Excerpt:

"You're my favorite actor but my mother says that you don't have much dialogue in your movies because you're not too smart and don't speak English very well."

Her bluntness caught him so off-guard he laughed out right. But the remark hurt. Deeply. It was the kind of quip said frequently by producers and directors who refused to give him the substantial roles he craved. He wanted audiences to see him as more than a muscular hunk who seduced the heroine and karate chopped his way to saving the world.

"Oh she did, did she?" Wes knelt down on large legs made all the more powerful by years of martial arts training. "What is your name?"

"Mary Beth."

"Well, Mary Beth, tell your mother that I try very hard to soften my French accent. And tell her that to prove I am smart, I'm writing my own movie about a little boy named Daniel who goes through the same treatments you do."

"Are you still going to get the bad guy?"

He brushed his fingers softly along her cheek. "You can count on it."

She cuddled his autograph next to her heart. "Why don't you write about a little girl -- like me?"

"I can have a little girl like you in my story. A little girl who goes to a camp like the one Claire Sutherland runs."

Wes stole a moment to look beyond the circus tent where Claire chatted with her family, a wave of heat washing over him. She was the sexiest woman here today. Her faded blue jeans caressed her hips like a lover's hand. Her plain white T-shirt pressed erotically against the swell of her breasts. Such articles of clothing should be outlawed except on a moonlit night when a man like himself could watch a woman like Claire slip them off, revealing a bare, silken body waiting for his touch.

Wes raked an unsteady hand through his hair. He hadn't expected to feel this way for the woman he needed to approach about backing Daniel's Story.

"Claire's camp is in two weeks," said Mary Beth. "Are you going to be there, too?"

He looked back at Mary Beth. "If everything goes the way I want it to, I'll be seeing quite a lot of Claire."

Author BIO: Although fiction writing has always been her passion, Tari May majored in molecular biology at the University of California at Irvine because she hoped she could always be assured a job. After working in recombinant DNA labs and raising four beautiful children, Tari decided to finally pursue her first love - writing. Researching subjects close to her heart, she started writing for such diverse magazine publications as "At Home Mothering Magazine" and "Air Classics". She went on to co-author the non-fiction book, Colorado Winter Trails, about the sport of cross-country skiing with her husband.

Her most prized achievement, however, is her first novel, Cherished. Centering on the devastating effects of cancer, the story portrays one man's desire to help the woman he loves triumph over her physical disability.

Tari is a member of Romance Writer's of America and the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writer's Association. She 'lives in a 'postcard' on fourteen acres overlooking a valley in the heart of the Rocky Mountains with her four children and husband.