Blown Away

by Muriel Jensen

Overview

A rogue wind blows hang glider Kara Abbott off course and snags her on a branch jutting from a canyon wall. The wind buffets her. She fears the branch won't hold. Then, from the cliff above, comes help....

Being rescued by gorgeous K-9 Officer Cole Winslow is a fantasy come true for single mom Kara Abbott--especially when Cole continues to be there for her and her eight-year-old son. Yet Kara senses she wants more from Cole than he's willing to give. And Cole is holding back--but not for the reasons she thinks. Now it's Kara's turn to be there for Cole, and rescue him...from the grip of his past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781426833038
Publisher:	Harlequin
Publication date:	06/01/2009
Series:	Harlequin Code Red - Direct Only
Sold by:	HARLEQUIN
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	205,596
File size:	158 KB

About the Author

Muriel Jensen always wanted to be a writer. She grew up in an industrial town in southeastern Massachusetts populated with wonderful and interesting people. They fill her head now as she creates characters for romance novels. Her family moved to Los Angeles when she was ten.

Muriel went right to work after high school, first for Pacific Telephone then, as the need to write became stronger, she joined the secretarial pool at the Los Angeles Times while taking a correspondence course in fiction writing.

She met her husband-to-be, Ron, at the Xerox machine. (There were two copiers in a nine-story building. That tells you how long ago it was.)

They married in 1968. In the first few years of their marriage, Ron edited several small newspapers that were always understaffed. Muriel sometimes helped out as a reporter and soon learned that journalism was not for her--editors got really upset when you made up stuff. Muriel decided to stick with fiction.

She and her husband adopted three children in 1973 after moving to Oregon. Suddenly she had many new priorities, but she couldn't shake the need to write down the scenarios in her head. She worked on them at night while the children watched television.

In early 1983, word was out that Harlequin was opening a New York office and looking for manuscripts about American women written by American authors. Muriel was managing a bookstore at the time and had written an entire novel between customers during a long, rainy winter. She buffed it up and sent it in.

That was the beginning of her romance writing career.

Today, she has three adult children, a growing army of grandchildren, four cats and a Labrador retriever mix named Amber. About ten years ago, Ron went back to school to work on a degree in fine art. He built a studio in their basement and supplies two galleries with his work.

They live in an old Victorian home on a hill overlooking the Columbia River. Every day Muriel watches freighters, Coast Guard cutters, yachts, and fishing boats come and go and speculates about the relationships of those aboard, and those they've left behind. She says it always inspires her.

Muriel has sold more than 70 books and novellas, and has had such a great time it's almost embarrassing.

Read an Excerpt

Blown Away

---

By Muriel Jensen

Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.

Copyright © 2004 Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-373-61288-5

---

Chapter One

OFFICER COLE WINSLOW raced through mid-morning traffic toward the cliffs that hugged the crescent-shaped coastline of Courage Bay, California. Behind him in the SUV's cage, Braveheart of the Castle, aka Mel, a one-hundred-and-four-pound black and tan German shepherd, moved restlessly, his tension palpable.

"Easy, Mel," Cole said, turning inland instead of toward the beach. The panicked call from Fly With Frank had reported a missing hang-gliding instructor. Frank had watched as the woman was blown inland over the ridge by a strong gust and he had been unable to raise her on her cell phone since then. That was twenty minutes ago. With so many of Courage Bay's police officers at the scene of a multiple motor-vehicle accident downtown, Cole and Mel were responding alone.

Mel replied with a low, throaty bark. Cole recognized it as conversation. He and the three-year-old dog had lived and worked together for eighteen months, and so far, Mel was the best partner Cole had ever had.

He was cross-trained for search and rescue as well as simple patrol and narcotics detection.

As Cole followed the road that led into the green foothills, he scanned the trees and brush rising around him, for some sign of the woman. The sail of the glider was yellow and red, accordingto Frank's description, the woman tall and fit.

"She can take care of herself up there," Frank had said, the fear audible in his voice, "but the wind can slam you into the hillside and splinter you. Find her, Cole. She's got an eight-year-old boy."

Cole heard a vehicle behind him and checked his rearview mirror to see Gehlen Lester's battered Jeep. Gehlen was the city's Parks and Recreation director and a member of the city's High Angle Rescue Team. His hobby was climbing and he'd done it all over the globe. Cole had thanked the fates that he'd been able to locate his friend on a Saturday, when he was usually off on some adventure. Gehlen was the only member of the five-man team Cole had found this morning. He pulled to a stop at the base of a steep slope.

The cliffs before them rose straight up about three hundred feet. Gehlen parked behind him, and Cole leaped out and ran around to the back of his vehicle to open the tailgate for Mel.

The dog flew out as though shot from a cannon, then waited, bristling, for a command.

"Any idea at all where she could be?" Gehlen asked, shouldering a backpack. He was average in height, but wiry and tough. Married three times, he was a favorite with the ladies. At least, those who weren't married to him ...

Cole pointed to the highest ridge. "Frank says he saw her disappear over there and go down on a gust. She's probably trapped somewhere in the Embrace."

That fold in the hills had earned the name because the ridge curled in on itself like an embracing arm, creating a concealed paradise of live oaks, big-leaf maples, and madrone. There was a pool on the far side of the Embrace that figured in a Native legend about a woman seeing the man of her dreams reflected in it. Or something like that. But horses were needed to make that climb.

Gehlen frowned worriedly. "Well, let's hope it carried her outside the curl of the ridge. If she went in, she may very well be at the bottom. Nothing for the wind to do in there but slam her around."

"Then we'd better know that before we start." Cole pointed in the direction of the ridge's base. "Mel, find!"

Mel ran off, barking, and Cole and Gehlen hurried in pursuit. The ground was covered with chaparral, a community of fire-adapted shrubs, and the slope was sharp and uneven.

Cole stopped halfway up to drag in air, and used the moment to scan the hillside. The land above them was more thickly wooded, and a bright yellow school bus could be lost among the dark green shadows, he thought fatalistically. What chance did a slender woman have?

Gehlen smacked him on the back as he passed.

"Wuss!" he accused. "I keep telling you to come work out with me instead of sitting in the Bar and Grill, swilling beer."

"I do not swill!" Cole followed him. "I have one, once in a while. You just always happen to come in when I'm there."

"Yeah, yeah."

They were both breathing heavily by the time they reached the entrance to the Embrace. The hills rose almost straight up around them like a wide-mouthed cylinder, the bright blue sky visible at the top.

Cole scanned the green floor of the Embrace and saw nothing.

Gehlen looked up, rotating his body as he scanned the trees and bushes clinging to the hillside.

Cole did the same, lifting his binoculars and turning slowly, carefully.

Suddenly Mel took off at a run, scrambling up the sharp incline, barking in controlled bursts. Cole had come to recognize the sounds as meaning "I've found something!"

"What?" Gehlen demanded.

Following the dog's path, Cole moved the binoculars back and forth, occasionally adjusting the lenses to sharpen the image.

If Mel was chasing a wood rat or a skunk, he was in trouble.

But Mel was too much of a pro to do that.

Cole just had to wait and see where he went.

THIS IS A METAPHOR for my life, Kara Abbott thought, dangling limply in the harness she'd set out to test an hour ago. Hanging by a thread.

She estimated that it had been about an hour since a gust of wind had turned her effort to check the new harness into every glider's nightmare. She'd been slapped into the side of the hill, where, fortunately, her gear had taken most of the impact. But it now hung uselessly beneath her, its flying and landing wires caught in the same tree from which she hung suspended over a two-hundred-foot drop.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Blown Away by Muriel Jensen Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---