
Part of Series
Getting stood up for her high school prom turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to Colleen Kilcannon. That's when Joe Mahoney offered to fill in as her date, and magic happened. By the end of that night, Colleen was ready to give up her dreams of flying the friendly skies and seeing the world…because nothing in that world could compete with her firefighter. She and Joe married, had a family, and remained deeply in love until he died in the line of duty, leaving her a widow for twenty years. Tim McIntosh has avoided Bitter Bark for forty-five years. But when the international business executive returns to his home town to fulfill his father’s dying wish, seeing Colleen again is inevitable. Determined to deliver a decades-old apology, he visits the dog treat store she runs, where a couple of sweet old ladies persuade him to participate in Peppermint Bark, a holiday dog fostering program. They even have the perfect dog for him to foster, an impish Westie named Bucky. There’s just one problem...someone else has already claimed that dog. Someone Tim remembers quite well. As Colleen and Tim rekindle their friendship and co-foster a dog that seems to only be happy when they’re together, old sparks ignite. But they only have the month of December together before he returns to his life of world travel…and she returns to what suddenly seems like a mundane existence. Their relationship deepens while they set out on an impossible holiday mission to fulfill his father’s deathbed request, uncovering life-changing secrets. It’ll take one clever Westie, two scheming grannies, and a whole lot of Christmas magic for Colleen and Tim to finally get a second chance at a dance that just might last forever.
Author

I don’t know about you, but when I check out an author's bio, it’s usually because I’ve read a book I liked and wondered about the person behind it. Let's skip the formal bio and I'll give you the inside scoop on who Roxanne St. Claire really is. First of all, call me Rocki. Everyone does. Evidently, when my mother brought me home from the hospital I seemed too scrawny and small to pull off “Roxanne” (she’d read Cyrano de Bergerac while pregnant or I would have been Judy) so they called me Rocki. I grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, the youngest of five (overachievers, every one), and fell in love with words and stories the summer I read Gone With The Wind. That year, for my twelfth birthday, my parents gave me a typewriter (with italic font – it was the coolest thing) and from that day on, I’ve had my fingers on a keyboard, pounding out love stories for fun. My AP English teacher taught me the two most important lessons an aspiring author ever needs: 1) verbs are the key to life and 2) a writer should get a real job. After attending UCLA and graduating with a degree in communications, I tried acting and television broadcasting. Oh, they aren’t real jobs? I learned that the hard way. I changed my last name from Zink to St. Claire because a news producer told me Roxanne Zink had too many harsh consonants for a TV personality – apparently Katie Couric didn’t get the memo. I got some fun gigs, and even met Tom Hanks when I did a guest appearance on Bosom Buddies. I liked on camera work, but wasn’t too crazy about starvation, so I moved to Boston and got that “real” job. In fact, I placed my foot on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder and didn’t look down until I’d climbed all the way up to the level of Senior Vice President at the world’s largest public relations firm. On the way up, I met the man of my dreams in an elevator. Two years later – in the same elevator! – he asked me to marry him and I wisely said yes. I stayed in PR, moved to Miami, had a few babies, lost my home in a hurricane, built another one a few hours north and all along, I kept writing my “stories” for fun. One night, I read a particularly fabulous romance novel that changed my life for good. That night, I decided I wanted to make someone else feel as whole and happy as that author made me feel. (Everyone asks! It was Nobody’s Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips.) With two small children and one big “real” job, writing my first novel wasn’t easy, but I did finish a manuscript that managed to get the attention of a literary agent. She told me to do one thing and one thing fast: write another book. (The first one is usually a “learner” book, honestly.) That second manuscript sold to Simon & Schuster’s Pocket Books and was released in 2003 as Tropical Getaway. Since then, I’ve written almost thirty more, in multiple genres, and long ago replaced the corporate ladder with the rollercoaster of publishing as a full-time novelist. Finally, writing is my real job. Today, I live in a small beach community in Florida with my husband and two dogs. Our kids are off to college and law school, which means my nest is empty! I spend my time writing, working with the kids at my church, enjoying my husband's gourmet cooking, and hanging with my many writer friends. Of course, I love to read. I’m still crazy about words and stories and hope to write at least a hundred books in my lifetime. And, yes, verbs are the key to life. My favorites? Love. Work. Believe. xoxo Rocki