Click on image to enlarge.

Category: Romance
Description: Love alone was not enough to help Cara and Liam overcome the trauma in her past. Now, it's time for the pair to get creative.
eBook Publisher: SynergEbooks, 2008 SynergEbooks
eBookwise Release Date: July 2008

2 Reader Ratings:

Great	Good	OK	Poor

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [175 KB]
Words: 39026
Reading time: 111-156 min.

"This was the first book I have read from Author PG Forte, but after a few sentences, I was hooked. She drew me in and captivated me into wanting to find out what happened to one of the main characters, Cara. I kept reading to find out more and could envision her pain. Before I knew it, I was finished and left wanting more. PG definitely can draw you in and spellbind you with her fantastic writing ability. It is fair to say that she is an accomplished author and I look forward to reading more of her novels. To understand what I mean, you need to read Sea Change to see for yourself."--Suzy Pecnick, Writer

Chapter One

Bodies have memories and hers remembered every touch; even the ones her mind could not recall. Especially those. And that, Cara thought, as she stared out the car window at the swiftly passing landscape, was precisely the problem.

"You're awfully quiet this morning," her boyfriend Liam observed, taking his eyes from the road long enough to shoot her a worried glance. "Is everything okay?"

"Um-hmm," Cara lied. She smiled at him reassuringly. "I was just thinking." Certainly, everything should be okay. After all, they were on their way to LA where later today they'd board a cruise ship for their first vacation together since they'd started dating six months earlier. The prospect of the trip--four days at sea with stops in Catalina and Ensenada, culminating in a New Year's celebration aboard ship--should be making her ecstatic. But her happiness was marred by one small problem: Her body. And those goddamned memories.

"What're you thinking about?"

"Just trying to remember if I packed everything." Another lie. She knew full well she had everything with her she'd need for the trip. She'd made sure of it.

"It'll be fun," Liam insisted. "You'll see. We're gonna have a good time."

Cara nodded and flashed another bright smile in his direction. Their vacation was likely to be a lot of things--memorable, challenging, life altering, a turning point. Fun wasn't one of them. But for Liam's sake, she'd keep up the pretense as long as she could. Given everything he had done for her, that was the least she could do in return.

The nervous tension rolling off Cara was so thick it should have impaired his vision. Liam tightened his hands on the wheel and stared out the window, pretending not to notice. But, oh, he noticed, all right. It didn't matter how many smiles she threw his way, he could feel the tension she was generating. It roiled in his gut. Hell, even if he hadn't been an empath and able to sense, all too clearly, the emotions of those around him, he knew her well enough, after all these months, to know when she was lying. The question was, what was she lying about this time?

As she lapsed back into a brooding silence he let his own mind drift back in time, remembering the night they'd first met and all the days and weeks that followed.

Cara had been a brainwashed member-in-good-standing of the phony, New-Age, pseudo-religious cult he'd gone undercover to infiltrate, when Liam first set eyes on her. At the time, she'd seemed perfectly happy in her role as girlfriend to the cult's sadistic leader, Gregg. It had taken Liam a little too long to realize she'd been lying then, too.

He'd often thought that if he and Cara could have somehow gotten together then, right at the start, maybe things would have turned out differently. But, no. It was only months later, after she'd been brutalized--beaten, raped, almost killed--that they'd finally confessed their feelings for each other. But maybe by then it was too late. Although her physical wounds were mostly healed now, the psychological scars were another matter entirely. Those, it seemed, might never go away.

Despite the workday traffic crowding the 405 Freeway, they made it to Long Beach with hours to spare before their ship was due to leave port. Checking in proved far easier than Liam had expected--all thanks to Cara's boss, Sinead, who used to work for the cruise line and who'd called in some favors and pulled a few strings.

Whoa. Make that a lot of strings, Liam thought as he gazed around their cabin. He had to admit he was impressed. Though the room was still almost claustrophobically small, they'd been upgraded several times resulting in an outside cabin on an upper deck with an actual window and a large gift basket welcoming them aboard.

Still, mindful of the fact that Cara might need a little time to adjust to the close quarters, he pasted on his own phony smile and turned to her. "Listen, why don't you take a few minutes to get settled in? I'm just going to pop upstairs and make a couple of phone calls while we're still in port, all right?"

Her eyes vague, Cara smiled and nodded. But as he turned to leave the room her gaze returned to the narrow bunk she'd been contemplating. The look of faint consternation on her face had him wondering whether the whole five days wouldn't be too short a time for her to adjust. Maybe he'd end up spending the next few nights sacked out on the deck.

And wouldn't that be something to look forward to?