On April 29th, 2019, I will be releasing my first ever contemporary romance novel, called A Love that Endures!
It’ll be a new and exciting experience, with plenty of emotions, and characters I think you’ll fall in love with.
Below I have shared with you a special SNEAK PEEK of the first three chapters, so keep turning the pages!:
A Love that Endures
Chapter 1: David
Embankment, London
From the shadows of a stone underpass, a man stepped out into a yellowing pool of old-fashioned lamplight, a round wooden clock clutched in both hands. Before him stretched a dark swathe of cardboard, dim torchlight, and hunched figures—a small colony of makeshift homes perched by the river. It was where the invisibles of Waterloo lived. The residents of the city that the brisk traders, excited tourists, and gallery-goers didn’t want to see.
David’s clothes were as worn-down as those of the rest of the homeless, his hair and thick beard just as unkempt, his name unknown to most. Few Londoners ever stopped to look at him. But if they had, they might have paused for a moment—taken aback by his unusually upright posture. By the stark handsomeness of his face, an angular, arrogant jawline and Roman nose, and his youth, at odds with the rest of his shabby appearance. By the long, elegant fingers, better suited to the keys of a piano than riffling through waste bins.
Eventually, though, the observer would have turned away. The most marked similarity between David and the rest of his kind was all too obvious: the same haunted and defeated look that shadowed his face.
A roll of thunder echoed overhead, and David kept moving. He approached the colony, his eyes fixed on the far corner, where a group of four was huddled in front of a low wall.
“Whoa. It’s…Clock Man?” One of the group—a wiry, plastic-swaddled male—rose from where he’d been crouched, his pale, grime-streaked face stretching into a broad grin.
“Shut up,” David muttered, heading for the short wall.
“Where did you find that?” the man asked as David passed. “And isn’t it for me?” His ginger eyebrows rose in offense.
“Not tonight, Charles,” David replied, ignoring the first question. “Didn’t you hear the thunder?” He placed the large, old clock on the ground and leaned over the brick wall, where he had hidden the materials for his own shelter.
Charles groaned. “Don’t care, mate. When it’s this bloody cold, it’ll be worth burning even if we only get five minutes from it.”
“Don’t be daft,” a coarse female voice reprimanded. “That thing’ll last us a few hours. We’re not risking ruining it in the rain! Here, hand it to me, David, love—I’ll keep it with me. My box is always dry.”
“I’ll bet it is...” Charles replied.
“Oh shut it.”
David sighed as he turned back around, his arms loaded with materials. “Help yourself, then, Tina,” he addressed the thirty-something-year-old woman. He nodded at the clock before proceeding toward the patch of empty ground next to Giles’s shelter.
“Long day, eh?” the older man asked as David passed his tent.
David paused to look the ex-businessman in the eyes. “Yeah,” he replied simply.
The lines of Giles’ tired face deepened as he chuckled—then some more as he rasped out a heavy cough.
David managed to return a faint smile. “You’d better get inside, old man. You’ve still got that fleece blanket, right?”
Giles nodded slowly. “Yeah. Don’t worry about me.”
David nodded and continued on his way. He had to get set up before the rain started.
“Hey—wait, Tina!” Charles called out behind him. “Hand me that thing for a sec. It looks antique.”
“Says the man who was about to burn it on sight,” Tina snapped.
Letting the bickering of his neighbors fade into the background, David arranged his collection of plastics and cardboard and got to work on his pop-up home. He set up as quickly as he could in a race against the blackening sky, then pushed open the plastic flap leading to his shelter’s dark, musty interior and crawled inside.
He fumbled in his pocket for his rusty light, switched it on, and began to organize himself for the night. He pushed his boots and coat to one end of the shelter while gathering some newspapers he had collected and smoothing them out over his coarse woolen blanket. They would provide extra warmth during the night, as well as help to absorb any water that seeped through the ceiling. He was almost done laying them out when rain began to batter the roof. The newspaper right in front of him crumpled, then began to stain under an onslaught of drops.
But the tent roof had held fast. This was not the rain. This water was spilling from his own eyes.
For they’d caught a glimpse of a bold line of text. A headline that drove the cold already inhabiting his limbs straight to his heart.
Barely breathing, he clutched the sheet of paper and shook it straight with one hand, his other illuminating the text with his light.
“Princess in London for Grand Engagement at Palace” the headline blared.
The princess in question was Princess Katerina De Courtes, touted by the media to be one of the most beautiful and eligible bachelorettes in the world. “A modern day Grace Kelly,” no less.
And at the sight of her picture, every memory David had fought to forget over the past five years came crashing back into him, ripping the breath from his lungs and crushing his windpipe.
The shock. The pain. The grief. The anger. The disgrace.
The injustice.
Each one a searing bolt of emotion, hot-wired to his chest.
Flashes of scenes lit up his mind like an unstoppable movie, forcing him to relive every second of it all.
