Come Home With Me

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When I introduced Aaron Gabriel’s sister Miranda and her two-year-old daughter Ariana in Fly Away With Me, I knew Miranda would one day have her own love story.

She’s a prickly character, impulsive and emotional, too trusting when it comes to men, and way too proud. She’s definitely not perfect, and yet to me her flaws make her even more interesting and appealing. So do her warm heart and her fierce love for Ariana and Aaron. I knew she had loads of potential!

Back when she was in high school in Blue Moon Harbor, she was a “bad girl,” so I thought it would be fun to match her up, as an adult, with a former classmate who’d been a “good boy.”

On the surface, I was conjuring an “attraction of opposites” story. Miranda had a totally dysfunctional childhood and her single-parent addict mom died of an overdose. Luke had a loving home with a teacher mom and chiropractor dad, and his father died of cancer. Miranda hated Blue Moon Harbor and ran away at the age of fifteen, intending never to return; Luke loves the island and has no intention of ever leaving. She’s fallen in love lots of times, and always been left broken-hearted; he fell in love with his childhood best friend, they married, and they planned a bright future together—until she died in childbirth. Miranda never finished high school and has worked as a waitress and salesclerk; Luke got a degree in veterinary medicine and loves his work as Destiny Island’s only vet. She’s prickly, proud, and independent; he’s mellow and believes there’s nothing wrong with asking for help.

Don’t they sound just perfect for each other? LOL. Well, that’s what I thought.

At heart, they’re both good people, single parents who love their kids above all else, adults with broken hearts who deserve to love and be loved.

So that’s the story I wrote. Luke sees Miranda as a rosebud with thorns, and really the whole book is about how her emotional connection with Luke—and with her expanding group of family and friends—helps her shed her prickles so her inner beauty can unfold.

She learns that what she felt for the guys in her past wasn’t true love, and what she feels for Luke is something brand new. He learns that even a guy who’d believed himself to be a one-woman man is capable of opening his heart to love again.
I hope you’ll join Miranda and Luke as they take their rocky journey toward true love.