Still Rydin' High (Rock-n-Rollercoaster Book 2)

He Sold His Soul for Rock and Roll. Now the Price Must Be Paid.

In 1973, Ryder turns a reckless dream into Rydin’ High, a rock band built on ambition, excess, and the kind of music that becomes a way of life. Seven years later, the band has found success, and Ryder’s connection with Reine—his fierce, magnetic bassist wife—burns as brightly as ever.

But love on the road is rarely simple. Ryder and Reine’s passion is matched by their tempers, and every fight threatens to tear them apart. Waiting in the space between them is Pepper, Ryder’s loyal best mate, whose hidden love refuses to stay buried. As desire, jealousy, and loyalty collide, the bonds within the band begin to shift in ways none of them can control.

Behind the music, the lust, and the broken promises lies something far darker: a bargain made years ago, half in jest and half under the influence, but binding all the same. When the bill finally comes due, Ryder is pulled toward a fate he never believed was real—and must discover whether love, music, and the people who refuse to let him go are enough to save his soul.

Step into a dark rock-and-roll romance of passion, temptation, supernatural consequences, and the high cost of chasing a dream.

Excerpt from the book

Feeling a hot, moist tongue caressing his neck, Ryder grinned and puckered his lips in response, only to find Elvis, their Cocker Spaniel, lying next to him in the king-size bed, his long tongue hanging from his drooling mouth.

“Bollocks. You’re not Reine.” Wiping his saliva-sodden neck and face with the sheet, he struggled into an upright position and noticed it was 1:15 a.m. on the bedside clock.

“I should hope not. I wasn’t that furry last time I looked.”

Reine was seated in one of the large leather armchair before the bow windows, peering downward from the manor’s second-floor bedroom. Grabbing a throw blanket from the footboard, he ambled across the vast room in the darkness, pulled her up, sat, and drew her back onto his lap.

She wrapped the fleecy blanket around them. “It’s so damp.”

“Small wonder. It’s been raining non-stop for five days.” His arms curled around her long flannel high-necked nightgown and pressed his face into her sleep-disheveled hair. Vanilla. Yummy. Like her.

The garment helped with the nip when the fire in the large fireside had dwindled to nothing, something they preferred not to have blazing when they went to bed. He, too, had opted for flannel jim-jams. Both were seldom worn, but when they were, role games like the Matriarch and the Postie and the Librarian and the Milkie abounded. Tonight, it had been the Hausfrau and the Odd-Jobber. Their sex life was as abundant and unrestrictive as ever, maybe more so.

She nodded to the guest cottage across the path below which would, in a couple of months, be extended to include that recording studio the band had repeatedly discussed. “Gauging from the lights in the front windows, Doris is up.”

“Tending to Baby Blue, no doubt.”

Baby Blue was Rags’ six-week-old son. Doris and Baby Blue—and Rags, when he was so inclined—lived in the cottage. Given the manor hadn’t yet been divided into private units, it afforded the Lawsens the solitude a family might want and need … or a mother and her much-loved infant, as the case might be.

Upon return from Holland last July, Doris had tentatively and tearfully called Rags to inform him she was pregnant. His response was a baleful, “Are you sure it’s mine?”

That had distressed poor Doris and angered Ryder and Pepper. Reg hadn’t seemed surprised and always the logical, “fatherly” one, had reacted in a composed manner. “You’d best do the right proper thing. We don’t need a lawsuit or bad publicity. And her baby deserves a father.”

Not that he and Ryder and Pepper believed Doris would create problems, but they all liked her and didn’t want to see her get the short end of the stick. She’d already been shafted. Literally.

Reine lay a cheek on his shoulder. “Do you think she believes Rags is in London, visiting his sick aunt?”