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The Wrong Man for Her ISBN-10: 0373714181 ISBN-13: 978-0373714186 May 2007 excerpt! Nick Logan, brother of the hero in TELL ME NO LIES, has never been able to trust women. After his mother kicked him out of the house as a teenager because he couldn't follow her rules, he went on the street, got into drugs, and hit bottom. He's made something of himself now, twenty years later, counseling troubled teens like the boy he used to be, but he can't get his personal life back on track. The one and only time he fell in love, with Madelyn Walsh, he broke it off because he couldn't commit. Now, he's back in his old place of employment, the Crime Victims Resource Center, and Maddie is his boss. Sparks fly between the couple as they work to help their kids and avoid any personal entanglement.

Welcome to one of my favorite Superromances, THE WRONG MAN FOR HER. The idea for this story came to me in two parts.  Every summer I work at a camp for kids with cancer. Our group meets to wait for the bus at the Crime Victims Resource Center in my home town. The place is a beautiful old brick building in the center of the city, and houses organizations which help the victims of crimes go on with their lives.  I thought, “What a great place this is. And there would be so many storylines for a novel.”  I couldn’t get the idea out of my mind all year long. 

So when I finished TELL ME NO LIES, which had Nick Logan, the hero’s brother, as a teen counselor, I decided he’d be a great employee for a crime victims center.  So I moved him to Rockford, New York, where his brother relocates at the end of that book, and set up his own story.   (No need to read his brother’s story first, though, as this one is self-contained.)

My fictional organization is a self-contained operation, not just a resource center; I set it up based on other national crime victims centers. These people do wonderful work all across the country, helping those who have been victimized by crime emotionally, legally and practically.  Because of my background as a teacher, and my love for helping kids, I made Nick the counselor for teenagers, and created a cadre of interesting people for him to connect with.  Their stories are heartbreaking, but very real.  And, of course, Nick is able to make great strides with them.

He ends up working with the love of his life, a woman he broke off with three years before because of baggage in his past. Interestingly, she’s now his boss. They hate working together and opening old wounds, and resurrecting old feelings, but they’ll do anything for kids, which make them immensely admirable to me.  And yes, in the course of helping two of the most troubled teens, they find a way to overcome their differences and past hurts.  What I like most about their relationship is that even though their split was wrenching for both of them, they never intentionally hurt each other. 

Finally, the secondary characters in THE WRONG MAN FOR HER really touched me. Both the staff and kids found their way into my heart and I hope the make their way into yours, too.