In the distance, a child let out a wild shriek—but one of joy.
It seemed to break the spell. Pete shook himself. “Don’t fuck it up like I did,” he said, and walked off, into the night.
Reed watched until he was out of sight. Another gust blew more debris around him, and a leaf stuck to his shirt. He plucked it from his chest, only then realizing what it really was.
A feather.
The feather of a red-tailed hawk, that showed up when you needed to pay attention. When you should look for an underlying truth.
Reed closed his fingers over it, then looked upward. “I think I got it now, Ben.”
Cleo trudged down the driveway to the guest house, Obie’s pillowcase of candy in one fist, Eli’s in the other. “I don’t know, boys. The person who carries the candy home might get the first selection.”
There were some outraged mutters, but they sounded half-hearted. The trick-or-treating had worn them all out.
They were in bed and she was thinking about a cup of tea when something on the kitchen counter caught her gaze. A feather, its colors white and black and a brownish-red.
The feather of a red-tailed hawk.
She glanced around wildly.
Then a quiet knock sounded on the front door. Swiping up the feather, she hurried to the entry. After checking the peephole, she swung the door open. “Reed?”
He opened his mouth. Then, instead of saying anything, he stepped in, swept her up in his arms and kissed her. Surprised, she stumbled, but he held her up, his mouth warm and gentle on hers.
Then he pushed her a little away. “Happy Halloween.”
She tilted her head. “Is it?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Her heart, already pounding harder at his nearness, tripped. “What’s going on?”
“I found a feather.” He held one up.
Puzzled, she stared at it, then produced her own. “Me, too.”
Reed blinked. “No.”
“Yes. On the kitchen counter.”
“I—” Shaking his head, he laughed a little. “Okay. So I think that means I need to pay attention to how I feel—or, at least, recognize it for what it is—and you need to look for an underlying truth. Which are, by the way, one and the same thing.”
“Which is?”
He touched his brow to hers. “That I’m in love you. That I love you and your boys and I want us to be a family—the kind that might be unfamiliar to me, but that I’m damn determined to create with you, Cleo.”
Happiness welled from her heart and spread through her body. “I love you, too.” Joyous, effervescent happiness. And not just for herself and for the future, but for Reed too, who was going to let her bring sunshine and missing socks, plastic dinosaurs and potluck dinners into his life.
“You won’t ever be alone again,” she warned him.
“Make that a promise,” he said, smiling brilliantly. “And you’re on.”
The End
Dear Reader:
Reed and Cleo have a rosy future ahead, though it took a sunny heart to convince the dark prince to abandon his solitary existence. This is the third book in my brand new Rock Royalty series and I’m loving writing these emotional and sexy stories.
Interested in sharing your thoughts with other readers? I hope you leave a review for the book.
The Rock Royalty rock on in the next in the series, Touch Me. Payne Colson, recovering from a bad auto racing crash, faces further obstacles when the girl he can’t forget re-enters his life. The people around him might be finding love, but Payne is as suspicious as the other single rock ’n’ roll princes and princess about his chances at a happy-ever-after. To not miss out on its release and to get other information about upcoming books, sign up for my newsletter. You can also follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or visit my website.
Below, find excerpts to other titles and links to buy books you may have missed.
Enjoy!
Christie Ridgway
Excerpt: Light My Fire
Rock Royalty #1
Christie Ridgway
The children of America's premier rock band learned early to sleep through anything. Late night jam sessions, liquor (and worse) -fueled arguments, raucous parties raging from dark to dawn that were peppered with wild laughter, breaking glass, and the squishy thud of fists against skin. At twenty-four, Cilla Maddox had not lost that skill, though she'd recently come to view it as something less than a gift.
Still, she didn't stir from her curled position on the edge of the king-sized bed when a tall, broad figure entered the room in the middle of the night. No streetlights disturbed the darkness this deep in Laurel Canyon and the newcomer found the bed only by deduction. When, at his sixth cautious step, his shin met an immoveable object, he dropped the motorcycle boots and duffel bag he carried to the plush carpet and took a leap of faith by tipping his long body forward. Finding firm mattress and feathery pillow, he instantly fell into sleep.
Hours later, Cilla came awake to the sound of birds tweeting and chirping their odes to another Southern California morning as they flitted through the shrubbery and tall eucalyptus trees that grew inside and outside the canyon compound where she'd grown up. Eyes closed, she breathed in the country-scented air, such a surprise when the famous Hollywood Boulevard and its twin in notoriety, the Sunset Strip, were less than a mile away. Flopping to her back, she stretched to her full five-feet, five inches. Then she pushed her arms overhead and swept them back down until her fingertips met—
Something solid. Warm. Alive.
On a gasp, her eyes flew open and her head whipped right. She yanked her hand from a man's heavy shoulder to press it against her thrashing heart.
As it continued to beat wildly against her ribs, she stared at her bedmate. Though his body was plastered to the mattress belly-down, his face was turned toward hers and it only took another instant to realize he was no stranger. But recognition didn't calm the overactive organ in her chest that continued sending blood sprinting through her body.
She blinked, just to make sure her eyes weren't deceiving her. They apparently had told the truth, she decided. After years of adolescent fantasies, she was actually sharing a bed with him. With Renford Colson.
No mistake, it was her teenage fantasy man. His glossy black hair that tangled nearly to his shoulders. His days'-old stubble of beard that made his mouth look softer, fuller, more kissable if that was even possible. Those were his spiky lashes resting against his sharp-angled face.
Yet...was he really here? To make herself believe it, she mouthed his name. Ren.
As if he heard the silent syllable, his eyes flipped open.
She started, their distinctive color—a silvered green, just like eucalyptus leaves—jolting her to the marrow.
Dark brows met over his straight nose and she watched the drowsiness seep from him as his gaze sharpened. "Priss?"
She frowned. He was the only one to call her that nickname and it had annoyed her since she was old enough to understand it telegraphed something about the way he viewed her. "Excessively proper," she remembered reading in the dictionary. "Prim."
"Cilla." Her voice sounded morning-husky as she made the correction.
One corner of his mouth kicked up. "Priscilla."
Ugh. That was worse. To her mind, Priscilla was the name of some old-fashioned china doll that was deemed too nice to play with and so grew dusty on a high, forgotten closet shelf. As the youngest "princess" of rock royalty (an article in Rolling Stone had described the nine collective children of the Velvet Lemons in just such terms), she'd often been overlooked. Likely Ren hadn't given her a single thought in the nine years since she'd last seen him.
"Why are you here?" she asked, sitting up.
His gaze dropped from her face to the size XL T-shirt she wore, an authentic Byrds concert souvenir, one of the several such clothing items she'd collected (read: purloined from her careless father) during her lifetime. "Priss," Ren remarked with a note of mild surprise
, "you've grown up."
Grown-ups didn't react to the red flush they could feel crawling over their skin. Grown-ups didn't check out their chest to determine if it was a modest B-cup that led him to such a conclusion. So ignoring both compulsions, she repeated her question. "Why are you here?"
"Couple reasons." Ren flipped over then jackknifed on the mattress to face her. Both palms rubbed over his eyes and down his cheeks, his beard making a scratchy sound. He'd fallen asleep in his worn jeans and wrinkled dress shirt. On the floor near him were a pair of battered boots and a leather bag, both as black as his hair. His hands went to the buttons marching down his chest.
She swallowed. "What are you doing?"
"I've been wearing this damn thing for—Christ, who knows?—it's got to be a couple of days. However long it took me to get here from Russia with a fucking long layover in Paris."
Her gaze didn't leave his nimble fingers as they continued unbuttoning to reveal a stark white undershirt beneath. "You didn't stop off in London?" That was where he was based. Ren had started as a roadie for the band, then moved into concert tour planning and security. When he'd left the employ of the Velvet Lemons, he'd set up shop across the pond and continued doing the same thing—just not for their fathers' band.
Cilla couldn't blame him for that. The three Lemons might as well have been named the Odd Ducks. They'd achieved superstardom in the 1970s and when they were nearing forty, somehow decided they wanted more than sex, riches, and scandalous reputations. Each had produced three kids before declaring their paternal urges satisfied. No mothers came attached to the children they'd fathered. They'd been bought off or wandered off and as long as Cilla could remember the nine rock progeny had spent their childhoods in the expansive Laurel Canyon compound that consisted of three separate houses and then this smaller cottage where she and Ren had chosen to sleep.
Inspecting the hand-tied quilt covering the bed, Cilla ran her fingers over the psychedelic-inspired design. "You know about Gwen?" she asked, referring to Guinevere Moon, an original Velvet Lemons groupie who'd been the closest to a mother figure the band's offspring ever had. This had been her house.
"Of course," Ren replied. "I couldn't get here for the memorial service, but I came as soon as I was able to make arrangements for my replacement."
As head fixer for some other band's tour, Cilla supposed. "Her real name was Donna Carp," she said, her heart squeezing to think that the spiral-curled, caftan-wearing gentle soul was now gone. "Gwen's, that is."
There was a short silence, then Ren laughed. "Baby, you didn't think she really had Guinevere Moon on her birth certificate?"
Mortification spread heat over Cilla's face once more. Okay, so she had. "Thanks for thinking I'm a fool," she said, glancing up to glare at him.
The spit in her mouth dried.
Ren had tossed his shirt over the side of the bed and then stripped free of the undershirt he'd worn too. Beneath that...
He was cut. Ripped. His abs were perfectly defined above the waistband of his jeans. His pecs were slabs of thick muscle that drew the eye to broad shoulders that led to arms that were sinew, bone, and more muscle. Over his left pectoral began a primitive-yet-elegant tribal tattoo that swirled in black ink over the cap of his shoulder to reach as far as his elbow. Though most of his forearm was unmarked, on his wrist was a lone, stylized half-curve. She stared at it and then his long fingers, unwilling to let her gaze wander back to that beautiful chest.
She'd been fifteen when she'd last seen him. He'd been twenty-two. Then, she'd only dreamed of his kisses, chaste kisses at that, and hadn't wondered about his body or his hands or what he could do to a woman with them.
It was what consumed her thoughts now.
That, and how they were sharing a bed.
Galvanized by that fact, she leaped from beneath the covers, her bare feet landing on the carpet. The overlarge shirt swung around her body, the hem tickling the top of her thighs. With Ren's gaze on her, her attempt at escape seemed a foolhardy choice. Suddenly her legs felt too naked, and she was acutely aware of what was under her tee—just a scrap of lacey panties. In another not-so-suave move, she swiftly re-inserted herself under the quilt and between the warm sheets, pulling them high to conceal more of herself. "It's, uh, cold out there," she said, by way of explanation. Her breathless state made her voice sound reedy.
Ren's expression had gone blank and his thoughts were impossible to interpret. Staring at her, he ran a palm along his stubbled jaw. "You cut your hair, Priss."
Her fingers flew to the bobbed ends. She still wasn't accustomed to how the dark blond stuff curled and waved now that eighteen inches of weight had been taken from its length.
"I thought you'd vowed never to take scissors to it," he continued.
He remembered that? She shrugged. "Like you said, I've grown up." The haircut hadn't been her idea, though, and a wave of humiliation at the memory of it washed over her.
Ren's gaze narrowed. "Priss..."
"Cilla."
"Cilla, then. Something wrong? Something bothering you?"
A lot was bothering her. Up to and including the fact that her old longing for Renford Colson was not dead, but just hibernating until the day his hot body arrived on the doorstep. Now her hormones were stirring and she felt oddly out-of-sorts and unfamiliarly ravenous. Not unlike the California black bears, she figured, that would emerge from their hollow trees and mountain caves in a few short weeks.
"It's been a lousy month or so," she said. He couldn't doubt that. "Gwen's passing, the wild circus the Lemons made of her memorial service before they rushed back out on tour, and then there's the Beck situation."
"Beck?" Ren frowned. "What about Beck?"
The Velvet Lemons' drummer had named his three kids, Beck, Walsh, and Reed—all boys—after musicians he admired: Jeff Beck, Joe Walsh, and Lou Reed. Ren's father had given all three of his progeny, two boys and a girl—Renford, Payne, and Campbell— the surnames of their long-gone mothers. Cilla never got a straight answer from her own dad. She figured he didn't remember why he'd picked out Priscilla, or why he'd chosen Brody and Bing for her twin older brothers.
She took in a breath, stalling. Beck was the oldest of the nine and Ren was the next closest in age. How would he take the news? "He's missing. Nobody told you that?"
Ren went still. "I don't have regular communication with anyone."
The princes and princesses of rock royalty had scattered as each came of age, but she hadn't realized how out of touch Ren had been. "You don't talk to Payne or Campbell?"
Ren was shaking his head. "Not very often."
"Beck hasn't been in steady contact with Walsh or Reed either. That's why we don't really know exactly how long he's been missing."
"Missing," Ren repeated.
"He took a freelance assignment to do a long piece on the Nile for one of the nature magazines. About nine months ago. No one has heard from him since."
"Hell."
"His dad and the magazine put feelers out, though it's not clear whether Beck is actually lost or merely following the story. It just seems weird that he's been silent for so long."
Ren relaxed, and ran his hand through his hair, giving Cilla another glimpse of that interesting, incomplete-looking tattoo on his wrist. "I'm sure Beck's fine."
Cilla wished she had his certainty. "I hope you're right."
"I am." He half-turned to punch the pillows behind him then settled back, crossing his arms over that magnificent chest. His biceps bulged.
Gathering the covers closer, Cilla pretended she didn't notice them. "So...you're just, uh, passing through on your way back to London?"
"Moscow to London via Paris and L.A.? I know we had shitty upbringings, Pri—Cilla, but our schooling wasn't so bad. Pretty sure you'd see there's no logic in that."
There wasn't logic in anything at the moment. Particularly how she was absolutely electrified by the presence of Ren who was gazing on her like she was a ditzy puzzle and not a de
sirable woman.
Though she'd been doubting the desirable part for months already. Her fingers wandered again to the shorn ends of her hair.
She forced her hand to her lap. "So what exactly does bring you home?"
He drew up his knees and rested his wrists on the top of them, his big hands dangling. "I got a package from Gwen's lawyer, telling me about some box she left me, as well as a key to this place. Then Bean tracked me down. That was a first."
"String Bean" Colson, the band's lead guitarist and Ren's father. "What did he have to say?"
Ren shrugged. "The gist of it was he wanted me to come to the canyon, look things over at the compound since the band's been gone for months. That, coupled with Gwen's death..." Looking down, he ran a finger over the tattoo on his wrist. "I decided to check in."
His gaze lifted to her face. "What are you doing here, Cilla?"
Hiding. Licking my wounds. Trying to resurrect my sense of self in the one place where I always found comfort. "I received my own package from Gwen—including a key as well. So I decided to leave my place at the beach and move to the canyon for a while. She left me her costume collection and I thought I might sort through it from here."
A brief smile gave her a glimpse of Ren's straight white teeth. "You always liked to play dress-up."
Didn't that make her feel five years old? "It's my business now," she said, bristling a little. Cilla's career had been seeded by Gwen. The older woman had left home at sixteen and become an infamous band groupie. Over the years she'd amassed a vast number of costumes from the most renowned rockers in the world and Cilla had always been fascinated by them. "I make custom clothes for professional dancers, skaters, and yes, even music stars."
"We really have been out of touch," Ren said. "I had no clue."
Cilla lifted a shoulder. "Every Lemon kid left the compound as soon as he or she could and never looked back."
He studied her. "Which means you, as the youngest, was alone at the end."
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