Whether you’re an avid romance reader or writer I thought you’d enjoy discovering how the idea of “Here to Stay” came to me. This is the popular billionaire trope, but this also has the subject of amnesia.
Some time ago, I boarded my Morgan mare, Belle, a forty-five minute drive north of Toronto. In winter, black ice sometimes formed on the highway.
If you live in balmy areas where temperatures seldom drop below freezing, you may not know about black ice. This treacherous feature of northern climes forms when moisture on roads freezes into a sheer coating of ice. The road just looks wet, but when cars unexpectedly start sliding, inexperienced drivers hit their brakes.
The danger on black ice is that cars don’t just slide, they fishtail and spin out of control and just keep going until something solid—a barrier, a boulder, a tree—stops them.
(The secret is to take your foot off the gas, ignore the brake pedal, gear down to low—yes, most automatic transmissions have low gears; they’re the L of PRNDL—and let your car slow gradually.)
One day, while gliding safely through a long patch of black ice, I saw a number of cars spinning and fishtailing and flying off the highway, into guard rails and ditches. And the idea of a driver from a warm climate hitting black ice popped into my mind.
What if a man—a reclusive billionaire from… Hmm… Florida—hit a patch of invisible ice and spun off the road into a tree. Make that a lonely, winding rural road. In the dark. I named him Miles Kent. He was injured, knocked out, trapped in his vintage Corvette, and… in his lucid moments he can’t recall who he is or why he’s in this frigid place.
I had my hero: an injured billionaire who has amnesia. He needed to be rescued, but by whom?
Here to Stay is a romance, so of course, his rescuer is the heroine of the story. She’d have to be his opposite (because that makes writing romances so much fun). Grounded, calm, patient, solidly assured of who she is and what she does. The name Sasha came to mind.
But what was Sasha doing on that dark, winding rural road? Oh, okay, she’s a veterinarian. Specifically a horse doctor, driving home from a barn call. She’s strong—her patients can weigh half a ton and aren’t always reasonable—and she’s practical, of course. And compassionate.
With that much settled in my mind, I brought Miles—angry, frustrated, impatient, stubborn and… Hmm… Plagued by frightening flashbacks he can’t decipher—and Sasha—patient, kind, generous—together and let them tell me how the story should go.
So, what did send Miles Kent, reclusive billionaire from Florida, to rural Ontario during an early spring freeze? That’s the mystery, isn’t it?
Here to Stay is available in digital format from Book View Café at https://bookviewcafe.com/bvc_author/kate-freiman, along with award-winning No Limit to Love and critically acclaimed The Bachelor and the Baby Wish.
Other books are coming soon, so check back to find them, too, or sign up for my Newsletter at www.katefreiman.com. Print format will be available in the near future.