Seven For A Secret 
Why has she never known her life was one colossal Lie?
When a posthumous letter from her father destroys Anna Belmonte’s sense of Identity . . . she goes in search of her birth mother . . . and the truth.
Accosted by Slade Haultain, her birth-mother’s step-son, Anna visits Puriri Downs, Slade’s huge sheep and cattle station high in the Kaimai Ranges
Pitchforked into mediating an emotional minefield, Slade struggles with his attraction to this cuckoo in the nest…
After years resisting her father’s attempts to coerce her into an arranged marriage, Anna is leery of men and considers marriage and a career in art incompatible.
The instantaneous attraction between her and Slade makes her question this decision…. perhaps it’s possible to have it all. Marriage, children and a career as an Artist.
Then in one horrifying moment the dead hand of her father reaches beyond the grave
and Anna learns there are some secrets that are never meant to be told …
Excerpt:
Suddenly, the sensation of being watched made her tense. A surreptitious glance around the dining room and her stunned gaze landed on a man filling the doorway.
He was staring directly at her and she forgot to breathe.
Trapped in the stranger’s obsidian gaze, heat flooded her face. She closed her eyes trying to escape his scrutiny, but opening them again, found him watching her with the same hawk-like intensity.
Who was he?
Unable to break free of his inimical stare, Anna tilted her chin in defiance.
His black eyes narrowed in unmistakable antipathy as he straightened and strode across the room with the easy cat-like grace of a man confident of his place in the world.
Anna swallowed hard, but failed to dislodge the lump anxiety settled in her throat.
He was tall, well over six feet, the breadth of his shoulders awesome. Blue jeans and pale blue shirt accentuated swarthy good looks. Sleeves, rolled to the elbows, exposed well-muscled, tanned forearms. Raindrops trembled in night-black hair. A hawkish nose dominated his rugged face. The square chin suggested a man accustomed to ordering life on his own terms.
Anna’s heart drummed at a suffocating pace.
His eyes were dark chocolate, not black. Her mind was in such a chaotic tangle the irrelevant observation seemed sensible as he pulled out the chair opposite, and sat at her table.
Slade Haultain studied the woman with something akin to shock. She wasn’t at all what he expected.
Her persistent questions were arousing a buzz of curiosity. In a town as small as Mt Maunganui, anything out of the ordinary was noted and commented on.
No stranger was going to wreak havoc in his family’s lives.
In his rush to intercept and send her packing, he never even paused to consider what this cuckoo in the nest would look like.
He sure as hell never expected a woman like this one.
Her hair, a wild halo of corkscrew curls, swamped a creamy face dominated by a pair of huge grey eyes. A pair of lush breasts would fill a man’s hands, and then some.
His heart leaped in his chest and all his blood went south.
A shudder zinged through him. Looking at her was akin to being zapped with the business end of a cattle prod.
He shook his head to clear it.
Hormones would not distract him from what he needed to do. But hell! This was one complication he did not need.
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