so that America’s rock
audience can vote me in to be the next lead singer of Red Velvet –
which is named after the cake, so I’ve been told.

I didn’t even win the reality TV show, called
American Rock Star
, outright. Nope, I got second place. But
karma would have it that the winner actually broke his spine right
after the final show due to a tumble off a brand new Harley that he
had bought immediately, and Red Velvet needed someone to cut a
record and go on tour right away.

So I was called in.

I am lucky that way. At least, I was lucky
then.

All this happened during the year I was
supposed to go to college. Now, I’m no valedictorian. I didn’t
graduate with any honors, and my GPA was a measly 2.5. A college
would be hard pressed to offer me anything but an athletic
scholarship . . . for basketball, which I was fairly good at. But
when this gig came up, I passed over the measly
one
offer I
had for college, and headed to New York to become part of the
velvety ensemble.

I was famous overnight, and I didn’t do
anything much except to strut onstage and win the audience over
with my sex appeal.

Believe me, I had –
have
– plenty of
sex appeal.

I have a good voice with a slight hoarseness
to it, but the American audience apparently lapped it up,
attributing sexiness to my mild throaty defect. I look really great
in tight leather pants, especially when you see me onscreen or on
YouTube, where my final song was downloaded over two hundred
million times – thirty million more than the actual winner, who has
a marvelous voice but lacks my body and considerable charm.

So the next two years were filled with
promotions and cutting records in studios (only no one really cuts
vinyl records these days, it’s all gone digital now) and whirlwind
tours and hiring a PA to tweet for us every day. I was the front
man for the band. The sex idol. The face they put in front of
Letterman and Conan O’ Brien and the scary quartet in ‘The
View’.

I was exhausted during those first two years,
you can imagine.

If you think a rock star is all sex and drugs
and groupies, think again. In the first two years, I was trying to
make my mark, and so I had very little energy left for sex. I
didn’t want to warp my head in drugs, and neither did the band
members. They very soberly and wisely remembered what happened to
Atticus Ford, whom the fans were already deeming irreplaceable.