Jane Lark
A division of HarperCollins Publishers
www.harpercollins.co.uk
Jane Lark Jane Lark I love writing authentic, passionate and emotional love stories. I began my first novel, a historical, when I was sixteen, but life derailed me a bit when I started suffering with Ankylosing Spondylitis, so I didn’t complete a novel until after I was thirty when I put it on my to do before I’m forty list. Now I love getting caught up in the lives and traumas of my characters, and I’m so thrilled to be giving my characters life in others’ imaginations, especially when readers tell me they’ve read the characters just as I’ve tried to portray them.
Praise for Jane Lark “Jane Lark has an incredible talent to draw the reader in from the first page onwards.” Cosmochicklitan Book Reviews "Any description that I give you would not only spoil the story but could not give this book a tenth of the justice that it deserves. Wonderful!" Candy Coated Book Blog "This book held me captive after the first 2 pages. If I could crawl inside and live in there with the characters I would." A Reading Nurse Blogspot “The book swings from truly swoon-worthy, tense and heart wrenching, highly erotic and everything else in between.” Best Chick Lit.com “I love Ms. Lark's style—beautifully descriptive, emotional and can I say, just plain delicious reading? This is the kind of mixer upper I've been looking for in romance lately.” Devastating Reads BlogSpot
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Epilogue
Love Romance?
About HarperImpulse
Copyright
About the Publisher
I love writing authentic, passionate and emotional love stories.
I began my first novel, a historical, when I was sixteen, but life derailed me a bit when I started suffering with Ankylosing Spondylitis, so I didn’t complete a novel until after I was thirty when I put it on my to do before I’m forty list.
Now I love getting caught up in the lives and traumas of my characters, and I’m so thrilled to be giving my characters life in others’ imaginations, especially when readers tell me they’ve read the characters just as I’ve tried to portray them.
“Jane Lark has an incredible talent to draw the reader in from the first page onwards.”
Cosmochicklitan Book Reviews
"Any description that I give you would not only spoil the story but could not give this book a tenth of the justice that it deserves. Wonderful!"
Candy Coated Book Blog
"This book held me captive after the first 2 pages. If I could crawl inside and live in there with the characters I would."
A Reading Nurse Blogspot
“The book swings from truly swoon-worthy, tense and heart wrenching, highly erotic and everything else in between.”
Best Chick Lit.com
“I love Ms. Lark's style—beautifully descriptive, emotional and can I say, just plain delicious reading? This is the kind of mixer upper I've been looking for in romance lately.”
Devastating Reads BlogSpot
The beat of the music pounded through my earphones, drowning out the loud rattle of the subway trains. I was in the zone. My heart was racing, my feet striking the pavement with the rhythm of the bassline as I ran.
The monotony of city life swamped me in the day, but running brought me back from it at night.
God, I missed home, and fuck it was cold.
Too cold to snow. I heard the words Dad always repeated. I’d always thought it a myth. Was it ever too cold to snow? I didn’t know, but people had been saying it all day.
The pavement was dry, not icy. Dry with cold. There was no moisture in the air, only the cloud of my breath, as my lungs filled and then exhaled with the pace of my strides.
Maybe it was true. God, there were so many myths in the world. Like, New York City was the place to be. It still felt like new shoes to me, like it just didn’t fit.
The asphalt felt firm beneath my sneakers.
I looked forward, trying to increase my pace and energy, burning away the doubts and disappointments I’d felt since I came to the city.
At the end of the bridge there was a figure, caught in the middle of a beam of orange lamplight, like some illuminated angel. I generally only saw other guys jogging on the bridge path. It was rare to see anyone else.
It was Thanksgiving in little over a week and Christmas in a few weeks. Lindy was pissed I wasn’t going back home, but she’d made up her mind to come to me for Christmas.
Was that good or bad?
The figure was facing the Brooklyn Bridge, probably looking at the reflection of the lights glinting and shifting on the dark water. It was mesmerizing when you focused on it.
The Manhattan Bridge was never busy, probably because of the noise of the trains. The environment didn’t inspire pleasure, so it wasn’t a place for tourists. But it was a good path for running: long and straight, and normally empty.
I ran harder, my eyes focusing on the figure.
The person hadn’t moved. They held their hands up, gripping the metal grill above them.
The pose seemed odd. A little desperate. It wasn’t casual.
My imagination shifted, no longer picturing angels but a horror movie. The way the lamplight shone down on the figure was like they were in the sights of a hovering helicopter, or a beam from a UFO.
I thought of Christmas again, and ached for home. But I wasn’t going home. I had to conquer New York.
The light shining down on the stranger suddenly took the form of a Godly benediction once more. The person’s arms shifted, stretching out, similar to a crucifixion pose, hands wide and high as they looked upward.
I was getting nearer.
My fingers were numb with the cold, even inside my gloves, and my ears burned as the frost nipped beneath my hood. Running should’ve kept me warm, but it was twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit, way below freezing point.
Fuck, now I could see the person ahead was standing in a t-shirt. Their outstretched arms were bare.
“Hey!” My heart rate thundered as I ran on, wondering what sort of sketchy city-nutter I was running toward. What were they doing wearing a tee in this weather? It didn’t look like a homeless dude, but…
My breaths grew more uneven.
The guy ahead hadn’t heard me.
I pulled my earphones out. “Hey!”
Still no recognition. It was like they were in some sort of trance.
My feet pounded on the concrete.
It wasn’t a guy, it was a girl. I’d seen the long hair way back, but hadn’t been sure. Plenty of guys had long hair. But now, I could see.
I knocked my hood back. I didn’t want to scare her. “Hey!”
Nothing. Not a single sign of recognition and I was only yards away. She was wearing skinny jeans and sneakers with her tee.
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