Presenting a brand new
series!
Nightstar
When the hot band Murder City Ravens gets its dream, when it
gets a number one album and single and suddenly the world is watching—that’s
great, right?
Well, mostly.
But V, Jace, Donovan, Hunter, Zazz and Riku have other
dreams, other places to go. The success shocks them. It means luxury hotels
instead of motels and vans, acclaim and attention, all they need to carry on
being the great band that has caught the fickle eye of the media. It puts a big
stop on anything else they’d considered doing, and demands their total
commitment to making Murder City Ravens stellar. A year-long world tour rips
them away from their lives, and puts them in the brightest spotlight the world
can provide.
New opportunities. New hot connections with partners who
take them by storm, coming at what seems like the worst possible time. Each
member of the band has a choice to make, and it could affect the band as a
whole. But they can’t walk away from what they’ve found and they can’t ask
their new love to give everything up for them, and the sake of the new album.
Nightstar.
Book One: In The Mood
By:
Lynne Connolly
Published By: Ellora’s Cave
ISBN # 9781419939761
Available from all good e-booksellers from 20th July 2012
About the book
Genre: Contemporary romance
Series: Nightstar
The sound of a saxophone drifting out of a Chicago blues
club sends Matt inside, hoping to sign the player for his recording studio.
Instead he finds V. Passion drives them from that moment on, and Matt can’t get
enough of her sweet body and generous spirit. But as a former drug addict who
spectacularly crashed out of the rock band Murder City Ravens, he has a lot to
prove.
V thinks she’s happy with her lot until she receives an
offer to join one of the most innovative and exciting bands in the world.
Joining Murder City Ravens could sever her from Matt forever. How can she join
the band when she’s spending her nights with the man who nearly destroyed
everything they had?
Matt and V have decisions to make that might give them their
life’s dream, but could split them apart. Which is more important, personal
fulfillment or love? Is it possible to have both?
An excerpt from the book
A breath of a note shivered through the air as the club door
opened. Matt paused, then stayed to listen. It sounded great. Better than
great. Whoever was playing that saxophone knew how to wrench the heart out of
the music.
Abruptly changing his plans for the evening, he walked
toward the door. Chicago had managed to turn a thriving music area into a
tourist trap, but for those who knew where to look, a few of the old style
clubs remained. Clubs that attracted tourists but were still all about the
music. After all, tourists loved music too.
This type of club didn’t have people queuing behind velvet
ropes and VIP areas or tourists turning up in droves. The savvy might pick this
place out, because it was small and laid back and looked as if it had been
there for some time.
The man at the door looked at him, then blinked and stared,
dark eyes widening. “Are you Maxx Syccoraxx?”
He grinned. “People ask me that all the time.” He was used
to the question by now. It was better than, “Didn’t you used to be Maxx
Syccoraxx?” Yes, that was who he used to be; lead singer with an up-and-coming
rock band. No more. Drink and drugs had finished all that for him, burned him
out. Now, with his body filled out and hair cropped short, he looked like a
different man, but sometimes people still recognized him.
He hadn’t done so badly. He was still here, unlike some of
the people he’d met in his wild years. And he had to admit, the band had gone
on to greater things without him, mainly due to his replacements and the way
they gelled with the other members. Though sometimes he had to grit his teeth
before he admitted it. Failure never came easy, but he was in the process of
mending his reputation and his fortune. That worked for him.
He strolled into the club. Inside, the place looked pretty
normal. A bar ran down one side of the room with stools set in front of it,
about half of them occupied, and the other side had small tables with bentwood
chairs or simple wooden stools arranged around them.
Every time he entered a place like this, chills of
recognition and excitement went up his spine. He just felt it, like coming
home. This was where he’d started, in the small, smoky, sometimes seedy clubs
and bars, in his case in New York. He never lost that excitement, and if he
ever did, he’d start worrying.
He’d arrived in time. The saxophonist was playing an
extended riff on Summertime, always one of Matt’s favorites. His mother said
she’d sung it to him when he was a baby, and it was true he couldn’t remember a
time when he didn’t know that song.
And now another time, another place, another version. A
magical version. He let the notes wreathe around him, luring him into listening
to more, but he wouldn’t look at the stage until he’d heard more. If the player
was male, he still wanted sex with him, just from the seductive music, although
his usual preference ran to something softer and rounder. The kind with gentle
voices, plump breasts and sweet, shivering bodies.
Shit, he was one sex-starved bastard. He’d been too busy to
think about sex recently but that changed abruptly when he’d heard the first
notes of the song.
He bought a beer at the bar, then found a seat at one of the
small tables at the back. The man who served him glared at him, his gnarled,
brown hands showing nicks and scars from old brawls, but he didn’t comment.
Matt would bet this guy had made him for sure. Seen a lot of life, that guy.
He’d deliberately kept his attention away from the little
stage at the front of the room. He wanted his first aural perceptions
unaffected by anything he saw. Now, sitting alone at a small table, he looked
up. And lost his breath.
The sax player was tall and slim, with soft bits in all the
right places, and she wore a short, sassy dress in an antique gold color, a
foil for the blonde hair that flowed down her back and curled around her body.
Strands of it clung to her instrument as if they wanted to bind the two
together, player and sax.
The notes shuddered through him, through her, as they did
through the dozen or so patrons here tonight. An inner voice told Matt to
snatch her away, lock her up somewhere he could enjoy her and nobody else could
get to her. This was his music, she was playing for him alone.
© Lynne Connolly, March 2012
All Rights Reserved
