A Flamingo Island Novella Lucy Smith, a British born and raised marketing executive who now lives in Boston, snags the biggest prize of them all at her boss’s annual holiday party—a paid 30-day sabbatical at his beach house on a tropical island off the coast of Florida. Three months later, she and her two tabby cats are settling into a stunning cottage with nothing to do but soak up the sun and enjoy the beautiful beaches. Oh, and work on a last minute assignment given by her boss to catch a major client. Until Pete. A long-time local celebrity, Pete has long skinny legs, bright pink feathers, a golden curved beak, and big dark eyes. Injured as a youngling, Pete is a native flamingo who can’t fly and enjoys the company of people more than his own kind. People and cats, it seems, as he and Lucy’s two fur babies become fast friends the first morning he shows up on Lucy’s deck. When Lucy chases after the flamingo, fearful he’s after her pets, she meets Pete’s favorite human, Aaron Graham, retired Army Special Forces and now the owner of “The Beach Bar”, a locals-only place on Flamingo Island. Despite an immediate attraction, Aaron is going to steer clear of the beautiful redhead staying at a beach house on Millionaire’s Row. He’s been burned before by a fling with a bored tourist from the other side of the island. He wouldn’t be making that mistake again. Besides, he’s got enough to deal with when it comes to local bureaucrats and keeping his fledging inheritance in the black. Still, he does his best to reassure Lucy the flamingo is harmless and he’ll make sure they both—him and Pete—will stay out of her way. However, it seems Pete has decided that his two favorite humans, Lucy and Aaron, should be together. And he—and the two tabby cats—will go to any lengths to make sure that happens.
Author
Thanks to an aunt’s love of genealogy, Christyne discovered both Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe are members in her extended family tree on her mother’s side, so she firmly believes her love of writing has always been her destiny. Her father served in the Air Force for twenty years which resulted in her birth in Taipei, Taiwan and she spent her youth growing up all over the world before her family settled in New Hampshire in time for her to attend high school. She followed in her family’s rich military history and joined the United States Navy where she fell in love with romance novels after someone remembered women were serving aboard seagoing vessels and sent a box full of paperback romances to her ship, the USS VULCAN AR-5. She started pursuing her own writing in 2002, sold her first ever ‘finished’ manuscript in 2006 and made her first sale to Harlequin Special Edition two years later! She writes contemporary romances full of life, love, a hint of laughter and perhaps a dash of danger too. Christyne loves the challenge of the boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back and the journey of joy and hardship two people go through. And there has to be a ‘happily ever after’ or she’s just not satisfied. When she’s not writing, she can be found hunting for treasures at yard sales and antique fairs to add to her collection of memorabilia of women who served in the military, watching classic romantic movies and the great movie musicals of the 40′s and 50′s, and reading books by her favorite authors. She lives in central Massachusetts with her family, a four-footed double-pawed black cat who rules the house and a shelter-saved pup named Harley (short for Harlequin) who really thinks he’s a cat too!
