Authors: Kelly Clark
“There is not time for that now. Right now is time to rejoice,” said his father.
Mary and Deborah looked elated at the news. Especially Deborah. “So looks like we are going to have even more time to get to know each other,” said Mary.
“Ya, and that isn’t such a bad thing,” replied John. He had not wanted to get his wishes up for Mary, for fear of disappointment. But now he allowed himself to dream. He saw Samuel walking out of the room, seemingly the only person that was upset.
“Come on, let’s go home,” said Deborah.
*****
That night, John was to bed court with Mary for the first time. It was something that he had never done before. “Hi,” he said when he got on his side of the bed. He didn’t know what else to say. “I kind of like that I can talk to you all night,” he continued.
“So do I,” whispered Mary. “How does it feel not to be sleeping on the couch? Do you feel more like family?”
John laughed. “I think I have a way that would make me feel even more like family though. Will you be my wife, Mary?”
Mary squealed. “Of course I will. You are my best friend, and what better than to be married to your best friend.” She wanted to jump out of bed and scream and tell the whole world. But what she wanted even more was to lay in bed and enjoy getting to know the man that she would spend the rest of her life with.
*****
THE END
The College Rockstar – A College Rockstar Romance
Chapter one
He likened an angel in a heavenly chorus.
That is, whenever any random angel in a heavenly
chorus
decided to set aside the commonplace harp and pick up a wicked
hot
axe
in its place.
Cara Donahue sat at a quiet corner table at Night Grooves, a low-lit night club that formed the eastern border of the campus at Primswell University. She stared with wide eyes at the man who stood center stage at the crowded, compact club; the ebullient backdrop of a red scarlet curtain seeming a perfect accent to his ethereal show.
She listened enrapt as the
statuesque
man before her, a beautiful vision of flowing golden hair,
wide
azure eyes, bronzed chiseled features and—for an angel at least—a downright devilish smile, performed a rousing rock instrumental titled “Nightsong.”
"This is an original composition,” she whispered as an aside to her companion at the table, a petite blonde who rolled her blue eyes heavenward in response to this news.
“You don’t say?” sniffed Morgan Cleary, Cara’s roommate and partner in crime (well, as much crime as two relatively sedate English lit majors possibly could muster). “You’ve only told me that at least once during each of the eight consecutive evenings that we’ve spent here, hidden in the corner and drinking lukewarm beer while we drool profusely over the object of your desire.”
Cara shook her head.
“Ian so is not the object of my desire,” she mumbled these last words in
a low
abashed tone, even as her rebellious bespectacled eyes devoured the
sublime
vision of the angel with the guitar; an angel dressed tonight in a skin tight leather jumpsuit that accentuated every muscle of his
tall,
statuesque
form.
Not that she noticed.
“Look, I just love his music OK?” Cara insisted, turning briefly
to regard her smirking roommate as
she added, “Imagine one of our very own classmates, cutting a CD and touring the state with his
own
brand of classic rock—all before graduation! If only I could have the same luck with that
novel,
I’m trying to sell.”
She paused here. She then piled a small mound of chocolate covered peanuts unceremonious between her lips. “You would think that some big city—or, what the heck, even small city—publisher would jump all over a steampunk version of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, with some mild picaresque themes subtly intertwined.
No accounting for taste in the world of modern publishing, I guess.”
Morgan chuckled.
“It’ll
happen,
Sis.
And in the meantime, you’ll always have your tutoring job waiting for you at the student services building,” her roommate reminded her, nodding in the direction of the performer onstage. “And if you really are just an admirer of Ian McGovern’s music, then why are you shy about talking to him?”
Cara bit her lip.
“Well maybe I have yet to garner the courage to actually, you know, speak to him,” she admitted with an awkward shrug. “But I did manage to move up a couple of rows from the last show—so potentially, if he ever lifts his head from that blasted guitar at any point and time, we could indeed make eye contact.
Potentially.”
Just then the object of her—um—admiration did indeed raise his head from the blasted guitar; his full moist lips graced with a slight frown as he seemed to be trying to figure out just who was talking
through
his show.
“Oh drat it to blazes,” Cara released through gritted teeth, adding as she jumped from her seat and ran some skittish hands down the length of the basic black dress that covered her
Rubenesque
form, “We’ve been found out. Code red! Let’s go!”
Just then she realized she’d said these words out loud; intensifying her ire as she grabbed the hand of her
wide-eyed
friend and ran for the door—the tousled strands of her cocoa brown hair flying like a banner posted to note the moment of her complete and total humiliation.
She froze
before
the door of the club, her cheeks flushing red hot as she heard a round of deep melodic laughter erupt from the stage behind them; followed by the opening strings of a rhythmic mid-tempo rock tune whose title and theme she knew all too well.
“Baby
don’t
go,” Ian howled, his deep throaty voice and stirring guitar riffs still
searing
her senses—even as they drove her straight out the door. “Please don’t leave me behind you, craving your light and your love.”
“Cha,
very funny
dude,” she mumbled, adding as she and her stunned friend made fast tracks out the door, “All that I’m craving right now is cab fare. Or the timely arrival of a bus. Or a
friggin’
unicycle. You know, whatever works.”
What was not working, she decided quickly, was this entire disaster of an evening.
Chapter two
“Never. Again.”
The next morning Cara found herself ensconced in a far more comfortable and familiar atmosphere; one that took the form of her modest,
clean-lined
enclosed cubicle at the
Primswell
University student services center.
Sinking
in
the cushioned steel
grey
chair that sat behind her polished cherry wood desk, she poised her cell phone up against her ear as she insisted into its defenseless receiver, “I don’t care if Ian McGovern is playing the
Primswell
winter festival this year. I don’t care if he’s playing the front lawn of the flipping White House, with Barack and Michelle singing back up on his
popular
cover version of ‘Rock’n’Roll All
Night.'
I hope never again to lay eyes or ears on that most
unsettling
man.”
She rolled her eyes as her alleged friend Morgan met these words with a long, hard sigh.
“Did you even bother to turn around and gauge Ian’s reaction to your little
melt down
at the club last night?” she asked, adding without missing as much as a beat, “Well I did, and—from what I could see, at least—he was thoroughly charmed by you. He smiled, he laughed, and—in a bizarre, totally warped sort of way—he even was serenading you as we left the club.”
Cara shook her head—then pondered just what an ineffectual move this was to make over the telephone.
“Don’t try to dress it up Sis. He was mocking me,” Cara insisted, adding with a snort, “And although I am as much a glutton for punishment as the next university tutor, I will not—and
I
repeat, I will not!—voluntarily
share
prime breathing space with that man. Ever. Again.”
She fell silent seconds later, as the
stout
form of her mustached employer—one Gary Lennox, lead teacher at the
Primswell
University student tutoring center—loomed suddenly in her doorway.
“And as I was saying,” Cara resumed her conversation, this time in a formal, officious tone, “Just keep practicing that long division, and we’ll see you
acing
Math 101 in no time. Got it? Good.”
With these words she hit the off button on her phone, dropping it like a piece of hot coal on the surface of her desk as she turned to face her smiling boss.
“Good morning, Gary!” she greeted him with a smile. “I hope we have a full roster of students awaiting us today, eager to benefit from our almost lethal dose of intellectual enlightenment. I don’t have my first class of the day until 2 p.m.”
Gary nodded.
“Well you’re in luck Kid,” he told her, adding with a broad gesture to the office around them, “As it turns out, your newest student is set to walk through our doors in just about 10 minutes. And this should be the first visit
of
many,
considering the fact that
he’s about to flunk Classic Literature.”
Cara clapped her hands together, beaming her approval of this concept as she declared, “I love a challenge, especially as it pertains to a subject that I know pretty well. I am an English major, as you know, and I have written a….”
“…a steampunk version of Pride and Prejudice with some mild picaresque themes subtly intertwined,” Gary finished in a deadpan tone, adding with a slight chuckle, “And I’m sure you will be more than pleased to learn that your new student also boasts a most artistic bent. He is a musician, as a matter of fact.”
Cara nodded.
“Well, in that case,
he’ll make my third regular client who plays the pipes or tickles the ivories,” she reminded him. “I’m currently tutoring the French horn player and a lead saxophonist from our school’s marching band.”
Gary nodded.
“You do indeed,” he affirmed, adding with a shrug, “I daresay that this
gent
is just a bit different, though. More of a rocker, I would say.”
Cara froze, eyes flying wide as she considered these words.
“A rocker?” she squeaked, shaking her head from side to side as she
considered
the unfathomable.
“Yes, Miss. A rocker.”
Cara relaxed immediately as her senses were soothed by the sound of a deep sonorous voice; one that she immediately recognized, but couldn’t quite place.
The mystery was solved seconds later, as her gaze rose to admire the vision of an angel on earth.
A particularly ripped angel who just happened to look mouthwateringly good in
a near
strangulating pair of skintight blue jeans and a crisp, bright patterned T-shirt bearing his
own
ebullient image.
Just then her gaze wandered upward to identify the unmistakable face that topped this
tall,
muscled
form; one distinguished by the presence of wide azure
eyes
bronzed chiseled
cheekbones,
and a pair of full moist lips that now spread in
a downright
catlike smile.
“Or to put it in other terms: You may be able to pull an A minor out of me, Sweetheart, but an A plus?
Well,
that’s entirely unlikely.” He paused here, adding as he extended his hand to her, “Ian McGovern, at your service.”
Cara chuckled.
“Very
nice
to meet
you,
Ian,” she greeted him, adding silently, “And even
nicer
that you have no earthly idea as to who the devil I am. Fates
be thanked
!”
Reaching forth to engage her new student in her usual hearty handshake, Cara almost pulled her hand away as her fingers touched fire; or
at least,
that’s how it
felt
when finally she touched the skin of the man she’d admired for so long.
Sparks ignited the instant they touched hands, spreading swift from their fingertips straight to her heart; igniting her senses with a thrilling sensation that energized her from head to toe.
For just a moment she stared into those azure eyes; seeing in their aquiline depths a sense of awareness that unsettled her still further; letting her know that he knew
exactly
what she was thinking.
“What we seem to be thinking,” she corrected herself, now seeing those same eyes come alight with more than a spark of passionate interest.
Aloud she told him, “No worries about that grade, Ian. If you can write a song, then you can write a paper. All we have to do is tailor your talents to a different art form.”
Ian paused, his smile softening as he squeezed her fingers in his.
“You know, you aren’t the first tutor who has tried to teach me classic lit,” he told her, adding in a thoughtful tone, “But you are the first who hasn’t treated me like a
braindead
rocker in the process. I appreciate that, Cara.”
“Not a problem,” Cara felt her cheeks flush as she considered this compliment. “Now let’s go back to my station and get to work!”
Soon the pair settled themselves on opposite sides of Cara’s work table, their gazes holding as the tutor asked her student to relate his difficulties in completing a successful lit composition.
“Dude I dunno,” Ian released with a sigh, shifting uncomfortable in the seat beneath him. “It seems like, as a songwriter, I should be able to turn out a kickass…that is, kick butt
…
I mean, a top quality essay.” He paused here, adding with a frustrated sigh, “I guess it’s just so different when I’m standing onstage, feeling free and in charge—sexy, in a way—with the girls screaming and the guys high fiving me from the front row. Out there I feel like I’m in my
element
like I can do no wrong. It’s just not the same as sitting at a classroom desk, with no fans and no music to back me up—only a smug, smirking professor who seems destined to see me fail.”