Icefire: Pure Wildfire, #2

By L.M. Connolly

Shape-shifters rock!

Ryan Hawthorne is the charismatic vocalist for the band Pure Wildfire, with the world at his feet. He's also a shape-shifting firebird more than a hundred years old, torn apart by the death of his lover. Maria died of a drugs overdose but Ryan always suspected foul play. Now he's back in New York to find out.

Gina always blamed Ryan for her stepsister Maria's death, but when she meets the devastatingly sexy singer she finds Ryan is the embodiment of all her wet dreams, and she's had plenty.

They set each other's worlds ablaze but they have to find Maria's killers before they get to Gina. Or Ryan will lose her too.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LMC Publications
• Release date: Sep 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781516341191

L.M. Connolly

L.M. Connolly writes steamy, exciting contemporary and paranormal romances. The best-selling writer of the STORM, Department 57, Pure Wildfire, and Nightstar series, she lives and breathes her characters. She lives in the UK, but travels to the US once a year, to enjoy the high life! Her books have gained her a number of awards and five star reviews, and she's also a best-selling author. Her life experiences add colour and veracity to the stories she tells, and she is always finding more! As Lynne Connolly, L.M. also writes historical romances.

Book preview

Chapter One

No way on earth am I doing that!

Hands planted firmly on the desk before her, Gina glared defiance at her father.

"Gina, you need to do it. I need you to do it. Mike Russo glared back. I have my reasons."

She refused to back down. And you think I worked this hard to get an assignment to do PR for one of the noisiest rock bands on the planet?

One of the best bands and the hottest British band to come over here since—oh, since The Beatles. This is a chance to make a real name for yourself, woman. You should grab it while it’s still on offer.

Gina pushed away from the desk, straightened and clasped her hands over her upper arms, feeling no consolation in the expensive wool under her palms, part of a suit she’d bought herself, with her earnings. She owed nobody anything. Her father had to know that if she walked out, a dozen PR agencies in Manhattan would take her in a heartbeat. She’d been head-hunted more than once but it wasn’t her relation to Mike that kept her here. She loved this job. At least she had, until this morning. Dad, I can’t. They killed Maria.

Her stepsister, his stepdaughter. Maria, gentle, ethereal, super-intelligent, died as a hopeless drug addict from an overdose. Her lover, Pure Wildfire’s singer Ryan Hawthorne, had survived, although he’d taken the same quantity of the same drug. An accident maybe, but if Maria had never gone with the band, she might be alive today. Without meeting the band, without falling for Ryan Hawthorne, Maria wouldn’t have become an addict and wouldn’t have died.

Mike stared at her, his dark eyes passionless. She envied his ability to separate work and pleasure. All the band members went into rehab after Maria died. They’re only this big now because they gave up the drugs in favor of work. I always took the view that the real villain was the drug dealer. Addicts are suffering from a disease, the dealers feed it. Hawthorne was as much a victim as Maria was. He paused, watching her carefully.

She sighed. He was right. Deep down, that was her opinion too. It was just easier to blame the person she knew, Ryan Hawthorne, rather than the unknown dealer who’d supplied the drugs.

Gina, never forget what you’re employed to do.

And what would that be? She kept her tone cool. She hadn’t said yes yet.

In this instance, to sell Pure Wildfire. Their manager is Randy Norwood and he fired their last PR consultants. He wants us to take over. So you’ll spend some time with the band, watching them and getting to know them, study what’s been done so far and come up with a viable plan for the future, as well as continuing the campaigns that are already under way.

She felt her professional side click in, with questions and budgets, campaigns and ideas. After nearly twenty years, it was almost second nature. It didn’t hurt to find out a bit more. Assume I know nothing. And I don’t know a lot, I’ve avoided them since Maria died. Where are they in their career?

Mike gave a one-sided grin. I thought you’d come around, once you got over the personal side. He glanced at his notes lying on his desk. Her father was an old-fashioned kind of guy who preferred to think with pen and paper, not the computer screen. Pure Wildfire plays rock and blues. Three English, two US members. You must have heard the music?

She shook her head. If I have, I didn’t know it, not after the first album. I sometimes put the radio on in the car but it’s more for the traffic news than the music. She turned them off whenever she heard them, too afraid she’d actually like the music. She didn’t want anything to do with the band, but now they’d become more popular in the States, it was getting harder to avoid them.

You should keep current.

I do! she protested, before she saw the teasing glint in his eyes. She waved a lackluster hand in his direction. Go on. Tell me about the band.

She knew her attempt at indifference hadn’t fooled him for a minute. How could it? She’d watched their fortunes ever since Maria died. She lied when she said she didn’t know their music too well but for the last two years she’d done her best to ignore them. That was when Pure Wildfire had really become the hottest rock band in years. Good luck to them, she’d thought, mourning the loss of the gentle, laughing girl she’d loved.

She’d felt happier ignoring Pure Wildfire’s success. Even when their posters were stuck all over spaces in New York, legal and illegal. Even when they featured in the Grammys, the telethons and the other parade of promotions necessary these days for success. Even when the last album, their third, topped every chart.

No. She was better pretending she didn’t know them, that Pure Wildfire was just another trend, another band. And now Mike, knowing her weakness, was forcing her to face it. Just as he’d forced her to face every difficulty in her life. She wasn’t fooled. This was more of his tough love stuff.

So she listened, knowing the result was inevitable. She’d take the gig.

"The third album is doing better than the first two combined. Sunfire, the Pure Wildfire live album and now Icefire. Now they’re knocking America dead. Halfway through a short nationwide tour, they’re doing a few dates here and then flying south for another concert and a video shoot. Big arenas, Gina. Corinne Hawthorne is supposed to be the catalyst that made the third album so good and she’s certainly a gift for us. She and Aidan have had a baby and they’re bringing it on tour. You have an angle there, Gina. The baby’s proving controversial. Rock bands tend to keep their kids and families apart. They’re staying at the best hotels and they have two nannies to take care of the baby when Corinne’s onstage or rehearsing. She and Splinter—Aidan—are obviously in love and both adore the child but Aidan’s never lost his wild man image. Weird."

The pictures of Aidan Hawthorne stripped to the waist, long, bright red hair falling in a silken swath to his hips, guitar slung low, seemingly a part of his body, didn’t encourage anyone to think of him as tamed in any way. Much less when he spooned behind his wife, the second guitarist with the band, one hand on her guitar strings, the other cupping a breast and Corinne, leaning back into him with ecstasy on her face. That was one picture Gina hadn’t been able to ignore, plastered as it was over some of the prime billboard sites on her way in to work. The image the band was using to promote Icefire and it was a good one.

But Mike was right. She could use that angle. Whip up a controversy, get them some airtime and then deflate it by interviewing the two nannies to show how well the childcare facilities actually were.

I thought you liked music, Mike’s voice gentled to placatory and only Gina knew how much that cost him. Mike Russo didn’t usually placate.

I do, in its place. But not if it deafens me. And in any case, you know that’s not the point. She turned away but swung back immediately, unashamed of the tears dampening her eyes and threatening to play havoc with her carefully applied makeup. You want me to work for the band that killed Maria. Your stepdaughter, Mike, in case you’d forgotten.

Mike’s expression didn’t change. His craggy face hardened very slightly but only someone who knew him as well as Gina would have noticed. I haven’t forgotten. That’s why I want you to take the job and not anyone else in the company.

Why? She stopped her agitated striding and swung around to face him, suspicion sharp in her mind. What is it, Dad?

He heaved a heavy sigh and indicated the chair before his desk. Sit down.

She took the seat and stared at Mike, waiting for his explanation.

There are two reasons. The first is that you’re letting this cripple your career. You have to be current, Gina, and you’re not. You avoid music, I’ve seen you turn off the radio. Russo’s is taking on more bands, we’re making a name for it and if you’re not careful you’ll be left behind. Normally I’d say go with it, take the other accounts but I think Maria’s death has become an obsession. You have to leave it behind and the only way you’ll do that is to confront what you’re afraid of. Meet Ryan Hawthorne. He’s not a monster, Gina, he’s a human being. Flawed, sure, he’s made some stupid mistakes but he took those drugs too and he nearly died. You faced all your other problems head-on and I don’t like seeing my girl avoiding this one. So stop demonizing them and meet them. If you can’t work with them, that’s different but make sure it’s for a business reason, not a personal one.

She couldn’t meet his eyes because she knew he was right. Staring at her hands tightly clasped in her lap, Gina forced herself to admit that yes, Maria’s death was with her every day, yes, she’d allowed it to affect what she did and how she worked. She forced herself to look up. You said there were two reasons.

Yeah. Mike grimaced, then settled down to his usual urbane self. I don’t think Maria died of a simple overdose.

Gina blinked, her mind reeling with shock. Maria was an addict. Anything she could get hold of, she’d inject. So while it might not have been simple, she died from a drug overdose.

Mike’s mouth settled into a grim line. Sure it was an overdose. And her partner nearly died too. God knows how he survived. I took a look at the coroner’s report. It’s taken me this long to get hold of it, five years after her death.

She frowned. I saw it at the time. The death certificate and the coroner’s report.

You would have thought so. There was another report, one we didn’t get to see. Not an official one.

Gina sat back, all her breath gone. A cover-up? Tell me.

I always thought something wasn’t quite right, just a feeling, nothing that I had any proof about.

Mike glanced at her face, his expression shielded. I received some anonymous letters that contained very weird stuff, saying that Maria’s boyfriend wasn’t quite human. I put them down to the weird ramblings of addicts or someone who hated the band.

He frowned. "The letters disappeared when my apartment was burglarized and the thieves took nothing else. The police said the burglars were disturbed but why didn’t they grab a laptop on their way out, or one of the paintings? No, they took the letters, the ones I’d discounted. So I got suspicious and I went looking. Eventually I got a hold of the original coroner’s report, the one that never reached the courts."

Gina stared at him, startled. Mike had never told her any of this before.

Maria died of an overdose all right but the authorities questioned the drugs they found in her. Heroin, sure, they found that but they found other stuff too. The report I got, the report in public record, doesn’t mention anything other than heroin.

What drugs?

He spread his hands helplessly. Not identified. Unless I want to spend a bucketload of money and give up this business, I don’t think I’ll ever find out much more. The coroner’s report cost a fortune to get hold of and it took me a lot of digging around to get it. But the fact that they hid the first report sends up warning flags. He shrugged. Just questions but if you’re working with the band, you can ask more, maybe find out more.

That put a different angle on working with Pure Wildfire. Could she do this? It had been five years since Maria died and the pain wasn’t as sharp now but Mike was right. Gina always had the feeling that something wasn’t quite right about Maria’s death. The explanations were too pat, too staged for her liking. But although she and Mike had dug into any reports they found, flown over to England and stirred the authorities there into action, the inquest had returned a verdict of accidental death and the authorities dropped the case. This might be her chance to find out what really happened.

A knock fell on the office door.

Come!

Well, today was just full of surprises. The door opened to reveal a man Gina hadn’t seen for years. An old friend from childhood, she’d cut the friendship when he’d taken up the same madness that had killed her sister. Sonny had stuck with the band after rehab. But they’d nearly become an item once and she still thought about him from time to time.

She gave him a cool nod. Hi. Long time no see. How are you, Sonny?

Sonny Fratelli walked farther into the room and gave her a long stare before smiling in the good-natured way she remembered. I’m fine, Gina. Good to see you again.

The sight of his tall, well-muscled body, displayed rather than revealed by his casual t-shirt and slacks, and the sound of his deep chocolate voice made shivers crawl up Gina’s spine. He looked better than ever, now he’d given up the drugs. Perhaps he’d matured in the last five years. Perhaps pigs flew. But one thing had stayed the same—he was still as good-looking as ever and twice as sexy. Not surprising since the last time she’d seen him he’d been strung out on heroin or crystal meth or something—she didn’t care what it was. She’d turned her back on him then.

Mike got to his feet and came around the desk to shake Sonny’s hand. Good to see you looking so well, Sonny. How are you doing?

Sonny gave a deep, sincere smile that made his eyes shine. Gina was intrigued to see the new creases at the corners at his eyes. They made him even handsomer, if that was possible. I’m all cleaned up now, sir. And for the last five years.

Mike gestured toward the chair next to Gina. She wanted to move away but giving up her personal space for him would only make her look vulnerable. So she sat upright and smiled thinly when he sat down. Sonny.

Gina. His expression deepened into concern. You look tired. How’re you doing?

Like you said, tired. But I’ll get over it. Not precisely tired, she’d had plenty of sleep. If he’d said stressed, he would have been on the button.

You okay with this? Working with the band?

She shrugged. I’m a professional. I can make gold out of lead if I have to.

You won’t have to do that with Pure Wildfire. They’re the real thing.

Allowing herself the luxury of an arched brow, she asked, How would you know?

I’m a professional road manager these days and doing well. Got my own crew. I’ve been working with Pure Wildfire.

Great, just great. She waited for the axe to fall. Mike sat down again and fixed her with a gimlet stare. I’ve made arrangements for you to travel in the bus with the band for part of the tour. You need to get up close to study them. You have tickets for the concert tonight. So go.

Thunk.

Chapter Two

––––––––

Radio City Music Hall was elegant, refurbished and, as luck would have it, one of Gina’s favorite venues. So it was a pity that was where she and Sonny went that night to see Pure Wildfire.

Outside it was crowded, inside  even worse but even though they arrived late, after the support band, just as the audience was beginning to get restless. Sonny saw her to her place, kissed her cheek and left her, laughing at her protest. I have to go do my job, Gina. I should be there now. I’ll see you later.

Only half an hour later, lights burst into life and the stage reverberated with the pre-recorded introduction. You’ve heard ’em, now see ’em. Pure Wildfire!

A roar greeted the band and a single, jarring guitar chord heralded the first song. Most of the audience leapt up to their feet, so if Gina wanted to see them, she had to stand up too.

This was a song Gina knew, something from the second album, though she couldn’t put a name to it. Loud and fast, the band ran on the stage already playing and then, last of all, vocalist Ryan Hawthorne leaped into action. Literally. With a leg-splitting leap reminiscent of The Who’s Pete Townsend, Ryan struck a power note on the way up and another as he hit the stage.

Great showmanship. Gina watched, trying to assess the band, carefully watching all the nuances, all the moves. Until she realized what they were doing. They had planned some of the moves and speeches Ryan made linking the songs but those key points provided a springboard for wild flights of fancy and improvised crowd-pleasing chats. Pure Wildfire fed off the audience, discerning the mood, playing what the audience needed.

Reluctantly, her admiration grew. When lead guitarist Splinter let himself ease into the music, his concentration was so intense she could almost feel it.

He closed his eyes and spread his legs in the typical rock god stance but Gina felt the rightness of it. He wasn’t posing for anyone, not at this moment, he didn’t want to lose his balance while he played. With his wife Corinne on the other side of the stage, buoying and supporting him with carefully balanced and timed chords and notes, Splinter exploded.

The torrent of notes, carefully chosen, as carefully as the spaces in between, flowed from him, his guitar as much a part of him as his arms or legs, as integral a part of his expression. Sweat poured off his body, drenching the t-shirt that was all he wore on his upper body and it wasn’t from overheating, it was from sheer concentration. Three bars in, he closed his eyes and the lighting darkened to a spot, pure blue, illuminating him, leaving the rest of the band in shadow. Unlike many other bands, they didn’t take the opportunity to take a drink or towel off. Each member of the band stood still, unless they were adding accents to Splinter’s solo and she knew the admiration on their faces wasn’t in any way faked.

The intensity wasn’t something she expected in a rock concert. Energy yes, noise yes, but not this concentrated onslaught of emotion.

As the spotlight widened, taking in other members of the band, and they began to drift back in to the music, she opened her eyes wide, then closed them hard, a trick she’d learned long ago to stop inconvenient tears falling.

And opened them, right on to the speculative, sharp gaze of Ryan Hawthorne. He wouldn’t be able to see her, not really, she assured herself.

She looked away but she’d felt the contact and it couldn’t be undone. She felt naked, open, just for a moment. That was why she avoided meeting eyes unless she had shielded herself, prepared for the encounter. Whoever said eyes were windows on the soul was right. She looked deep inside Ryan Hawthorne and caught an amazed, vulnerable, open soul for a second, or perhaps even less. Then he turned away, his whole body pivoting in the other direction, and took his microphone from a roadie. Just an illusion. It had to be.

Unnerved, Gina watched the rest of the concert with a stillness and concentration she hadn’t been able to muster before. Every note struck something deep inside her, something she hadn’t even been aware of before tonight, or something she had willfully ignored. She wasn’t sure.

An hour and a half into the set, Splinter and Ryan took stools at the front of the stage but before they began, Ryan looked straight at her. Or seemed to.

Ramps were set around the stage and across the boarded-over orchestra pit for the band to use and while the rest of the band had occupied the one close to her seat at one time or another, Ryan had avoided it or not used it. Now he didn’t.

He walked slowly up the ramp, Splinter playing a gentle riff that announced the tune, and to her horror Gina recognized it as the song Ryan had written for Maria, Tearing Me Apart.

Ryan held out his hand to her. She swallowed and looked up at him.

His expression now was completely controlled, the deeper emotions masked, a query in his eyes. She could refuse him but that would be the act of a coward. And besides, something inside her urged her to go to him, as he evidently wanted.

Behind him, Splinter played on. Taking a deep breath, she leaned up and took his hand. Come up, he said softly, so softly she couldn’t hear him, only follow the shape of his sensual mouth.

One of the security staff lifted her and she scrambled over the low barrier separating them, sliding from the edge into his arms.

He released her as soon as she’d steadied but not before she felt his astonishing steely strength. Who would have imagined such a slender-seeming man would be so strong? When she looked closer, she saw muscles bunch as he turned away, his hand in hers, to lead her to the stools.

Time slowed as he seated her next to the guitarist then began the song. She knew many bands did this, drew a member of the audience into a song, and her seat was conveniently close. But however much she told herself This is a gimmick, a device, she couldn’t separate her professional self from the vulnerable woman underneath.

She tried not to listen, tried to keep the smile fixed on her face, the blank expression in her eyes. But she couldn’t. Ryan had evoked Maria perfectly in the song—her fragility, her gentleness, her touching naïveté. Her image—slight, blonde, ethereally pretty—swam before Gina’s eyes.

Damn, when had she started to cry? Tears spilled over her eyes and ran down her cheeks, two big, fat tears the spotlight would only emphasize. The man taking video shots for the band knelt in front of them and she knew the camera would magnify her distress tenfold. She couldn’t use her trick of squeezing her eyes tightly closed, because anyone watching the video would see it and know. So she forced her sight past the tears misting her eyes and gazed at Ryan. Right into his eyes.

Shock lanced between them and although she didn’t jerk with the impact, it was a close-run thing. Constantly aware that thousands of strangers watched her, she used Ryan as a focus, a way of keeping her eyes dry and her expression bland.

Except he seemed emotional too. He’d sung this song many times, how could he keep the emotion so raw, so new? But he did. She saw it. The psychic ability she preferred to ignore connected them in a way she’d never meant. Her ability amounted to a sensitivity, strong intuition, that was all but sometimes it focused itself more than she wanted. Useful sometimes in her work, mostly it was just a fucking nuisance.

Like now. She wanted to hate Ryan Hawthorne for the life he led, that had led Maria into losing her life but she knew it must go both ways. She doubted Ryan held Maria down and shot that poison into her veins. Maria made that decision all by herself. She didn’t want to know that. This was what she had been afraid of when her father gave her the job, her emotions coming back, the agony she felt at the time returning to haunt her.

Now she saw something worse in Ryan. The agony had never left him. He felt it still, the pain fresh in his eyes.

He sang to her, her alone and while she ached for him, she recognized his gift, rare in the music world, of shrinking a huge theater to the size of Ryan Hawthorne and one other. Every woman in that theater knew for sure that person was herself.

"I’ll love you always and forever

Until the pain in me subsides."

When he stopped, she heard it, the sound more awesome than the roaring of approval, or the applause of thousands of people.

Silence, absolute and complete. For the duration of one second, maybe two. She’d heard it before and it was always the indication of something great, something so deeply moving that people needed to regain their senses and remember they were individuals and not a single entity.

Then the applause came. A great roar, until Gina thought her ears would ring for evermore. Ryan held out his hand like some old-world gentleman and she let him help her off the stool. He took her to the side of the stage where Sonny stood grinning like a loon, holding a towel and a bottle of beer.

Ryan leaned toward her, pitching his voice below the decibels. She heard him perfectly. It might seem like a gimmick but I need to sing that song to one person if I’m going to get it right. And you—you remind me of someone I once knew. Gina’s heart sank. She knew who. Look, Ryan said, it sounds like a line but it isn’t. Will you come backstage afterward? I’d like to talk to you.

She opened her mouth but couldn’t get any words out. She closed it again and nodded. Oh yes, she’d be there all right but as his publicist, not a groupie or a quick fuck.

She turned to Sonny and glared, daring him to say anything. Sonny winked. Ryan glanced at him and then did the oddest thing. He lifted her hand to his mouth and deposited a gentle kiss on the palm. And Gina felt as if he’d reached into her soul. With that simple touch he’d contacted a part of her she was barely aware of, a place she had no name for and no way of explaining. Such an old-fashioned gesture from a wild child!

Ryan walked back on to the stage. The stage he owned, at least for tonight.

Sonny touched her shoulder, waking her from her reverie, and she let him take her away from the noise, back to a small corridor. Hey, I can’t wait to see Ryan’s face when he realizes who you are! He sniggered.

Don’t you dare tell him, Sonny. I want to tell him myself.

She wanted to spare Ryan any ridicule or shock, feeling she owed him that, at least, for the connection to a woman they had both loved, in very different ways. The woman, she reminded herself, whom Ryan had seduced and led into a life totally unsuited to her.

The woman he’d killed.

* *