After the last member of her family leaves her, she hopes a new life in Galway with her former college roommate might be the fresh start she needs. Falling in love isn’t her plan, especially now that she’s busy building a new life for herself.
Soul mates always find each other . . .
For twenty-four years, Claire Neeson has been invisible. Ever the nerdy type, boys never spared her a second glance, and the one time one did, she ended up bruised and heartbroken.
After the last member of her family leaves her, she hopes a new life in Galway with her former college roommate might be the fresh start she needs. Falling in love isn’t her plan, especially now that she’s busy building a new life for herself.
That’s when she meets him.
David O’Hagan is haunted by nightmares. After losing his older brother in a car accident more than a year ago, he has been trying to go back to his old life, hiding his grief behind a mask nobody can see through. He thinks he’s getting by just fine. He thinks he’s happy with his life, his job, and his girlfriend.
That’s when he meets her.
When their worlds collide, David and Claire feel something spark but one minute is all they have before they go their separate ways. They never expected to meet again after that serendipitous encounter, but fate has its own plan . . .
Sometimes true love can heal the deepest scars. If you believe.
How can you ever love again when tragedy has crushed your heart?
Kathleen used to love life. She had plans, dreams, and faith in life; but that was before the accident that took it all away from her in an instant. Now that her beloved brother is dead and she's confined to a wheelchair, her future is but a dark cloud hovering above her head. How can she ever find the will to move on and keep living without him? Even the cares of the happy-go-lucky American physiotherapist who's helping her with her rehab therapies are all in vain. Life seems to have lost its meaning, until one night she receives an unexpected celestial visit…
Colin has been working as a physiotherapist in Dublin for almost five years, but he’s never bonded so much with a patient like he is bonding with Kathleen; there's something about those sad blue eyes that makes him want to help her, to take away the pain that reminds him so much of his own. Having lost both his parents in a plane crash when he was only sixteen, Colin knows how it feels to have someone you love taken so abruptly away from you, and he makes it his mission to help Kathleen find her faith in life again. But something changes along the way…
Sometimes love can work miracles. If you believe.
EXCERPT
An hour later I
excused myself to go to the ladies’, and slowly made my way through the crowd
standing in front of the small stage, swaying to the music. I had almost
reached the door when a guy stumbled and collided against me, causing me to
lose my balance. I would’ve surely face-planted into the hard wooden floor if a
set of arms and a firm chest hadn’t saved me. A firm chest that belonged to a
handsome guy with silver-blue eyes and tousled dark blond hair. My face burned
with embarrassment.
“Are you all
right?” he asked, a light frown appearing on his face. I blinked and shut my
mouth. I probably looked like a cod, but he was so gorgeous I couldn’t help my
jaw from dropping.
He was tall; even
with my five-feet-eight and my—well, Ciara’s—heels, he still had at least
another couple of inches on me. A citrusy, masculine scent of cologne hit my
nostrils and I couldn’t help breathing it in, feeling slightly dizzy at my
proximity to this striking guy. His hands were still on my upper arms, and I
was thankful for that.
“I . . . um . . .”
My voice came out in a weird, strangled tone. I cleared my throat and tried
again. “I’m okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bump into you. I was only trying
to go to the toilet.”
Huh? Had I just
said something so stupid?
He smiled. “Yeah,
well, I was only trying to get a beer, and look what’s fallen into my arms.”
If possible, my
face turned even hotter. I was positive I looked like a chili pepper right now.
Had the temperature just spiked in the pub, or was it just me self-combusting?
“Will you be okay
if I let go now? You won’t crash to the floor, will ya?”
The cheeky grin on
his beautiful, angelic face was contagious, and I couldn’t help but grin back.
I nodded and he let go of my arms, tucking his hands in the back pockets of his
jeans.
“Well, um . . . I
guess I should . . .” I looked past him at the toilet doors and he took a step
aside, a flash of something resembling disappointment crossing his face for an
instant. Or maybe it was just me seeing things, because there was no way a guy
like that could be single, let alone be flirting with me.
“Um . . . thanks.”
I said, my voice trembling a little. What was wrong with me? He’d only just
stopped me from making a fool of myself by smashing my face onto the floor—no
big deal, right?
“My pleasure,” he
said, bowing his head just a little. I turned around and made a beeline for the
toilets, needing to splash ice-cold water on my cheeks before the flames burned
the place down.
I was hopeless.
Completely, utterly hopeless.
*******
We reached our
house minutes later, and as I opened the door Robbie came barking down the
corridor.
“I hope you’re not
afraid of dogs.” I’d forgotten to mention Robbie while we were walking home,
but I doubted a grown man could be afraid of a tiny little thing like Robbie.
“That looks more
like one of those battery-operated toys for kids.”
I laughed, and he
picked up Robbie from the floor, earning a lick on his cheek. “Thanks, buddy. I
really needed some love.”
“Take a seat in the
living room. I’ll be right back.”
When I walked back
with antiseptic wipes, Band-Aids and a bag of frozen peas, he was sitting on
the couch, Robbie sprawled on his lap as David scratched his belly.
“Apparently we
don’t have an ice bag,” I said, as I handed him the bag of frozen peas. The
bleeding had stopped but he was now sporting a shiner which would surely look a
lot worse in the morning.
David smiled as he
took the bag, placed it on his left eye and winced. Robbie whined almost empathically,
which under other circumstances would have made me laugh. Seeing David’s
discomfort now only made me feel guilty for being the cause of it.
“I’m so sorry,” I
said, as I sat next to him on the couch, careful to leave enough distance
between us so that no limbs were touching, but still close enough to dress his
wound. “I don’t know how I can apologize for what happened.”
He shrugged. “It’s
not you who punched me.”
“I know but . . .
it’s my fault that you got punched in the first place, and I’m really, truly
sorry.”
He gave me a
crooked smile that made my legs turn to jelly. Good thing I was already seated
or I would’ve made a fool of myself, crumbling to the floor. I concentrated on
cleaning the cut with the antiseptic wipe, careful not to lock eyes with him.
“It’s not your
fault, Claire. The guy’s a gobshite and I couldn’t stand to see him
hurting you. When he said those things, I just . . . I lost it completely.”
He flexed his
fingers, and I saw him trying to hide a wince but failing miserably. I hated to
see him in pain, knowing it was because of me. As he removed the packet of peas
from his eye for a moment and placed it on his hand, I could see the skin above
his cheekbone had already started turning purple.
“You’re going to
have a black eye.” I felt so awful I wanted to fling myself at him and cry in
his arms. The thought made me want to slap myself; after what I’d been through
tonight I should feel shaken and scared of all men in general, but all I could
think of was how much I wanted David to hold me. Seeing him stand up for me,
when nobody ever had, only made me like him more. I was walking in a minefield,
and sooner or later a bomb would blast right in my face, I was sure.
David shrugged,
then gave me a cheeky grin. “My students are going to think I’m cool. I’ll be
the cool, kickass professor.”
I laughed, as I
placed the Band-Aid on the cut. “I doubt your colleagues will share the
feeling. They’ll think you’re a troublemaker.”
He shrugged again,
and stared at me. “I look cool, though, don’t I? The bad-boy kind of cool, like
Johnny Depp.”
He quirked an
eyebrow, and I wanted to melt right there. He was way more handsome than Johnny
Depp, Brad Pitt and Hugh Jackman put together, but I obviously couldn’t say
that. After all the bad memories that had come back to kick my butt tonight,
how could I still have fantasies over a man? A man who had a girlfriend, for
heaven’s sake—a girlfriend who’d probably dig my eyes out with her perfectly
manicured nails when she found out why he had a black eye.
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About the author:
An avid reader since her childhood years and being an only child, Roberta always enjoyed the company of her fictional friends from the children’s books she loved reading, while she dreamed of writing her own stories one day.
It was when she discovered novels by authors Rosamunde Pilcher and Maeve Binchy in her teenage years that she realized it was time she put down in words the stories she had kept well hidden in her mind until then.
What started as a hobby, soon turned into a real passion and a way of life, until she could no longer keep the stories to herself, and decided to get over her fears and share them with the world.
Roberta lives in Italy, but her dream is to move out of her country and live either in a thatched cottage in the Irish countryside or in a country house with a swing on the back porch, somewhere in the United States, where she would love to spend her days writing novels as a full-time job, and maybe one day even get as far as writing a screenplay for a movie.
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