Oceanside Read online

  OCEANSIDE

  by New York Times bestselling author

  Michelle Mankin

  ROCK STARS, SURF AND SECOND CHANCES series

  Copyright © 2017 by Michelle Mankin

  Cover design by Michelle Preast at Indie Book Covers

  Photography by Wander Aguiar from Wander Photography

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, bands, and/or restaurants referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Michelle Mankin

  Connect with Michelle Mankin

  Oceanside

  Love is the good in me

  Where there is love

  There is hope

  Where there is hope

  There is light

  Where there is light

  There is a way

  Tomorrow Today

  – Fanny Bay

  2012

  Prologue

  Fanny

  The Dolby Theatre. One of the largest stages in the nation. One hundred and twenty feet wide. Seventy-five feet deep. On one of the biggest nights of the year.

  Oscar night.

  Mesh bronze accents. Plush seats trimmed in plum velvet. Pure old school Hollywood glam.

  Ultra cool.

  What wasn’t?

  Me. Fanny Bay Lesowski. A twenty-year-old with red corkscrew curls and a slight Canadian accent. Even my name was the opposite of glamorous.

  Under the striking silver looping ovoid structure, which supported and disguised an immense lighting grid, I felt tiny and insignificant. Clenching my fingers tighter around the mic in my hand, I willed my body not to tremble. But I was scared. I didn’t belong here. Not really. Not center stage at the Oscars with dozens of cameras trained on me following my every move.

  Fanny Bay, don’t let your nerves get the best of you, I reminded myself, my stomach swirling anew. Remember, you’ve done this song in front of cameras and audiences plenty of times since the nomination. The trick was fooling my brain into believing that this was just one more performance, not one in front of countless celebrities and rock stars much less fifty million worldwide viewers.

  Breathe in Zen. I closed my eyes and inhaled positive energy.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Breathe out all the negativity. I exhaled for three counts and opened my eyes.

  Better.

  My surroundings seemed less intimidating with my mind cleared. My tense muscles loosened as I compiled a list:

  1. The capacity inside the historic venue was only thirty-four hundred. I focused on that manageable number.

  2. I had done similar shows before—minus the enormous television audience of course.

  3. I wouldn’t be alone. My half-sister Hollie would arrive soon to occupy her reserved aisle seat three rows back from the stage. She would be radiating positive energy and cheering for me. Our mother would be here, too. I believed that, truly I did.

  Actual venue capacity. My experience. And most importantly, my support network. This was doable. When I broke overwhelming things down into less intimidating pieces, a Zen technique, it usually set me back on track.

  “I love you, Mama.” I brought my hand to my mouth. “Tonight’s for you.” I pressed my lips to the Claddagh ring that had once been hers but now encircled the first finger of my right hand. The metal was cold, like my life had often felt since she had left us.

  Blinking back tears, I tried to envision her standing right beside me lending me her strength. But that was difficult to do. Nine months, three weeks, two days since we had scattered her ashes. The loss still felt fresh. My emotions bubbled too near the surface and with them a pain too raw to soothe.

  Focus lost, I returned the mic to its slot on the stand and backed away. I suddenly didn’t feel like singing her favorite song about making your tomorrows today anymore.

  “Do you need something, Miss Lesowski?” The well-meaning sound technician assigned to me suddenly reemerged from the shadows. Navy ball cap on his head, the brim low and his eyes sparkling with eagerness to please, he had been hovering nearby since I had taken the stage for my allotted ten-minute window of rehearsal time.

  “Yes. Thank you.” Best to give him something to do so I could try to regather my thoughts. “Would you mind taking my guitar?” My Martin D18-E, a six-string acoustic-electric featured a solid Sitka spruce top, mahogany back and sides and a Fishman F1 Aura plus pickup system. I smoothed my fingertips over the handsome finish of the beautifully crafted instrument any musician would be proud to play. I loved the warm tones it made, but mostly I loved it because it had been a gift from my mother. “Be careful with it,” I cautioned making eye contact with him as I unclipped the strap and relinquished my treasure to his care.

  “I will, Miss Lesowski. Promise.” He gave me a reverential nod and retreated with the guitar. As he did a flash of platinum blond caught my eye.


  It can’t be, I thought. Only it was. It truly was.

  Ashland Keys of the Dirt Dogs.

  My heart leapt to my throat.

  Holy shit.

  I had hoped, maybe even allowed myself a little daydream about a chance meeting, but the last I had heard things had still been up in the air as to whether his band would actually perform live tonight. My eyes bugged out of my head as I stared. The drummer of the Dirt Dogs was even more handsome in the flesh, though he looked less like a rock legend right now in a crisp, white, button down shirt and dark denim jeans and more like a cover model for some upscale clothing catalog.

  What to do? My heart hammering with indecision, I panicked as he moved closer eclipsing a stack of amps with his wide shoulders and over six feet frame.

  I was a big fan of Ashland Keys.

  Ok, maybe more than just a fan.

  He was the reason I had gotten interested in music. I had his pictures—the band’s pictures, I reflexively downplayed my obsession—pasted all over my room. I had been to so many of the Dirt Dogs’ concerts that I had lost track of the count. Well, actually it was ten. The laminated ticket stubs lined the inside of the top desk drawer in my room, but don’t tell. And I had indulged in a couple—okay, a lot—of farfetched fantasies in which the rocker and I met, bonded and instantly fell madly in love. If my mother had been alarmed by my fascination with the band and a man eleven years older than me, she had never let on. Though, I suspected my biweekly guitar lessons had been her way of channeling my fixation into something more constructive. Certainly nothing edifying in my stepfather’s reaction. He had made his disapproval of Ashland Keys and his group of surfers turned rowdy, antiestablishment rock stars abundantly clear. But then again Samuel Lesowski didn’t approve of anything that I did—that is until my nomination for best original song alongside the super successful Dirt Dogs.

  Not that I desire my stepfather’s approval, I reminded myself. I didn’t need or want anything from him. He was hardly the benevolent benefactor with a heart for the downtrodden the public perceived him to be, and that he had fooled my mother into believing in the early days of their relationship. In fact, he was an egomaniac with disturbing sadistic tendencies.

  “I’m marrying him for you, Fanny Bay,” my mother had told me while holding her hand over a belly that had yet to swell. “For you and this little one so we can have plenty of food and a comfy bed to sleep in rather than an old car.”

  That had been fifteen years ago, but I actually missed the rusty 1998 Buick LeSabre land-barge that had temporarily served as our home.

  More specifically, I missed her and the life we’d had together before my stepfather had entered it. Just the two of us, a typical day starting with me at her feet in the wee hours before dawn peeling potatoes while she cooked breakfast for the men working the oyster beds. Later I would take a glorious nap next to her in the backseat of the car before the evening found me standing in the shadows backstage watching her perform in the small local theater. It had been a hard way of living, yet it seemed to me that we both had been happier in those days.

  “Ashland, baby, wait.” A high-pitched woman’s voice screeched through my thoughts like a scratch on one of my mother’s vintage records. Shifting, I saw a brunette wearing ass-baring leather shorts clattering after the rock icon in her three inch stilettoes. He turned, irritation bristling his brow as he took a step backward to avoid her. But she had momentum. She barreled into him smashing her ridiculously huge boobs into his chest while grabbing hold of his upper arms—well as much of his biceps as she could curl her red tipped claws around. “Come back to the dressing room,” she whined. “Do a couple more shots. Let’s play some, honey.” She tipped her head back and batted her glued-on lashes at him. “My sister and I were just getting started. I’ll do you while she does Linc.”

  “No thanks.” He frowned, and her overly made up face registered surprise as he decisively set her away from him.

  “Whatever you want then. We’re easy, honey. We’ll do the whole band if you’d like. You can watch. Everyone knows how you like to.”

  My jaw dropped, not because her offer was shocking. My stepfather was a big Hollywood producer. I had seen plenty of women proposition him. Seasoned and aspiring actresses, some barely legal, came onto him everywhere he went hoping he would cast them in one of his films. No, my reaction was one of dismay. Being this close to my idol and having things unfold like this was a far cry from my fantasies.

  “I’ll pass.” Ashland pried her fingers loose and lifted his chin. “Go on back and do whatever you please without me.” Silky strands of platinum brushed the collar of his shirt as he turned away from her. His eyes sweeping right over me without interest or acknowledgment, he strode smoothly toward the portable riser that would be pulled onto the middle of the stage later tonight when the Dirt Dogs performed. He withdrew a pair of sticks from his back pocket and skirted around the drum kit that sported the band’s name and the iconic bulldog surfboard logo before he lowered his significant frame onto the stool behind it.

  Don’t just stand there like a dork, Fanny. My heart rate quickened. Introduce yourself. Get a picture with him at least. My sister would never let me hear the end of it if I passed over a golden opportunity to meet my idol.

  “Uh-um.” I cleared my throat and shuffled closer. He lifted his gaze, his fingers stilling on the cymbal fastener he had been tightening. Piercing blue eyes met mine. Pinned in place, I was unable to move. I suddenly couldn’t breathe. The solid floorboards seemed to go fluid beneath me. I was drowning in pools of aquamarine. They weren’t the lighter shade of Lincoln Savage’s, his adopted cousin and the lead singer of the Dirt Dogs. They were a deeper, more complex hue that spoke of the ocean. Not the distant view I could see out the windows of my bedroom, but the ocean in those professional surfing photos where it all seemed alive; the overspray a smoky exhalation, the currents’ eddies swirling thought and the waves’ cosmic forces of turbulent emotion.

  I swayed, buffeted by the force of his gaze knowing that my little fantasies had been one dimensional nothings. There were layers of complexity in the 3D Ashland Keys. His eyes alone could tie me up for hours. “I’m…uh…” I found it difficult to harness my thoughts. The words stuck to my tongue as he focused intensely on me. No longer dismissive, he slipped his gaze over my body in a slow approving way that stripped me of more than just my halter top and cutoff shorts. “I’m Fanny,” I managed though I sounded like I had just sprinted up three flights of stairs. “Fanny Bay.” I left off the Lesowski. I wasn’t proud of that association.

  “‘Tomorrow Today’.” His intensity receding, his sculpted and-oh-so-kissable lips curved up on one side. He knew me. Well, he knew my song. Of course he did. We were nominated in the same category though my little acoustic tune wasn’t near the equal of his chart-topping hit. “You’re on before us.” He laid his sticks on the top of his snare and stood. I lost his eyes for a moment, my gaze drifting away from them and the defined strength of his handsome face, to take in his massive shoulders, his tapered waist, his narrow hips and the untucked hem of his shirt.

  “Yes, that’s my song.” My breath hitched as he and all his alluring male perfection approached. “And yes, I’m on before you.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, Fanny.” He stopped in front of me and my heart nearly did, too, hearing my name flow from his lips. He had such an amazing voice. Soft. Low. Seductive. “‘Tomorrow Today’ is a fantastic song and your guitar picking on it is perfection.”

  “Thank you.” Heat rose to my cheeks as I lifted my gaze and found myself ensnared by the fathomless blue depths of his eyes again.

  “I saw your acceptance speech at the Golden Globes.” His voice rumbled compellingly lower. “I’m sorry about your mother. I know it’s incredibly hard losing someone you love so unexpectedly.”

  I swallowed and nodded. Most people didn’t know what to say and shied away from offering sympathy. Obviously he wasn’t one of those. In fact, he
was so confident, his commanding presence such an arrestive force, I got the impression he didn’t shy away from much. “I’m sorry about Dominic.” He and his band had recently lost one of their founding members. Dominic Campo, the original bassist, departed the band to join the military and had died tragically while overseas. The Dirt Dogs’ song and my own were both Oscar nominated tributes to loss. Mine had been featured on a character driven film with a redemptive theme and theirs on a blockbuster WWII action film with a much more somber tone.

  “So am I. So the hell am I.” His eyes swam in sudden emotion that mirrored my own. “Well, I better get back to it.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, his shirt sleeve bunching up at his elbow to reveal more of his muscular forearm and tanned skin.

  “Oh. Yes.” Duh. I was holding him up. “Could I get a picture with you first? Just a quick one. Otherwise my sister won’t believe me if I tell her I met you.”

  “Sure.” The heaviness leaving his eyes, the right corner of his mouth tilted his amusement again. “How about a selfie?” He didn’t pause for me to answer, which was a good thing because when his lips tilted my mind whirled. “C’mon.” He reached for me. “Come and stand right here beside me.” My breath left my lungs in a whoosh when I felt him curl his long, slender, talented fingers around my bared shoulder. Skin to skin, an ember of heat at the point of contact ignited a deeper fire inside of me as he drew me into his rock-hard side. Being held by the living breathing man I had idolized from afar for so many years was surreal. “Don’t be shy, little rose…” His amusement brightened his voice. I didn’t have to glance up at him to know that his half-smile had blown up into a full grin. I realized I was too obvious in my adoration. He knew I was flustered, and he was enjoying teasing me.

  “Alright.” Ignoring my skyrocketing pulse and the electrical shivers racing over my skin from his touch, I slid my cell from the pocket of my shorts and took a quick shot knowing he was going to look cover model great in it while I was just going to look like a wide eyed lunatic.