FOREVER MINE e-book Now Available

The day has finally arrived. Forever Mine is now available as an e-book at most e-book stores.

Blurb:
Their love was fated…
A mail-order bride from Cincinnati, Ariah Scott traveled all the way to Oregon to marry one man, only to lose her heart to another. What will become of her now? Ever since her father died at the hands of a vengeful relative, Ariah's life has been shadowed by dark secrets. And now her forbidden desire for Bartholomew Noon fills her with uncertainty—and a secret longing that can never be fulfilled.

And forbidden…
From the moment Bartholomew saw Ariah standing alone at the Portland train station. the keeper of the Cape Meares Light was lost. Hopelessly in love with this angelic beauty who is fated to live beside him at the isolated lighthouse as the wife of another man, Bartholomew never dreams that destiny will someday bring them together. Is Ariah truly the woman he can cherish…forever?

Excerpt:
Cape Meares, Oregon 1891

To Bartholomew Noon the unceasing rumble of the sea and the melancholy cry of gulls were the very embodiment of his loneliness. Constant. Never ending. But loneliness was not the cause of the heavy sense of foreboding that had come over him on awakening that morning. A warning he knew better than to ignore.

In the hope of escaping the gloomy cloud hanging over him, he had hiked the steep trail down to the beach where a man could be alone. Here on the driftwood littered strand, he could be himself. No one to placate. No one from whom he must hide his innermost feelings in order to keep from being manipulated or tormented. Here, he could ponder his unwonted presentiment without interruption.

Out where the water deepened, a wave of translucent jade crested, curled in upon itself, then broke in a boiling froth that tossed and fumed until its force ebbed. Indolently, it crept toward him until the foam-tipped water encircled his boots, as if to embrace him in empathy and compassion, before being sucked back into the gray Pacific Ocean, stealing the sand from under him as it went.

A derisive snort erupted from deep inside Bartholomew's chest as he shrugged off his imaginings. The sea neither embraced nor understood him. What it did do, a few grains at a time, was erode away the land, the same way life with Hester was eroding away his soul.

The sky darkened from gray to black as a storm drew near. Fog, pushed by the wind herding the storm inland, had already obliterated the headland to the south where Hester and the lighthouse awaited him. The air grew more chill. Soon the rain would begin. Resolutely, he thrust his icy fingers into his coat pockets and turned his back on his beloved sea. It was time to see to his responsibilities.

The thick February mist formed droplets on his lashes and the tip of his sturdy nose. Under his keeper's cap, his damp sable hair formed a mass of loose curls.

"Come on, Harlequin," he called to a puffin feeding in the shallow water, "time to go."

The stubby bird scooped up a last mouthful of tiny mole crabs in its garish orange and red beak and waddled out of the surf toward the man, every bit as though it had understood the human command. Awkwardly, it flapped its raven wings, flying barely high enough to reach the man's broad shoulder, but it seemed content there. Bartholomew patted the sleek snowy feathers of its breast as he climbed the bluff that rose above the strand. The wing Bartholomew had mended was nearly as strong as ever. Any day now the bird would rejoin its own kind on the seastacks off the Oregon coast, leaving Bartholomew more alone than ever.

Evergreens draped in moss crowded close around him as he made his way up the trail, and added to the gloom of the foggy morn. Tree trunks, misshapened by ferns that rooted in every gnarl, appeared like phantoms in the drifting mist, writhing and moaning in the rising wind. It was when the track ran close enough to the cliff to offer a last view of the sea that Bartholomew saw the ship.

One second the vessel was there, the next it was gone. The fog congealed to the consistency of Hester's sausage gravy and laid every bit as heavily upon the sea as the gravy did in Bartholomew's stomach. His dark eyes strained to penetrate the ghostly vapor. If he was right, Pyramid Rock lay directly across the vessel's course.

Like a too-tight seam, the fog split apart. In the resultant window, he spotted the ship, heading straight for the hidden rock.

He screamed for the vessel to veer sharply portside, knowing in the more reasonable portion of his brain that he was much too far away to be heard.

The rising wind hurtled the ship closer to its destruction, as easily as a stone cast from a sling. To Bartholomew the scene played out in painful, slow motion, grating on his nerves like wood beneath a rasp. People were on that ship, people who would die. He wanted to rage at the heavens for allowing such tragedy.