Audition: A Rock-and-Roll Romance

By Dish Tillman

rocker romance; rock and roll romance; romance books for women; famous romance books; erotica novels

Shay and Loni are from very different worlds, and in Audition, they come together for the first time. But not how you think! Loni is deep into the academic world, dating guys that stimulate her brain but little else. Meanwhile, Shay is on the prowl for a new bassist for his up-and-coming band, when a fortune teller reveals he'll meet the most important woman of his life that day. What a joke, right? Wrong! The stars align as he meets three women women who will change his life in ways he couldn't possibly imagine, and one of them will rock his world that very night.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ulysses Press
• Release date: Jun 13, 2014
• ISBN: 9781612434124

Book preview

1

The sun splashed brilliance over the entire landscape. Soft, caressing breezes gently toyed with everyone’s hair, and the hint of moistness in the air was like the residue of a kiss from a long-sought lover. It was, in short, a perfectly amazing summer afternoon.

Shay Dayton was miserable.

He wandered the enormous parking lot that the Harvest Fest committee had claimed for its various booths and attractions, with his hands in his pockets, his eyes downcast, and his mouth set into a scowl. A rainstorm would better have matched his mood. A real squall with whipping winds, spectacular lightning bolts that reached across the sky like spiders, and deep, ominous, kettledrum rumbles of thunder.

Yeah. That would be cool. He would be down with that. And he could throw it right back, too. His mood was a match for any monsoon. He could turn the winds around with one hardened glare, he was sure of it.

Not that anyone around him felt the fury he held in check. Children ran past him as if he wasn’t even there, on their way to apple-carving demonstrations or taffy-apple merchants or apple-cider vendors or whatever bloody else these people had thought to do with apples. What goddamn thing did an apple ever do to anyone that the whole species was condemned to eternal torture? He passed a booth on which an old witch figurine, made out of a desiccated apple with cloves for eyes and straw for hair, stared out at him. It was weirdly disturbing, so he didn’t let his eyes linger.

Instead he moved on and figured, screw apples anyway. He’d just turned down his fourth gig and had no sympathy left for orchard fruit.

Four gigs that his band, Overlords of Loneliness, would have played if they’d been at full strength. Four gigs that would have put them closer to their ultimate goal of getting signed by a label, touring America, producing a hit single, becoming rock legends.

And now all of that, instead getting progressively closer, was on indefinite hold, because Kelly Ramos—their bassist and a founding member of the band—had quit. Quit, hello, to get married. Quit, to settle down to family life. Quit, in other words, to lie down and die.

You’d understand if you met her, Kelly had told Shay, his eyes bright and sparkling, a stupid grin on his face.

Would I? Shay had said, in a tone that made it very clear he very much doubted it.

Oh, hell yeah, he’d said. "But that’s exactly why I gotta keep you away from her. I know you and chicks, man. One look at Kelly, you’d be after her ass yourself. You’d be out to goddamn steal her from me."

That was another thing; Kelly’s fiancée’s name was Kelly, too. Shay could maybe make allowances for true love. Shit happens. But no self-respecting man of the world should ever marry a girl who has the same name as he does. He could already see the matching sweaters in their future, and cocktail napkins and license plates, all with KELLY & KELLY scrawled across them for hilarity. Oh, the sheer fucking degradation.

Never with me, man, Shay thought. And he didn’t just mean no women named Shay. He meant no women, period. Not for marrying anyway. His wife was his music. His marriage was