Rock Me Gently
A Havenwood Falls Novel
Susan Burdorf
Contents
Havenwood Falls Books
Love Is Like a Memory
Chapter 1
The Unexpectedness of You
Chapter 2
Never Say Never
Chapter 3
Ocean of Our Love
Chapter 4
Falling
Chapter 5
Plans Change
Chapter 6
Reflections on a Possibility
Chapter 7
Drawings in the Sand
Chapter 8
Message
Chapter 9
The Sands of Time
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Breaking Point
Chapter 12
Inside the Darkness
Chapter 13
Quicker Than My Heartbeat
Chapter 14
Clarity
Chapter 15
Judgment
Chapter 16
Nothing But Time
Chapter 17
Catching the Dream
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Fly Away Angel
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About This Book
With his hard rock band Pink Melon nominated for a Grammy, lead singer Brett Rhys-Falwyck’s dreams are about to come true. Then tragedy strikes. After losing the one person he loves most, he turns to the only thing he knows will never fail him—his music. But even that’s betrayed by the corrupt owner of the band’s management company that owns his soul. Turning his back on his bandmates, he finds himself in the mountains of Colorado—running a band camp, of all things.
Cecelia Amundson, angel and owner of Havenwood Falls Music & More, can’t stop dreaming of a man she’s never met. Knowing he needs her help, she invites him to Havenwood Falls to run a music camp sponsored by her store. As soon as he arrives, she senses a darkness gripping his soul and curling its hooks deeper inside him.
In a race to save his soul, Cecelia grows ever closer to Brett. But she must hold tight to her heart, for within this tortured man lies a secret darker than her past, and deadlier than she ever imagined.
Havenwood Falls Books
Forget You Not by Kristie Cook
Old Wounds by Susan Burdorf
Fate, Love & Loyalty by E.J. Fechenda
Covetousness by Randi Cooley Wilson
The Winged & the Wicked by T.V. Hahn & Kristie Cook
Alpha’s Queen by Lila Felix
Ink & Fire by R.K. Ryals
Lose You Not by Kristie Cook
Tragic Ink by Heather Hildenbrand
Nowhere to Hide by Belinda Boring
Flames Among the Frost by Amy Hale
Rock Me Gently by Susan Burdorf
From the Embers by Amy Miles (June 2018)
Defying Gravity by Kallie Ross (July 2018)
More books releasing on a monthly basis
Also try the YA line, Havenwood Falls High, and the historical paranormal line, Legends of Havenwood Falls
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Copyright © 2018 Susan Burdorf, Ang’dora Productions, LLC
All rights reserved.
Published by
Ang’dora Productions, LLC
5621 Strand Blvd, Ste 210
Naples, FL 34110
Havenwood Falls and Ang’dora Productions and their associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Ang’dora Productions, LLC.
Cover design by Regina Wamba at MaeIDesign.com
Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the owner of this book.
Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
To Kristie Cook and all the folks at Havenwood Falls. What a magical town!
Love Is Like a Memory
(Pink Melon: One Time More)
Written and sung by Brett Rhys-Falwyck
What happened to our story
Your love is like a memory
I kiss you but you aren’t there
I reach for you but hold only air
Mmm ooo mmm ooo
Your love is like a memory
Mmm ooo mmm ooo
Your love is like a memory
What happened to the kisses we shared
Our lips meeting, the souls we bared
I touched your heart, and you touched mine
We promised our love would last for all time
Mmm ooo mmm ooo
Your love is like a memory
Mmm ooo mmm ooo
Your love is like a memory
Our love is like a ghost
That haunts me more than most
I fly to you, but you touch the sun
And go, and go, a fire never won
Mmm ooo mmm ooo
Your love is like a memory
Mmm ooo mmm ooo
Your love is like a memory
Are you an illusion? A myth?
What do you hold a firefly with
I want to keep you in a jar
I want to know who we are
Mmm ooo mmm ooo
Your love is like a memory
Mmm ooo mmm ooo
Your love is like a memory
So please, oh please come back to me
I will take you as you are, not a memory
For our love will survive all time
I am yours and you are mine
Mmm ooo mmm ooo
Your love is like a memory
Mmm ooo mmm ooo
Your love is like a memory
Chapter 1
“Hey, Brett, you ready?”
Brett Rhys-Falwyck, lead guitarist and singer for the band Pink Melon, looked left, then nodded. Looking to his right, he nodded again. Slipping the ear buds into his ears so he could keep in touch with their sound crew, he stepped forward and pulled the microphone closer. Striking the opening chord of their multi-platinum hit song “Love Is Like a Memory,” he lowered his tone and sang to the enthusiastic screams and cheers from the thousands of fans in the arena as they recognized and approved his song choice.
Lights flashed around them, psychedelic and random, adding a heartbeat to the drumbeat and chords ramping up the audience’s enthusiasm. Not that they needed much more to get them dancing. From the minute Brett and the boys of Pink Melon stepped onto the stage and began the opening to their hit that was flooding the airwaves, the audience belonged to them.
Brett’s body gyrated provocatively, caught up in the deep bass and fast rhythms of the song and sending the audience into a frenzy of movement that matched his subtle sexuality. He didn’t notice. Throwing his head back and hips forward, he strummed his guitar with a fierce desire to wring every note from the instrument, as if stroking a lover’s body. Smooth and sure, his fingers slid and caressed each string, pulling from the guitar the emotion of the song as if he were playing for every woman in the audience individually.
He ignored the whistles and screams from the bobbing crowd be
low the stage, focusing instead on the song’s words and their meaning, trying to draw every bit of feeling out of the song that he could. Nothing stopped him when he became like this. He smiled as the spotlights flashed on and off the other band members, keeping them in both shadow and light, further adding to the unreality of being in a full house with adoring fans screaming their names. He saw his bandmates, all of them friends for quite a while before the band hit it big, enjoying the music and adulation from the crowd as much as he was. Were they inspired by his energy, or by their own connection to the music? In the end, that wasn’t as important as giving the audience what they paid for.
The audience was hearing even more than that tonight. His body absorbed the music, the tune singing in his blood and lending a fire to his playing he hadn’t heard before. He was inspired to be greater, his late mother’s presence all around him, comforting and familiar, pushing him to new heights. He felt nine years old again with his first guitar playing just to her, even though the audience in front of him strained for his attention.
This particular song was one he and the band had argued about before coming on stage. He wanted to open with it, but the others wanted to end with it, to keep the audience anticipating whether they would play it or not. He’d won that particular battle as scheduling the set order was his thing, after all. He instinctively knew what the crowd would go for, and he’d yet to be proven wrong.
The song was up for a Grammy Award and very popular at concerts even though, as a ballad, it was very different from most of what they played. Pink Melon wasn’t known for playing love songs. Their fans expected more rock and roll with hard chords and riffs, but this song had somehow captured the attention of radio stations across the country, and that had led to fans requesting it on the online outlets. Their music video had over a million views, all of which helped shoot the song up the charts and skyrocket the band to prominence.
Their newest album would have more ballads and less rock and roll due to his songs. That had led to a bit of discord among the guys. Grumbling, they’d played their parts, sang his lyrics, but still they didn’t like the direction the band was going. Brett was sure they would be talking about this for a while before they went on tour again, this time to bigger houses, they hoped. No more college campuses or state fairs or small venues unless they chose them.
Brett leaned into the microphone, his mouth nearly sucking it like a lollipop as he locked eyes with a pretty redhead in the crowd. She danced for him as he sang, her large boobs nearly falling out of her low-cut T-shirt as she sought to keep his attention. The light moved on, and she was lost to view in the sudden darkness.
The crowd cheered and sang along to the popular tune. The song, one Brett had penned when in one of his rare romantic moments, had become such a sensation that the band was nonstop busy these days. No one was complaining. Playing to sold-out houses had been the goal of Pink Melon from the beginning, after all. Rock and roll might be what put them together, but romantic ballads like this one were going to pay the bills. They all knew it—didn’t like it, but knew it.
As the song progressed, Brett alternately singing and strumming his guitar to the subtle rhythms of the unique love song, the rest of the band played to the crowd with their own enthusiastic gyrations and musical accompaniments.
The crowd cheered enthusiastically every time Cooly dipped his guitar or flipped his long blond hair like an eighties rocker. The other band members—drummer Peter “Sticks” Friend and their keyboardist Harry Williams—also bobbed and swayed to the music.
Brett glanced out into the nearly invisible audience. The redhead, if she was still there, was hidden in the glare of the lights. He couldn’t see anyone in particular right now, just indefinable shapes as the lights scanned the crowd like a police helicopter, making individual faces impossible to differentiate. Closing his eyes to lose the feeling of vertigo that always struck him when on stage, he took a deep breath and focused on his guitar and the music instead of the overexcited fans.
The combination of the footlights, hot smells from the electrical equipment, the sharp familiar feel of his guitar, and its steel strings on his fingers lulled him into a kind of melodic trance. He knew where he was, but he became lost in his music—a trait reporters following the music scene called his “harmonic haze,” but which he called his “escape.” Music had always been a way to express thoughts and emotions too painful or uncomfortable to talk about face to face with the people in his life.
Shy and a bit of a loner, starting a band was a way to challenge himself out of his shell. His mother had often despaired of ever receiving grandchildren from her shy only child, and her recent death from cancer made that a real regret for him. Biting his lip, he relished the pain that kept him in the moment. Fighting back the tears that threatened to fall at the thought of his mother, he closed his eyes, taking deep ragged breaths to regain control of his emotions. How she would have loved to be here, front and center, for his performance. He regretted so much in life, nothing more than the fact that she would never be here to share this with him.
His focus returned to the strings, the solidness of the guitar, and the energy he felt in the air around him as he put the sadness of his mother’s death behind him. His heart pounding, his body vibrating with the release music always brought to him, his attention returned to the music.
Every time he sang this song, he felt he was sending out a message to someone, but who? Someone he’d never met? Someone he wanted to meet? He was never sure, but he knew—judging by the thousands of posts and Twitter comments from lonely women and men too—that his message of love being lost and searched for was reaching into the souls of the people he sang to.
So many lonely people.
And he was one of them.
As the final note of the last encore song echoed out, Pink Melon left the stage, another successful concert in the books. Behind the stage, they smiled, talked to fans, took innumerable photos with the lucky fans who won backstage passes from local radio stations, and did interviews for rock magazines.
“Finally,” Brett sighed as he closed the door to the band’s dressing room, “a few minutes of peace.”
Taking advantage of the time before the rest of the band joined him, he collapsed onto the couch facedown, closing his eyes, trying as best he could to shut out the world.
Breathing deeply, he tried to find the place he always returned to in his thoughts, his serenity place, the imaginary place he went to when the world became too heavy to bear.
The mountains were so beautiful tonight. Lit by the silver glow of the moon, the scene spread before him was perfect. Cool breezes ruffled his hair, and the strong, acrid scent of pine and the subtler odor of fresh turned soil surrounded him like a familiar coat. The cares of the day slipped from his body like water after a shower. The delicate sounds of the night carried with them a subtle music of their own making that wrapped around his mind, pulling from him the troubles that rested on his shoulders like boulders. He was more at peace than at any time he had been that day.
Glancing around the forest of his imagination, he walked a short distance across grass that brushed his ankles, sending up waves of a clean and crisp fragrance he found soothing and refreshing. Ahead of him, a path unfolded from the vegetation as if inviting him to tread upon it.
Walking around the bend in the path, he found himself facing a large boulder that rested on the edge of a cliff. Something about that stone drew him closer. Peering over the side, he saw a drop-off that ended a few hundred feet below. He noticed a narrow river that reflected the moonlight like molten silver.
This is new, he thought. He watched the water flow gently on its way to who knew where. The air was so still, he could hear the rush of water that signaled a waterfall might be near, but he couldn’t see it. Looking over his shoulder, he noticed the thick grass near the boulder’s edge. He sat with his back against the rock and closed his eyes. Breathing deeply of the scents of this verdant area of the forest, his
dream self was nearly asleep when soft footfalls interrupted his meditative state.
Opening his eyes, he was shocked to see a petite woman with a long blond ponytail standing at the edge of the precipice. She wore a body-hugging, dark-colored jogging suit, the reflective stripes catching the morning sun and shining back at him like a beacon. As he watched—afraid to move lest he startle her, even though he was still asleep and couldn’t really touch her—she unzipped the jacket, revealing a tank top that molded itself to her body. Her breasts were small, and her waist, accentuated by the clinging fabric, was tiny. Dropping the jacket next to her on the grass, she flexed her powerful-looking shoulders in the low-backed tank top she wore. A strange glow appeared around her in a soft silvery hue, and her tank top seemed to flow and grow around her until she shook her head, her hair slipping from the ponytail to pour down her back like a golden river.
In profile, he barely saw her face, but what he did see caused him to gasp. She was more than beautiful. Highlighted by the light, she was almost the answer to a prayer. As she turned back around, she lifted her arms to the sky. She stretched and shook her body slightly as if to free the flesh of invisible bonds.
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