BURNING EMBERS
by Hannah Fielding
It’s got a gorgeous new look, but definitely still worth reading.
Coral Sinclair is a beautiful but naïve twenty-five-year-old
photographer who has just lost her father. She's leaving the life she's known
and traveling to Kenya to take ownership of her inheritance – the plantation
that was her childhood home – Mpingo. On the voyage from England, Coral meets
an enigmatic stranger to whom she has a mystifying attraction. She sees him
again days later on the beach near Mpingo, but Coral's childhood nanny tells
her the man is not to be trusted. It is rumored that Rafe de Monfort, owner of
a neighboring plantation and a nightclub, is a notorious womanizer having an
affair with her stepmother, which may have contributed to her father's death.
Circumstance confirms Coral's worst suspicions, but when
Rafe's life is in danger she is driven to make peace. A tentative romance
blossoms amidst a meddling ex-fiancé, a jealous stepmother, a car accident, and
the dangerous wilderness of Africa. Is Rafe just toying with a young woman's
affections? Is the notorious womanizer only after Coral's inheritance? Or does
Rafe's troubled past color his every move, making him more vulnerable than
Coral could ever imagine?
Excerpt:
Though the afternoon
sunshine was beginning to fade, the air was still hot and heavy. Coral was
struck by the awesome silence that surrounded them. Not a bird in sight, no
shuffle in the undergrowth, even the insects were elusive. They climbed a
little way up the escarpment over the plateau and found a spot that dominated
the view of the whole glade. Rafe spread out the blanket under an acacia tree.
They ate some chicken sandwiches and eggs and polished off the bottle of
cordial. They chatted casually, like old friends, about unimportant mundane
things, as though they were both trying to ward off the real issue, to stifle
the burning embers that were smoldering dangerously in both their minds and
their bodies.
All the while, Coral had
been aware of the need blossoming inside her, clouding all reason with desire.
She could tell that he was fighting his own battle. Why was he holding back?
Was he waiting for her to make the first move? Rafe was lying on his side,
propped up on his elbow, his head leaning on his hand, watching her through his
long black lashes. The rhythm of his breathing was slightly faster, and she
could detect a little pulse beating in the middle of his temple, both a
suggestion of the turmoil inside him. Rafe put out a hand to touch her but
seemed to change his mind and drew it away. Coral stared back at him, her eyes
dark with yearning, searching his face.
The shutters came down.
“Don’t, Coral,” Rafe whispered, “don’t tease. There’s a limit to the amount of
resistance a man has.”
“But Rafe…”
A flash of long blue
lightning split the sky, closely followed by a crash of thunder. Coral
instinctively threw herself into Rafe’s arms, hiding her face against his broad
chest. She had always had a strong phobia of thunderstorms. Now she knew why
the place had seemed eerie, why there had been no bird song or insect
tick-tocks, no scuffling and ruffling in the undergrowth. Even though the skies
when they entered the valley had not foretold the electrical storm that was to
come, just like with the animals, her instinct had told her that something was
wrong. But she had been too distracted by the turbulence crackling between her
and Rafe to pay attention to the changing sky.
Rafe, too, was shaken
out of his daze and turned his head to see that the sun had dropped behind the
mountain. Dense clouds had swept into the valley and were hanging overhead like
a black mantle.
“Where did that come
from? No storm was forecast for today?” he muttered, jumping up.
There was another
tremendous peal of thunder, lightning lit up the whole glade, and again another
crash. Then the heavy drops of rain came hammering down against the treetops,
pouring down through the foliage.
A wind was starting up.
Without hesitation, Rafe folded the blanket into a small bundle and tucked it
under his arm. He slung the hamper over his shoulder, and lifting Coral into
his arms, he climbed his way up to the next level of the escarpment where a
ledge of rock was jutting out and found the entrance to a cave where they could
shelter. Coral was shivering. She tucked her face into his shoulder, her
fingers tightly gripping his shirt. She was completely inert, paralyzed by
fear. They were both drenched.
There was no way they
would be able to get back to Narok tonight. Coral knew from her childhood that
storms were always long in this part of the country, and through her panic she
prayed that he wouldn’t be piloting that little plane back in this howling
gale. At least here they were protected from the storm. It was not yet
completely dark. Rafe looked around, still holding her tightly against him.
Coral couldn’t herself as she sobbed uncontrollably.
“Shush, it’s all right,”
he whispered softly in her ear. “It’s only a storm. By tomorrow morning it’ll
all be over.” He brushed her tears away as more fell.
“I’m going to have to
set you down for a moment, Coral. I need to light us a fire and get you out of
those wet clothes.”
Review Quotes:
First class –
beautifully written with an intriguing premise and interesting characters. –
Romancing the Book
Hot, sultry,
breathtakingly beautiful and entirely unpredictable… I think the end
analysis of a good read is whether it lingers, and this one certainly did.
– A Bookish Libraria
It warmed every corner
of my heart. – Cocktails and Books
Hannah Fielding created
a backdrop for this story that held me spellbound. – Unwrapping Romance ... read my review
An epic romance like
Hollywood used to make… – Peterborough Evening Telegraph
A truly compelling and
romantic tale that you won’t want to put down. – Go City Girl
The kind of romance that
makes you sigh dreamily… – Bookish Temptations
About the Author:
Hannah Fielding is a
novelist, a dreamer, a traveller, a mother, a wife and an incurable romantic.
The seeds for her writing career were sown in early childhood, spent in Egypt,
when she came to an agreement with her governess Zula: for each fairy story
Zula told, Hannah would invent and relate one of her own. Years later –
following a degree in French literature, several years of travelling in Europe,
falling in love with an Englishman, the arrival of two beautiful children and a
career in property development – Hannah decided after so many years of yearning
to write that the time was now. Today, she lives the dream: she writes full
time, splitting her time between her homes in Kent, England, and the South of
France, where she dreams up romances overlooking breathtaking views of the
Mediterranean.
Her first novel, BURNING EMBERS, is a vivid, evocative love story set against the backdrop of
tempestuous and wild Kenya of the 1970s, reviewed by one newspaper as ‘romance
like Hollywood used to make’. Her new novel, The Echoes of Love, is a story of
passion, betrayal and intrigue set in the romantic and mysterious city of
Venice and the beautiful landscape of Tuscany.
Social links:
Website: www.hannahfielding.net
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/fieldinghannah
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fieldinghannah
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5333898.Hannah_Fielding
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/fieldinghannah
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fieldinghannah
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5333898.Hannah_Fielding
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