Excerpt:

Arienh rose before dawn to move the stones and wait for spring's first day, setting out in the brittle, cold night before the first twilight streaks crossed the horizon.

It was the day when the sun would rise over the pointer stone, to mark the day midway between midwinter, and midsummer, the day when day and night were equal. Those markers of the seasons were like affirmations to her that life could go on, even when things seemed darkest, when her people seemed destined for extinction.

Today, the marker of the first of spring, represented the waxing of new life, of hope. She had to be there.

A nearly full moon, close to setting, traced a silver path leading up the valley. Arienh followed the path to the little plateau where the ring of stones had awaited daybreak since long before any living man remembered. Nothing had ever been written down of those distant folk who had left the stones on the plateau overlooking the sea. They were not even Celts, her great- grandfather had said, but she felt the kinship with them all the same. They were her people, who had longed then as she did now to understand and predict the world in which they lived.

Climbing up onto the plateau, she recalled the last time she had been here, the day Ronan had taken her sheep from her. As he had taken everything else.

He waited for her. She was not surprised, although she had hoped he might forget to come. Ronan rose from the pallet of furs and blankets spread within the circle on the damp new grass. A corona of fading moonlight outlined his magnificent form against the black night sky.

Arienh forced herself to look away, wishing she could avoid acknowledging his presence. She drew her woolen cloak closer about her neck to ward off the chill and stood directly across from the pointer stone. Every year since she had become the counter of days, she had come and stood in this spot. Yet now it was so different, for the Viking came to stand beside her, silently placing his blanket around her shoulders. She was cold enough that she did not resist his invasion of her sacred place. He could not belong here, yet somehow, he did.

Heart pounding, she waited, the Viking beside her, as the first grey streaks appeared in the east. A dim line grew below it, growing paling, charging the air with the sort of energy it held before a storm. The deep midnight gloom faded to eerie, expectant twilight as long ribbons of red fused into the darker purple.

Yellow light breached the horizon.

"There," she said, her voice barely a whisper that shattered the silence.

His hand gripped her shoulder as if he, too, felt the magnificence of the moment. The glowing golden line brightened to a bulge of light and merged into a globe as it rose over the pointer stone and broke free of the earth to join the sky. A new dawn, new life, as surely as the birth of a child.

His arm came around her waist beneath the blanket, drawing her against his side. Her own arm found its way about him, taking in his pure, solid strength, a strength they shared beneath the heavy blanket as dawn took on life, light, sound.

Somewhere, far down the valley, a young lamb bleated and its mother bawled back. The chitter of a tit, and honks from the faraway estuary as ducks and geese awakened. Slowly, the grey of twilight brightened into a brilliant, pale morning. His eyes were brighter blue than the sky, deeper than the vast majesty of the passing night. The tip of his smallest finger caressed over her lips and back, pleading.

Perhaps she had come here to see him, rather than to move the stones and wait for the arrival of spring. Perhaps...

She didn't know. She knew only the warmth of his body as he held her, the tender ecstasy of their lips where they joined. Knew only the wanting, desiring, aching need that kept her in his arms. She had not slept the night for thinking of him, remembering his brazen, blazing touch, wanting, needing it again.

It was a need he had awakened in her from the night of their first meeting, that had grown and stretched its bounds to the point of bursting. A need born of knowing, seeing, learning. A touch caused it to grow; a kiss, to expand dangerously. Every thought that slipped past the barriers she had erected pushed her closer to the brink of explosion.

Enveloping them in the blanket against the biting cold, he took them to their knees, and with a hand to her back, eased her gently onto his pallet of furs. Her cheeks burned with the rasp of his beard, and she rubbed against it, memorizing the feel.

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Author BIO: I remember holding a pencil in my hand at age four and feeling an incredible compulsion to create the magic of words. I knew it could be done. But I couldn't make it happen. At four, I could read, having been taught to read by my older brother, who taught me everything as he learned it, including being left-handed (which may explain why I am both left and right-brained and thoroughly ornery.) At nine, I sat down to a typewriter with a story in mind. But before I had pecked out the first paragraph, my words had already strayed in a different direction. I couldn't give them up, but I couldn't make them fit, and I gave up in confusion. Eventually, maturity, experience, and the abandonment of false dignity resolved most of my barriers to writing. Of course, it helped when the kids grew up.

Since I also have an avid interest in history, along with a Bachelor's Degree in Geography and Anthropology, and an enduring love of romance, I particularly enjoy putting timeless human problems into a romantic, historical perspective.

In my other life, I am married to the One True Hero and have a wild and wonderful collection of children, step-children, and grandchildren. I live in Washington State within a day's drive to mountains, ocean, rivers, volcanoes, or deserts, and just about any climate except the Arctic.