by Liz Harris
A part of her had died at that moment, she’d said. From then on, her life had closed in on itself, and the years that had followed had been lonely years. Her daily thoughts of Kalden had been the only things that had kept her going. And then Nima had come back into her life, and it had begun to be a life again.
On their last evening in Ladakh, while Amy had been saying a temporary goodbye to her family and to the people she’d met in the village, she had walked with Kalden into the fields and they’d stood quietly beneath the night sky, a canopy of black silk against which the stars shone out with a rare brilliance.
Their eyes had met, and Patricia knew that they each felt the same inner peace.
This visit to Ladakh had been about the past, she mused as she fingered the pages of her book, but it had opened the door to a future, a future that they hadn’t yet had time to talk about. There would be time for that on the next visit.
A shadow fell across her book and she looked up to see her daughter.
‘I think we ought to get a taxi now, Patricia,’ Amy said with a reluctant sigh. ‘I bought a butter jar made of apricot wood for Andrew, and I’ve got us a really good book that teaches you Ladakhi. I’m going to learn to speak the language. We can learn together, if you want.’
‘I do want. That’s a really good idea. And so’s the butter jar – Andrew will love it.’ She looked at her watch. ‘You’re right. It’s time to leave.’
She put her book in her bag, stood up and went out into the street. Pausing, she turned to stare at the distant mountains.
‘We’ll come back again soon,’ Amy said softly, moving to her side. She tucked her arm through Patricia’s and turned to look at her, her eyes full of love. ‘Let’s go, Mother,’ she said.
The driver lifted their suitcases out of the taxi. Patricia paid him and they made their way towards the entrance to the airport building. As they drew close, they saw a figure move out from the shadows and into their line of vision.
Amy caught hold of Patricia’s arm. ‘It’s Kalden! He’s come to say goodbye.’ She started to run forward, then she stopped and came back to Patricia. ‘No, you go first,’ she said. ‘Here, leave your case with me.’
Her heart full, Patricia walked forward, her eyes fixed on Kalden.
Enveloped by the golden rays of the late morning sun, he stood still and watched her approach. She went right up to him, stopped and stared up into his face.
He smiled slowly. ‘When I tell you about advantages of being short-term monk, Patricia,’ he said softly, his eyes alive with love, ‘there is one thing I forget to tell you. It is very important thing and you must know it. I forget to tell you that biggest advantage of being a short-term monk is that such a monk can leave the monastery forever, if he wishes.’
She caught her breath.
‘And if she wishes,’ he added.
He held out his hand to her, and she took it.
* The End *
We would love to hear how you enjoyed The Road Back. Please leave a review where you purchased this novel. Reviews on eBook stores really do help the author. Thank you!
Find out about the author and her novels next including a preview of A Bargain Struck.
About the Author
Liz was born in London and now lives in South Oxfordshire with her husband. After graduating from university with a Law degree, she moved to California where she led a varied life, trying her hand at everything from cocktail waitressing on Sunset Strip to working as a secretary to the CEO of a large Japanese trading company, not to mention a stint as ‘resident starlet’ at MGM. On returning to England, Liz completed a degree in English and taught for a number of years before developing her writing career.
Liz has written several short stories, articles for local newspapers and a novella. The Road Back is Liz's debut novel which won a 2012 Book of the Year Award from Coffee Time Romance & More. Her second novel A Bargain Struck was shortlisted for the 2014 Romantic Novel of the Year Award. Liz is a member of the UK Romantic Novelists’ Association.
Read about Liz's novels next including a preview.
For more information on Liz visit www.lizharrisauthor.com
and you can follow Liz on twitter @lizharrisauthor
More Choc Lit from Liz Harris
A Bargain Struck
Finalist for the 2014 Romantic Historical Novel of the Year Award
Does a good deal make a marriage?
Widower Connor Maguire advertises for a wife to raise his young daughter, Bridget, work the homestead and bear him a son.
Ellen O’Sullivan longs for a home, a husband and a family. On paper, she is everything Connor needs in a wife. However, it soon becomes clear that Ellen has not been entirely truthful.
Will Connor be able to overlook Ellen’s dishonesty and keep to his side of the bargain? Or will Bridget’s resentment, the attentions of the beautiful Miss Quinn, and the arrival of an unwelcome visitor, combine to prevent the couple from starting anew?
As their personal feelings blur the boundaries of their deal, they begin to wonder if a bargain struck makes a marriage worth keeping.
Set in Wyoming in 1887, a story of a man and a woman brought together through need, not love …
Read a preview here ...
Or find out more and purchase from your favourite eBook store. Visit www.choc-lit.com for details.
The Lost Girl
What if you were trapped between two cultures?
Life is tough in 1870s Wyoming. But it’s tougher still when you’re a girl who looks Chinese but speaks like an American.
Orphaned as a baby and taken in by an American family, Charity Walker knows this only too well. The mounting tensions between the new Chinese immigrants and the locals in the mining town of Carter see her shunned by both communities.
When Charity’s one friend, Joe, leaves town, she finds herself isolated. However, in his absence, a new friendship with the only other Chinese girl in Carter makes her feel like she finally belongs somewhere.
But, for a lost girl like Charity, finding a place to call home was never going to be that easy …
Find out more and purchase from your eBook provider or visit www.choc-lit.com for details.
A Western Heart
Wyoming, 1880
Rose McKinley and Will Hyde are childhood sweethearts and Rose has always assumed that one day they will wed. As a marriage will mean the merging of two successful ranches, their families certainly have no objections.
All except for Rose’s sister, Cora. At seventeen, she is fair sick of being treated like a child who doesn’t understand ‘womanly feelings’. She has plenty of womanly feelings – and she has them for Will.
When the mysterious and handsome Mr Galloway comes to town and turns Rose’s head, Cora sees an opportunity to get what she wants. Will Rose play into her sister’s plot or has her heart already been won?
Find out more and purchase from your eBook provider or visit www.choc-lit.com for details.
Evie Undercover
When libel lawyer, Tom Hadleigh acquires a perfect holiday home – a 14th century house that needs restoring, there’s a slight problem. The house is located in the beautiful Umbria countryside and Tom can’t speak a word of Italian.
Enter Evie Shaw, masquerading as an agency temp but in reality the newest reporter for gossip magazine Pure Dirt. Unbeknown to Tom, Italian speaking Evie has been sent by her manipulative editor to write an exposé on him. And the stakes are high – Evie’s job rests on her success.
But the path for the investigative journalist is seldom smooth, and it certainly never is when the subject in hand is drop-dead gorgeous.
Find out more and purchase from your eBook provider or visit www.choc-lit.com for details.
The Art of Deception
Jenny O’Connor can hardly believe her luck when she’s hired to teach summer art classes in Italy. Whilst the prospect of sun, sightseeing and Italian food is hard to resist, Jenny’s far more interested in her s
oon-to-be boss, Max Castanien. She’s blamed him for a family tragedy for as long as she can remember and now she wants answers.
But as the summer draws on and she spends more time with Max, she starts to learn first hand that there’s a fine line between love and hate.
Find out more and purchase from your eBook provider or visit www.choc-lit.com for details.
READ ABOUT CHOC LIT NEXT ...
Introducing Choc Lit
We’re an independent publisher creating
a delicious selection of fiction.
Where heroes are like chocolate – irresistible!
Quality stories with a romance at the heart.
See our full selection here:
www.choc-lit.com
We’d love to hear how you enjoyed The Road Back. Please visit www.choc-lit.com and give your feedback or leave a review where you purchased this eBook.
Choc Lit novels are selected by genuine readers like yourself. We only publish stories our Choc Lit Tasting Panel want to see in print. Our reviews and awards speak for themselves.
Could you be a Star Selector
and join our Tasting Panel?
Would you like to play a role in choosing which novels we decide to publish? Do you enjoy reading women's fiction? Then you could be perfect for our Choc Lit Tasting Panel.
Visit here for more details…
Keep in touch:
Sign up for our monthly newsletter Choc Lit Spread for all the latest news and offers: www.spread.choc-lit.com. Follow us on Twitter: @ChocLituk and Facebook: Choc Lit.
See a small selection of our novels next ...
More Choc Lit
Why not try something else from the Choc Lit selection? Here’s a small sample:
Highland Storms
Christina Courtenay
Winner of the 2012 Best Historical Romantic Novel of the year
Who can you trust?
Betrayed by his brother and his childhood love, Brice Kinross needs a fresh start. So he welcomes the opportunity to leave Sweden for the Scottish Highlands to take over the family estate.
But there’s trouble afoot at Rosyth in 1754 and Brice finds himself unwelcome. The estate’s in ruin and money is disappearing. He discovers an ally in Marsaili Buchanan, the beautiful redheaded housekeeper, but can he trust her?
Marsaili is determined to build a good life. She works hard at being a housekeeper and harder still at avoiding men who want to take advantage of her. But she’s irresistibly drawn to the new clan chief, even though he’s made it plain he doesn’t want to be shackled to anyone.
And the young laird has more than romance on his mind. His investigations are stirring up an enemy. Someone who will stop at nothing to get what he wants – including Marsaili – even if that means destroying Brice’s life forever …
Sequel to Trade Winds.
Find out more and purchase from your eBook provider or visit www.choc-lit.com for details.
The Silent Touch of Shadows
Christina Courtenay
What will it take to put the past to rest?
Professional genealogist Melissa Grantham receives an invitation to visit her family’s ancestral home, Ashleigh Manor. From the moment she arrives, life-like dreams and visions haunt her. The spiritual connection to a medieval young woman and her forbidden lover have her questioning her sanity, but Melissa is determined to solve the mystery.
Jake Precy, owner of a nearby cottage, has disturbing dreams too, but it’s not until he meets Melissa that they begin to make sense. He hires her to research his family’s history, unaware their lives are already entwined. Is the mutual attraction real or the result of ghostly interference?
A haunting love story set partly in the present and partly in fifteenth century Kent.
Find out more and purchase from your eBook provider or visit www.choc-lit.com for details.
The Silver Locket
Margaret James
Winner of CataNetwork Reviewers’ Choice Award for Single Titles 2010
If life is cheap, how much is love worth?
It’s 1914 and young Rose Courtenay has a decision to make. Please her wealthy parents by marrying the man of their choice – or play her part in the war effort?
The chance to escape proves irresistible and Rose becomes a nurse. Working in France, she meets Lieutenant Alex Denham, a dark figure from her past. He’s the last man in the world she’d get involved with – especially now he’s married.
But in wartime nothing is as it seems. Alex’s marriage is a sham and Rose is the only woman he’s ever wanted. As he recovers from his wounds, he sets out to win her trust. His gift of a silver locket is a far cry from the luxuries she’s left behind.
What value will she put on his love?
First novel in the trilogy.
Find out more and purchase from your eBook provider or visit www.choc-lit.com for details.
To Turn Full Circle
Linda Mitchelmore
Life in Devon in 1909 is hard and unforgiving, especially for young Emma Le Goff, whose mother and brother die in curious circumstances, leaving her totally alone in the world. While she grieves, her callous landlord Reuben Jago claims her home and belongings.
His son Seth is deeply attracted to Emma and sympathises with her desperate need to find out what really happened, but all his attempts to help only incur his father’s wrath.
When mysterious fisherman Matthew Caunter comes to Emma’s rescue, Seth is jealous at what he sees and seeks solace in another woman. However, he finds that forgetting Emma is not as easy as he hoped.
Matthew is kind and charismatic, but handsome Seth is never far from Emma’s mind. Whatever twists and turns her life takes, it seems there is always something – or someone – missing.
Set in Devon, the first novel in a trilogy.
Find out more and purchase from your eBook provider or visit www.choc-lit.com for details.
Please don’t stop the music
Jane Lovering
Winner of the 2012 Best Romantic Comedy Novel of the year
Winner of the 2012 Romantic Novel of the year
How much can you hide?
Jemima Hutton is determined to build a successful new life and keep her past a dark secret. Trouble is, her jewellery business looks set to fail – until enigmatic Ben Davies offers to stock her handmade belt buckles in his guitar shop and things start looking up, on all fronts.
But Ben has secrets too. When Jemima finds out he used to be the front man of hugely successful Indie rock band Willow Down, she wants to know more. Why did he desert the band on their US tour? Why is he now a semi-recluse?
And the curiosity is mutual – which means that her own secret is no longer safe …
Find out more and purchase from your eBook provider or visit www.choc-lit.com for details.
Love & Freedom
Sue Moorcroft
Winner of the Festival of Romance Best Romantic Read Award 2011
New start, new love.
That’s what Honor Sontag needs after her life falls apart, leaving her reputation in tatters and her head all over the place. So she flees her native America and heads for Brighton, England.
Honor’s hoping for a much-deserved break and the chance to find the mother who abandoned her as a baby. What she gets is an entanglement with a mysterious male whose family seems to have a finger in every pot in town.
Martyn Mayfair has sworn off women with strings attached, but is irresistibly drawn to Honor, the American who keeps popping up in his life. All he wants is an uncomplicated relationship built on honesty, but Honor’s past threatens to undermine everything. Then secrets about her mother start to spill out …
Honor has to make an agonising choice. Will she live up to her dutiful name and please others? Or will she choose freedom?
Find out more and purchase from your eBook provider or visit www.choc-lit.com for details.
Never Coming Home
Evonne Wareham
; Winner of the Joan Hessayon New Writers’ Award
All she has left is hope.
When Kaz Elmore is told her five-year-old daughter Jamie has died in a car crash, she struggles to accept that she’ll never see her little girl again. Then a stranger comes into her life offering the most dangerous substance in the world: hope.
Devlin, a security consultant and witness to the terrible accident scene, inadvertently reveals that Kaz’s daughter might not have been the girl in the car after all.
What if Jamie is still alive? With no evidence, the police aren’t interested, so Devlin and Kaz have little choice but to investigate themselves.
Devlin never gets involved with a client. Never. But the more time he spends with Kaz, the more he desires her – and the more his carefully constructed ice-man persona starts to unravel.
The desperate search for Jamie leads down dangerous paths – to a murderous acquaintance from Devlin’s dark past, and all across Europe, to Italy, where deadly secrets await. But as long as Kaz has hope, she can’t stop looking …
Find out more and purchase from your eBook provider or visit www.choc-lit.com for details.
The UnTied Kingdom
Kate Johnson
Shortlisted for the 2012 RoNA Contemporary Romantic Novel Category Award
The portal to an alternate world was the start of all her troubles – or was it?
When Eve Carpenter lands with a splash in the Thames, it’s not the London or England she’s used to. No one has a telephone or knows what a computer is. England’s a third-world country and Princess Di is still alive. But worst of all, everyone thinks Eve’s a spy.