Falling for the Rock Star: Falling for You, #2

By Mazy Morris

Eight weeks before my wedding to my high school sweetheart, things have taken a disastrous turn, and a high-maintenance rock star is to blame.

I'd planned to give my two weeks' notice, then never again lay eyes on the Blue Lotus Boy's frontman, Jax Fitzroy.

Instead, I've been coaxed into hiding out in a remote mountain cabin with the 12th sexiest man alive, according to Famous Faces Magazine.

 

This wasn't part of my carefully calibrated plan, but I'll do my duty as Jax Fitzroy's personal security one last time before I quit this job for good.

I'll lay my life on the line to protect Jax from homicidal stalkers, mountain lions, and even himself, but I have a few conditions of my own, the most important of which is that this all stays strictly professional.

 

The only problem? I can't seem to stop thinking about that one time we kissed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Squid Press
• Release date: Nov 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798224133543

Book preview

Chapter One

A bby, you absolutely cannot give notice right now! Lilith wailed. Why do you always do this to me?

To be fair to Lilith, it was the 3rd time in as many years that I’d threatened to quit on her.

I got why she wasn’t taking me seriously, but this time I really meant it. My reasons for quitting were different this time.

I held the phone away from my ear before I sustained permanent hearing damage and let Lilith go on yelling at me in the hopes that she’d work her wrath out of her system.

Normally, Lilith is remarkably unflappable. She hasn’t been Jax Fitzroy’s manager for the last decade for nothing.

It was the upcoming Blue Lotus Boys’ world tour that had her on edge, but I had no intention of playing any role in the crazy that’s involved in playing thirty cities in thirty days.

Instead, I planned to hole up in my apartment and finally give my wedding to Hugo the time and attention a significant life event deserves.

I’d been planning on giving notice for weeks, anyway. My teach-yourself-self-defense online courses had long since eclipsed my earnings from being a junior bodyguard on Jax Fitzroy’s security detail. I’d become something of a social media sensation if I do say so myself.

I could pay my bills and put money aside for the wedding. It was time to move on from the bodyguard game and stop living my life at the beck and call of Jax Fitzroy and the Blue Lotus Boys.

I’ll give you a raise, Lilith said in a milder tone. You name your price.

She sounded calmer, albeit no less desperate, but I knew she wasn’t authorized to give raises. My salary came out of the security team budget, and Hugo oversaw that.

Yes, I worked for my fiancé, but before he was my boss, he was my boyfriend. And no, it wasn’t common knowledge.

Lilith didn’t have a clue that Hugo and I were a long-time item; at least, I hoped she didn’t.

That was just one more reason I was eager to quit before the wedding, although Hugo didn’t agree with me on that point. He’d discouraged me from letting go of a sure thing.

I know why you’re so desperate to get Jax out of town, but why does it have to be me? I asked Lilith. Why do I have to be the one to get stuck at some off-grid cabin in the woods to look after the health and safety of the most high-maintenance man on earth?

I wouldn’t call Jax high-maintenance.

Lilith had a point. High maintenance wasn't quite the right word to describe Jax. It was not that Jax was willfully difficult; it was just that if there was any way to get lost or sick or injured, he’d manage to do it, and don’t get me started on his propensity to misplace and break his belongings.

As far as the ability to defend himself against any sort of physical threat, the man couldn’t beat his way out of a wet paper bag.

Jax might be a prime specimen of male beauty, but he fell more at the eighteenth-century gentleman-poet end of the spectrum: all soulful green eyes, curly black hair, and skin that looked like it had never seen sunlight.

Now that I think about it, scratch eighteenth-century gentleman-poet. Jax most closely resembled a beautiful half-starved vampire.

Alright, we’ll just say Jax is fragile if that makes you feel better, I told Lilith, but I don’t see why his fragility is my problem?

But Jax requested you, Lilith told me when I pushed back on accompanying him to some cabin in the woods. He’s absolutely set on you going with him.

I’m sorry, Lilith, I really am, but you’re going to have to inform our favorite porcelain figurine I’m unavailable.

Tell him yourself, said Lilith and hung up.

I sat there on my couch for a few seconds, staring at the phone in disbelief. Lilith really must have been feeling the strain. She was not the type to hang up on people.

I texted Jax.

I can’t come with you to Tahoe. Please request somebody else

I read it over a couple of times before I hit send. Jax wasn’t going to like my refusal to go with him to Tahoe one bit. I had a feeling he was going to like the fact that I was giving notice even less, especially when it finally dawned on him that I meant it this time.

I hit send and waited. Three dots appeared and then went away. A few seconds later, the dots were back, then disappeared a second time. Immediately after that, my phone rang.

I don’t want to discuss this by text, Jax said. He didn’t even bother with the preamble of a greeting.

Alright, but there isn’t much to say. I won’t be able to go to Tahoe with you.

That was a lie. I was able to go. I just didn’t want to.

I don’t want to have this discussion over the telephone, Jax said. Come over and tell me in person.

I fail to see why physical proximity is necessary for this discussion.

You can keep all the distance you want, but I want to have this conversation face-to-face.

Jax believes he has some sort of power to mesmerize others into giving him his way. I’d like to think that’s just him being delusional, but he usually does get whatever it is he wants.

Jax thinks it’s his great personal charm that gets him whatever his little heart desires, but I’m more of the opinion that it’s because practically every person in his orbit is reliant on him for a paycheck. Even his mother gets a monthly allowance from him. We’re all dependent on him in one way or another. It’s no wonder the power has gone to his head.

You should probably know I’m— I wanted to inform him I was quitting, but it was too late. Jax had already hung up.

Twenty minutes after Jax hung up on me, I was sitting on the back patio of Jax’s palatial Hollywood Hills mansion, keeping the expansive mahogany dining table Jax uses for poolside dinner parties between us.

I stared at the sparkling surface of the pool and tried to come up with a gentle way of breaking it to Jax that I was terminating my employment.

For once, Jax wasn’t turning on the charm. Not once during the past three years I’d spent on Jax Fitzroy’s security detail had he seemed more sincerely desperate. The look on his face had me downright dreading the prospect of informing him I was giving notice.

Jax was already agitated, and all I’d done so far was balk at accompanying him to his uncle’s backwoods cabin in the Sierra Nevadas.

I absolutely refuse to spend the next two weeks until we leave on tour holed up in a remote mountain cabin with Sven, Jax said. I just can’t do it.

And I refuse to spend the next two weeks holed up in a remote mountain cabin with you, I shot back. Besides, what’s wrong with Sven? He’s very good at his job. He won’t let anything happen to you.

Jax rolled his eyes at me and huffed through his nose.

Sven is one of my fellow bodyguards. Sven is good at his job, but he only speaks in monosyllables. He carries around with him a whiff of stale sweat, garlic, and despair.

It wasn’t hard to understand why Sven wasn’t Jax’s first choice, but I was having a little trouble understanding why I should be Jax’s only other acceptable option.

What about Jon? I asked.

Just had a baby.

What about Michael?

Broke his arm a few days ago.

Michael did have a broken arm. I’d forgotten about that.

What about Hugo?

What about you?

Chapter Two

Usually, when Jax wasn’t getting his way, he reverted to puppy dog eyes. He’d turned combining adorable vulnerability with an audacious awareness of his own sex appeal into an art form. He did not become the frontman for the Blue Lotus Boys for nothing.

Unfortunately for him, unlike his scores of raving fans, I was immune to his act. I knew when he was playing a character and when he was being real. Right then, Jax was genuine, hence the absence of puppy dog eyes.

I didn’t like the nervous energy in the way he was kicking at the table leg or the way he was picking at the cuticle on his left thumb so viciously it was starting to bleed. I didn’t like the tension in his jaw or the twitch in his right eyelid.

Jax was usually only like this in the hours leading up to a concert.

Once he made it on stage, Jax was all swank and swagger, but that was at the expense of having thrown up the meal Lilith always insisted he ate.

I asked Lilith once why she kept bringing Jax food before concerts since he invariably couldn’t keep it down, but she insisted it was all part of his process.

I sometimes wondered about Lilith’s judgment, although I certainly couldn’t argue with her dedication. Her entire life revolved around Jax. She fussed over him like he was the son she never had, although she had six children of her own and dozens of grandchildren.

Jax had that effect on people. Even I felt more protective of him sometimes than was probably professionally called for.

I wouldn’t want to spend the next two weeks stuck at a remote mountain cabin with Sven, either, I told Jax, He’s not what one would call a sparkling conversationalist, but I don’t see why I have to do it. In my opinion, you don’t need a trained bodyguard to go with you. Anyone will do. Miss Stabby is hardly likely to track you down up there.

Miss Stabby?

I shouldn’t have let that drop. That’s what Jax’s security team had taken to calling Jax’s latest (and scariest) out-of-control admirer. For a few seconds, I’d forgotten that Jax didn’t know quite everything I did. Lilith generally tells him only enough to justify her decisions.

Sometimes, I think Lilith is a little overboard in her belief that the world is teeming with