Getting Played (Heart of Fame #7) Read online

On his left, Levi Levistan—bass player and award-winning Hollywood composer—let out a chuckling sigh. On his right, Noah Holden—the best drummer in the world and Pepper’s one and only—burst out laughing. And yet Jax noticed a strained energy in Noah’s body. His leg thrummed up and down and he tapped his fingers against his rising and falling knee in a blur.

  It had been a while since Jax had seen the ADHD-suffering drummer in such a state. Since Pepper had entered his life, Noah had been so much more calm and centered. Come to think of it, where was Pepper now?

  As if he’d conjured her up with the curious thought, their manager strode out onto the balcony, two steaming mugs in her hands.

  “Where’s mine?” he asked with a smile as she placed one in front of Noah and kept the other in her hand.

  “You don’t get one,” she answered, taking a seat in the empty chair next to Noah.

  He pouted. “Because I broke curfew, Mom?”

  She rolled her eyes. “One of these days, Jaxon Campbell, you’re going to find yourself in a situation you can’t joke your way out of. Now please put a sock in it, there’s a reason for this meeting and it isn’t just to eat breakfast together.”

  Jax straightened in his chair. “There’s breakfast coming as well? Excellent.”

  Levi picked up a strawberry and threw it at his head.

  “Thanks, mate,” he said, catching it mid-air.

  “Okay, okay.” Pepper shook her head and shifted in her seat, stiffening her back a little. “Time to be serious.”

  Jax frowned, studying everyone at the table. Holy shit. Why were they all so serious? “Has someone died?”

  “Synergy,” Samuel muttered, glaring at the tall glass of juice on the table in front of him.

  Jax couldn’t stop his eyebrows shooting up his forehead. “We’re breaking up? What the fuck?”

  “What Strings is saying—” Pepper shot Samuel an exasperated sideways glance, “—is the notion of replacing Nick for the Dead Even 2 soundtrack seems unlikely, given the studio wants the song in four weeks.”

  “And we’ve had fuck-all luck finding a new lead singer to sing the bloody song,” Samuel continued, lifting his stare from his juice. “So unless one of us is going to take front and centre—and we know that’s not happening or we would have done it when Nick first retired years ago—this wonderful experiment we called Synergy has run its course. Told you it was impossible to replace the bastard.”

  Jax gaped at the group of people who were closer to him than family. “So that’s it? The reason for all the doom and gloom? Geez, don’t do that to me. I seriously thought someone was dead.”

  Levi let out another shaky sigh disguised as a laugh. “Think this group has had its fair share of death, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I think we have.” Jax gave his friend a warm smile. The shit the bass player and his partner, Corbin, had been through this year…man, Jax didn’t know how he’d coped. Jax sure as hell couldn’t. What he could do, however, is save Synergy.

  Maybe.

  Hopefully.

  Leaning forward, he picked up Noah’s untouched coffee, took a sip and then settled back in his seat. “I know a guy.”

  Pepper narrowed her eyes. As did Samuel. Noah’s knee stopped thrumming. Levi raised an eyebrow.

  “You know a guy?” Samuel echoed.

  Jax took another sip of Noah’s coffee. Damn, how many sugars did the guy put in the thing? “Well, more like a girl,” he said after swallowing. “And she hates me. At least, she did the last time I had anything to do with her, but—”

  “Jesus,” Samuel burst out, “you’re not talking about who I think you are, are you?”

  “I am.”

  Pepper frowned at him, then at Samuel and back to Jax again. “Who?”

  On Jax’s right, Noah threw back his head and laughed. “Oh man, this is going to be fun.”

  Pepper’s frown deepened. “Who are you talking about? Can someone please tell me what the hell is going on?”

  Jax grinned at his fellow band members, his stomach tight, his heart fast and his groin…well, his groin liked the idea a lot, even if it was damn near suicidal. “Hey,” he said, doing his best to ignore the image of the sexiest woman on the planet suddenly filling his head. “It’s worth a shot, right?”

  Noah laughed again.

  Samuel snorted. “It’s your funeral, Liberace.”

  “Who?” Pepper repeated.

  Levi sniggered, reached for the glass of juice in front of him and raised it in a toast. “To Jax. He was a brave if somewhat stupid man. We knew him well.”

  Pepper gaped them all. “Who?”

  Stomach knotted, cock well on its way to making his jeans too tight, Jax took one more sip of Noah’s coffee. “Natalie Thorton,” he murmured. “God help me.”

  Chapter Two

  Natalie Thorton knew going all fan-girly over Nick Blackthorne was pretty damn woeful, given she was the Dean of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, but it was hard not to. She’d thought by now, two months into his son’s studies there, she would have gotten the highly teenage-like reaction out of her system, and yet every time Nick rang or visited the Con, Nat went a little silly.

  The most annoying thing about it all was the fact she knew Nick personally. Knew him just as Nick, not Nick Blackthorne, mega rock god. Of course, she’d known Nick back in the early days of his career, when he and her no-good, lying, duplicitous, stealing ex-boyfriend had performed together. Before she’d gotten wise to the fact Jaxon Campbell wasn’t anything more than the most amazing sex of her life. She’d thought he was her one and only for a while, but truth be known, she’d also thought One Direction were the next Beatles, so her judgment skills back then weren’t exactly stellar.

  What was stellar, however, was Nick Blackthorne’s son. Damn, Josh Blackthorne could sing and play guitar. The twenty-one-year-old’s voice was a smoky mix of sex, sin and velvet, and he left his father for dead when it came to playing the guitar. The trouble was, Josh was only at the Con because his true love—soccer—had been taken away from him. Which made for an unsettled and at times surly student. A student inclined to rest on his laurels and cause a ruckus in class.

  In his two months at the Conservatorium, he’d been in more than one drunken fight, more than one argument with lecturers and teachers, and more than one situation with fellow students—which essentially was Nat’s euphemism for Josh Blackthorne being busted having sex with a female student in the choral assembly hall, or the music café or the Director of Vocal and Choral studies’ office.

  The last time he’d been caught, the situation had been taking place in the east recital hall as Nat was taking the Federal Minister for Education and the Federal Minister for the Arts and Culture on a tour of the Con. When they’d walked in on Josh and his situational friend, Josh had raised his head from between Emily Duncan’s thighs, grinned at the federal ministers and asked if his performance was worth a standing ovation.

  For Nat, it was the last straw.

  Either Josh straightened up, or he left. Simple.

  Hence Nick Blackthorne’s imminent arrival in less than fifteen minutes. The retired rock star was going to have a talk with his son. Nat suspected, based on his tone of voice during her last telephone conversation with him, that it wasn’t going to be a calm one.

  A knock at Nat’s door raised her head from the paperwork she was paying no attention to on her desk.

  “There’s a man here to see you, Ms. Thorton,” the pixie-like brunette on the threshold said. “Says he knows you.”

  Nat frowned. “I know a lot of men, Dory. What’s so special about this one?”

  Dory Boone, Nat’s assistant and the spryest person Nat knew, grinned. “Think Jensen Ackles meets Henry Cavill meets Vin Diesel, and you’re not even close to how yummy he is.”

  Nat’s frown deepened. Did she know anyone that delicious? Surely not. If she did, she’d never let him out of her bedroom. “I think you might be exaggerating a tad.”
r />   Dory shook her head. “No way. This guy…” She fanned herself, eyes twinkling. “But if you don’t want me to send him in, I’ll gladly deal with him myself. I may have to take the rest of the day off to do so, mind you. Given that I plan to strip him naked and tie him to my—”

  With an exasperated sigh, Nat waved her hand in the air. “That’s enough. I get the picture. Show him in. But come and save me in five minutes. Nick Blackthorne is due any—”

  “I always knew you had a thing for Nick,” a tall, lean man with dark-brown eyes and messy brown hair strode past Dory, oozing devilish charm. “Shame it’s too late for a threesome, eh? What with him being married and respectable now.”

  Nat gaped up at her old boyfriend as he crossed to her desk, her heart slamming up into her throat. “Jax? What the hell are you doing here?”

  Jaxon Campbell dropped into the chair directly in front of her desk, legs spread, grin wide. “I’m here to see you, Boxhead.”

  Tummy knotting, pulse pounding, pussy fluttering—damn it—Nat scowled. “How many times have I told you not to call me Boxhead?”

  Jax shrugged, threading his fingers behind his head. “Five?”

  Her scowl deepened. “Try five hundred.” Damn it, why the hell was her body behaving like he was the second-goddamn-sexual coming?

  His dark eyes found hers, the twinkle in them as dangerously sexy as the smirk dancing on his lips. “So you have missed me,” he stated. “I figured as much.”

  “Sure,” Nat shot back. “I miss the drunken groping behind the stage between sets, the vomit on my shoes after you’ve partied too hard. I miss the empty promises of being home for dinner, your birthday, my birthday. And I definitely miss the women trying to climb into our bedroom window hoping to become a…what did your groupies call themselves? The Jaxontops?”

  “The Jaxonfires. Man, they were a wild bunch, weren’t they? Do you remember when three of them tried to strip you during our first concert in Perth?”

  Nat stared at him, gobsmacked. Behind him, lingering at the door to Nat’s office, Dory gaped at them both, mouth open, excited disbelief on her face. Disbelief and impatience.

  The knot in Nat’s stomach tightened. Dory was the biggest gossip at the Con. This situation would be around the staff and students before Nat had a chance to kick Jax off the premises, no doubt sprinkled with creative embellishment.

  Her tummy twisted some more and, deciding it was better to get the inevitable over and done with sooner rather than later, she waved her assistant away. “Have at it, Dory,” she said. “I know you’re going to burst if you don’t.”

  Dory quivered on the spot, grin wide, for less than a heartbeat and then—with a little squeak of delight—spun on her heel and hurried away.

  Hands still behind his head, Jax shifted in his seat, craning a look at the fleeing woman as she pulled the door close behind her.

  “She’s cute,” he said when he turned back to Nat.

  “She’s nine,” Nat stated, making her voice as flat and threatening as possible. “And dating a cellist.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I just said she was cute.”

  “And I know what she’s cute translates as in Jaxon Campbell speak.”

  He studied her, lips curled, eyes…ambiguous. “You know I never said you were cute, don’t you, Boxhead?”

  Nat closed her eyes. “Please don’t call me Boxhead.”

  He didn’t respond. Silence stretched between them, long enough for Nat to open her eyes and cast him a cautious look. Jax rarely passed up a chance to shoot off his famous mouth.

  “Want to know what I said you were, Nat?” he asked when her gaze found his, not a hint of flippant jest in his voice. Ah, his voice. She could come over and over again just listening to his voice.

  She pulled a breath, the knot in her stomach now a full-blown granny knot. “Gullible?”

  “Mine,” he answered.

  Goddamn it, where did all the air go in the room? Where did all the ants crawling all over her body come from? And more to the point, where the hell did Jaxon Campbell—the guy who stole not only her heart but also her rare, mint-condition, fully-signed AC/DC Back in Black vinyl LP—come off pretending what they’d had was anything more than sex to him? Huh? Huh?

  Shoving aside the sudden and all-too-vivid memory of sex with Jax—hot, wild sex, explosive, exhibitionistic sex, slow, soul-melting sex, playful, let’s-include-toys sex—she rolled her eyes. “I think I prefer Boxhead.”

  He grinned at her. “Of course you do.”

  Another surreal stretch of silence claimed them. Nat couldn’t help but study him. It had been twenty-one years since she’d seen him. Not just on the TV or in a magazine, but actually seen him, in the flesh. He hadn’t lost his boyish sexiness, but the passing of time had left its mark on him. The laugh lines on either side of his eyes were distractingly wonderful, as was the faint crease between his eyebrows and the hint of silver in the stubble dusting his jaw and chin. He wasn’t as sinewy and lean as he’d been when they were together, which only transformed him, in Nat’s begrudging opinion, into a delicious mix of sculpted muscle and natural early forties strength.

  Damn, she’d love to feel those muscles sliding under her palms again. Would dine out on his newness even as she indulged in the familiarity of his body, a body she’d never ever forgotten.

  As frustratingly annoying as he’d been—and still was, if this brief encounter was anything to go by—he was still the most amazing, talented, no-holds-barred lover she’d ever had. And she was so missing amazing, talented, no-holds-barred sex. Nothing had come close to Jax in all the years since they’d parted.

  Nothing.

  He’s still the utterly sexy rock star though, Nat. That hasn’t changed.

  Letting out a slow breath, and killing the very naughty notion of a for-old-time’s-sake tumble forming in her head, she leant forward and rested her elbows on her desk. Time to be the professional, aloft woman she was known to be. She was the Dean of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, not a Jaxonfire. “What do you want, Jax?” she asked, holding his gaze. “I’ve got another appointment in a few moments and I’d like to be done with this reunion ASAP. Are you here to return my AC/DC record?”

  Jax wriggled deeper into his chair, his eyes glinting. “Your next appointment is outside with his son. I’ve already said g’day.”

  Nat blinked. “Nick Blackthorne is here already?”

  Jax nodded. “I left him in the waiting room—nice ficus in the corner, by the way—chewing Josh a new one. That’s an angry father out there. And a disgruntled son.”

  Before she could stop herself, Nat half-rose to her feet. Goddamn it, she was in here thinking about sex with Jax and the Con’s biggest financial benefactor was on the other side of the door?

  Jax burst out laughing. “Geez, Nat, you really do have a thing for Nick. How did I miss this all those years ago?”

  Dropping back into her seat, cheeks hot, she picked up a pen and glared at Jax. “I don’t have a thing for Blackthorne. It was only ever you, dickwad.”

  So much for being professional.

  The smile Jax gave her at her unplanned confession sent a flutter of traitorous suggestions through her body. Suggestions involving things like rope and whipped cream and handcuffs and open windows…

  Nat squeezed her thighs together and ground her teeth. She had to get rid of him now. Before she did something stupid.

  Just one for-old-time’s-sake bonk, Nat. Just one? Right here on your desk would be good.

  “What are you doing here, Jaxon?” she asked, ignoring the increasing throb between her thighs. If she touched her clit now, she’d probably come right there and then. “And please, just a simple, straight-to-the-point, honest answer would be appreciated.”

  He regarded her, an uncharacteristic seriousness falling over his face. Her heart pounded. Jax rarely was serious, but when he was…damn, he used to rock her world.

  She fidgeted on her seat, mouth going dry
, pussy growing damp. “Jax?”

  His Adam’s apple slid up and down his throat and then, like a burst of charged energy, he leant forward in his seat and pinned her with a wide grin. “I want you to find me someone better than Nick Blackthorne.”

  Nat blinked. She hadn’t expected that.

  But when she’d arrived at work this morning, she hadn’t expected to find herself sitting in her office having entirely dangerous thoughts about entirely unwise sex with Jaxon Campbell either, had she?

  She frowned at her ex. “Excuse me?”

  Jax’s grin grew wider. “We’re looking for a new lead singer. And by we, I mean me, Strings, Levi and Noah. You remember us, right? The band behind the man that is Blackthorne? Anyways, Levi got us a gig writing and recording the end-credit track to the next Chris Huntley movie, Dead Even 2, and we’ve spent the last few months trying to find someone to replace Nick with fuck-all success. The guys are about to give up and I said you’d be able to find us someone because you are incredible at recognising talent. Oh, the guys say hi, by the way. Shit, I’ve just realized something. I owe Noah ten grand.”

  Nat stared at Jax, not sure what to say. “Why?” she croaked out, head spinning.

  Jax flashed his teeth at her in one of those boyish grins that always led to them bonking like rabbits when they were together, no matter where they were. “Because he reckoned you’d deck me within five seconds of being in my presence.” He paused, cocking an eyebrow at her. “And you didn’t.”

  She didn’t say a word. Once again, she really didn’t know what word she should say.

  Say yes.

  Jax’s grin grew more devilish. A debauched promise she remembered all too well danced in his eyes. “C’mon, Boxhead,” he murmured. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Sex.”

  The word blurted from her before her brain registered it had formed on her lips.

  Jax’s eyebrows shot up his head. “What?”

  “I’ll find you a replacement for Nick Blackthorne,” Nat said, her voice a raspy, rapid breath. It was as if she was having some surreal, out-of-body experience, except she suspected it was actually her body in charge of her brain and mouth and tongue and voice box. Her body, after all, had never forgotten what sex with Jax was like. And never forgave her for denying it more. “On the condition you give me—”