To celebrate our fortieth wedding anniversary my husband and I went to India for a long and very special holiday of a lifetime. We explored the desert, rode camels, toured ancient palaces and temples, saw tigers on a wild life reserve and met so many wonderful people.

We truly fell in love with the colour, chaos and beauty of the state of Rajasthan in Northern India.

Back home again I began a book set in India in which I tell the story I dreamt up while I was over there. It is Jai and Willow’s story, a tale of unashamed passion, occasional cultural differences and ultimately, a love that cannot be denied.

Can two very different people learn to live together and understand each other? Can they avoid their own parents’ mistakes and misjudgements? And finally, can they forgive and accept each other’s flaws?

UPDATE (December 2019): Willow and Jai’s story will be called “Indian Prince’s Hidden Son“.

Excerpts From the Book

Everything familiar was fading:

When the sounds of her distress became more than he could withstand, Jai abandoned his careful scrutiny of her father’s books- several first editions, he noted with satisfaction, worthy of the fine price he would pay for them. He drained his glass and forced himself to mount the stairs to offer what comfort he could. All too well did he remember that he himself had had little support after his father’s sudden death from a massive stroke. Thousands had been devastated by the passing of so well-loved a figure and hundreds of concerned relatives had converged on Jai to share his sorrow, but Jai hadn’t been close enough to any of those individuals to find solace in their memories. In reality only he had known his father on a very personal, private level and only he could know the extent of the loss he had sustained.

Willow was lying sobbing on the bed and Jai didn’t hesitate. He sat down beside her and lifted her into his arms, reckoning that she weighed barely more than a child and instinctively treating her as such as he patted her slender spine soothingly and struggled to think of what it was best to say.’ Remember the good times with your father,’ he urged softly.

He was just a onenight stand and that she had no desire to attach strings to him:

‘Let me warm you,’ Jai urged, hauling her into contact with his hot, muscular length, driving out the shivers that had been assailing her.

And it all began again and this time she was wholly free of tension and insecurity and the excitement rose even faster for her. The pleasure stole her mind from her body and left her exhausted. She dropped into sleep, still melded to Jai and still amazed by what had happened between them. At some stage of the night he kissed her awake and made love to her again, slow and sure this time and achingly sexy. It occurred to her that Jai had made her initiation into sex wondrously sensual but even then she knew she ached in bone and muscle and would be wrecked the next morning.

I don’t want to marry anyone right now:

‘Obviously you don’t want to marry me,’ she remarked in a brittle undertone.

’Aside of my little flirtation with the idea of marriage when I was twenty one, I have always hoped to retain my freedom for as long as possible,’ Jai confessed with a twist of his shapely mouth as he studied her, appreciating the elegant delicacy of her tiny figure in the overly large chair but not appreciating the way his attention instinctively lingered on the swell of her breasts below the sweater and the slender stretch of her denim-clad thighs .’ I planned to marry in my forties while my father was even older when he took the plunge. Hari’s birth, however, has changed everything. I cannot deny Hari his right to enjoy the same history and privileges that I had-‘

‘I understand that but-‘ she began emotively.