Winter winds off the Atlantic have turned the tourist mecca of Seaside Creek, New Jersey, into a ghost town. Dr. Christina Paxton, however, is growing accustomed to living with ghosts. Recently widowed, the emergency room physician has returned to the shore with her young daughter, house-sitting a sprawling beachside Victorian home. One night, her two-year-old calls her by a name that makes Christina’s blood run cold and sends her thoughts spiraling back thirty years. 

Deeply unnerved, and certain someone else is in the house, she flees with her child into the cold night, only to come face-to-face with Chief Harris Bowers, a former classmate with whom Christina has a complicated history. Now divorced, Harris hopes to mend their past, but Christina is wary of being played for a fool again. As threats emerge, Christina and her small family find themselves in grave danger. It seems there is no one she can put her trust in—least of all herself.

Plunging from a well-bred lady to society’s most scandalous outcast, one woman faces danger and romance with a determination to live on her own terms
London’s high society assumes that Alexandria Cassell, a lady of impeccable lineage, is eager to wed the first suitable aristocrat who proposes. But Alexandria despises the shallow mindlessness of London society. Craving adventure, she steals down to the docks and stows away aboard a merchant ship bound for Canada. Drake Barrett loves the open seas. As captain of his own vessel, he can escape his life as a duke, where he would be doomed to the empty chatter of glittering ballrooms. But when he finds a delicate beauty aboard ship, he forgets everything but a man’s desires. From a fleeting island paradise to a country caught in the sudden crossfire of war, Drake and Alexandria give in to a passion that just might reveal their true passions . . . if a shocking act of treachery doesn’t separate them forever. 

My Heart's Desire is the first book of the Barrett Family series, which concludes with Samantha.

"Like most bad ideas, it started with alcohol." 

When a vicious serial rapist terrorizes the Bay Area, lowly beat officer Lukas Richter knows he can help. It’s said he can see through your skin and is more effective than a polygraph at detecting lies, which might seem like it would be a killer talent in law enforcement. But when a drunken boast has Richter seeing something he shouldn’t, he will be sorely tested: Does he have what it takes to make it in the SFPD --- or will his career dissolve before it even starts? 

If this short story were a movie it would be rated R for hard language and intense violence.