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The Loner's Guarded Heart
Harlequin Romance
April 2008
Josie was touched that her brothers had arranged a holiday for her – she certainly needed one. Only, the location isn’t the lively resort she expected, but a rustic cabin in a beautiful but isolated Australian idyll...
Her only neighbor for miles is the taciturn, if incredibly attractive, Kent Black. Following a family tragedy, Kent cut himself off from the world. Josie can’t help but be intrigued by this solitary man, and with her bubbly, warm personality, she’s determined to pick away at the iron padlock around his heart.
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CataRomance 4.5 stars
"‘Packed with a smoldering tension and underlying passion The Loner’s Guarded Heart by Michelle Douglas will leave readers wanting more... [It] is a keeper that I will treasure. If you are a reader that loves tender heartfelt stories then this book is a must buy because it has all these elements and so much more.."
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His Christmas Angel
Harlequin Romance
December 2007
Home for Christmas...
Once Sol Adams and Cassie Campbell had been inseparable, drawn to each other when times were tough. Cassie has spent the last ten years trying to move on from her life back then, but now Sol is home for Christmas, more gorgeous than ever, and she can’t avoid him – or her memories...
His bride for New Year?
Sol can see Cassie’s changed – she’s now a widow, a woman who tirelessly cares for others. But he knows her too well – he can see the hurt and yearning behind her cheerful smile. Can he get to the bottom o f her troubled heart and make this Christmas angel his much-loved wife?
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Romantic Times 4.5 stars
"Michelle Douglas makes an outstanding debut with HIS CHRISTMAS ANGEL, a complex, richly emotional story. The characters are handled especially well, as are the many conflicts and relationships. This one's a keeper."
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Excerpt from THE LONER'S GUARDED HEART
‘HELLO?’
Josie Peterson bent down and called her greeting into the half open window before knocking on the door again.
No movement. No sound. Nothing.
Chewing her lip, she stepped back and surveyed the front of the cottage – weatherboard, neatly painted white. A serviceable grey-checked gingham hung at the windows.
Grey? A sigh rose up through her. She was tired of grey. She wanted frills. And colour. She wanted fun and fanciful.
She could feel the grey try to settle over her shoulders.
She shook herself and swung away, took in the view about her. The paths were swept, the lawn was clipped, but there wasn’t a single garden bed to soften the uniformity. Not even a pot plant. At the moment, Josie would kill for the sight of a single cheerful gerbera, let alone a whole row of them.
Six wooden cabins marched down the slope away from the cottage. Nothing moved. No signs of habitation greeted her. No cars, no towels drying on verandas, no pushbikes or cricket bats leant against the walls.
No people.
Fun and fanciful weren’t the first descriptions that came to mind. The grass around the cabins, though, was green and clipped short. Someone took the trouble to maintain it all.
If only she could find that person.
Or people. She prayed for people.
The view spread before her was a glorious patchwork of golden grasses, khaki gum trees and a flash of silver river, all haloed and made soft focus by the late afternoon sunshine. Josie had to fight back the absurd desire to cry.
What on earth had Marty and Frank been thinking?
You were the one who said you wanted some peace and quiet, she reminded herself, collapsing on the top step and propping her chin in her hands.
Yes, but there was peace and quiet and then there was this.
From the front veranda of the cottage, there wasn’t another habitation in sight. She hid her face in her hands. Marty and Frank knew her well enough to know she hadn’t meant this, didn’t they?
Her insides clenched and she pulled her hands away. She didn’t want the kind of peace and quiet that landed a person so far from civilization they couldn’t get a signal on their cell phone.
She wanted people. She wanted to lie back, close her eyes and hear people laughing and living. She wanted to watch people laughing and living. She wanted–
Enough already! This was the one nice thing Marty and Frank had done for her in...
She tried to remember, but her mind went blank. Okay, so maybe they weren’t the most demonstrative of brothers, but sending her on a holiday was a nice thing. Did she intend spoiling it with reservations and rank ingratitude?
Some people would kill to be in her position. Lots of people would love to spend a month in the gorgeous Upper Hunter Valley of rural NSW with nothing to do.
She gazed about her wistfully. She wished all those people were lining the hills of this valley right now.
She dusted off her hands and pushed to her feet. She’d make the best of it. According to her map there was a town a few kilometres further on. She could drive in there whenever she wanted. She’d make friends. She was tired. That’s all. It had taken too long to get here, which was probably why her landlord had given up on her.
She wondered what kind of people would live out here all on their own. Hopefully, the kind of people who took a solitary soul under their wing, introduced them around and enthusiastically outlined all the local activities available. Hopefully they’d love a chat over a cup of tea and a biscuit.
Josie would provide the biscuits.
Impatience shifted through her. She rolled her shoulders, stamped her feet and gulped in a breath of late afternoon air. She didn’t recognise the dry, dusty scents she pulled into her lungs, so different from the humid, salt-laden air of Buchanan’s Point on the coast, her home. Her stomach clenched up again at the unfamiliarity.
She didn’t belong here.
‘Nonsense.’ She tried to laugh away the fanciful notion, but a great yearning for home welled inside her. The greyness settled more securely around her. She hastened down the three steps and back to the gravel path, hoping movement would give her thoughts new direction. She swung one way then another. She could check around the back, she supposed. Her landlord could be working in a... shed or vegetable plot or something.
In her hunger to clap eyes on a friendly face, Josie rushed around the side of the house to open the gate. Her fingers fumbled with the latch. Need ballooned inside her, a need for companionship, a need to connect with someone. The gate finally swung back to reveal a neat yard. Again, no garden beds or flower pots broke the austerity, but the lawn was clipped and short, the edges so precise they looked as if they’d been trimmed using a set square.
The fence was painted white to match the house and the obligatory rotary clothesline sat smack-bang in the middle of it all. An old fashioned steel one like the one Josie had at home. Its prosaic familiarity reassured her. She stared at the faded jeans, blue chambray shirt and navy boxer shorts hanging from it and figured her landlord must be male.
Why hadn’t she found out his name from Marty or Frank? Though, everything had moved so fast. They’d popped this surprise on her last night and had insisted on seeing her off at the crack of dawn this morning. Mrs Pengilly’s bad turn, though, had put paid to any early start. Josie bit her lip. Maybe she should’ve stayed and–
A low vicious growl halted her in her tracks. Icy fingers shot down her back and across her scalp. No.
Please God, no.
There hadn’t been a Beware of Dog sign on the gate. She’d have seen it. She paid attention to those things. Close attention.
The growl came again followed by the owner of the growl and Josie’s heart slugged so hard against her ribs she thought it might dash itself to pieces before the dog got anywhere near her. Her knees started to shake.
‘Nice doggy,’ she tried, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth slurring her voice and making it unintelligible.
The dog growled in answer. Nuh-uh, it wasn’t a nice doggy and, although it wasn’t as large as a rottweiller or a doberman, it was heavy-set and its teeth, when bared, looked just as vicious. She could imagine how easily those teeth would tear flesh.
She took a step back. The dog took a step forward.
She stopped. It stopped.
Her heart pounded so hard it hurt. She wanted to buckle over but she refused to drop her eyes from the dog’s glare. It lowered its head and showed its teeth. All the hackles on its back lifted.
Ooh. Not a good sign. Everything inside Josie strained towards the gate and freedom, but she knew she wouldn’t make it. The dog would be on her before she was halfway there. And those teeth...
Swallowing, she took another step back. The dog stayed put.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Another step. The dog didn’t move. Its hackles didn’t lower.
With a half-sob, Josie flung herself sideways and shinnied straight up the clothesline.
‘Help!’ she hollered at the top of her voice.
Something tickled her face. She lifted a hand to brush it away. Spider web! She tried to claw it off but it stuck with clammy tentacles to her face and neck. It was the last straw. Josie burst into tears.
The dog took up position directly beneath her. Lifting its head, it howled. It made Josie cry harder.
‘What in the devil–’
A person. ‘Thank you, God.’ Finally, a friendly face. She swung towards the voice, almost falling out of the clothesline in relief.
She stared.
Her heart all but stopped.
Then it dropped clean out of her chest and laid gasping and flailing on the ground like a dying fish. This was her friendly face?
No!
Fresh sobs shook her. The dog started up its mournful howl again.
‘For the love of–’
The man glared at her, shifted his feet, hands on hips. Nice lean hips she couldn’t help noticing.
‘Why in the dickens are you crying?’
She’d give up the sight of those lean hips and taut male thighs for a single smile.
He didn’t smile. She stared at the hard, rocky crags of his face and doubted this man could do friendly. He didn’t have a single friendly feature in his face. Not one. Not even a tiny little one. The flint of his eyes didn’t hold a speck of softness or warmth. She bet dickens wasn’t the term he wanted to use either.
Heaven help her. This wasn’t the kind of man who’d take her under his wing. A hysterical bubble rose in her throat. ‘You’re my landlord?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you Josephine Peterson?’
She nodded.
‘Yes.’ He scowled. ‘I’m Kent Black.’
He didn’t offer his hand, which she had to admit might be difficult considering she was stuck up his clothesline.
‘I asked why you were crying?’
Coming from another person the question would’ve been sympathetic, but not from Kent Black. Anyway, she’d have thought a more pressing question was, ‘What the dickens are you doing in my clothesline?’
‘Well?’ He shifted again on those long lean legs.
An hysterical bubble burst right out of her mouth. ‘Why am I crying?’ She bet he thought she was a madwoman.
‘Yes.’ His lips cracked open to issue the one curt word then closed over again.
‘Why am I crying?’ Her voice rose an octave. ‘I’ll tell you why I’m crying. I’m crying because look at this place?’ She lifted her hands. ‘It’s the ends of the earth?’ She fixed him with a glare. It was the only thing that stopped her from crying again. ‘How could Marty and Frank think I’d want to come here, huh?’
‘Look, Ms Peterson, I think you ought to calm–’
‘Oh, no, you don’t. You asked the question and demanded an answer so you could darn well listen to it.’ She pointed her finger at him as if he was personally responsible for everything that had gone wrong today.
‘Not only am I’m stuck here at the ends of the earth but... but I’m stuck in a clothesline at the end of the earth. And to rub salt into the wound, I got lost trying to find this rotten place and ended up at Timbuktu where I got a flat tyre. Then your dog chased me up this rotten clothesline and there’s spider web everywhere!’
Her voice rose with each word in a way that appalled her, but she couldn’t rein it back like she normally did. ‘And Mrs Pengilly took a bad turn this morning and I had to call an ambulance and... and I buried my father a fortnight ago and–’
Her anger ran out. Just like that. She closed her eyes and leant her head against the centre pole. ‘And I miss him,’ she finished on a whisper so soft she hardly heard it herself.
Darn it. She chinked open one eye and found him staring at her as if she was a madwoman. She opened the other eye and straightened. Then smoothed down her hair. She wasn’t a madwoman. And despite her outburst she didn’t feel much like apologising either. He didn’t have the kind of face that invited apologies. She pulled in a breath and met his gaze.
‘You’re afraid of my dog?’
She raised an eyebrow. Did he think she sat in clotheslines for the fun of it? ‘Even at the ends of the earth you should put signs up on your gates warning people about vicious dogs.’
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Excerpt from HIS CHRISTMAS ANGEL:
SOL slammed through the house and out the back door to the veranda. Gripping the railing, he hauled in a breath. Then another. Half an hour. He'd been back half an hour and already he was dying to get the hell out of here. Nothing had changed.
For Pete's sake, you'd think after ten years...
He rolled his shoulders trying to ease the tension that had them wedged up tighter than double lapped dovetail joints. His eyes swept across the backyard. What a mess. The fence needed mending the lawn needing mowing and the-
Cassie's tree.
His angry thoughts slammed to a halt. He squinted into the afternoon sun, but two giant oleanders on the other side of the fence prevented him from making out much of the house in the yard beyond. Did Cassie Campbell still live there?
Cassie Parker, he amended. Married ten years ago.
And widowed for eighteen months. Some things had changed.
He dragged a hand down his face. Cassie wouldn't live there now she'd live in the centre of town with the rest of the Parkers. She didn't need to live on the outskirts any more. And since her mother had died...
An ache hollowed out his chest. He hadn't come back for the funeral. He hadn't come back for Brian's funeral either.
He stared hard at what he could see of the house and yard, trying to imagine someone else living there, but he couldn't. His gaze came back to the tree squatting in the corner, his lips curved upwards and the tension seeped out of him. Back then the only thing that had kept life bearable around here was Cassie Campbell.
Cassie Parker, he reminded himself and his smile faded.
He clenched the veranda railing again. What the hell did he think he was doing? Trying to catch a glimpse of Cassie Campbell? He had an insane urge to butt his head against a veranda post. He'd left all thoughts of Cassie behind ten years ago.
Yeah right, which is why you're craning your neck over her back fence with your tongue hanging out.
He made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. For Pete's sake, it wouldn't even be her damn fence any more. He went to turn away when a leg dangled out of the tree, a long, lean, female leg. He blinked and shaded his eyes.
Cassie Campbell?
His breath hitched. Parker, he amended, steeling himself. And don't be such a goddamn idiot. But curiosity propelled him down the back steps and across the yard all the same. That was a damn fine leg and he was real curious to see who lived in Cassie's old place now.
A mumbled half-smothered expletive drifted out of the tree as he drew near and for some reason it made him grin. He quickened his step and without waiting for his eyes to adjust to the shade, glanced up. The breath punched out of him. A strange choked noise emerged from the back of his throat. He couldn't have uttered a single coherent sound if his life depended on it.
Dancing violet eyes swung around to stare down at him. They raked across his face then generous lips formed a perfect O. 'Good lord, if it isn't Sol Adams home for Christmas at last.'
Cassie Campbell!
His heart started to pump hard and fast. He swallowed. The sound rolled in the spaces beneath the tree, loud in the summer afternoon. 'Hey, Cassie,' he finally managed to get out.
'Hey, Cassie?' She rolled her eyes. 'After ten years that's all you can think to say?'
Then she smiled. Really smiled. Cassie had always put her whole heart into a smile. It outshone the hot summer sun. He blinked, but he couldn't look away. His groin ached. The entire surface of his skin tightened as if he'd grown too big for it.
Her smile wavered. 'You didn't even say goodbye.'
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