Read To Love a Highlander Online
Authors: Sue-Ellen Welfonder
To Love a Highlander (37 page)
Dear Reader,
Weddings! I love them. The ceremony, the traditions, the romance, the flowers, the music, and of course the food. Face it. I embrace anything when cake is involved. When I got married many moons ago, there was a short ceremony and then cake and punch were served in the next room. That was it. Simple and easy and really lovely. But possibilities for weddings have expanded since then.
In FLIRTING WITH FOREVER, Irene Cornwell decides to become a wedding planner, and she has to meet the challenge of giving brides what they want within their budget. And it can be a challenge! I have planned a couple of weddings, and it was a lot of work, but it was also a whole lot of fun. Finding the venue, booking the caterer, deciding on the decorating theme. It is so satisfying to watch a million details come together to launch the happy couple into their new life together.
In one wedding I planned we opted for using mismatched dishes found at thrift stores on the buffet table. We found a bride selling tablecloths from her wedding and used different swaths of cloth as overlays. We made a canopy for the dance floor using pickle buckets and PFC pipe covered in vines and flowers, and then strung it with lights. We spray-painted cheap glass vases and filled them with flowers to match the color palette. And then, as Irene discovered, the hardest part is cleaning up after the celebration is over. But I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.
Another important theme in FLIRTING WITH FOREVER is second-chance love. My heart gets all aflutter when I think about true love emerging victorious after years of separation, heartbreak, and misunderstanding. Irene and Theo fell in love as teenagers, but it didn’t last. Now older and wiser they reunite and fall in love all over again. Sigh.
I hope you’ll join Irene and Theo on their journey. I promise it’s even better the second time around.
Happy Reading!
Mollycannon.com
Twitter @CannonMolly
Facebook.com
Dear Reader,
The spark to write THE WINDFLOWER came when Sharon read a three-hundred-year-old list of pirates who were executed by hanging. The majority of the pirates were teens, some as young as fourteen. Sharon felt so sad about these young lives cut short that it made her want to write a book to give the young pirates a happier ending.
For my part, I had much enjoyed the tales of Robert Lewis Stevenson as a boy. I had spent many happy hours playing the pirate with my cousins using wooden swords, cardboard hats, and rubber band guns.
Sharon and I threw ourselves into writing THE WINDFLOWER with the full force of our creative absorption. We were young and in love, and existed in our imaginations on a pirate ship. We are proud that we created a novel that is in print on its thirty-year anniversary and has been printed in multiple languages around the world.
Fondly yours,
Writing as Laura London
Dear Reader,
At a recent gathering, someone asked about my upcoming releases. I revealed that I’d just launched a new Scottish medieval series, Scandalous Scots, with an e-novella,
Once Upon a Highland Christmas
, and that TO LOVE A HIGHLANDER would soon follow.
As happens so often, this person asked why I set my books in Scotland. My first reaction to this question is always to come back with, “Where else?” To me, there is nowhere else.
Sorley, the hero of TO LOVE A HIGHLANDER, would agree. Where better to celebrate romance than a land famed for men as fierce and wild as the soaring, mist-drenched hills that bred them? A place where the women are prized for their strength and beauty, the fiery passion known to heat a man’s blood on cold, dark nights when chill winds raced through the glens? No land is more awe-inspiring, no people more proud. Scots have a powerful bond with their land. Haven’t they fought for it for centuries? Kept their heathery hills always in their hearts, yearning for home when exiled, the distance of oceans and time unable to quench the pull to return?
That’s a perfect blend for romance.
Sorley has such a bond with his homeland. Since he
was a lad, he’s been drawn to the Highlands. Longing for wild places of rugged, wind-blown heights and high moors where the heather rolls on forever, so glorious it hurt the eyes to behold such grandeur. But Sorley’s attachment to the Highlands also annoys him and poses one of his greatest problems. He suspects his father might have also been a Highlander—a ruthless, cold-hearted chieftain, to be exact. He doesn’t know for sure because he’s a bastard, raised at Stirling’s glittering royal court.
In TO LOVE A HIGHLANDER, Sorley discovers the truth of his birth. Making Sorley unaware of his birthright as a Highlander was a twist I’ve always wanted to explore. I’m fascinated by how many people love Scotland and burn to go there, many drawn back because their ancestors were Scottish. I love that centuries and even thousands of miles can’t touch the powerful pull Scotland exerts on its own.
Sorley’s heritage explains a lot, for he’s also a notorious rogue, a master of seduction. His prowess in bed is legend and he ignites passion in all the women he meets. Only one has ever shunned him. She’s Mirabelle MacLaren and when she returns to his life, appearing in his bedchamber with an outrageous request, he’s torn.
Mirabelle wants him to scandalize her reputation.
He’d love to oblige, especially as doing so will destroy his enemy.
But touching Mirabelle will rip open scars best left alone. Unfortunately, Sorley can’t resist Mirabelle. Together, they learn that when the heart warms, all things are possible. Yet there’s always a price. Theirs will be surrendering everything they’ve ever believed in and accepting that true love does indeed heal all wounds.
I hope you enjoy reading TO LOVE A HIGHLANDER! I know I loved unraveling Sorley and Mirabelle’s story.
Highland Blessings!
www.welfonder.com
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Sue-Ellen Welfonder
Excerpt from
To Desire a Highlander
2014 by Sue-Ellen Welfonder
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitutes unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: April 2014
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ISBN 978-1-4555-2623-9
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