This is a story of a courageous woman who has married, supposedly for love. But she's been duped. Her husband doesn't love her. He simply wants a trophy wife he can flaunt, control, and abuse. Until she leaves him, shortly after their marriage. She's a strong minded personality, who'll never accept such a fate.

Sherri is on the run. She has been for months, since the day she left her vile abusive husband. Now she wants to go home, to her family, but she can’t. She believes George is watching her parents’ place, or that he’s paid someone to do so. He’s wealthy, and no one in the community would believe her if she told the authorities how he treated her. They hadn’t believed her the times she’d gone to the emergency room, broken, beaten, and battered. Why would they now?

            So she lives out of a suitcase, and ironically enough, volunteers at a women’s shelter. Yet she lives in motels, under assumed names, using the money she’s taken from George’s accounts. That infuriates him more than anything, she knows…well, more than anything except that his prize, his arm decoration, has left him, making him look bad in the eyes of his fellow richies.

            Finally, Sherri is fed up with moving from motel to motel. She knows of a place being rented by the owner of the women’s shelter where she works, also under an assumed name, since she only volunteers. Should she go there? Should she tell the man why she works for him?

            She decides to take a leap of faith, and prays her luck is about to change, for the better.

 <>           John - a fireman who once rescued Sherri from a burning building, when her husband tried to kill her - thinks he meets Sherri for the first time when she steps out of the cab in front of his home. He doesn’t remember her name and hadn’t seen her face well when he’d saved her, so he doesn’t recall meeting her. He thinks her beautiful…and he feels her fear. He’s seen it countless times at his shelter. This woman needs him, needs his help, and he’s not about to turn her away.

            He wants more than to help her though, but he suspects she’ll take a long time in coming around to trust him, or any other man, if his guess is correct. He soon finds out he’s right, when she breaks down and tells him her story and asks for refuge in his above-garage apartment, which many of the past women of his facility refer to as the Safe Haven.  

          Can Sherri learn to trust, and love again. Can John let go of the guilt driving at him, guilt over the loss of another woman in quite the same predicament as Sherri – Amy: his lost love, who was murdered while John was away, working, by her ex husband, who’d always sworn he find and kill her, and he had.

         Can the ice around Sherri’s heart melt by the heat of the fire in John’s hands and heart, and can their love and the feelings within them turn combustive beyond all comprehension. They must find a way to rid their lives of George, and they must find a way to salvage the love in their hearts…will they win?

 EXCERPT:

Sherri must be dreaming.

John’s hands caressed her as she slept, awakening desire, causing her to stir, and reach for him. She put her hands around his neck, wishing she didn’t have to leave him, kissing him back, arching towards him…

Then she realized she was awake. She wasn’t dreaming. He was here, in bed with her, but Sherri was confused. Had John come home in the middle of the night? Would the doctors have released him early?

There was something else odd, too. John was different somehow, rougher, stiffer, grabbing at her, pawing at her, almost painfully…

Oh, God. George.

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