Sweet Promised Land

SWEET PROMISED LAND
A HEARTFELT TALE ABOUT SECOND CHANCES

ZAK AND TESS'S STORY: Eskauldun fededun—the Basque is faithful. Words Zak de Neuville had engraved inside the gold ring he gave Tess O'Reilly when he promised to love her forever then disappeared without a word. Seven years later, Zak's back in Baker's Creek with a son who had to have been conceived right after he'd left. Tess too has returned to help her ailing father run his logging camp. After a lengthy estrangement from him because of Zak, she's come home to rebuild the relationship she and her father once had, and she has no intention of getting involved with Zak again. The problem is, time has done nothing to temper the white-hot flame that's once again building.

LEVEL OF SENSUALITY: If you're looking for steamy stories you'll find instead sexy stories in a non-graphic way. My goal is to create heartwarming, action-packed romances about the power of love to triumph over adversity and the joy that comes with giving the gift of hope.

SPECIAL NOTE FROM THE There are two stories behind this story. Years ago when I was a photo journalist, I did two assignments, one for Earthwatch Magazine and the other for Farm and Ranch Living magazine. For Earthwatch I trekked along on a bald-eagle nest study in Washington's Olympic Rain Forest, in which the leader of the expedition climbed old-growth trees to take one baby eagle out of a nest with twins, for reinstating bald eagles on Santa Catalina Island off the coast of California. So I learned all about climbing trees to fetch eaglets in nests high above the forest floor. The assignment by the editor of Farm and Ranch Living magazine was to interview a father-daughter logging team about 60 miles up the Columbia River gorge. Coincidentally, and unknown to the editor, I owned 20 acres on Mosier Creek, which was in the area of my assignment. On hiking around their forested plot of land for the photo shoot it came to me that their land must butt up to mine, although on a different access road. And as it turned out, we were neighbors! The man's name was Gib Wiley, who in this story is Gib O'Reilly. However, while driving back to my place, I came up with the idea for a romance featuring a father-daughter logging team. I went on to write that story and sell it to Harlequin Superromance, and it was published as "Sweet Promised Land." So this is that story, revised since then and also set back in time to the 1970s when there were still logging camps in the mountain forests of eastern Oregon, and east of the mountains were Basque sheepherders who tended vast flocks with herding dogs. I hope you enjoy the story. Patricia