Falling in love with her cousin's rock star ex-boyfriend was definitely not part of the plan.
Mayhem #4
Jamie Shaw
Releasing February 21st, 2017
Avon Impulse
When Hailey Harper left her family farm to enroll in veterinary school, she had a plan: keep her head down, ace her classes, and most importantly... don't upset the uncle paying her tuition. Translation? Don't piss off his dramatic, self-absorbed daughter, Danica, even if she's a nightmare to live with.
Falling in love with her cousin's rock star ex-boyfriend was definitely not part of the plan.
As the drummer of a now-famous rock band, Mike Madden could have any girl he wants. He's sweet, funny, romantic, talented--and the only guy that's ever made Hailey's heart do cartwheels in her chest. The more she gets to know him, the harder she falls, but Hailey knows they can never be more than friends… because Danica wants him back, and she'll fight dirty to win.
Mike is falling for Hailey too, but Danica's threats and his rock star life-music video shoots, international tours, obsessed fans-could tear them apart before they've even begun. Hailey isn't sure she's the one for him, but Mike's waited years for a girl like her… and he'll do anything to prove it.
Excerpt
At a door
near the back corner of the room, my fun-loving cousin marches right up to the
first security guard she sees, who also happens to be approximately five
zillion times her size, with muscles made of stone and a face to match. “Who do
I need to talk to to get backstage?”
With my mouth
shut, I slink away before my mere presence can enrage Danica further, and when
she asks where I’m going, I make up the lamest excuse ever. “To read this flyer
over here.”
At a door
near the back corner of the room, my fun-loving cousin marches right up to the
first security guard she sees, who also happens to be approximately five
zillion times her size, with muscles made of stone and a face to match. “Who do
I need to talk to to get backstage?”
At her bossy
tone, Muscle-man lifts an eyebrow. “The Easter Bunny?”
“Excuse me?”
“No one’s
allowed backstage.” The arms he crosses over his chest warn that he isn’t
messing around.
“I’m with
Mike,” Danica lies, and after studying her for a moment, Muscle-man laughs.
“Sure you
are.”
“I am!”
When
Muscle-man just smiles at her like she’s a petulant child, Danica resorts to
acting like one. She demands to see his boss and threatens to get him fired.
When that doesn’t work, she resorts to curse words. And when those have no
effect, all hell breaks loose.
She’s
torpedoing her finger into his chest and shouting something about his inbred
gene pool when I try to pull her away from him. But Danica is on a rampage, and
all my efforts get me is a hard shove that nearly knocks me on my ass. At
five-feet tall, one hundred and three pounds, I’m not exactly in a position to
throw my weight around, and I don’t make a second attempt to try. I’m rubbing
my tender collarbone when the security guy picks my assailant up off her feet,
and I helplessly follow as he carries her outside.
After serving
as an armrest for a sweaty gigantor inside the club, after obliterating my
eardrums in front of the world’s biggest speakers, after getting knocked around
like a bratty child’s toy all night, all I want is to take a hot shower and
crawl into my own bed to sleep for a week straight. Instead, I stand on the
sidewalk outside of Mayhem, frowning at the furious look on Danica’s face as
she glares at the big metal door the security guard just shut behind him.
She came here
for one thing, and I know she’s not leaving until she gets it.
“You didn’t
have to push me,” I mutter, and her eyes flare.
“You
should’ve had my back!”
“And done
what? Bite his ankles?”
In her
four-inch wedge boots, Danica towers above me. I stare way up at her, trying to
remember the girl who played dolls with me up in my parents’ hay loft. But
she’s lost somewhere behind fake lashes and fifteen years of getting everything
she's wanted.
“You’ve been
nothing but a bitch this whole time,” she snaps, and I sigh and pull my shirt
away from my skin again, letting the cool night air dry the sweat beaded on my
lower back. There’s no point in trying to defend myself. In Danica’s mind,
she’s always simultaneously the victim and the hero, and as her non-rent-paying
roommate, I’ve learned to just accept that.
I appreciate
everything she’s done for me. I do. If she hadn’t been the little voice in her
father’s ear, persuading him to fund my schooling and begging him to make some
calls to get us enrolled, I’d be home mucking stalls, not following my dreams.
Her dad pays all of my bills—my
tuition, my insurance, my living expenses, all of them. And while I suspect
that Danica’s sudden interest in my life wasn’t entirely genuine—she’d flunked
out of college before, and I think her dad was only open to the idea of her
going back if she was living off-campus with a responsible roommate, AKA her
boring farm-girl cousin—I owe her. I owe her the roof over my head and the
massive student loan debt I don’t have.
When her
phone rings, she wastes no time dismissing me to answer it. “Katie?” she says.
“Guess who just got kicked out of the fucking club. Yes! Because this asshole
bouncer wouldn’t let me backstage.” She gives me a dirty look. “Just stood
there doing nothing. I know! No, she didn’t even try. Getting a place with her
was stupid.”
An icy chill
slithers up the back of my neck, and I chew the inside of my lip. Because of my
uncle’s insistence that I focus all of my energy on school right now instead of
also finding a part-time job, I have no income. My only “job” is not pissing
off his daughter. And it’s a job that I’m learning I am very, very bad at.
With my mouth
shut, I slink away before my mere presence can enrage Danica further, and when
she asks where I’m going, I make up the lamest excuse ever. “To read this flyer
over here.”
HAVE YOU FALLEN FOR ALL
THE MEN OF MAYHEM?
A
resident of South Central Pennsylvania, JAMIE SHAW's two biggest dreams
in life were to be a published author and to be a mom. Now, she's living both
of those dreams and loving every minute of it. When she's not spending time
with her husband and their young son, she's writing novels with relatable
heroines and swoon-worthy leading men. With her MS in Professional Writing and
a passion for all things romance, her goal is always to make readers laugh,
cry, squirm, curse, and swoon their pants off, all within the span of a single
story. She loves interacting with readers, and she always aims to add new names
to their book boyfriend lists.
