Rachel Hayward hoped to have a quiet thirtieth birthday alone. Instead, fate had different plans.

Caught in traffic and late for work, Rachel takes her eyes off the road to gawk at an accident and rear-ends the car in front of her. Sick over having ruined her day, she lowers her head and waits for the driver to begin a tirade over her stupidity. Instead, a kind man taps on her window showing genuine concern.

The brief colliding encounter suddenly starts a relationship between two strangers that takes off under odd circumstances. When intimacy begins, their relationship turns into a conflicting set of needs. Ian is tenderhearted and respectful, but Rachel desires aggressiveness from a man. The clash of desires threatens to tear them apart. As a result, she is faced with the decision to leave the man she loves or finally confront the painful secret of her childhood.

J. D. Burrows also writes under the name of Vicki Hopkins, who is an award-winning author of historical romance. She started her writing career somewhat late in life, but can attest to the fact that it is never too late to follow your dreams. Her debut novel was released in 2009, and four books later and another on the way, she doesn’t think she will stop any time soon.

With Russian blood on her father’s side and English on her mother’s, she blames her ancestors for the lethal combination in her genes that influence her stories. Tragedy and drama might be found between her pages, but she eventually gives her readers a happy ending.

She lives in the beautiful, but rainy, Pacific Northwest with a pesky cat who refuses to let her sleep in. Her hobbies include researching her English ancestry and plotting her next book.