Dark Victory (31 page)

Dear Reader,

I hope you have enjoyed the first two books of THE ROSE TRILOGY. I love writing about these superpowered, macho medieval heroes—men who are men, make no apologies about it and the ladies beware! However, something new has happened. I’m really enjoying writing about some of the strongest heroines I’ve ever created. Working with these modern Rose women and taking them on their personal journeys has been a blast. I hope you enjoyed Tabby’s courageous struggle with evil—and her equally courageous journey to find true love with Macleod.

By now you all know Sam Rose’s story is next—and that she will go head to head with Ian Maclean!

Sam is truly a modern woman and is probably the strongest heroine I’ve done yet. She is powerful, sexy, independent and a Slayer. Romance is not in her vocabulary—a true soldier lives alone, fights alone and dies alone. Sam might miss Tabby now, but she’d never admit it, not even to herself. Her life is the war on evil, period. Except for one itty-bitty grudge she is holding—against Ian Maclean.

You see, Sam believes in payback. She will never forgive Ian for walking out on her and leaving her naked in
Dark Victory
. She can’t wait to meet him again and bring him down. But what she doesn’t expect is for them to meet and be on opposite sides of the war. Because Maclean has come to town, and he has something everybody wants: the good guys, the bad guys and, of course, Sam….

Ian Maclean ranks right up there with the handful of best heroes I’ve ever done. Society assumes he is what he appears to be—a wealthy and powerful jet-setting playboy. But Maclean spent sixty-six years as a child in demonic captivity,
and he has far more than scars—he has dark secrets. He is tortured. He rarely sleeps—he can’t handle his dreams—and he suffers daily from terrible flashbacks. And, as rich as he is, he lives a life of isolation, without family, without friends. He struggles with the truth about himself. But he is oh-so-sexy, anyway. And he knows it….

He comes to New York to steal a page from the Duisean, which has wound up in an art collector’s hands. However, he hasn’t forgotten Sam. He knows she will be hunting the page, too. And Ian can’t wait to play this game with her, certain of its outcome. Because women never say no to him for very long. Of course, he’s never met a woman like Sam before!

Dark Lover
is an amazing story—but a word of caution: it is
dark.
What Ian has gone through is horrific, and it’s a miracle he’s survived.
Dark Lover
is a story of an incredibly wounded man seeing that thread of light at the end of a dark tunnel and slowly being helped toward it. It is a story of good and evil, courage and fear, true love and dark desires. It is a story of two strong, proud, furiously independent people daring to look past the obvious and reach out to one another. And mostly, it is once again a story of the healing power of love.

Happy reading!

Brenda Joyce