Sleepless Nights

“Have you had many lovers?”Letter to ReaderTitle PageCHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENEPILOGUECopyright

“Have you had many lovers?”

Like his proposition at the table, the question startled her. In her world people didn’t ask such things. They repressed their curiosity...and much else.

“Hardly any compared with your ally, should imagine.”

He caught hold of her hand. “What makes you think I’m a womanizer?”

“Because that’s the way you come across.”

“Time isn’t on my side, Sarah,” Neal said gently. “The slow approach isn’t practical in these circumstances. You’re leaving town.... It will be a month after that before I get back to the U.K. Between now and then, anything could happen. My motto is Seize the Day.”

“Mine is Look Before You Leap...especially before you leap into bed with someone.”

Dear Reader,

I was married in the spring. After the honeymoon, my husband had to leave for a rather dangerous place on the other side of the world. I’ll never forget how the months dragged until, just before Christmas, I was able to join him and, as a bonus, found the inspiration for my first book.

The inspiration for Sleepless Nights came in a somewhat similar way. My husband and son decided to climb a mountain in the Himalaya together. They left at the end of September and for the next four weeks I tried not to worry about them.

At last came the night when I flew to Nepal to wait for them there. I reached Kathmandu late the following day, spending another mess night in probably the most bizarre bedroom I shall ever sleep in. Early next morning I went out to explore the city, soon losing my way in a warren of fascinating backstreets. Eventually I returned to base. “Key not here,” said the smiling Nepalese desk clerk “Maid cleaning now.”

But it wasn’t the maid in my room. It was a pair of hollow cheeked, bearded climbers who, by hitching a lift on a Russian helicopter, had arrived in Kathmandu a day sooner than planned.

Our joyful reunion was followed by a family holiday exploring the Kathmandu valley until it was time for our son to return to the mountains, this time as one of the organizers of the Everest Marathon. Flying back to Europe, I read my travel notes. Ideas began to form. I hope you will enjoy the story based on that trip as much as I enjoyed living it.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘IF YOU meet a truly gorgeous guy out there and he starts coming on strong, don’t back off.’

Giving Sarah her final pep talk, her best friend Naomi went on, ‘Life isn’t a dress rehearsal. You’ve got this fantastic chance to break out of the cage. Make the most of it. Around here men to die for are thin on the ground...non-existent would be more accurate.’

Taking Sarah’s agreement for granted, Naomi continued, ‘In Nepal there’s a better supply...or there was the year I was there. Real men like uncomfortable places...oceans and jungles and mountains. When did you last see a ten-out-of-ten in a shopping mall? Never... or hardly ever. They’re like any other rare species. If you want to get close to them, you have to go to their habitat... and it’s not where you and I are spending our lives, that’s for sure,’ she added, with a crack of ironic laughter.

Forty-eight hours later, while the airbus droned through the night sky, over mountains and deserts, Sarah was thinking about Naomi’s theory that most people spent their lives caged by forces and circumstances beyond their control. Sometimes their conditions were miserable and they were very unhappy. Sometimes the cages were comfortable, even luxurious but, despite that, lifestyles they couldn’t escape and which often didn’t fulfil their real needs.

Naomi’s and Sarah’s cages were somewhere between those extremes. Their lives weren’t the way they would have liked them to be. Unable to change them, they made the best of them. Until, suddenly and unexpectedly, the door of Sarah’s cage had opened.

Now here she was, flying free in an unfamiliar environment that would become more exotic as the adventure progressed.

For two weeks she was on her own, free of all her usual responsibilities...free to be her real self...whoever that real self was.

The woman in the seat next to hers was asleep. From their conversation during dinner, Sarah knew that her neighbour was an off-duty air stewardess for whom flying round the world to glamorous destinations was an everyday routine.

Sarah had never been anywhere glamorous. She was too excited to close her eyes for a moment. They had boarded the aircraft at ten o’clock. Dinner had been served at midnight. After watching both the in-flight movies, she spent the rest of the night reading a guidebook until dawn came up and breakfast was served. Soon after breakfast they landed at Doha, a place that until very recently she had never even heard of.

The stewardess sitting next to her, who worked for an Arab airline and lived at Doha, was looking forward to relaxing in the bath at her apartment in the city. For Sarah it would be another five hours’ flying time before she reached her destination. Meanwhile the next ninety minutes would be spent in the airport’s transit lounge.