My Rock (The Rock Star Romance Series - Book #1) by Alycia Taylor Page A

out soon so I could
satisfy my age-old curiosity and go home.   I had looked him up off and on over the years, searching for any
information about him or his band. I didn’t obsess over him any longer, but
every now and then when I got bored, I just checked to see if I could find any
information about him. What I’d been able to find had been snippets here and
there about the band. This one got arrested and that one came out as being
gay—all of it pretty typical, but none of it helpful. But the information on
Tristan was few and far between. The first couple of years after the band broke
up, he’d gotten out of rehab, dated an heiress for a while, and then a B-list
actress. He’d gotten picked up on a DUI and had to serve community service and do
rehab again. Sadly, his music seemed to have all but died. The day I saw the ad
about his band in the bar, I wasn’t looking for him at all. I had actually
bought the paper to look at job openings, and, when I had opened the paper,
there it was. I let my over-active imagination think that maybe it was fate and
that was one more silly reason that I found myself sitting in a bar that was
the namesake of a brand of diapers.
    The advertisement hadn’t mentioned Tristan’s
previous connection to Uptown Boyz . It advertised his new band as “new age rock”—a
far cry from the kind of music he used to sing. I ran my finger around the rim
of my drink, waiting. The lights in the already dim bar went down and a
spotlight lit up the stage. A woman that looked to be about thirty-five with
long, obviously bleached platinum blonde hair and dressed in black from head to
toe came on the stage. She was so thin that it wouldn’t have even taken a
strong wind to blow her over, just a light breeze. She walked up to the
microphone.
    “Ladies and Gentlemen, hello and
thanks for coming to Huggys tonight. I’m Mandy Silva, the owner of Huggys , along with my
hunky husband, Ray, who is over there behind the bar.”
    I glanced over at the bar. The only bartender that
I’d seen tonight was a young stud that looked like he should have been the star
of Magic Mike . He was still the only
one behind the bar. I looked from him to the skinny, slightly torn up woman and
I had to wonder what the attraction was.
    “I hope you’re all having a great time and getting
your drink on. We have a real treat for you tonight, so I won’t stand here and
bore you any longer. Without further ado, I give you Tristan and the Mister
Rogers band.”
    The lights started changing colors and smoke floated
up from beside the stage as a drummer, and a bass player took their positions
on stage. The audience clapped, some hooped and hollered, and I waited for
Tristan. The band fired up and it was a good two minutes into the song before
he came bursting through a curtain hung along the back of the stage. If I
hadn’t known it was him, I would have never recognized him.
    First off, he came out screaming and banging on his
guitar. I’m assuming the noise he was making was supposed to be singing, but it
didn’t sound anything like the beautiful voice that I remembered. Secondly, the
four young men that made up the band the Uptown Boyz were famous not only for their extraordinary
talent at such young ages, but for their sense of style. They were trendsetters
for tweens, and when they performed, they usually wore starch white or brightly
colored t-shirts and casually faded designer jeans. Tristan always wore a
silver cross that dangled from his neck and stood out against whatever color
shirt he happened to be wearing. He never took it off back then. Their hair was always stylishly mussed or spiked up and they had that
scrubbed, fresh-faced look that mother’s and little girls both loved.
    Tonight, he wore jeans, but instead of a designer
brand, they looked like he’d borrowed them off of one of the homeless men I’d
seen on my way into the place. They had huge holes in them—not stylish ones—and
they hung low on his