Title: Highland Healer
Author: Willa Blair
Genre: Scottish Historical Paranormal Romance
Book Blurb:
Toran Lathan never expected to become Laird, and he never expected to meet a woman like Aileanna Shaw. Her healing ability is just what his people need, but Toran cannot resist her beauty. Yet will loving him destroy her ability to heal?
Aileanna Shaw has a healing touch - and a special talent she must keep secret. Stolen from her home by a marauding army, she's kidnapped again by the Highland Laird she heals. Is she a prize of war or the prize of his heart?
While Toran battles the invading lowland army, he also battles his desire for Aileanna. And Aileanna must decide if she can trust her secrets to this fierce warrior who needs her talent but wants her love.
Excerpt:
Aileana studied the big man leaning so casually against her door. He’d been formidable, stretched out on the table in her Healer’s tent. On his feet, healthy, fully in his power and in his own keep, formidable was too weak a word. He fascinated her. His genial arrogance annoyed her; his size, strength and powerful position frightened her, but still, she found him compelling. She’d distracted herself by braiding her hair, keeping her eyes away from the bed, and looking anywhere but at him as he questioned her. Now, she had no further diversion, and no excuse to look anywhere else, nor did she want to.
In the flickering firelight he seemed taller and broader than any real man could be. The metal and crystal of his torc gleamed at his powerful throat, half covered by the fall of his thick, dark hair. But she knew just how real he was. She had touched him. She had healed his hurts. She knew the beat of his heart, the rise and fall of his massive chest, the length of his lashes when they rested on his high cheekbones. She’d depended on the strength of his arm securing her against his hard torso as he rode headlong through the hills, and blushed at the forbidden hardness of his manhood pressing against her hip. The idea of this beautiful, powerful man becoming hers thrilled her, but scared her witless, too. How could she hope for a fantasy like that to become true? She couldn’t, not with any man, and especially not with him. Her position here was too precarious. Not knowing what else to do to save her composure, she stood and moved to the fire, to stare into the flames and burn Toran’s image from her eyes.
“What do you intend to do with me?” she asked at last, afraid and hopeful at the same time. It was too much like the last question he’d asked her this morning: “And what’s to be done with me?” She recalled the dismay that had filled her at his question, and her certainty that Colbridge would torture him for information, then kill him. But only after she’d healed him again and again, and only after he’d given up his secrets to his tormentor.
So now it was her turn to wonder. Despite his threats a few moments before, she had sensed no real animosity in him. She’d been treated well since arriving at the Aerie. Her dream of a home, with people who cared about her, perhaps a family of her own, rose unbidden to her mind, and with it came a familiar lump in her throat. She was tired, she thought, to let that longing overwhelm her now. She crossed her arms and kept her eyes on the flames. She heard Toran move from the door to stand behind her. She tensed as his hands came to rest on her shoulders. He turned her gently, but irresistibly, to face him.
“What should I do with so beautiful, so valuable, a prize?” he murmured, almost to himself.
His deep blue gaze ensnared Aileana as completely as his hands. She knew she should be outraged at being called a prize. He’d done it before, on the way here. Did he truly see her that way? She refused to be chattel any longer, she told herself, and would not allow him to treat her so. But she found she could not summon her ire. One of his hands left her shoulder and he lightly touched her cheek, then slowly slid his fingers down her throat to her collarbone. There, he hesitated, and Aileana held her breath until he moved the hand back to her shoulder.
His simple touch sent shivers dancing and nearly undid her. That frightened her enough to break the spell he wove. “Please, don’t,” she asked. “Let me go. The Healer is not to be touched.”
“Aye, I heard ye tell Brodric MacAnalen the same thing. Did ye learn that from Colbridge?” Toran asked, slowly stroking along her collarbone with his thumb. “Or is that what he told his men, to keep them from...hurting ye?”
Aileana shook her head. She could try to force him away, but she felt less and less able to summon the energy as his touch ensnared her.
“Have ye spent the last two years without any human feeling? Without a simple handclasp between friends?” Toran’s tone dropped along with the hand that he slid slowly down her arm and back to her shoulder. “Without the embrace of a lover?”
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Why is your featured book a must-read?
HIGHLAND HEALER is a reader favorite, an Amazon and Barnes & Noble best seller, and one of my personal favorites, as well. If you like your romance spiced with a touch of the paranormal, or if you’re a fan of Outlander or books Hannah Howell, Cynthia Wright or even Anne McCaffrey, this is the book for you!
Giveaway:
Enter to win an e-copy book bundle of all 35 books featured in the Book Series Starter Event:
Open Internationally.
Runs January 13 – 23, 2020.
Winner will be drawn on January 24, 2020.
Author Biography:
Willa Blair is an Award-winning Amazon and Barnes & Noble #1 Bestselling author of Scottish Historical, light Paranormal, and Contemporary romance. Her books have won numerous honors, including the Marlene, the Merritt, National Readers’ Choice Award Finalist, The Reader’s Crown finalist, Historical Romance finalist and Honorable Mention in InD’Tale Magazine’s prestigious RONE Award, NightOwl Reviews Top Pick, and InD’tale Review’s Crowned Heart. A life-long student and reader, she has been a stained glass artist and instructor, a foreign language teacher, a computer scientist, an analyst, a manager and an executive. She has visited five continents and can get by in several languages. She loves scouting new settings for books, and thinks being an author is the best job she’s ever had.
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