We have a number of Lynne Connolly fangirls around here, so I know they are pleased to hear about Icefire, releasing from Ellora’s Cave 3rd May 2008. This is the second in the Pure Wildfire series. Read about Sunfire here (reviewed by Nikki), then read on for a sneak peek at the sequel.

     Ryan Hawthorne, brother of Aidan, the hero of Sunfire, is in New York with the band, promoting the release of their second studio album. While he’s there, he plans to uncover the person who killed his lost love Maria, five years ago. The death was attributed to a drugs overdose, but Ryan’s always had his doubts.

     He meets Maria’s stepsister Gia (Angelina) who has always hated the band for corrupting and ultimately killing her sister. However she is forced to rethink her assumptions when she meets Ryan. Together they try to uncover the PHR cell that is still persecuting the band Pure Wildfire, but in doing so they discover a lot more.

**E-x-c-e-r-p-t**

Gina is at a Pure Wildfire concert, the guest of an old childhood friend, Sonny, who now roadies for the band. Ryan Hawthorne was with Gina’s stepsister Maria when she died and Gina has always blamed him for introducing her to the drugs that killed her.

When lead guitarist Splinter let himself ease into the music, his concentration was so intense she could almost feel it.

He closed his eyes and spread his legs in the typical rock god stance but Gina felt the rightness of it. He wasn’t posing for anyone, not at this moment, he didn’t want to lose his balance while he played. With his wife Corinne on the other side of the stage, buoying and supporting him with carefully balanced and timed chords and notes, Splinter exploded.

The torrent of notes, carefully chosen, as carefully as the spaces in between, flowed from him, his guitar as much a part of him as his arms or legs, as integral a part of his expression. Sweat poured off his body, drenching the t-shirt that was all he wore on his upper body and it wasn’t from overheating, it was from sheer concentration. Three bars in, he closed his eyes and the lighting darkened to a spot, pure blue, illuminating him, leaving the rest of the band in shadow. Unlike many other bands, they didn’t take the opportunity to take a drink or towel off. Each member of the band stood still, unless they were adding accents to Splinter’s solo and she knew the admiration on their faces wasn’t in any way faked.

The intensity wasn’t something she expected in a rock concert. Energy yes, noise, yes but not this concentrated onslaught of emotion.

As the spotlight widened, taking in other members of the band and they began to drift back in to the music, she opened her eyes wide, then closed them hard, a trick she’d learned long ago to stop inconvenient tears falling.

And opened them, right on to the speculative, sharp gaze of Ryan Hawthorne. He wouldn’t be able to see her, not really, she assured herself.

She looked away but she’d felt the contact and it couldn’t be undone. She felt naked, open, just for a moment. That was why she avoided meeting eyes unless she had shielded herself, prepared for the encounter. Whoever said eyes were windows on the soul was right. She looked deep inside Ryan Hawthorne and caught an amazed, vulnerable, open soul for a second, or perhaps even less. Then he turned away, his whole body pivoting in the other direction and took his microphone from a roadie. Just an illusion. It had to be.

Unnerved, Gina watched the rest of the concert with a stillness and concentration she hadn’t been able to muster before. Every note struck something deep inside her, something she hadn’t even been aware of before tonight, or something she had willfully ignored. She wasn’t sure.

An hour and a half into the set, Splinter and Ryan took stools at the front of the stage but before they began, Ryan looked straight at her. Or seemed to.

Ramps were set around the stage and across the boarded-over orchestra pit for the band to use and while the rest of the band had occupied the one close to her seat and one time or another, Ryan had avoided it, or not used it. Now he didn’t.

He walked slowly up the ramp, Splinter playing a gentle riff that announced the tune and to her horror, Gina recognized it as the song Ryan had written for Maria, Tearing Me Apart.

Ryan held out his hand to her. She swallowed and looked up at him.

His expression now was completely controlled, the deeper emotions masked, a query in his eyes. She could refuse him but that would be the act of a coward. And besides, something inside her urged her to go to him, as he evidently wanted.

Behind him, Splinter played on. Taking a deep breath, she leaned up and took his hand. “Come up,” he said softly, so softly she couldn’t hear him, only follow the shape of his sensual mouth.

One of the security staff lifted her and she scrambled over the low barrier separating them, sliding from the edge into his arms.

He released her as soon as she’d steadied but not before she felt his astonishing steely strength. Who would have imagined such a slender-seeming man would be so strong? When she looked closer, she saw muscles bunch as he turned away, his hand in hers, to lead her to the stools.

Time slowed, as he seated her next to the guitarist, then began the song. She knew many bands did this, drew a member of the audience into a song and her seat was conveniently close. But however much she told herself This is a gimmick, a device, she couldn’t separate her professional self from the vulnerable woman underneath.

She tried not to listen, tried to keep the smile fixed on her face, the blank expression in her eyes. But she couldn’t. Ryan had evoked Maria perfectly in the song—her fragility, her gentleness, her touching naïveté. Her image—slight, blonde, ethereally pretty—swam before Gina’s eyes.

Damn, when had she started to cry? Tears spilled over her eyes and ran down her cheeks, two big, fat tears the spotlight would only emphasize. The man taking video shots for the band knelt in front of them and she knew the camera would magnify her distress tenfold. She couldn’t use her trick of squeezing her eyes tightly closed, because anyone watching the video would see it and know. So she forced her sight past the tears misting her eyes and gazed at Ryan. Right into his eyes.

Shock lanced between them and although she didn’t jerk with the impact, it was a close-run thing. Constantly aware that thousands of strangers watched her, she used Ryan as a focus, a way of keeping her eyes dry and her expression bland.

Except he seemed emotional too. He’d sung this song many times, how could he keep the emotion so raw, so new? But he did. She saw it. The psychic ability she preferred to ignore connected them in a way she’d never meant. Her ability amounted to a sensitivity, strong intuition, that was all but sometimes it focused itself more than she wanted. Useful sometimes in her work, mostly it was just a fucking nuisance.

Like now. She wanted to hate Ryan Hawthorne for the life he led, that had led Maria into losing her life but she knew it must go both ways. She doubted Ryan held Maria down and shot that poison into her veins. Maria took that decision all by herself. She didn’t want to know that. This was what she had been afraid of when her father gave her the job, her emotions coming back, the agony she felt at the time returning to haunt her.

Now she saw something worse in Ryan. The agony had never left him. He felt it still, the pain fresh in his eyes.

He sang to her, her alone and while she ached for him, she recognized his gift, rare in the music world, of shrinking a huge theater to the size of Ryan Hawthorne and one other. Every woman in that theater knew for sure that person was herself.

“I’ll love you always and forever

Until the pain in me subsides.”

When he stopped, she heard it, the sound more awesome than the roaring of approval, or the applause of thousands of people.

Silence, absolute and complete. For the duration of one second, maybe two. She’d heard it before and it was always the indication of something great, something so deeply moving that people needed to regain their senses and remember they were individuals and not a single entity.

Then the applause came. A great roar, until Gina thought her ears would ring for evermore. Ryan held out his hand, like some old-world gentleman and she let him help her off the stool. He took her to the side of the stage where Sonny stood grinning like a loon, holding a towel and a bottle of beer.

Ryan leaned towards her, pitching his voice below the decibels. She heard him perfectly. “It might seem like a gimmick but I need to sing that song to one person, if I’m going to get it right. And you—you remind me of someone I once knew.” Gina’s heart sank. She knew who. “Look,” Ryan said, “It sounds like a line but it isn’t. Will you come backstage afterward? I’d like to talk to you.”

She opened her mouth but couldn’t get any words out. She closed it again and nodded. Oh yes, she’d be there all right but as his publicist, not a groupie or a quick fuck.

She turned to Sonny and glared, daring him to say anything. Sonny winked. Ryan glanced at him and then did the oddest thing. He lifted her hand to his mouth and deposited a gentle kiss on the palm. And Gina felt as if he’d reached into her soul. With that simple touch he’d contacted a part of her she was barely aware of, a place she had no name for and no way of explaining. Such an old-fashioned gesture from a wild child!

Ryan walked back on to the stage. The stage he owned, at least for tonight.

Sonny touched her shoulder waking her from her reverie and she let him take her away from the noise, back to a small corridor. “Hey, I can’t wait to see Ryan’s face when he realizes who you are!” He sniggered.

“Don’t you dare tell him, Sonny. I want to tell him myself.”

She wanted to spare Ryan any ridicule or shock, feeling she owed him that, at least, for the connection to a woman they had both loved, in very different ways. The woman, she reminded herself, who Ryan had seduced and led into a life totally unsuited to her.

The woman he’d killed.