Jen locked her door behind her and pulled the curtains before sinking down on the couch. What had she expected Trent to do? Avoid her? If he’d just had the class to forget her, it would have been perfect. She could have spent today and tomorrow suffering with the idea that he was there and she couldn’t see him, and then it would have been over so she could go back to being a single mom who had no interest in dating.

He felt so good when he grabbed her. It was just like old times. The crazy, dizzying feeling of being swept up by Trent Markov. Carried away on the wild, sexy roller coaster of his life. The limos, the fans, she had been famous by association. And he had treated her like a queen. For a while she’d believed she be just like Bear D’Amato’s girlfriend – wife. Bear had looked at Maureen like the walked on water. Bought her all those gorgeous clothes. Got her into the show.

Jen had thought it was a sign that Trent picked her out of the crowd that night. That her time had come.

Jenny appeared first in Satellite Of Love. First, she was working in the shop where Bear took Maureen to get clothes for a concert he wanted to take her to. That night Trent picked Jenny out of the crowd of groupies and she thought she’d won the lottery. She spent some time chatting with Maureen, getting to know her and dreaming about a day in the future when they were both married to their rock stars.

What Jenny wasn’t taking into account then was that Maureen didn’t have groupie mentality. She wasn’t there as a plaything and she had an identity of her own. When I was writing the scenes between Jenny and Maureen in that first book, I knew Jenny was a wounded, broken character with a lot to learn before her Happily Ever After. Even after all she’s been through in the intervening years, she still has a ways to go at the start of this book.

Trent rolled over and checked his email on his phone. Nothing. Tonight was the last show before they had a week off. He’d been hoping to hear from Tessa before then. Shit.

How hard could it be to find a woman and a little girl? He sat up and took a pull from the whiskey bottle he’d left on the nightstand the night before. Damn it, even alcohol was losing its appeal. First groupies, then drugs, now alcohol. What was next? Food? Music? Air?

He located Tessa in his contacts. “Any news?”

“I ran a background on her, but I was waiting to hear from my PI to send it to you.”

“Give me what you’ve got so far.”

“Jennifer Hammerstrom. Twenty-three. Bookkeeper at the Agora Ballroom in Cleveland. Last known address is two seven oh eight nine West Highland apartment four C, but the place is empty. Her rent is paid through the month, but her landlord said she left town.”

The venerable Cleveland Agora is closed and has been for a long time. It’s been closed so long that the last show I saw there was Savatage, which later turned into the Trans Siberian Orchestra. Yeah, that long ago. I bring up the fact that I saw Savatage to my brother at least once a year because I like to needle him about the fact that I saw his favorite band before he did. Indeed, before they became the band that is now his favorite.

The venue where Jenny works, though called the Cleveland Agora, is actually based on the State Theater in Playhouse Square in Cleveland. I had a job once where I had to arrange an awards dinner of the stage of the State Theater that was going to be broadcast live on a classical music station. (Yes, Cleveland has a classical music station. NPR, too.) Arranging that event just about killed me, but it gave me the opportunity to go all over the State Theater, which was not an opportunity that I had with the Cleveland Agora. (I keep saying Cleveland Agora on the off chance that the reader might confuse it with the Akron Agora, which is also closed.)