LITMIR.BIZ

      For Gordana Sikora-Presecki who introduced me to Croatia

      … and sharing inspiring pictures when we should have been working!

       Chapter 1

       Northumberland

      Nick huddled into the collar of his coat, grateful for the thick tweed barrier protecting him from the brisk northerly wind that whipped around the lee of the craggy hillside. A wry smile touched his mouth at the sight of the two models shivering together like highly strung Arabian fillies.

      Today the models were dressed in vibrant — Pucci style, he’d been informed, whatever that was — wool ponchos. Although, if anyone had asked his opinion, he’d have said it looked as if someone had run amok in a paint shop, but he was no fashion expert. The outfits were topped with dashing tam-o’-shanter hats, perched jauntily on their heads while striped woollen scarves, wrapped several times around their elegant long necks, flapped in the breeze like Himalayan prayer flags. The poor frozen models were as out of place as a pair of tropical birds as they waited for the photographer to line up the next shot.

      Normally, at seven-thirty in the morning, he’d have the bleak moorland to himself, and if it hadn’t been for the quelling looks his sisters-in-law had shot his twin brothers, Dan and Jonathon, over dinner last night, there might have been a few more people up here.

      ‘Tara, stand on that rock in the shaft of sunshine,’ directed the brusque photographer whose facial expression was well hidden behind dark bushy eyebrows and a fearsome, glossy black beard of biblical proportions, a stark contrast to his bald head.

      Nick had to give her credit; the minute Tara moved into the unforgiving eye of the lens, she stopped shivering and threw a cool indifferent pose as if the freezing temperature was nothing. Her thin, haughty face stared out over the view, dispassionate and seemingly oblivious to the valley unfolding before her, the rich green grass softening the contours of the hillside and the sunshine dancing on the distant sea at the mouth of the valley five miles in the distance. Something twisted in his stomach at the sight of her standing on the outcrop of rocks, with one knee bent, a delicate, almost fey figure, with her flawless complexion and mane of golden hair burnished with red and gold threads picked out by the spring sunshine. She looked as if she might slip away into another realm at any moment. Then he told himself off for allowing the little kick of something to affect him and the odd desire to want to protect her from the cold. Compared to her, he was a steady, reliable carthorse hitched to unremitting destiny while she was like a delicate faerie creature, as unattainable and remote as the stars. She came from another world. A world a million miles away from this remote farm and the village community where he knew everyone and everyone knew him and had done since he was born. This was home. Always had been, always would be.

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