âRowena. You feel it, too, donât you?â
Oh, yes. She felt it. A weird kind of humming in the air between them. When heâd touched her just now sheâd felt as if her body were supercharged. âI donât do this sort of thing.â
âNeither do I.â His voice was wry. âBut something about you makes me want to.â
Just as well she was sitting down, because her knees had just turned back to jelly. âIâ¦â Her mouth was too dry to force the words out.
âDonât worry, Iâm not going to make you do anything you donât want to do. But Iâd really like someone to hold my hand right now.â
She reached out and curled her fingers around his hand, keeping the pressure light.
He responded by curling his own fingers around hers.
And everything else vanished. There was just the two of them at the edge of the lake, under the stars.
This is probably the most emotional book Iâve ever writtenâand probably also the most personal.
It started when my friend Phil did a fund-raising trek through Chile. When I saw her photos, I thought it would be a fabulous setting for a book. I knew Iâd need some incredible emotion to balance the incredible setting, and that meant dealing with an issue Iâve found very hard to face for the last eighteen years. My mother died from breast cancer the Christmas six weeks before my twenty-first birthday, and I still miss her terribly. Luckily, being a writer, Iâm able to express my feelings in fiction. So this book is a tribute to my mother.
Rowena has a tough time growing up, loses the nearest sheâs ever had to a parent, falls in love and then has a health scare that could break the heroâs heart as well as hers. But Rowena is a fighter. Together, she and Luke face the worst, andâ¦Without giving too much away, I think youâll like the ending. I really believe that after deep heartache you can journey on to find happinessâI have. I have the most wonderful husband in the world, my beloved daughter was actually due on my motherâs birthday (which I donât believe is a coincidence) and I have a gorgeous son. I canât ask for more. And I know that my hero and heroine will be as lucky as I am, in the end.
With love,
Kate Hardy
HIS hair was the first thing she noticed. Down to his shoulders, dark and with the tiniest wave to hint that, when short, it curled. Antonio Banderas as El Mariachi, Rowena thought. Beautiful. Her fingers itched to touch it.
As if heâd felt her staring, he turned round. Glanced her way, just for a momentâbut enough for her to note that his dark eyes held shadows. Shadows even deeper than her own.
She shook herself. He was a stranger. Though admittedly he was the most gorgeous man sheâd ever seenâthe most gorgeous man any of the other women in the airport had seen, too, judging by the looks he was attracting. Tall, dark and dangerous, with a mouth that promised paradise, dressed in black, he was every womanâs fantasy.
Then she realised his gaze had returned to her. There was a faint question in his eyes; she gave the tiniest shake of her head. The attraction might be mutual, but nothing was going to come of it. Sheâd bet serious money that he had a wife and kids at home. Despite that faint air of danger, Rowena thought, he was the type. A family man.
And she most definitely wasnât a family woman.
She hauled the backpack onto her shoulders, ready to join the rest of the group. Carly, the woman sheâd sat next to on the flight out, smiled nervously at her. âI can hardly believe weâre here in Santiago, over seven thousand miles away from London.â
âWell, itâs what weâve been waiting for. Training for,â Rowena reminded her, returning her smile. âThough thereâs still a four-hour flight to go.â
âAnd then the coach trip. Six hours, the information pack said.â Carly grimaced. âI hate coach travel. It always makes me sick.â
Rowena was just about to ask if Carly had bought some travel sickness tablets before sheâd left England, when she remembered. Right here, right now, she wasnât Dr Thompson, registrar in the emergency department at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Manchester. She was just plain Rowena Thompson, in Chile with a group of people who were doing a one-hundred-kilometre trek through the Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia to raise money for leukaemia research. If she admitted to medical knowledge, either sheâd get annexed as one of the tripâs medical officersâwhich wasnât what she wantedâor sheâd have people sidling up to her, wondering if she could just give them a bit of advice about a long-standing health niggle or âjust take a quick look atâ yada, yada, yada.