by Clare Austin
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BLURB:
They call her Selkie. Muireann O'Malley often felt she was born of the sea but refuses to let sentimentality stand in the way of her crusade to protect the shore she has wandered since a small child. A patch of West Clare, Ireland, and a derelict building are all that stand between the cliffs she loves and the callous grip of progress.
Tynan Sloane should be content with success, but a dream beckons. O'Fallon's Pub in historic downtown Boston is for sale and Tynan wants to make it his. An unexpected inheritance of land in the west of Ireland could provide the financing he needs. He doesn't expect his quick trip to sell the land to rekindle youthful passion.
Fifteen years ago, they had an adolescent crush. Now disparate ambition and a legend as old as Ireland herself stand between them. Will love and myth collide to bring them together or tear them apart?
Read an exclusive excerpt:
Whomp. A virtual slap to the side of his head would have knocked him flat had he not already been prone. He’d rekindled his acquaintance with Muireann less than twenty-four hours ago. He’d either lied to himself or to her about why he was here. A lie by omission, but still not the entire truth.
Ty had promised himself he wouldn’t deviate from his master plan. That plan, initially, did not include a woman—in his bed or his heart.
“What am I looking at?” he asked, trying to distract his carnal thoughts.
“You have to be patient. Watch the water, there, just beyond that solitary rock.” She nodded in the direction of a shallow pool.
Ty tried not to think of the churning blue water and the three hundred foot drop. He gamely pushed back the memory of being caught in the tide and dragged out to sea, the struggle, and then the giving up. Twenty years had passed, and he still remembered clearly his battle for the surface of the water.
“There. Do you see her?” Muireann whispered and pulled him back to the present.
Against the dark water, Tynan’s vision focused on a silvery streak. Just when he thought he had made out a form, it disappeared. Then there were two and in a moment a third silken and sleek creature appeared.
“Seals?”
“Cool, huh? It’s a family.” Her voice caught. “I watched that pup being born right here on this strand. This is home to them. Harbor seals live in the same place all their lives.”
Muireann’s face softened and her lips turned up ever so slightly as she spoke of these animals. She reminded him of American girls’ reaction to puppies and newborn babies. The female need to nurture inspired an instinctual fear in the gut of most men, himself not included. When the time was right, Tynan would be more than ready for a nurturing female in his life.
A word about the author...
Clare Austin submitted her first manuscript to a publisher at the age of eight years. She wishes she still had that rejection letter.
Many years and not a few stories later, with characters knocking at the inside of her cranium and begging to be released, Clare’s romantic comedy, Butterfly, was published. There followed a suspenseful sequel, Angel’s Share, and Hot Flash, a women’s fiction/romance for mature women and the men who love them.
Clare lives in the beautiful Rocky Mountains and enjoys her horses, playing her violin, and traveling to Ireland every summer.
Website: www.clareaustin.com
Blog: http://clareaustin.wordpress.com/
Twitter: clareaustin @authorclare
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