Gaffney’s life changed course in 1984 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her battle with the disease prompted her, in 1986, to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a novelist. Her first novel, Sweet Treason (1989), won a 1988 Golden Heart Award and the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice award for First Historical Romance. Her second novel, Fortune’s Lady (1989), which is set in England against the backdrop of the French Revolution, was shortlisted for the RITA. She followed her early success with Another Eden (1992), Crooked Hearts (1994), Sweet Everlasting (1994), Lily (1996), Outlaw in Paradise (1997), and Wild at Heart (1997), the latter of which was among ten finalists for RWA’s reader-nominated Favorite Book of the Year Award.
Since the late nineties, Gaffney has found added success writing women’s fiction. Her novels The Saving Graces (1999), Circle of Three (2000), Flight Lessons (2002), and The Goodbye Summer (2004) all appeared on several national bestseller lists. The Saving Graces was on the New York Times bestseller list for seventeen weeks.
With her friends Nora Roberts (writing as J. D. Robb), Mary Blayney, and others, Gaffney has also contributed novellas to three anthologies, all of which were New York Times bestsellers.
Gaffney lives with her husband and two dogs in Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania.
Gaffney at age three.
Gaffney celebrating her twenty-first birthday in Vienna, Austria, during her junior year studying abroad.
Gaffney attended graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She’s pictured here during what she refers to as her “hippie days” in the early 1970s.
Gaffney and her husband Jon Pearson, high on love.
Class photo from East Mecklenberg High School in Charlotte, NC, where Gaffney taught twelfth-grade English for a year.
Romance Writers of America Winner’s Ribbon from the 1988 conference in Seattle.
At Nora Roberts’s house in the early 1990s. Left to right: Nora Roberts, Mary Blayney, Christine Dorsey, Elaine Fox, Gaffney, Beth Harbison, and Mary Kay McComas.
Example of a first draft, always done longhand.
A final outline for Mad Dash.
The Gaffney clan in 1989. From left: Mike (brother), mother, father, Pat.
Gaffney and Jon with their dog Hannah in 2000.
Gaffney with Jon and dogs Jolene (left) and Finney (right) in 2007.
Gaffney’s office in the attic.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1991 by Patricia Gaffney
cover design by Connie Gabbert
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
180 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
EBOOKS BY PATRICIA GAFFNEY
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
Available wherever ebooks are sold
FIND OUT MORE AT WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM
follow us: @openroadmedia and Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia
Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases
Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.
FOLLOW US:
@openroadmedia and
Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia
SIGN UP NOW at
www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
The Maid
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
The Master
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
The Gift
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-night
A Biography of Patricia Gaffney
Copyright
EBOOKS BY PATRICIA GAFFNEY
Videos, Archival Documents, and New
Lily Page 42