Savage
Author: Willow Rose
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Release Date: June 14, 2012
Purchase Links: Amazon
Synopsis:
The
year is 1983. Christian is 22 years old when he leaves his home in
Denmark to spend a year in Florida with a very wealthy family and go to
med-school. A joyful night out with friends is shattered by an encounter
with a savage predator that changes his life forever. Soon he faces
challenges he had never expected. A supernatural gift he has no idea how
to embrace. A haunting family in the house next door. A spirit-filled
girl who seems to carry all the answers. An ancient secret hidden in the
swamps of Florida. One life never the same. One love that becomes an
obsession. Two destinies that will be forever entangled.
Savage
is a paranormal romance with some language, violence, and sexual
situations recommended for ages sixteen and up. It is the first in a
family saga that covers three decades of the character's lives. The
sequel is expected to be published in September 2012.
“So how much do you know about St. Augustine, Chris?”
The
woman driving gently touched her elegant yellow hair, careful not to
mess it up with her colored nails. She spoke with a strong southern
accent and was incredibly beautiful for her age, which I guessed was
more than twice my age of twenty-two. Her name was Mrs. Kirk. I had just
met her at Orlando Airport for the first time a few minutes before. She
was waiting for me holding a sign with my name, Christian Langaa,
printed on it.
The year was 1983 and I had recently finished my
third year of med school at a university in Denmark. I had just left my
country of birth for St. Augustine in Florida. Leaving Denmark was my
father’s idea, really. I guess he thought it was about time I left the
nest, so he called in a favor with an old friend of his, an American eye
surgeon, to take me in and help me get a year at a medical school
“over-there.” I can’t say I was unhappy about it. At that time all kids
my age wanted to go to the States where stone-washed jeans and Michael
Jackson came from. His latest album "Thriller" had just been released
and was played on every radio station all over the world. Like so many
else I bought the cassette and played it again and again on my Walkman.
Where I came from anything that was American was considered hip and
cool. That summer before I left, my friends and I had watched the movie
Flashdance that made ripped sweatshirts popular and we loved the TV show
Dallas and Dynasty that made everybody wear increasingly oversized
shoulder pads - even us guys. We drank lots of Coke and dreamt of
watching MTV, which at that time wasn’t something you could do in Europe
yet and especially not in my small home-country Denmark, where we only
had one national channel on our TV.
The older generation in our
country thought we were indifferent to the times we lived in and didn’t
understand us at all. They named us the “So what-generation” or the “No
future-generation” because they felt like we didn’t care about what went
on in the world around us. We weren’t even rebellious. We didn’t have
ideals and dreams about changing the world like they had back in ’68.
Meanwhile they were terrified of the A-bomb, the Cold War and the
communists. While we listened to disco music on our ghetto blasters and
danced electric boogie, they fought with a bad economy and the fear of
someone deciding to push the big red button, dropping the A-bomb and
ending the world as we know it. Not to mention the increasing fear of
AIDS that was spreading among people, commonly referred to as the
"Gay-Plague" since it was believed back then to be an "epidemic of a
rare form
of cancer triggered by the lifestyle of some male homosexuals," as the headline said in one newspaper.
The
older generation simply felt like our generation just didn’t care about
anything. And maybe they were right. We weren’t that concerned about
political affairs and foreign threats. Politics simply didn’t interest
us, especially not me. I was fed up with listening to my father talk
about politics and war during my upbringing. I was a dreamer not a
fighter. You can’t be both. Not in my book. And AIDS? Well, I guess we
thought we couldn't get it since it was a disease for the homosexuals.
Plus we were in our twenties. We didn't think we could die at all.
We ran over a bump and I was rudely jolted out of my reverie.
“Not
much,” I answered Mrs. Kirk a little timid. “I know it calls itself the
nation’s oldest city. I know it was here Ponce de León came to look for
the legendary Fountain of Youth. I know the city of St. Augustine is
home to the Fountain of Youth National Archaeological Park, a tribute to
the spot where Ponce de León is traditionally said to have landed.
Though there is no evidence that the fountain located in the park today
is the storied fountain or has any restorative effects, visitors drink
the water. The park exhibits native and colonial artifacts to celebrate
St. Augustine's Timucuan and Spanish heritage.”
Mrs. Kirk looked
at me with a small impressed smile. “Very well, you have done your
homework. Dr. Kirk will be pleased to hear that you have not come
unprepared.”
“My dad gave me a book on Florida to read on the
plane. I have a photographic memory. I remember things easily. It helps
me a lot in school.”
I stared out the window at swamps and what
seemed to me like wild-growing brushes and forests. I was desperately
hoping to catch a glimpse of an alligator, an animal I had never seen
before and of which I had been told you could find in pretty much every
waterhole in Florida. I was deeply fascinated by creatures of the wild.
By predators of any kind. But as a city boy, I had only seen them behind
their bars at the zoo, never in the wild. By now we had passed several
waterholes and I had still not seen any to my great disappointment.
It
felt like my headband was getting tighter, and I was sweating in my
tight jeans and jacket with shoulder-pads and rolled up sleeves. I took
the jacket off and put it in my lap. Florida was a lot warmer than I had
expected it to be. And a lot more humid, too. I wasn’t used to this
kind of heat, coming from a country where we would be lucky to have
three weeks of summer. I still remember the feeling when I stepped out
of the airplane in Orlando
airport for the first time. It felt
like someone had taken a winter jacket and swept me in it. Like the air
itself was hugging me and welcoming me home. I remember sweating just
from walking from the airport to the big black Mercedes that Mrs. Kirk
picked me up in.
She cranked up the air conditioning and I soon
felt a little cooler. I touched the nice leather seats and suddenly felt
so insignificant. Coming from a rich family by Danish standards I was
used to some luxury, yet I had never been in a car like this.
“Well, maybe you will have to think about losing some of those unruly curls once you become a doctor,” Mrs. Kirk said.
I
touched my hair gently. I liked my blond curls and had let them grow
past my ears. And I wasn’t the only one who liked them. The girls did
too. Along with my deep-set blue eyes, my curls were my finest feature.
Why parents and others older than thirty-five insisted they want me to
cut them off was beyond me. My dad was the worst. “You look like a
savage,” he would say. But I didn’t care. Deciding what I was going to
do for a living was one thing, but he wasn’t going to change the way I
looked, too.
He was the one who wanted me to go to med school,
not me. All I wanted to do was play my acoustic guitar. “But you can’t
make a living out of just playing the guitar. You need to grow up,
Chris. It is about time,” my father said just before he told me about
his plans for me. It wasn’t like he gave me a choice. I was going to
take over the family practice. It had always been his dream for me ever
since I was a child, so I never questioned it, simply because it would
break his heart. I never said no to my father in these matters and I
didn't argue when he told me he was going to send me away for a year,
either. Instead, I decided to make the best of it.
Author Bio:
Willow Rose writes Paranormal Romance, fantasy and
mystery. Originally from Denmark she now lives on Florida’s Space Coast
with her husband and two daughters. She is a huge fan of Anne Rice and
Isabel Allende. When she is not writing or reading she enjoys to watch
the dolphins play in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.
Contact Willow:
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