Playing Autumn (Breathe Rockstar Romance Book 1) (25 page)
Read Playing Autumn (Breathe Rockstar Romance Book 1) Online
Authors: Mina V. Esguerra
Finally, she got to the pool house, and when she flipped the lights on she remembered that she had switched off her phone during the recital and hadn't switched it back on.
And then it started buzzing like crazy.
The wireless Internet kicked in at the same time, so she was getting all manner of notifications—email alerts, text messages, voice mail. She hadn't yet sorted it out when the screen was taken over by a familiar face—Victoria's photo, because she was calling.
“Victoria?” Haley said, bewildered. “What the—?”
“
Holy fuck
,
Haley Reese
! I've got her, I've got her!”
“What are you talking about?”
She could barely hear her friend over the noise, but then Victoria started to yell, and it was a little clearer.
“Haley! I'm in New Orleans! Oliver flew me in to watch his show! Can you hear me? Can you hear anything?”
What the—? He flew in
her friend
? What the. “I don't understand…”
“Haley, shut up a sec! Oliver's show is awesome and his show is almost over and he's about to do his encore and you know what he just told everyone? CALL HALEY! He said ‘Call Haley!' And everyone's like who the fuck is Haley and I'm like
I know who the fuck Haley is, that's why he brought me here!
You’re seriously avoiding him? Yes, shit, yes, I've got her right here! Haley, are you there?”
She was there, but her limbs were starting to go numb. “Yes, I'm here.”
“Haley.” The next voice she heard seemed further away but amplified, and she recognized it, of course she did. “Haley, I didn't want to end the show without you hearing this right now.”
“Did you hear that?” Victoria again.
“Yes,” she said.
“She's listening!” her friend shouted.
“Who's Haley?” someone else yelled.
“Haley,” Oliver said, “is a talented, beautiful artist, and she did the new arrangement for this last song I'm going to perform. In fact, I love this arrangement so much that I wanted her to perform it with me tonight, but she wouldn’t take my calls.
“So I showed her video of it to some people, who showed it to other people, and now I have people throwing money at me because they want me and Haley to work on something new together.”
“It’s your video!” Victoria said.
“Shut up, Victoria,” Haley hissed. She could hear a piano playing a tentative melody.
“…and then I said,” Oliver continued, “I don't think that's going to work, because she's a strong and principled person, and she said she absolutely did not want to see me again. She thinks she has a real life to live and this shouldn’t be part of it. I shouldn’t make her hope for something only to let her down. And we should respect that, right? So I can’t.”
“
No,”
Victoria gasped. “What the hell is this? Are you stupid or something?”
“Shut
up
, Victoria.”
“…she won't even take my calls anyway,” Oliver was saying, “And then they said, ‘What's her number?' And I said no, I'm not going to give
you
her number if she doesn’t want to pick up
my
calls.”
Scales. She could hear him playing scales, warming up.
“But,” Oliver added, “I can’t keep thinking that she’d want to hear about this. So I told the people with money, ‘
Look, she's not going to take your call. But maybe you can fly her best friend over to the Louisiana show. Maybe she’ll take a call from her best friend.
’ She’s listening now, isn’t she?”
“Yes!” Victoria yelled.
“Maybe she’ll hang up before she finds out what I’m doing, but I thought we should try anyway. Even if she doesn't want to hear from me. I know this is something she loves to do. She owes it to herself to try, because she's got a gift and she knows it.”
The scales transitioned into the opening bars of
that song
, but he didn't start singing.
“Besides, what’s real, right? It’s what we decide to do. Every stupid thing. Every brilliant thing. And sometimes brilliant decisions look incredibly stupid, but that’s fear talking. So, people of New Orleans,” Oliver said, “I need your help. I want her to do this, to make music with me, but it has to be her choice.”
Really, Oliver. She would have been mortified at how public this was, except it wasn't, not for her. She was alone in a room in a pool house.
He
was putting himself out there. Without knowing what she was going to say, what she would do, if she would hang up this very second.
Of course she couldn't.
“This is also a very selfish way of finding a way to spend time with her. Maybe because I’m falling in love with her.”
That was said a little too clearly for it to be a mistake.
“Oh my
god!
” Victoria screamed. “What the hell happened in Houston?”
Haley fell onto her bed, one hand covering her face, the other keeping her phone to her ear. “He's crazy.”
“She says you're crazy!” Victoria not-so-helpfully shared.
Oliver laughed into his microphone, and it made her spine tingle. “I might be. I think the way to know for sure is to see me again, right? Let’s work together, Haley. You’ll teach me everything I still need to learn. Tell me which songs suck, how to make them better. Let’s go home for Thanksgiving and eat more pie. Will you help me tell her this, New Orleans? Can everyone please tell Haley to listen to me? Just do that. Everyone. Say, ‘
Haley, make music with Oliver!’”
“
Haley! Make music with Oliver!”
Haley heard, because that had to have been over a hundred people yelling it at the same time.
“Is that code for something?” Victoria piped in.
And then Oliver said, “Now everyone shut up so Haley will think I'm serious about this falling in love with her business.”
She regained some brain function long enough to switch her phone to speaker mode. So she had both hands free as she laughed and cried, uncontrollably, as Oliver Cabrera performed her arrangement of
Your Life.
She was looking forward to Thanksgiving already.
The End
Tempting Victoria, Breathe Music Book 2
,
will be available on September 29th.
About
Tempting Victoria
Victoria Bennett is in control and in charge all day every day, but she needs help sometimes. Organizing a romantic proposal weekend for her client in Mexico would be that time – and the only person available to help her is Nathan Grant, notorious heartbreaker. She knows his past and shouldn’t want him, shouldn’t fall for guys like him, but that hasn’t prevented her from lusting after him all these years. It’s just one weekend on the beach, away from people they know, alone with the guy who could cause her perfectly coordinated world to crumble. Shouldn’t be a problem, right?
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Acknowledgements from the first edition
Thank you, Mike (for everything, and time), Marian (for the crazy/brilliant idea), Jill (for fajitas and more), Tito Jay (best ribs in Tampa and the world), Jan (you know what you did), Layla (hugot ever), DC (yes you), DA (you too), CC in IAH, Continental Guy in HNL, because fiction is sometimes not really fiction, even though it absolutely is fiction.
And Houston, my family's home, sometimes mine too. I don't miss the fire ants though.
2015 Author’s Note
Playing Autumn is the longest standalone book I’ve worked on in my years as a romance author. (It’s easily double the word count of most of my titles.) This was first published as a novella in the
Rock Gods of Romance
ebook anthology released in 2013 by Jaded Speck Publishing, and if you’ve read that edition, thank you. If you’ve read this one and have any feelings about what’s been added and removed, I hope you let me know.
I learned a lot about romance writing, the new adult category, and
myself
really, in the process of revising Playing Autumn. Thank you so much, Nicole, for the encouragement and the guidance.
Mina
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mina V. Esguerra learned everything she needed to know about writing romances from Sweet Dreams novels and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series. When not working as a communications consultant, she writes contemporary romance, young adult, and new adult novels. When not working and writing, she’s hanging out with her husband and daughter. Visit her site
http://minavesguerra.com
.
Chic Manila series
My Imaginary Ex | Fairy Tale Fail | No Strings Attached | Love Your Frenemies | That Kind of Guy | Welcome to Envy Park | Wedding Night Stand | Young and Scambitious | Properly Scandalous (Scambitious #2) | Shiny and Shameless (Scambitious #3) | Greedy and Gullible (Scambitious #4)
Interim Goddess of Love series
Interim Goddess of Love | Queen of the Clueless | Icon of the Indecisive | Gifted Little Creatures (short story) | No Roses for Hannah (short story)
Spotlight series
The Harder We Fall | Never Just Friends | Playing Autumn
Anthology contributions
Say That Things Change (New Adult Quick Reads 1) | Kids These Days: Stories from Luna East Arts Academy Volume 1 | Sola Musica: Love Notes from a Festival
Twitter, Instagram, Facebook: minavesguerra
Wattpad: MinaVE
Contact the author:
minavesguerra.com
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