Hard Rock Unrehearsed (23 page)

"Shit baby, I was pissed at you for treating Maya like you did.  I should have realised that she was playing us but I didn't.  I played right into their hands, putting you in the spotlight yet again when I should have protected you.  I'm sorry Jade, so very sorry.  I should have called you.  Actually that's not right.  I should never have taken her up to that room in the first place.  I should have handed it off to one of the guys and come home to you.  I won't disrespect you like that ever again, you have my word on it.  I know I've said that before but I mean it baby."

And then his baby just blew him away as she gave him everything.

"We will leave this behind us and start over.  I love you Diego, so damn much.  Please don't hurt me again.”

"I love you baby.  You have my promise that I will always put you first, no matter what.  But baby I'm a stupid male and we make mistakes all the time so what I
can
promise is that I will try my very best to never cause you pain ever again."

Diego leaned into his woman and kissed her, not hard, soft, so soft and deep.  Slipping his tongue over her bottom lip he licked before sliding deep into her mouth and that taste that he was so addicted to, the taste of his woman, slammed into him and sent his heart racing.  It took everything to slow it down, to not take her right then but it would have to wait for later.  He had to get his woman to the stadium and he knew Mel was stalking up and down the passage outside the door.  The damned woman had been standing in her open door watching him with a tiny smile just tilting her lips as he went into Jade’s suite.  No, not Jade’s suite, their suite, from now on it would always be their suite.  Damn that felt good, knowing that he had his woman back where she belonged, in his arms.

Mel felt like doing a little dance of joy as she watched a very determined Diego Delgado walk into Jade’s room.  At last!  She had been waiting for the damned man to take charge and talk to her friend for what felt like forever.  After the fiasco with Val and the baby her friend had built walls behind which she had hidden.  She had still loved Val but it had been different and Mel knew that Val had felt it and had been hurting.  The day they got married they were completely happy for the first time since that slut had spread her poison in their lives, only to have it all disappear the very next day.  Her friend had suffered enough and Diego Delgado was exactly what she needed.  He was strong enough to take on the stresses of the high profile life they were going to be living.  The last few days had proved to Mel that Diego was a strong enough badass to handle anything that might be thrown at them and it helped that he loved her girl.

She would give Diego time to talk to her girl before she had to whip her into shape for the performance.  And if Jade Galloway Delgado thought she was going to forget about the new outfits she had better think again!  Mel was sick and tired of seeing her best friend dress like a boy and her excuse that it was comfortable was just that, an excuse.  Did she have a surprise waiting for her girl!  Hah!  She couldn’t wait for LA because that’s where she was going to take charge of Jade’s wardrobe and make some serious changes.

It was their last night in San Francisco and they were having a ball!  The energy in the stadium was electric and they were all soaking it up.  Soaking it up was the operative word where Trace was concerned, he had long since gotten rid of his sweat soaked tee and his body glistened with sweat.  Trace was bent back in an impossible arc powering through the last note and as it ended the crowd erupted.  He laughed as he stepped back looking towards RJ who stood with his guitar clutched close to his chest while looking back at Jay.  She had a wide grin plastered on her face as she twirled her sticks in both hands above her head.  A show off trick if he ever saw one, something Jay never did.

Turning towards Giv and Jimmy he raised an eyebrow and grinned when his mates immediately knew he was going to go off the set list.  Fuck the world, he wanted to sing with Jay and even if they couldn’t do any of the new stuff they could do one of their old songs.  Motioning to Jimmy with his head he walked back to Jay as Jimmy started talking shit to the crowd.

“Are you ready to do your stuff sweet thing?”  He grinned up at her where she sat high above him on the drum stage.  Her frown was there and gone as realisation what he was talking about sank in.  Leaning forward over the snare drum she looked at him from under the cymbals with a question in her eyes.

“We agreed not to do the new stuff.”  She mouthed so as not to be picked up by the mics on her kit.

“Do you know
'All the way Home’
sweet thing?”  Trace grinned as she nodded.  “Great, we’re doing that next.”

RJ had moved up next to him and as he heard what Trace said he grinned and ran over to tell the others.  Jay gaped at the guys as they looked at her then nodded.

Trace ran back to the front of the stage.

“Are you guys having fun yet?”  He shouted as he strutted along the front of the stage and the crowd went wild as he rubbed a hand suggestively down his glistening torso.  He grinned as he hooked his thumb in the waist of his jeans and tapped his fingers right next to his very nice package.  It drove the girls hanging over the barriers wild.

“We have a little treat for you tonight so just give us a minute to arrange some shit and we’ll be right back with you.”  The crowd yelled and jumped and waved as Trace strutted some more while RJ talked to the sound techs, they immediately scrambled to do what he’d asked.  “A few days ago we found out that our sweet thing was more than just a drummer, the woman has a voice.  So tonight we’re going to do
‘All the way home’
which first got us noticed and gave us our first hit single and sweet thing’s going to sing it with me.”

“We always notice you Trace!”  A girl shouted and Trace grinned down at her.

“Thanks darlin’.  We’re noticing you too.” Trace said laughingly and winked broadly.  Looking back over his shoulder he grinned as the sound tech gave him a thumbs up.  “So let’s do this sweet thing!”  He roared out as he stepped back from the front of the stage taking his mic with him.

Jay brought them in and they played flawlessly, as if they had rehearsed the song.  The vocals were a little tricky while playing the drums but not too bad and she had fun.  At least she only had to back up Trace’s vocals and didn’t have to take a lead.  That would have been a bit of a problem.  As she sang the on-stage cameraman was right there in her face and she did her best to ignore him until he turned the camera back on Trace.

As the final note died away the stadium rang with the screams and shouts of the fans.

“Did you like that?  Yeah?  Then let’s hear it for our sweet thing!”  Trace laughed uproariously when Jay shook a stick at him as the crowd roared out ‘sweet thing’.  They returned to the set list after that one deviation and finished the night on an amazing high.  The encore went from four songs to six and they were all soaked with sweat but totally revved up when they eventually left the stage.

Their last night in San Francisco had turned out to be one of the really good nights on the tour.  And the fact that it had been caught on film made it just so much better.  Plus they had a day to rest before the show in LA on Friday.  They were being sneaked out to LA very early the next morning to avoid the media.

The meet and greets and both the after parties in San Francisco went off without a single incident and the reason it did was that while Jade had been at the beach house Astrid had taken control.  She had fired their current publicist and had signed both Storm Front and Jade up with Rick’s publicist, Nathan Sterling.

Nathan Sterling was a legend in the entertainment world.  His clients ranged from musicians to actors and every one of them would donate a kidney to stay on his books as he took such good care of them.

He immediately assigned one of his associates to take over all publicity and media interaction for Storm Front and he personally stepped in to handle the media storm around Jade.  He handled the Molly Rutherford exposé and declined all interviews with the media until further notice.  All things media related would now be handled by him and he would inform Jade of any publicity he might need her to do.  He suggested they wait until they were in LA to address the speculation in the media regarding her connection to the Ortega-Delgado drug cartel.  Jade agreed as she wasn’t ready to talk about it until she had spoken to Luis and had heard his side.

L A was a disaster.  It was damned early and they were swamped by the media and the paps the minute they set foot outside the jet.  Fuck knows how the bastards found them!  At least the security teams under Steele’s direction kept them far away from Jade and the guys.  But this time they weren’t just after them, they were after Diego as well.  The questions regarding his family’s involvement in the drug trade were shouted at him as he herded Jade towards the waiting limo.  He ignored them as Nathan had advised.  The stinging questions regarding his fuck up with Maya were harder to ignore but he did it while clenching his jaws shut.  Anything for his woman.  Any.  Fuckin’.  Thing.

They were once again in one of Michael Galloway’s penthouses and Diego could at last relax because he knew that no one would be able to get anywhere near them while they were in the building.  The first thing he saw as they walked out of the elevator was his father standing with his hands in his pockets looking out over the city.  Rage clenched his gut and he battled it, shoved it down so that he could take care of his woman before getting into it with his father.

Once they were all settled in he took his woman’s hand and led her to the study where his father waited for them.

“Luis.”  Jade said softly from where she stood tight against his side.

Diego watched the pain streak across his father’s face as he stayed silent before it disappeared, hidden behind his tight smile.  He sat down in a big leather chair in front of the desk and drew his woman down in his lap.  His father took the chair opposite them and started talking.

For the first time his father told him the unvarnished truth about his family, about his younger brother Bernardo.  About his Uncle Bernardo and honorary Uncle Sandro who ran an organised crime family along with their sons, sons who had been his best friends while growing up.  In all the years he had been around them he had never realised that they were involved in organised crime and not just skating around the law as he had thought.  How stupidly blind had he been?

The way their family had been systematically destroyed clawed at his gut as his Dad explained how his so called friends had had a hand in destroying his marriage.  He did not excuse being unfaithful to his wife, he admitted to drinking excessively and having an affaire with one of his brother’s women.  His wife found him with the woman after a phone call from Bernardo and divorced him immediately taking the boys with her.  She got sole custody because of his involvement with Bernardo Delgado who had known drug affiliations.

Bernardo wasn’t finished with their family though, through Emilio and Gina he targeted Val’s band and supplied them with drugs, booze and women.  He couldn’t get to Diego at first because he had joined the marines when he turned eighteen and was outside his reach.  When Val met and fell in love with Jade and broke off his relationship with Gina she along with her sister Marcella set him and Diego up and took those compromising photographs.  Val brought the photographs and their demands to Luis and he contacted an FBI agent who was after Bernardo.  Luis and Val worked with the FBI to gather evidence against Bernardo.  To protect Jade and Diego and help the FBI, Val agreed to drugs being transported with the band equipment.  When he lost his child due to their machinations he told Gina that he was done with them, if they didn’t back off he was going to the cops.  Along with Marcella and Emilio she set him up one final time and he was killed by the men who had been his family.

It was more difficult to sit still while his father explained how they had gone after Jade when she reappeared in the limelight.  Diego struggled to keep a level head as he heard how they had targeted his woman in the media, how they had orchestrated the whole Maya fiasco with the help of Sandro Ortega.

It pissed Diego off when he heard how the FBI had had a hand in him almost losing Jade.  He clasped his woman tight against his chest, closed his eyes and leant his chin on top of her head breathing her in as he tried to control his anger.  His Dad stopped talking, waiting for him to find his control before he continued.

Luis’s voice was soft and filled with sorrow but with determination as well.

“I had to go along with it.  I am so sorry that I hurt the both of you with my actions.  I wanted justice for Val and for my grandchild, and I wanted peace for the rest of us, and to get that I had to make sure that they all went down.  We needed Maya to get to the others, she knows where all the bodies are buried in their organisation and she has been singing like a canary.  She made a deal that would see to it that she gets the minimum of jail time.”

His father sat rigid in his chair as he finished explaining the unexplainable.  His Dad was one of the good guys, and not a bad guy as he had suspected.

“Damn Dad!  Why didn’t you tell me any of this?  We could have worked together.”

But his Dad shook his head with such sorrow in his eyes it hurt to look at him.

“They took my wife, my son and my grandchild from me Diego.  I was not going to allow them to take anymore from me.  With you and Jade we have a chance to be a family again.”  He gave them a small smile and his face lightened.  “And maybe if it is not too late I could win your mother back.  She’s flying in this afternoon, she wants to be here for both of you and of course she wants to watch Jade play.  She’s so excited that you might be pregnant that nothing could have kept her in Italy.”