Welcome Clare! You're going to christen the revival of the writing blog with your new release.
Gold medalist, Peter Stanmore has
returned home a broken man and intends to put the past behind him. But love
isn't so easily repressed, and second chances are rare.
Jill Davenport has given up any
hope of marriage and a life of her own, after all, years ago, she lost the only
man she ever loved. But the truth is impossible to hide.
When secrets are revealed,
decisions must be made in spite of the consequences. Can what was once lost be
found, or is love destined to remain forever lost?
Here's a little excerpt:
“Jill? Jill Davenport, as I live
and breathe, is that you?”
She jerked her hand back from the
bread and looked into eyes that dragged her in and swallowed her whole. “Yeah…”
Her voice died in her throat and she had to cough to make it work. “Yeah, yeah,
it’s me. Hello, Peter.”
Peter Stanmore looked as gorgeous
as he always had, as he leaned on a cane next to her. His ankle was in one of
those Velcro support boots, surprising her as she’d expected a cast. His dark
hair, longer than she remembered stuck up untidily as well as brushing against
his collar. His green eyes still as piercing as they were all those years ago,
although now their brightness was dimmed with grief.
The rest of him however, was just
as striking as when she last saw him. And judging by the way her heart pounded,
her stomach flipped and lack of air currently in her lungs, he still had the
same effect on her. She struggled to breathe, light headed through lack of
oxygen. Simply being this close to him was intoxicating, mind numbing and
overwhelming.
“Of all the places to bump into
you, I didn’t think it would be here.” His voice concentrated her mind; which
could only be a good thing. “What are you doing?”
“Shopping,” she said, stating the
obvious as she seemed incapable of doing anything else right now. “The thing
same as you are doing. The same thing most people do in a grocery shop. Unless
you’re Mrs. Jones, in which case you’re here to gossip.”
“I guess some people never change,
but you sure have.” Amusement tinged his voice as his gaze swept up and down
her figure, before lingering on her head and face. “What’s with the hair?”
Jill ran her hand over the top of
her head. Had she left the comb in her hair? Left a single plait in or splashed
bleach in it and now had a white streak in her dark locks? “I d-don’t…” she
stuttered.
“It’s long,” he said. “I’ve never
seen you with long hair before.”
“Oh. I stopped cutting it years
ago. I usually tie it back, but haven’t gotten that far this morning.” She
pulled a band from her jacket pocket and tied her hair back into a high
ponytail. “There.”
Then, out of a desperate need to
get back onto solid ground, she held the loaf of whole meal bread out to him.
“Here.”
Peter shook his head. “You have
it. You got to it first.”
“It’s fine,” she insisted. The
solid ground, she so desperately needed, could only be found by ending this
conversation and sudden encounter right now.
“I can eat white bread just as
easily.”
Jill rolled her eyes. “And I can
make my own.”
“Really?” Surprise filled his
face. “That’s a talent I don’t possess. Most things I can cook, but my bread
always turns out doughy and inedible. Mum always says…said I’m the reason shop
bought bread was invented.”
Jill put the bread into his
basket. “Then you should definitely take this one. I must get on. Have fun
shopping.”
She headed into the next aisle and
leaned against the freezer of vegetables, rubbing the back of her neck. She
hadn’t expected the reaction to seeing him again that now flooded her. Every
nerve ending sang and her pulse raced, conflicting with the pitting in her
stomach and the way the scars around her broken heart ached. They were old
friends from school, who became skating partners, who then dated off the ice. They’d
been teased by their competitors for their chasteness and she’d hoped and
prayed that his kisses would one day lead to more and her happy ever after
would mean marriage and life with Peter.
But it hadn’t happened. He’d
dropped her like hot cakes to pursue a solo career. The last thing she needed
was someone like Peter back in her life. No, not someone like him, rather him
personified. The last thing she needed was him back in her life, breaking her
heart all over again. They were so over.
She shook herself and opened the
freezer to pull out a packet of frozen peas. A hand reached down and grabbed
the same packet.
Jill sighed. Not again.
“This is getting to be a habit.”
Peter pulled back. “You can have this one.”
“Thanks.” Jill picked up the peas.
Bumping into Peter was a habit she
wanted to avoid. Moreover it was a habit she needed to avoid if she were to have any hope of getting home before
her nerves shattered into a million tiny pieces and went spinning off into the
heavens. She moved away and continued to shop.
Only to find she reached the
checkout at the same point he did. Somehow Jill managed to resist raising her
eyes heavenward as she all but begged God to stop them meeting like this. It
wouldn’t do either of them any good in the long run. There was too much water
under the broken bridge between them to ever hope it would be mended or gulfed.
Peter held out a hand. “Ladies
first. We seem destined to meet today.”
“That we do.” She began unloading
her basket onto the conveyor belt. She could feel his gaze almost burning
through her jacket and glanced back.
“It seems a shame to waste the
opportunity destiny has presented us with. Can I buy you coffee? We could catch
up.”
About the author:
Clare is a British author. She lives in a
small town just outside Reading, England with her husband, whom she married in
1992, their three children, and unfriendly mini-panther, aka Tilly the black
cat. Clare is half English and half Welsh, which makes watching rugby
interesting at times as it doesn’t matter who wins.
Writing from an early childhood and
encouraged by her teachers, she graduated from rewriting fairy stories through
fan fiction to using her own original characters and enjoys writing an eclectic
mix of romance, crime fiction and children's stories. When she's not writing,
she can be found reading, crocheting or doing the many piles of laundry the
occupants of her house manage to make.
Her books are based in the UK, with a
couple of exceptions, thus, although the spelling may be American in some of
them, the books contain British language and terminology and the more recent
ones are written in UK English.
The first draft of every novel is hand
written.
She has been a Christian for more than half
her life. She goes to Carey Baptist where she is one of four registrars. You can sign up for her quarterly newsletter here
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She can be found at:
