My novel, Betrayal, published by Second Wind Publishing, will be launched on June 1st. To give you a bit of a preview, I have chosen an excerpt from the book to post to my blog. I hope you enjoy it.

Ben stood for a moment, staring blankly at the closed door. He was trying to assimilate everything that had happened today. The arrival of the girl had been a surprise, and he had suspected all along she was hiding something, but now it was confirmed. Now he knew that not only was she hiding something, but it was something dangerous. Tori had had a very good reason not to follow the road back into town. She was running from someone and that someone had just come knocking at his door.

The two strangers had obviously followed her footprints through the snow. Ben had no doubt she had made no effort to cover her tracks. It had taken a lot of explaining on his part to convince them it was his footprints leading to the cabin, and he wasn’t so sure they were entirely convinced.

There had been no question in his mind of handing her over to them. True, he valued his private time alone in his cabin and he would have preferred she had chosen someone else’s lake to fall into, but he was not cold-blooded enough to turn her over to a couple of goons. She was in trouble and he wasn’t going to make it worse for her. Ben pivoted and looked speculatively towards the bedroom where she was hiding.

He knew she had heard everything that had been said, but hadn’t been able to understand. He also knew she had probably recognized the voices at the door and remembered them as belonging to the people who had inflicted those bruises on her neck and face. He was sure they were responsible for her injuries. Several pieces of the puzzle fit together now. There were still some gaping spaces, but, if he handled this carefully, he might be able to fill them in. The question was whether he really wanted to. After all, this cabin was meant to be his refuge, not a hotbed of intrigue.