This Winter

Calista Harlow is a young woman feeling as if she's on top of the world and ready for anything. Anything, except for a tragedy that shakes her to her very core and changes everything. She has responsibilities now that she can't handle, a new life that she never asked for and so much grief that she can hardly function. No longer a quiet, happy girl, she begins to live her life as if she has nothing to live fore anymore. From drunken dares to life-threatening shenanigans, she is willing to do anything as long as it makes her feel alive again. The only question is; will she live through it? She will if Wyatt Kestrel has anything to say about it. He intends to save her from herself, even if it means she drags him down with her. All in all, it should make for one wild winter.

Maya Reyes is twenty-six, quietly resilient, and out of options. When she takes a live-in nanny position for a Manhattan billionaire, she expects a difficult employer and a lonely child. She gets both, but she also gets Ethan Cole. Ethan lost his wife eighteen months ago and has been managing the grief the only way he knows how: by controlling everything around him. His apartment is spotless, his rules are laminated, his daughter Lily is the only crack in the armour he has built around his life, and it is through Lily that Maya begins to see the man underneath. What follows is not a dramatic love story, it is a quiet one. He carries her to her room when she falls asleep on the floor, he heats her soup when she hasn't eaten. He holds her hand in a dark car and lets go like it never happened. She cooks for him, confronts him, tells him truths no one else will, and slowly without either of them naming it, they become the most important person in each other's lives. But grief doesn't move in straight lines. When Ethan's fear gets the better of him, he tries to restore the distance, and nearly loses the one thing that has made him want to come back to life. It will take a four-year-old's unfiltered honesty, a letter Maya writes from the floor of her room, and a man finally choosing to stop running, for both of them to find their way to the other side of it. When Winter Blooms is a story about what love looks like before anyone admits it exists, and what it costs to let it.

The Williamson family sets out on a road trip to reach their family for the holidays. Along the ride they run into bad weather, multiple accidents and unnerving strangers. When a near accident forces them off the road, they meet a man who befriends the father. He tells him of this motel not too far up the street, in case they need a place to wait out the approaching snow storm. When the family is forced to find a place to stay, that motel seems to be their only option. Everything seems normal at first, but the longer the stay the more sinister things become until the family is forced to fight for their lives.. will they make it through the holidays? Will the survive this snow storm?

My mouth inched away from his, and we panted for air. “This feels wrong,” I whispered and looked away. I darted my tongue out to lick my lips, my body still pressed against his legs. He held my chin, and I turned my head to look back at him. “Good pleasures never feel right,” he said, as he settled me onto the bed, his body hovering over mine. He lifted my legs and wrapped them against his hips as he claimed the whole of me. Winter Cooper, a young budding journalist, thought her boyfriend was going to propose during their long-awaited vacation holiday in the private cabin they had booked. But when she caught him in bed with her sister, her dreams of getting married that year were shattered. Determined not to let the heartbreak ruin her final long gotten vacation holiday, Winter decided to retreat to the luxurious private cabin alone. However, upon her arrival, she met an unexpected guest: Gavril Hawthorne, her billionaire ex-boyfriend’s father. With nowhere else to go, they are forced to stay together. What started as an awkward encounter soon blossomed into an unexpected romance.

Before the world turned to ice, her family came knocking, ready to negotiate the terms of our marriage. They wanted more than commitment. They wanted three million dollars and three luxury homes. My parents shut them down immediately. It was ridiculous. Then, the storm hit. The blizzard sealed us inside the house. With numbers on their side and no mercy to spare, her family took control of everything. The food. The heat. Our chances. When we fought back, we lost. They dragged us outside and left us in the snow. We froze. Then, I opened my eyes. I was back to before it all began.

"Why are you angry?" I asked him. "It's not like we're a couple." He stopped, and stared at me, boring my eyes with his emerald eyes. "If we are…" He paused, clenching his jaw, "then am I allowed to be angry?” I looked at him like he was insane. “Then we'll take it to that level." He continued. "I'm serious. I want you.” Leizel Snow Garcia Waterstrings is not just fierce. She's more than that. Ending up as an ice cream worker in a local ice cream shop, it was her one step of becoming a strong and independent woman. And that's when a cold-hearted stranger came in view. Eion Aurelio Hudson. Out of seven billion people in the world, the two hard-headed people crossed paths, making her "strong and independent woman" facade slowly fall apart. With all the dramas, free food, forgotten birthdays, Robot handling, idiots around, and emotional crisis, will she be able to melt his winter heart with her blazing fire or will this fire be put away instantly? ``` ``` One Blazing Head. One Winter Heart. Two Hard-headed people. A huge disaster. (Book 1 of Hearts Series but can be read as standalone)