Read Never Ending for Free Online Page B

couldn't help but feel sorry for him.
              It had only
recently hit me just how lucky I was. So many of the kids I'd grown up with –
other celebrity brats come of age among the snapping of paparazzi photographs,
who learned to walk toddling down the red carpet – had family lives that
were...far from ideal, to say the least. Mothers who did cocaine in the family
bathroom, blaming their empty canisters of prescription pills on the
housekeeper. Dads who hired escorts to pleasure them in the family bed. Endless
rotating casts of second-, third-, and fourth wives, and all the therapy bills
that came with it.
              My family seemed
downright normal in comparison. My mother may have been a model, and my father
had been a rock star, but somehow they managed to escape every single
stereotype. If anything, my father said, his rough living in his 20's and 30's
had made him realize just how little he wanted a similar existence for his
daughter – my mother, too, used to the backbiting of the modeling world, had
decided that it was more important for her daughter to grow up with a strong
sense of self than with a plastic-perfect nose or a 32DD bust. And I was
grateful for them – even when their love veered clearly into the territory of
protectiveness. Looking at the darkness in Danny's eyes when he spoke of his
stepmother, I thought, I was even more thankful for them now.
              I couldn't
imagine a viper like Roni Taylor getting anywhere near my family.
              Still, viper or
no, she was a force to be contended with, and contend Danny did.
              “Sometimes it's
good to have contacts,” he said to me with a mischievous grin. “The club
manager at Blue Circus remembers me from the time I threw up on his stage.”
              “You were drunk?”
I raised an eyebrow.
              “Not quite,”
Danny laughed. “I was five and had eaten too many white chocolate caramel bars.
A real rocker, I was, as you see. Setting the stage for my later excesses.” He
kissed me. “And the owner of Blue Cabaret in Edinburgh – he remembers me, too.
He gave me a Batman action figure for my fifth birthday. Which, I'm not ashamed
to say, I still possess today.”
              From what I could
hear from Danny's end of the phone conversations, it looked like Danny's
contacts were susceptible to stories about Batman action figures and an excess
of caramel bars. By the end of the second day of phone calls, Danny had booked
us ten tour dates in the US and the UK, all in promotion of our much-vaunted
second album, which Danny promised the club managers would be “even better than
the first.””
              “Now, we've got
to write the bloody thing,” said Danny. “And it's got to be good, too. These
chaps are doing us a favor, risking annoying Roni the way they are. They're
good men and women, but they're also businesspeople. They're betting that the
Never Knights will be a success – one worth getting Blues Enterprises angry
for. So we'd better make sure that they get a return on their investment.”
              “I guess that
means it's time to start rehearsal.”
              “One step ahead
of you, love. I've sent a mass email to the band and booked the basement room
in this hotel – just for us. Starting in thirty minutes. We've booked it
for twelve hours. So, if you're feeling at all sleepy...” he squeezed my thigh,
his fingers tracing a line up towards where they met; my mouth parted in a
soft, lazy moan. “You'd better down an entire thermos of coffee. The others are
already on their way.”
              I swallowed down
my fear. What would it be like – all of us together again in the same room? We
hadn't all been together since the Never Knights broke up, and – although my
one-on-one conversations with Kyle, Luc, and Steve had gone some way towards
allaying my fears – I was still worried that the