Worlds
Apart
Blurb:
You never forget your first love.
Even if it hurts your chance at second love.
In Ontario Anjaline realizes her dream of becoming a journalist for one of Toronto’s leading newspapers.
In Hope Valley Gabriel
apprentices to become a skilled carpenter. Together they were two kids in love. Apart they have a chance to grow into the people they
were meant to be. If part of that growth means taking a chance on new love, will they embrace it? Or will they cling to what they once had and miss out on what the future has to offer? And if they do take a second chance on love, does that mean they will never see each other again?
Maybe there is something even better in store for them both.
Blurb:
You never forget your first love.
Even if it hurts your chance at second love.
In Ontario Anjaline realizes her dream of becoming a journalist for one of Toronto’s leading newspapers.
In Hope Valley Gabriel
apprentices to become a skilled carpenter. Together they were two kids in love. Apart they have a chance to grow into the people they
were meant to be. If part of that growth means taking a chance on new love, will they embrace it? Or will they cling to what they once had and miss out on what the future has to offer? And if they do take a second chance on love, does that mean they will never see each other again?
Maybe there is something even better in store for them both.
A Young Adult Romance
Goodreads
Amazon US
Smashwords
I was given this book by author for honest review. The characters grow on you. Anjaline and Gabriel sweethearts from a distance. Can they make it work, or turn to others as time goes by? The passage of time and distance take a toll how much of one I’ll let you read to find out all the angst and drama that unfolds.
Excerpt:
Eastern Plains
Victoria Elizabeth
Tanbrook was just eight years old when she shortened her name to Ria, a name
more befitting her tomboy image. It was
a cool spring day and along with her six-year-old brother, she pretended that the
fence running the length of their property was a tight wire.
Squinting into the mid
afternoon sun as she held tight to Nicolas’ hand for balance, Victoria
frowned. “Look at me, Nicky. Do I look like a Victoria?” Before he could say a word, she answered for
him. “No. And I’m not an Elizabeth either. What on earth was Mother thinking when she
named me after two queens?”
She released his hand and jumped
down, bending her knees slightly to cushion the fall. Smoothing out the dress their mother had
insisted she wear for the weekly visit to their aunt and uncle’s farm, she
leaned against the fence and sighed.
Nicolas, in his usual teasing
fashion, leaned against the fence beside her and dropped a frog onto her
shoulder. She sniffed, scooped the
croaking amphibian into her hands and smiled at it before setting the
bewildered creature gently on the ground.
Seemingly unperturbed, he
shrugged. “Beats me, Vickie. Maybe it’s because you’re the only girl in
the family. So, you got a special
name. What’s the big deal?” He jumped out of the way when she tossed the
frog in his face in a rare show of temper and stomped away. “What? Hey, Vickie! Wait up! What’d I say?” He finally caught up with her, confused and
out of breath. She spun, nearly crashing
into him.
“I’m not Victoria or Vickie.
My name is Ria and if you ever tell anyone my middle name, I swear
I’ll beat you senseless, Nicolas Tanbrook.”
Snatching a full head of wheat from
between the slats of the rust red fence, she popped a few kernels into her
mouth, chewed and spit out the husk, missing Nicolas’ shoes by inches.
“Aunt Sharon named all of her kids
simple names. You can’t get much more
basic than Bryan, James, Eric, Peter and David.” She narrowed her eyes when it seemed like
Nicolas might laugh. Their mother called
them in for a snack and Victoria sighed.
As she passed Nicolas, she gave him a swat for good measure.
Nicolas shook his head and grinned,
following his sister into the house.
When his mother raised an eyebrow, he shrugged and said, “Vickie wants
to be called Ria now. Oops. I mean Victoria
wants to be called Ria.”
Behind his sister’s back he twirled
his finger near his ear and made a face that conveyed the idea that he thought
she was crazy. Victoria spun at their
mother’s reprimand and glared at him suspiciously. He returned her glare with an air of
innocence and strolled in the other direction.
~*~*~
As time passed and Victoria grew
older she spent more and more time by herself up on the roof of her father’s
barn. There she could dream as she gazed
out over the vast fields of amber and gold.
From an early age she had shown an aptitude for painting, and would
spend hours at a time copying the view before her onto canvas. A slight breeze often rippled through the
wheat like waves on an endless sea, and before long she was lost in her art.
She envied the occasional eagle that
swooped into the ocean in search of its prey, and dreamt that someday she would
see what a real ocean was like. Someday
she might even see a mountain outside a Geography textbook. Someday she might even smell salt air. And maybe someday she would have more than
just Nicolas and her cousins as friends.
Homeschooling seemed to make the most
sense since they lived so far out in the country. Secretly she admitted to a deep-rooted loneliness,
and imagined what it would be like to have friends. Not being the type to wallow in self pity,
she would shake her head and laugh whenever she felt melancholy. Then she would take a stroll down the road to
her aunt and uncle’s farm for a visit with her cousins.
She learned to spit like the boys,
haul heavy bales and clean out the pig pen as soon as her cousins saw that she
was capable. Victoria picked up tips on
how to be one of the guys quickly. She
spent a lot of time with her cousins and brother, learning how to run a
farm. As a result of all the time spent
hard at work in the blazing sun, her skin was tanned to a deep bronze and
freckles dusted her nose and cheeks.
The only allowances for femininity
that Victoria made were in regards to her hair and choice of tattoos. She let her hair grow down to her waist, only
allowing the barber to trim it once a year.
She wore it in a tight braid to be practical, and only let it down when
she was alone in the fields after dark.
Victoria went with her cousins to get
her first tattoo when she was fifteen.
Bryan was the first to tease her about her choice of tattoos, but she
ignored the laughter of the boys who were more like brothers than cousins. As stubborn as ever, she held firm.
“I’m not getting skulls or dragons,
guys. Besides, if I’m getting something
permanent, I want it to be something I won’t be embarrassed to show Mother.”
Peter, David, Eric and James laughed
but Bryan seemed impressed that she was so independent. Nicolas waited outside the parlour, claiming
a great aversion to the sight of needles.
While they all stood around joking
that she would cry before the needle even touched her, she squared her
shoulders. She bit down on her lip hard
enough to make it bleed, but somehow managed to keep from screaming as the
tattoo artist burned and inked in the tender flesh at the base of her spine.
“Wow, Ria. You’re a lot tougher than I thought,” Eric
said as he helped her stand. As they all
strolled down the street to the local Dairy Queen®, Eric’s twin, James,
gave her a high five and winked.
Nicolas grinned and rested his hand
on Victoria’s shoulder. “That’s my big
sister; one of the guys and probably tougher than all of you jokers put
together.” He ducked the swat David gave
him and laughed.
“Come here and say that to my face,
half pint!” David said, a mock frown on his face as he raced after him.
The two youngest Tanbrooks engaged in
a boxing match until they reached the door of the Dairy Queen®, and
Peter stopped them with a look. He
sprung for several huge Blizzards® in honour of her bravery and Nicolas
just shook his head in awe as they all ate.
Bryan, her co-conspirator, secretly slipped a little of the frozen
dessert down the back of her shirt and she sent him a smile of gratitude even
as she worked to suppress the shiver.
While they ate and the boys engaged
in light-hearted banter, Victoria tried not to think about their next trip into
town. Peter, the oldest and in his eyes
the wisest, reminded her that such a detailed tattoo would take several visits
to the tattoo parlour. “Why you chose
such a big tattoo for your first time is beyond me, Ria. Now that you’ve done it though, you’re kind
of committed. You up for this?”
Victoria, who was trying to swallow
the pain along with her ice cream, nodded, wondering at her own sanity. It would take close to three months to
complete the tattoo. When it was done,
the result pleased her immensely. Her
mind fairly buzzed with the freedom it represented.
~*~*~
On her sixteenth birthday, Victoria
bribed Bryan to take her back for another tattoo. “I’ll do all your chores for a week, if you
take me into town for another tattoo.
Please, Bry?”
Bryan shook his head and grabbed the
keys to his dad’s pickup. He barely hid
a grin when she skipped along beside him.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.
This is the last one though, right?”
She pressed her tongue against her
teeth as though thinking before tossing her waist-length braid over her
shoulder and winking at him. “Not on
your life. I’m getting you to bring me
back for a belly button tattoo on my seventeenth.”
Bryan raised an eyebrow and crossed
his arms, letting the truck idle. “One,
you’d better be getting a female artist, because there’s no way in Hades I’m
letting some strange guy touch your stomach.
Two, if I do take you back, you’re going to owe me a month’s worth of
chores.”
She squealed and grabbed him around
the neck, planting a kiss on his cheek.
“See? This is why you’re my
favourite cousin.” After a moment she
realized how girly she appeared and let him go.
She settled back in her seat, trying to look tough again. “I mean, that’s fine. Anyway, I think you’ll like the next one.”
Bryan merely rolled his green eyes to
the truck ceiling before leaning forward and shoving the gearshift into
reverse. “Your mom is going to kill me
when she finds out you’ve been sneaking out every year since you were fifteen
to get a tattoo.”
She grinned and sat up straight,
looking out of the windshield. “By the
time she finds out it’ll be too late.
Let’s see anybody call me Princess Vickie now.”
He sighed and she knew he was
wondering just how much trouble he would be in if his part in her small acts of
rebellion was ever discovered. Her final
tattoo was on March 17th; her eighteenth birthday. Had she known how symbolic it would be of all
she would leave behind, she might have requested more detail. Barely one week later, her father called a
family meeting.
“Ria…Nick. I’ve called you here because I have something
important to tell you.”
When Victoria glanced uneasily at
Nicolas, he simply shrugged as if to say he had no idea what was going on.
“About a month ago, I received a
letter from an old friend by the name of Colin O’Connor. Apparently, the resident anthropologist and
his family had to leave Hope Valley for a new post a couple of months ago. Since Colin knows about my part-time work
with the natives here, he thought I would like the position. There are a few things to be figured out
first, so we won’t be leaving until late July.
I wanted you both to know ahead of time, so you can get used to the
idea.
Now, I’ve talked it over with your
mother and we both feel very strongly that I should go, but I wanted to make
sure you and Nicolas are on board as well. This isn’t just a job for me. It’s a change for the whole family. The position is out west and it sounds like a
really exciting opportunity, but I need to know that you both are okay with
this.”
Victoria flicked her gaze to Nicolas
and swallowed hard. This was a chance to
see some place new, but it also meant saying goodbye to her home, her cousins
and all that was familiar. “What’s out
there that we don’t have here?” She bit her lip to stop the quivering,
determined to hide her feelings until she could be alone to sort things out.
Their father’s eyes lit up like a
child at Christmas and he leaned forward, hands on his knees, turning to them
both in turn. “We’ll see the ocean and
mountains; taller than you could ever imagine.
And there will be other kids your age, and all the berries you can eat,
and new people and—”
Victoria raised a hand to stop her
father, excitement mixing with panic as she tried to absorb everything he was
telling them. “If it’s okay with you,
Nick and I would like to take a week or so to think all this through. Would that be okay?”
Her father nodded with an indulgent
smile for his only daughter. He seemed
barely able to contain himself, and yet when he spoke his words were
measured. “That will be fine. I’ll call another family meeting in two
weeks. You and Nick can tell me your
decision then.”
Victoria nodded too, standing a
little shakily. It was a lot to take in
all at once. She hurried out to the
fields and up onto the roof of her father’s barn, a million thoughts and
questions racing through her mind.
This has been my home for the past eighteen years. I don’t know if I can really leave it for a
place completely foreign. Daddy knows I’ve always wanted to see the world beyond Eastern Plains,
but...it means saying goodbye to everyone and everything I love. I don’t know if I can do it.
At first she was excited about the
possibility of friends, mountains and even the ocean. Her father’s excitement was contagious, and
she looked forward to new adventures.
Her longing to see other places and eventually the world won out in the
end, but her heart broke at the thought of leaving her dear cousins, perhaps
forever.
She took the full two weeks to
decide, and silently observed as her little brother did the same. At the end of those two weeks she had come to
a decision but it had not been an easy one.
The thought of leaving Bryan, her ‘brother from a different mother’ as
she jokingly called him, was especially painful.
The day of their second family
meeting arrived, and she steeled her resolve.
Victoria sat down in the living room of their old ranch style house
opposite her father and mother and beside her brother, fighting back the tears.
She risked a glance sideways at Nicolas and could see he was doing the
same. It didn’t make things any easier
when he raised his head and stared back at her miserably.
Henry Tanbrook leaned forward as he
had before, and looked intently at them both. Beside him, his wife Crystal was gently
holding his arm, as if she felt the need to restrain him. He cleared his throat and smiled
tentatively. “So? Have each of you made your decision? Do you have any more questions that I didn’t
answer last time?”
Victoria struggled with a huge lump
in her throat, and it took five swallows before she was finally able to
speak. When she did, her voice was soft
and tentative.
“I don’t want to leave Eastern
Plains, but I know this job is important to you. I also want to see what life is like outside
our little farm. I vote that you take
the job.”
The tears were incredibly near the
surface and she couldn’t wait to bolt.
She dropped her eyes to the floor, knowing the moment she heard Nicolas’
trembling voice that she would lose control of her emotions.
When her father released a small
breath and shifted in his leather chair, she knew without looking up that he
was waiting for Nicolas to speak. With everything
in her, she wanted to take back her words.
Is adventure really worth leaving
my family and the only friends I’ve ever known? She swallowed again and clenched her fists.
Deep down she knew that if she had
said she didn’t want to leave, it would just be a fight with her father. She could see in his eyes whenever she looked
his way, that this job meant everything to him.
Victoria raised her eyes to Nicolas’, wishing he would vote no.
Nicolas cleared his throat. “I don’t want to leave Eastern Plains,
Father. I don’t want to leave my
cousins. But, like Ria, I want to see
what life is like outside our little farm.
I want to see the ocean and the mountains and I know that you really
want this job.” He closed his eyes a
moment and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down.
When he opened them again there was determination in them. “So, I vote for your new job in Hope Valley
too.”
Victoria sat upright, prepared to
rush from the room as soon as her father gave her permission. Her chest felt incredibly tight, her throat
was swollen and her eyes were burning with unshed tears. Bryan’s beloved face floated in her mind and
she fought not to clench her eyes shut, instead keeping them focused on her
father’s face.
Beaming from ear to ear, Henry stood
up and approached his children, laying a huge hand on each of their shoulders
in turn. “You won’t regret this. I promise.
And you’ll see, it will be a fantastic new adventure. Thank you for supporting me in this
decision.”
And just like that, the decision was made and
her future was changed. When her father
left the room, she exited quickly through the back door of their ranch style
home and made a beeline for the barn.
Climbing the ladder swiftly, she crawled out onto the widow’s peak and
sat down, legs crossed in a lotus position.
She took one deep breath, and the pressure on
her chest eased a fraction. Gazing at
the sun setting over the sea of wheat, she let the first tear fall. A small hiccup followed before the tears
came. Wracking sobs overwhelmed her as
she struggled to imprint every acre of the farms owned by her father and uncle
on her memory.
Other books in the series
The Heart’s Discovery
Blurb
Are you a YA Romance fan? Want to remember what it feels like to be young? Pick up this book today! With themes of self-acceptance, first love, and overcoming prejudice, this is a book you won't be able to put down!
Anjaline Rodriguez thinks that mountain boy Gabriel Walker is a snob, even though she can't stop thinking about his fathomless eyes. Could he just be shy? Damian Vega could be trouble, but bad boys are hard to resist, especially when the good one seems like a judgmental know-it-all.
She thought her world had ended when her stepfather's job ripped her away from her friends and her dream of attending the prestigious Cotopaxi Academy back home in Quito, Ecuador. Anjaline goes from a tropical, densely populated Latin American city to a cold, drizzly Canadian village populated by three small families, complete with major culture shock. On top of being stuck in the middle of nowhere, she has no clue how to deal with two attractive boys.
Gabriel thinks the exotic Latina is too spoiled. He's never figured out how to talk to pretty girls anyway, and can't get rid of that stutter when he's nervous. It’s practically love at first sight. Gabriel knows he needs to tell her how he feels, but while he’s gathering his courage, Damian may just spoil everything. Will Anjaline return Gabriel’s feelings in time or will tragedy tear them apart before she has the chance?
Anjaline Rodriguez thinks that mountain boy Gabriel Walker is a snob, even though she can't stop thinking about his fathomless eyes. Could he just be shy? Damian Vega could be trouble, but bad boys are hard to resist, especially when the good one seems like a judgmental know-it-all.
She thought her world had ended when her stepfather's job ripped her away from her friends and her dream of attending the prestigious Cotopaxi Academy back home in Quito, Ecuador. Anjaline goes from a tropical, densely populated Latin American city to a cold, drizzly Canadian village populated by three small families, complete with major culture shock. On top of being stuck in the middle of nowhere, she has no clue how to deal with two attractive boys.
Gabriel thinks the exotic Latina is too spoiled. He's never figured out how to talk to pretty girls anyway, and can't get rid of that stutter when he's nervous. It’s practically love at first sight. Gabriel knows he needs to tell her how he feels, but while he’s gathering his courage, Damian may just spoil everything. Will Anjaline return Gabriel’s feelings in time or will tragedy tear them apart before she has the chance?
Coming Easter 2014!
Dreams Come True
Back Cover blurb:
Nearly six ago,
Anjaline promised Gabriel that she would make it back to Hope Valley, no matter
how long it took. Will keeping her
promise mean a second chance for them, or just more heartache?
Shortly after ending
her engagement to Tom Sawyer, Anjaline Rodriguez is given an assignment which
leads her back to Hope Valley. Over the
past six years she has become Charity Sutherland, a reporter willing to set
aside her dreams to protect her heart. In
becoming Charity she gave up with it meant to be Angie, a girl from Quito,
Ecuador with a compassionate heart. When
she sees Hope Valley and her old friends again, she longs to return to being
the girl she once was. Gabriel finds her
on the bridge where they first met and she can’t deny the spark of
attraction. Can that spark become a
flame of true love? Will she have the
courage to say yes to her future and no to a past that has only caused her
pain? Will all her dreams come true at
last?
Amy
McGuire
About the Author:
About the Author:
Amy was
raised in Africa by missionary parents and has gained a rich perspective of the
world in her travels. She has been
writing stories since she could hold a crayon but was officially published in
2009 through Kindle Direct Publishing and CreateSpace. A great reader of romance, it was a natural
step for her to start writing it. Amy
lives in Toronto with her husband and young daughter. Worlds
Apart is her second novel.
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