Chapter One
Shay Maloneypoured himself onto the plush couch at the back of the tour bus. “How does this even happen?” he wondered aloud. “We’re a pirate band from Derby.”
Corina, his manager and instigator of Smuggler’s Beat’s meteoric rise from pub band to touring megalodon—in folk music terms, at least—flicked an impatient eyebrow. “Hard work. Yours and mine. Don’t start being a brat about it now.”
Brat.The term set Shay’s teeth on edge. At twenty-three, he’d outgrown the child prodigy label he’d carried through school, but the word still stung. He flung his feet up on the seat. “I need new boots.”
Corina didn’t reply.
A little while later, they rolled into Dublin, the first stop on the tour. The band shuffled off the bus in various states of disarray after seven hours on the road. Shay was the only one without a hangover, by laziness rather than design—the fridge was at the front of the bus.
Backstage at the venue, they decamped to the dressing room. It was the most luxurious they’d had so far but still amounted to little more than a couch too small for five people, a can of Pringles, and the world’s smallest telly. Shay wasn’t complaining, though; he had no time to lounge around. His pregig routine was sacred, and even a rough ferry voyage and some dodgy tuna sandwiches wouldn’t keep him from his solitary circuit of the unfamiliar stage.
He escaped the rest of the band at the first opportunity and ventured along a dark corridor. The three-thousand capacity indie club was a big name to have on their scorecard, but in reality, the grand venue was pretty dingy behind the scenes. Gig detritus cluttered every corner, and it smelled like an old man’s empty wallet.
Shay picked his way through until he found the stage. Finally, the magic hit. Wooden and weathered, high ceilings and sticky floors, the venue was everything he’d ever dreamed of beyond the muddy festivals the band had spent their entire summer frequenting. Rock and pop could keep their stadiums and arenas. For Shay,thiswas everything.
As was his habit, he lay down on the stage and closed his eyes, imagining how it would feel when the lights went down. When the sold-out crowd would either love them or hate them. Smuggler’s Beat had a loyal following, but their eclectic shanty-punk vibe was an acquired taste, and it was hard to ever feel at home in a city they’d never played before. Their record company had taken a chance on them, and the mantra that followed them around was stronger nowhere than in Shay’s own head.What if we fucking bomb?
“Then you’ll be out on your ear and back to being an accountant, or whatever it is you posh kids do when you get back on the straight and narrow.”
Shay jumped and opened one eye to face Larry, the grizzled percussionist who was the heartbeat to Shay’s lyrical soul. “Accountant? I barely got GCSEs, I’m from the arse crack of Derby, and I haven’t ever been straight.”
“There’s still time,” Larry deadpanned. “Though I don’t know what you’re worried about. These are your people, aren’t they?”
“Who?”
Larry rolled his eyes. “The Irish, knobhead. That’s why we came here… to bookend the tour with our fearless leader’s heritage, Dublin to Derby.”
He wandered off, saving Shay the trouble of another retort, and Shay stared after him, long-carried disquiet fizzing gently in his already nervous heart.Your people.Yeah, right. If only he knew Shay’s name was a lie and he had no more Gaelic blood in him than Cuban-born Larry.
* * *
Showtime.OlliePietruska stood in the press booth of the packed venue and observed Smuggler’s Beat as they took to the stage. The Cuban drummer, the chiselled fiddler. The dreadlocked bass player, and the pianist with her long white hair. And the reason Ollie had braved a Ryanair flight across the Irish Sea bounced out behind them. All alabaster-skinned, chestnut-haired, six foot of him.
Ollie sighed.Fuck’s sake. Somehow, despite the mad-panicked month he’d spent researching this man, he hadn’t got round to digging up a photograph of his present-day self—or actually, any photographs of him at all. He knew what the bloke’s grandfather looked like, his great-aunt, and his long-lost distant cousin, but until this moment, Shay Maloney had been nothing more than a name begrudgingly scrawled on the first page of a brand-new notebook.
Now he was a vision in skintight jeans and battered boots, chin-length hair tucked under a leather fedora, and a vintage guitar slung over his shoulder. Everything Ollie had ever dreamed of when his imagination got the better of him. Goddammit, Shay Maloney wasgorgeous.
Ollie cursed again and leaned on the railing as Smuggler’s Beat launched into their first song, an upbeat ceilidh number with a tribal twist. The band was famed for their fusion folk style, but Ollie had neglected to research that, too, so was sorely unprepared for the pulsing, grinding rhythm that seeped, unbidden, into his bones. Smuggler’s Beat were… awesome, and it was quite clear to Ollie that their secret lay in the indomitable charisma of their dazzling frontman.
The band churned out song after song, each laced with their trademark energy but distinctly different from the one that came before. They were the Aladdin’s cave of folk music—a genre Ollie had assumed to be dull—and it wasn’t long before the confines of the press booth became too much.
Gaze fixed on the stage, Ollie slipped out of the booth and down the steps into the crowd. The singer was playing a bright melody on a harmonica, all the while stomping his booted feet to a rhythm that drove the audience wild.
They stomped along with him, moving like a beer-fuelled ocean. The real ale being served at the bar slopped onto the floor, and as Shay swapped his harmonica for an accordion, they roared.
Goosebumps broke out over Ollie’s skin, tingling in places, a phantom sting creeping across others, as though his ruined body had never healed. Irritated, he rubbed his arms and swept the stage again, searching for a welcome distraction.
The band had evolved in the brief moment Ollie had been gone. Instruments had been swapped around, and they’d moved to the front of the stage. Shay Maloney held a drum Ollie couldn’t name, and even from a distance, Ollie saw the mischief in his eyes.
He took the mic. “We’re gonna have some fun now. Bring the house down before we let you go home.”
The crowd booed their dismay at the prospect of the rowdy gig coming to an end, but Ollie barely heard it, instead inexplicably lost in the melodic lilt of Maloney’s Derbyshire accent. For some reason, he’d expected Irish brogue, even though Ollie knew there was nothing Irish about the entrancing singer.
I wonder if he knows too.But Ollie nixed the thought before it took hold and roused the detective part of his brain. What Shay knew about himself right now was irrelevant. By the end of the tour, he’d know it all, and then Ollie could go home.Fuck this shit.
As though he’d somehow heard Ollie’s rebellion, Shay shifted his gaze, scoping out the crowd until he seemed to be staring right at Ollie. They locked eyes. The world shifted, and Ollie sucked in a breath. His hands were clenched at his sides, but as Shay Maloney held him hostage, the ever-present tension in his body gave way to a feeling he didn’t recognise.
