Finding Dalia (Pine Mountain Estates #4)

A young lady who has known nothing but slavery since the age of nine.
A young man who wants to be her hero.
And the dark powers that will do anything to keep that from happening...

What if you'd been a slave since childhood, and were suddenly thrown out into the streets without a clue about how the world works?

This is exactly what happens to eighteen-year-old Dalia. First forced to be a choir member from ages nine to sixteen by a white man claiming to be her adoptive father, then sold off to another white man who kept her chained in a bedroom to do computer work, she dreams of one day escaping to find her freedom.

She doesn't have to. One day, Ted, her owner, insists that a "voice" told him to set her free. But despite gifting her with a backpack full of items to help her survive, Ted doesn't give her what she really needs to claim her freedom: knowledge about how the outside world really works.

Just when she starts to figure out a plan to get back to her homeland of Kenya so she can avoid white people – especially white men – forever, she discovers that complete strangers know her name. Frightened that she'll be sent back to Ted, she runs...into a stranger who not only knows her name, but also claims to be the foster brother of two of her other fellow slaves.
She can't believe a thing he says, because he's white. Unfortunately, by this time she's lost all the money Ted had given her, and finds herself at the mercy of this young man.

Jared Whitlock, a twenty-year-old who has traveled to Phoenix for a missionary conference, does his best to convince Dalia that he's telling her the truth about who he is. But she's skittish, and if she's not giving him the cold shoulder, she's running away from him.

At first, all Jared wants is to reunite Dalia with her African friends, his foster sisters who live in Oklahoma. But it doesn't take long for his desires to get more selfish.

He is attracted to her, and feels an odd compulsion to be her protector.

Dalia works hard to deny and resist the attraction she feels toward Jared, believing that she'll never be happy unless she's completely independent. She doesn't want a protector, especially a white one.

What she doesn't realize is that she needs a protector. The voices talking to Ted, the ones he's heard for years, are demanding that he recapture Dalia and bring her back into his home. If he doesn't obey, the voices will drive him completely mad.

Dalia and Ted must both learn that there is always a price to pay for freedom...and it doesn't always look the way you think it should.