Click on image to enlarge.

Category: Romance
Description: A tropical island key and two adoring men; life couldn't get any worse for burnt out anthropologist Sera Summers. Amid a community of artisans, Sera discovers good friends yet fights the feeling that she has come home. Despite her ethics, she finds herself falling hard for Cristian, one of her subjects. Afraid of her feelings, Sera retreats to the attentions of Manuel, a temperamental artist and café owner who is dead set against her work. At the end of her sabbatical, Sera returns home but finds the pull of the men and the island too much to bear.
eBook Publisher: Cobblestone Press,
eBookwise Release Date: June 2007

1 Reader Ratings:

Great	Good	OK	Poor

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [204 KB]
Words: 47056
Reading time: 134-188 min.

"Just as the heroine has a gift as a confidant, the author has a gift for revealing the depths of her characters, secondary as well as the major protagonists, that makes the reader feel as if she is living through the story right along with the characters. The plot line breezes merrily along, and the reader is drawn in immediately. I strongly recommend this as a meaty, content-filled, comfortable kind of story; the kind that the reader wants to curl up with and just savor. Get this one! 5 Stars!"--Annie Kudzu, Ecataromance

Sera Summers curled up, tired and barefoot, on the sofa with her daily horoscope from the community paper. Your true love is not where you think you will find him. She crumpled the paper up and threw, aiming for the woodbin by the woodstove. She missed. Why can't I stop reading these?

Boxes crowded the floor of her small cottage home. Absently rolling the beads of her pearl anklet between her fingers, she scanned the open cupboards and shelves for a stray ornament or magazine that she might have missed when packing.

It was finally finished. Her belongings were going into Fiona's basement. The cottage would be rented for three months by a family of skiers who planned to use it only on weekends as a base for skiing at the local alpine hill among other recreational pursuits.

Her tortoise-shell cat, Molly, would continue to inhabit her corner of the sofa. The renting family had agreed to care for her on weekends, and Fiona would check on her during the week. The rent money would cover the mortgage and utilities for the three-month period Sera intended to be away. Everything had worked out perfectly.

The last textbook Sera had written had been picked up by a small government-funded publishing house, and was to be used as a teaching tool by the local school board. The funds she'd earned from the book afforded her the time and the means to finally work with a people who were completely unfamiliar, and to possibly produce something of interest to the university. Tenure, she hoped, would not be far behind.

Sera was eager to leave, but the details seemed endless. It had been no small feat to rent the cottage for three months, and then she'd had to make arrangements for the cat, storage for her things, plane tickets, visa and a sabbatical from work. She had taken the next year off to plan, sort, visit and write. If all worked out in the three months she was away, she would go back and continue her study of other cultures in the same area. But she was giving herself three months as a start.

Her outline and proposal lay on her kitchen table. These, she planned on keeping in her carry-on luggage for revisions as the spirit moved her. She was an anthropologist and a decent writer. This opportunity would prove her to the university community. The word "professor" came before her name and the letters MBA after it; however, she still did not feel comfortable in her office. She related more easily to her anxious young students than to her burned-out co-workers.

A gust of wind blew across the porch and into the wooden wind chime hanging in front of her window. It rang with warm, hollow tones, filling her with memories of the summer she first moved in. She felt so excited, so independent. Inside, the comfortable scent of wood smoke permeated the cottage. She was warm, and happy not to be outside. Seven years ago, the rough cottage had been a steal, well within her budget, and Sera couldn't turn it down. With her job at the university, it hadn't been hard to make it work. Now, the property value was substantially higher, but Sera had no reason to sell.

Her home overlooked Lake Glory, a poetic name to say the least, but it really did suit. The red pines surrounding her home and the birch trees on the horizon were often a stark shade of black as the sun descended directly in front of her verandah.