• When lightning struck


    Chapter 1

    I was always a spoiled child. My father was the owner of the large shop just outside of London, the dressmakers. I used to watch him as a child making the long, flowing skirts and corsets made of brocade. I used to love sitting there watching the finest fabrics change like magic into the most beautiful gowns this side of the English Channel. I am an only child and heiress to my father's great fortune as well as the great beauty I have inherited from my late mother. I have been likened to a bright flower on a cold winter day and although I have had many suitors, I had never found happiness, yet I was content. Content to watch and to wait. And that was how I lived until that day.

    I had walked along that street every day for all of my 17 years. I had stepped through that gate a thousand times, I had sauntered through the door to my father's workshop since I could walk and yet when I came through the door that day nothing could prepare me for the sight that met my eyes.

    A man, so exquisitely perfect that my breath caught and for a moment I stood transfixed gazing at the vision of perfection that melted my heart. And at that moment I knew that my life would never be the same again.



    Chapter 2

    “Juliet?” said a voice near me. “Come on in” My father said “Come in and meet our new client.” But I could not move. All I could do was stand and stare at the tall man with the long brown hair and the blue eyes so deep that you could fall forever and never reach the bottom, his long overcoat tailored to show the muscular body underneath, his long pointed nose and sun darkened skin gave him a Hispanic look. Spanish or maybe Mexican. A dazzling figure of perfection and beauty. “Leon Espinoza” he said with a bow “and you must be the famous Juliet”