My Cherry Duet (The Trenton Troublemakers #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

GIA

“Regina!” Mom bellows at full volume, Italian mother fury. “You have a visitor. Spicciati! Chop, chop.”

I wake up tangled in the top sheet and sense trouble right away. My head throbs like a blown-out amp. It hurts to think. It hurts even to squint at the January sun blaring through the curtains I forgot to close.

Sweet hell, what happened?

Last night flickers somewhere on my mental horizon, the truth of it sloshing through the J?ger bomb wasteland of my body.

I croak out a pitiful, “Coming!” and slowly peel myself upright.

Whoever’s staring back at me from my vanity mirror looks less like Gia Barlow, future legend of rock and roll, and more like the poster child for middle-class suburbia I’m trying to escape.

Maybelline mascara smeared under both eyes and hair by Supercuts.

Sexy as a used napkin in a thick cotton nightgown.

What was Nonna thinking, buying a twenty-year-old the kind of high-necked shroud only a nun would wear?

More importantly, who shows up unannounced on a Sunday?

The Lord’s Day of rest is sacred, according to my mother.

As important to her as the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling are to me—the little reminders to keep aiming high. And that I can shine just as bright.

Just maybe not this morning.

As I paw through last night's clothes for my phone, I’m hoping the texts might fill in some blanks. But when I find it, it’s out of juice, the screen sticky, like I used it as a coaster.

Wait.

The fog suddenly lifts, and fragments of last night’s EP release party creep back in. The bartenders who kept pouring as the evening wore on, and every conversation, along with my manners, blurred around the edges.

Uh-oh.

Please let the mystery guest be another cousin determined to mold me into the perfect Catholic.

Anyone but him.

I pad down the hall barefoot and hear Mama talking, which, unfortunately, she does all the time. At the top of the stairs, I pause, peering down into the foyer. For a strangled moment, my lungs forget how to function.

Shit!

It is him.

JC Trenton stands beside my mother, all casual about his super hotness.

Dreamy as fuck in his jeans and leather jacket.

Trouble as hell with dark waves of hair that some chick had her fingers in last night.

He has a way of looking at a woman that turns her inside out.

And for the past six months, he’s been doing just that—playing my heartstrings to the breaking point.

“There she is.” His eyes twinkle with that delinquent mischief my heart finds increasingly difficult to ignore. “Keeping rock star hours like a pro. Atta girl.”

“Where’s your housecoat?” Mama asks, horrified, and at the same time, I mumble at JC, “What are you doing here?”

He smiles, revealing his perfect teeth and kindly ignoring the fact that I must look like a third-rate sister wife. “Checking in on our resident hurricane.”

“Jameson dropped you off last night. Someone could barely walk.” Mama eyes me with all the disdain she can muster. “Or speak an intelligent sentence.”

Here we go. Ten to one, I’m getting an earful once JC leaves. About all the novenas she’ll be forced to pray for her irresponsible only child.

What can I say?

Musicians and alcohol are the dream duo, until they aren’t.

“I stepped in before fists started to fly,” JC explains, his smile widening in what feels like respect, but also confirms my worst suspicions. A not-so-pleasant vision percolates through what’s left of my brain as I walk down the stairs.

“I could’ve handled myself.” The weakest protest in history.

JC winks. “I was more concerned for the other woman.”

Right. Her.

The insufferable blonde macking on my guitar player while I downed every shot shoved into my hand and plotted her unfortunate death. Diving off bars is new, even for me, but call me territorial or slightly unhinged when it comes to JC, and you’d be right on both counts.

“Would you like a coffee, Jameson?” Mama asks.

“I’d love one,” he replies. “And please, call me JC.”

“The usual for you, Regina?” Mama stares me down, prepare-to-be-lectured vibes radiating off her like heat.

“It’s Gia, Mama. Has been for the past five years.”

I hate correcting her in front of JC, like I’m a child. And honestly, why name me queen in Italian if you treat me like the village idiot?

“I like Gia,” JC chimes in, his voice bedroom-soft yet confident. “It suits you.”

Mama sniffs, “Both of you should embrace your real names,” and swishes into the kitchen, taking her timeless Sicilian scowl with her.

When I meet JC’s eyes, he seems to understand my pain. Or at least his “Moms, huh?” comment lands with a degree of solidarity. I rake a hand through my hair, wishing I’d bothered to brush the tangled black mess my BFF Audrie always jokes mirrors my personality.

“Why didn’t you just call? I’m not exactly in your neighborhood.”

“I promised I’d make an appearance,” he says with a shrug. “You had her worried.”

A fresh scary thought closes in. “Please tell me you didn’t drag me into my bedroom?”

JC, raised in a Shaughnessy mansion, has no business witnessing my sad little room with its spinster twin bed and home made curtains. Or the photo of his old band pinned to the wall reserved for all my musical heroes.

“Your mom wouldn’t hear of it,” he says, killing my fears. “Although I did help both of you up the stairs.”

He smiles, and once again, I’m lost in the absolute beauty of his face.

At certain angles, his eyes shine teal blue, like the sky after rain.

In the dim glow of late-night studio sessions we clocked all winter, they smoldered gray.

This morning, they’re alive, shining a kind of metallic bluish-gray that defines his entire being: the elegance of a prince with a side order of renegade.

“Have a seat.” I gesture at the sofa in the living room we’re already standing in, and wish our house didn’t look like someone left in a hurry.

JC brushes past me, and I catch that familiar whiff of something citrus and sophisticated. He mercifully says nothing about the plastic-wrapped furniture. Or when he scans the mismatched box-store decor.

“How’s the head?” he finally asks.

“Like it has a chainsaw buried in it.”

JC cracks up, a deep rumbly laugh I wish I could recreate with an instrument. Instant number-one hit.

“How bad was I?”

“Nothing I couldn’t control.”

“Did I throw up in your car?”

My giant cringe seems to amuse him. “I’d still be here, even if you did.”

I sit at the far end of the sofa, swallowing down a tiny nervous flutter in my throat. Welcome to my current hell. My abominable hair and worse breeding, and JC embraces it all.

What he hasn’t literally embraced yet is me.

“You looked great last night,” he adds. “Loved the leather pants.”

“Thanks. I thrifted them. Major score.”

In the silence, I can hear the beat of my own pulse.

And JC keeps looking at me until I’m completely frazzled.

There’s something behind those eyes. They’re lingering, like the tension in his jaw.

Is he second-guessing his decision to join a scrappy, on-the-brink band for our first European tour?

I hope not. Today is Sunday, and we leave on Friday.

His head snaps up as Mama reappears with a tray bearing two cappuccinos and a plateful of biscotti hard enough to chip a tooth. She hands us our mugs, smiling tightly. At something.

“Did Jameson mention our discussion last night?”

I choke on the cocoa-dusted foam. I know that tone. “No. Why? What happened?”

JC flicks a tight-lipped glance my way. “Group intervention.”

Mama sinks into Dad’s tartan recliner. In her vintage Pucci robe and battered fleece slippers, she has the air of a fading movie star clinging to her beauty. “Everyone thinks it’s best if you have a chaperone on this tour.”

“What for?” My voice rises an octave. “I toured last year and survived just fine.”

“That was in North America,” she reminds me. “You like to think of yourself as a wise old soul, but Europe is different.”

“How do you know? You toured there never.”

JC dodges my baleful gaze, but I catch the shadows under his eyes and the tiniest flicker of discomfort.

For one bewildering second, all the questions pinballing in my thoughts make it hard to breathe.

Did Mama unload her sob story last night?

Lay on the guilt of her brief cabaret singer dreams going bust?

When I decided to pursue music, she had a conniption.

All I heard was doom and gloom. The music biz preyed on young women; failure lurked around the corner.

And for god’s sake, Regina, you need a backup plan.

Like her “back-up plan” of getting pregnant at nineteen? Even mouthy me understands that remark would slice too deep. But every time she tries to cram me into a square-peg mold, it dances on the tip of my tongue.

And JC must sense the pending crisis because he quietly attempts to right this monstrous wrong. “It’s not like I’d be monitoring you.”

“Except that’s exactly what a chaperone does,” I point out.

Suddenly, I feel like a stranger in a strange land. It’s wild how fast this is all turning against me. And the last thing I need is our dynamic locked into the friend zone.

For the past six months, JC has treated me politely and professionally. He’s shown up on time every day for our recording sessions and offered great crew suggestions for our upcoming tour. I was hoping Europe might shift our vibe, bring us closer to what I’m feeling.

Now Mama unloads this BS?

I lean back, unimpressed. “I’m not agreeing to this.”

Mama ignores this, crossing one leg over another in a silent gesture that says I’m screwed. “Jameson has already agreed,” she says. “In fact, it was his idea.”

My head snaps toward JC. “Your idea?”

He sips his coffee, silently staring at the laminate. Doesn’t deny it. “After last night, Sawyer had some concerns,” he finally says. “This was the compromise.”

The room tilts. Of course, Sawyer Trenton is behind this. JC’s older brother. CEO of Trenton Talent Management and fun as a blister. He hooked me and JC up last August after my band’s guitar player bailed. Sawyer promised to sweet-talk JC out of self-imposed retirement if I signed with them.

I mean, duh, no brainer.

Who says no to having rock and roll’s sexiest enigma join their band? Except I’ve spent far too many nights thinking about him. And now my first major tour gets chaperoned because I couldn’t keep my shit together.

Because of him.

“If you want to be a professional musician,” Mama drones on, “act like one. You aren’t a soloist, you’re in a band.

It’s not your way or the highway.” She reaches for a biscotto and points it at me like a gun.

“I think a chaperone is a great idea. And while you live in my house, you play by my rules.”

I hold her gaze, my jaw clenched. She’s been a formidable dream-crusher, so why am I surprised she’s turned up here according to spec? But using JC as her puppet? On the cusp of my band’s breakthrough moment?

That’s ice-cold.

And so is my voice when I declare, “Maybe it’s time I moved out.”

Mama, fully aware my bank account hovers at the three-hundred-dollar mark, can’t resist one last twisting of the knife. “Once you pay back your father’s loan, you can do whatever you want.”

Of course. The big leverage. I borrowed money to cut a video and partially fund last year’s tour. I’m still thirty grand in the hole. Our European tour will finally get the monkey off my back.

I say nothing and drink my coffee, swallowing down outrage along with it. The immovable glacier can try to hold me back all she wants. I have big dreams for this world. Dad told me I was singing before I could crawl. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. There is no backup plan.

JC cuts me a glance, his gaze no longer remote; it’s imploring. Both guilty and soft, like the warm brown sin of his hair. Is he trying to apologize? He better be.

What I have in mind for us in Europe will make God blush and run for cover in His favorite cloud.

Chaperone?

Maybe when hell freezes over.