Dee J. Adams
Dangerously Close
Carina Press / July 23, 2012 / $5.99 digital
Bad-boy rock star Seger Hughes hates how his life has spun out of control. After changing his appearance and his name, he transforms into a different man: Mel Summers. Now he just needs a place to hide out from rabid fans and paparazzi.
An isolated cliffside mansion is perfect. Ashley Bristol, his only neighbor, is blind—and her assistant is a classical music fan. They have no clue who he really is, but someone else does and she’s waited her whole life to be with him.
Struggling to find her way after an accident that took her sight, Ashley is determined not to feel anything. Yet she gets to know Mel and can’t help falling for him. When her assistant mysteriously disappears, Ashley must rely on Mel more than ever. But then his past comes back to haunt them both, and just when they must pull together to avoid danger, betrayal and lies threaten to tear them apart…
Even more than rock star heroes, I like rock star heroes in hiding or in disguise. Luckily for me, in romance novels, rock stars are rarely touring or recording; usually, they’re trying to rediscover themselves and find a new kind of life or a new kind of fame, sometimes after a tragedy, sometimes after they discover being a rock star is not the summit of their ambition. It’s more interesting to read about someone who’s struggling, after all, than someone who’s at the height of their success, and the greater the height from which they’ve fallen, the greater the dramatic tension.
Dangerously Close by Dee J. Adams features both a struggling hero (rock star) and a struggling heroine (painter). Seger Hughes/Mel Summers is trying to rediscover his love for music after one too many drunken, orgiastic tours. A single tawdry event has made him rethink his life. Ashley Bristol recently discovered she has a talent—and love for—painting, only to have a head injury render her almost totally blind, which means she has to re-learn how to accomplish a whole raft of daily tasks without her sight. The plot is further complicated by a manipulative stalker who’s out for Seger and doesn’t mind harming Ashley to get to him.
I loved that Adams didn’t shy away from making Seger Hughes completely unheroic when he first appears. Had he not later shifted gears, I could easily picture him ending up in one of those angstful exploitative documentaries.
We first meet him as he wakes after a concert.
Seger didn’t want to look at the woman next to him. Shit. What was her name anyway? He couldn’t even begin to remember. Bimbo? Bambi? Becky? Christ. Welcome to Loser Central. His kingdom. The urge to pee won out and Seger crawled out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom of his hotel suite. In…Bumfuck, somewhere. He had no clue. After twelve months on the road, he wanted to disappear. He wanted to chuck his guitar and his name and he wanted to…disappear. Completely. There was no other word for it. Considering how hard he’d worked to get here, it was a damn shame he was so ready and willing to throw it all away.
…Seger pissed, then rinsed with mouthwash, happy to get the sludge of morning-after Jack Daniels out of his mouth. He dared a glance at the mirror and didn’t recognize the man staring back at him. His greasy long hair hung in his face, his swollen right eye glared, black. His jaw had a black and blue mark that looked less like a fist and more like a…a…again, he had no clue. He looked like death and smelled like booze and smoke.
Then it gets worse. Way worse. It got so much worse that I was laughing at the depths of his humiliation.
She had Rob Thomas on her cell phone and not him? She’d frickin’ slept with him last night, but didn’t have the courtesy to play his music on her phone? Rob-fucking-Thomas?
…“Sorry, I have to go,” she explained, shaking out her hair. “Mom’s waiting for me. She loves your music and thinks you’re awesome.” Mom loved his music? Seger was afraid to ask how old Mom was. His stomach churned as he stood speechless near the foot of the bed.
His life was completely sad:
“He’d finally indulged his three-woman fantasy but was too wasted to remember it. What the hell was the point?”
Luckily for us readers, we don’t have to look at him being trashed for long. He shaves off his hair and beefs up in preparation for his long vacation as Mel Summers, which is when he meets Ashley. Even though he thinks he wants to be in hiding from everyone, his liking for Ashley draws him out and he begins to interact with the world again, as a person rather than an icon; he submerges his own needs in order to help Ashley with hers, and in the process becomes more himself. Now that Mel Summers, him I could get into.
Victoria Janssen is the author of three novels and numerous short stories. Her World War One-set Spice Brief, May 2012, is titled “Under Her Uniform” and is a tie-in to her novel The Moonlight Mistress. Follow her on Twitter: @victoriajanssen or find out more at victoriajanssen.com.
