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EMILY FORBES began her writing life as a partnership between two sisters who are both passionate bibliophiles. As a team, ‘Emily’ had ten books published. One of her proudest moments was winning the 2013 Australia Romantic Book of the Year Award for Sydney Harbour Hospital: Bella’s Wishlist.
While Emily’s love of writing remains as strong as ever, the demands of life with young families has recently made it difficult for them to work on stories together. But rather than give up her dream Emily now writes solo. The challenges may be different, but the reward of having a book published is still as sweet as ever.
Whether as a team or as an individual, Emily hopes to keep bringing stories to her readers. Her inspiration comes from everywhere, and stories she hears while travelling, at mothers’ lunches, in the media and in her other career as a physiotherapist all get embellished with a large dose of imagination until they develop a life of their own.
If you would like to get in touch with Emily you can e-mail her at [email protected]
A Kiss to Melt Her Heart
Emily Forbes
This story has been floating around in my head for a while. Like so many of my ideas, it started to take shape when I got talking to a man who had just spent six months working in Antarctica. He told me some interesting tales about various accidents and emergencies that he’d encountered, and that got me thinking about what it would be like to move to the bottom of the world.
What type of people would choose to live and work in those extreme conditions, and what hardships would they face even in the twenty-first century?
I spent far too much time on research, but that gave me a very clear sense of the type of man Gabe Sullivan is. He loves a challenge, and is exactly the type of man I can imagine thriving in Antarctica—and he is the perfect man to melt Sophie’s heart.
Sophie had to travel to the end of the earth to find love again, but isn’t that something we would all be willing to do?
Enjoy!
Emily
FOR MY DAD
1935–2014
I MISS YOU
Table of Contents
Hobart, Tasmania, February 26th
‘ARE YOU SURE you want to do this?’
Sophie could see the concern in Luke’s grey eyes and she appreciated it, but she’d made up her mind and she wasn’t going change it now. She’d come too far. She couldn’t stop now. And Luke should know that. They had been friends since they’d both been teenagers and there was only one person who knew Sophie better than Luke did—but Danny was gone now.
She squeezed his hand in what she hoped was a reassuring fashion, although she suspected she needed more reassurance than he did. His hand was warm in the chill of the hospital. Sophie didn’t normally feel the cold. She had grown up in Tasmania, the wild but beautiful southern end of Australia, and cold weather was something she was used to, but the air felt frosty today. Maybe it was nervousness—not about the surgery, having her appendix out was a minor procedure—but her future plans were ambitious although she wasn’t about to admit to any misgivings at this point.
She wrapped the towelling dressing gown around her body a little more firmly to ward off the chill as she said, ‘I need to get away.’
‘I understand that,’ Luke replied, ‘but why don’t you take a holiday instead.’
Sophie looked at him. She wasn’t in a vacation mood. ‘What would I do on a holiday?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Relax?’
‘I don’t need to relax and I don’t want time to myself, I’ve got too much of that already. Holidays are meant to be shared with someone and we both know I have no one now. I don’t want to go on a holiday but I do need to go some place where the memories won’t follow me. Everywhere I look around here things remind me of Danny and I can see it in people’s faces too. Every time they see me I remind them that Danny isn’t here. I need to move on and I can’t do that here. It’s too hard. I need some space to get my head together.’
‘I miss him too, Soph, but I’m not sure that spending a winter in Antarctica is necessarily the right place to get your head together.’
‘It’s not a whole winter, it’s only seven weeks.’
‘If the other doctor gets back. Otherwise you’re there for winter. That’s seven months.’
Seven months. Sophie knew that could seem like a lifetime. Danny had been dead for seven months.