Where The Heart Is. Kate Hardy
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“Rowena. You feel it, too, don’t you?”
Oh, yes. She felt it. A weird kind of humming in the air between them. When he’d touched her just now she’d felt as if her body were supercharged. “I don’t do this sort of thing.”
“Neither do I.” His voice was wry. “But something about you makes me want to.”
Just as well she was sitting down, because her knees had just turned back to jelly. “I…” Her mouth was too dry to force the words out.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. But I’d really like someone to hold my hand right now.”
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.
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The emotion is deep
The drama is real
The intensity is fierce
This is probably the most emotional book I’ve ever written—and 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 I’d need some incredible emotion to balance the incredible setting, and that meant dealing with an issue I’ve 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, I’m 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 she’s ever had to a parent, falls in love and then has a health scare that could break the hero’s heart as well as hers. But Rowena is a fighter. Together, she and Luke face the worst, and…Without giving too much away, I think you’ll like the ending. I really believe that after deep heartache you can journey on to find happiness—I have. I have the most wonderful husband in the world, my beloved daughter was actually due on my mother’s birthday (which I don’t believe is a coincidence) and I have a gorgeous son. I can’t 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
Where the Heart Is
Kate Hardy
MILLS & BOON
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In loving memory of my mother,
Sandra Christine Shirley Sewell, 1945–1986.
So special. So deeply missed.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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 he’d felt her staring, he turned round. Glanced her way, just for a moment—but 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 she’d ever seen—the 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 woman’s 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. She’d 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 wasn’t a family woman.
She hauled the backpack onto her shoulders, ready to join the rest of the group. Carly, the woman she’d sat next to on the flight out, smiled nervously at her. ‘I can hardly believe we’re here in Santiago, over seven thousand miles away from London.’
‘Well, it’s what we’ve been waiting for. Training for,’ Rowena reminded her, returning her smile. ‘Though there’s still a four-hour flight to go.’
‘And then the coach trip. Six hours, the information pack said.’ Carly grimaced. ‘I hate coach travel. It always makes me sick.’
Rowena was just about to ask if Carly had bought some travel sickness tablets before she’d left England, when she remembered. Right here, right now, she wasn’t Dr Thompson, registrar in the emergency department at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Manchester. She was just plain Rowena Thompson, in Chile