"Ally Blake's Falling for the Rebel Heir (5)  is a wonderful romance of opposites. War-Zone correspondent photographer meets quiet, book-loving heroine who craves security. Trespassing, physical attraction and pursuit are one thing, but can they also find true love?
 
Falling for the Rebel Heir starts off with a bang as the hero catches the heroine trespassing on his property. An initial attraction leads to love as the author opens layer and layer of the richness of her characters. Each encounter between the hero and heroine shed those things which separate them, mainly class differences, careers, and even personality labels. Visual meets verbal as a photographer encounters a literary, Shakespeare-quoting heroine. Both Kendall and Hud find liberation from the scars of the past in sharing, but when ambition and Hud's job come into play, will Hud choose his job or love?

 
Readers of Ally Blake's previous book, BILLIONAIRE ON HER DOORSTEP, will enjoy her new romance Falling for the Rebel Heir for the look inside her characters which characterizes both romances. Falling for the Rebel Heir, however, looks further inside her characters while revealing increasing technical skill in this author's romance writing. Although the hero and heroine do confront each other as well in a verbal fireworks scene, the changes in them come from within. The pairing up of the hero and heroine starts some kind of chemistry, both physical and internal, but here the reader sees the inside evolution come from within each character is a sweet, often funny story with a wonderfully written pair of lovers and a believably developed relationship."

4 stars  Romantic Times

4 stars  Cataromance

4 stars from Romantic Times!

Since the accident that injured her band took her fiancé's life, Kendall has been in pain - and not just physically. Swimming in the pool of a nearby derelict mansion helps.  But now she's been rumbled by the heir to the estate, the broodingly handsome Hudson Bennington III.

On the surface, Hudson couldn't be more different from Kendall, with his dangerous job and wanderlust.  However, when he proposes a deal that will enable Kendall to keep swimming, she finds Hudson is kind, thoughtful - and attracted to her.  He's vowed to ease the pain of her past, but can Kendall trust that he'll be around for her future?

Hud hitched his dilapidated rucksack higher onto his shoulder as he stood staring at the façade of Claudel, the grand old house before him.

Ivy trailed over masonry outer walls, the front marble steps were steeped in mould, the delicately framed picture windows layered in many years worth of storm-splattered mud, the multi-gabled grey roof was now missing tiles and the gutters were filled with rotting leaves.

But even the decade worth of invading shabbiness couldn’t stop the memories of sunny days spent with his Aunt in the big house from melting into one another; a dozen summers during which his parents took off on adventures to far flung lands to authenticate new discoveries about old civilisations, leaving him behind.  He pictured himself lying in the cool grass at the side of the house reading Aunt Fay’s original editions of The Chronicles of Narnia wishing himself a faun, or a lion, or even better, one the four Pevensie brothers and sisters taking part in adventures.  Together.

He sniffed in deep through his nose, then leaving the house and her deluge of memories for later he hooked a sharp left to head into Claudel’s colossal garden only to discover far sorrier disarray.

What had once been a perfect green lawn littered with croquet arches and bordered by a dramatic garden boasting random marble sculptures worthy of any gallery, was now overgrown weed-infested chaos.  Once immaculately clipped conifers were now untamed, with patches torn apart by storms leaving raw-looking wounds.  Chickweed, blackberries, and roses ran wild.  Any patch of grass still visible through the shrub was littered with wild daises.  Had Aunt Fay been alive to see how much he’d let the place go, she would have screamed bloody murder.

But after the initial shock wore off, Hud began to notice the air had been made pungent with a rich floral scent, and through the gaps in the brush bees and wattle dust floated on the hazy summer air.  As a photographer for Voyager Enterprises, for both their documentary TV channel and magazine, he’d shot the gardens of queens, rainforests which by now had been demolished, and thick, viny, mystical swamps protected by rednecks with guns.  But this place was so out of control, so uncontaminated and crazy beautiful, Hud’s throat clogged with some unexpected emotion.

He cleared his throat, shoved the feelings down deep inside of him where he’d kept every other come-from-out-of-nowhere and too-hard-to-deal-with-right-now feeling that had threatened to expose him over the past couple of months, and moved on, forward through the undergrowth, not much caring that branches scratched at his hands, or that his jeans collected spiky thorns.  It only brought back more memories of trailing Aunt Fay’s crazy Irish wolfhound through the same gardens as the dog in turn had chased invisible air sprites.

Through a gap in the seemingly never-ending wilderness, Hud was blinded by a pinpoint of light.  He held up a hand to shield his eyes and tugged his rucksack through the heavy brush until he found himself face to face with the old pool house.

A half-smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and pressed against the backs of his tired eyes as echoes of more long forgotten recollections tickled at the corner of his mind.  Dive bombing.  Performing pretty darned legendary back flips off the diving board.  Lying on his back in the water for hours simply watching clouds shift past the pitched glass roof, wondering if his mum and dad looked up if they would see the same clouds while trekking some thrilling spot on the other side of the world.

Back then he’d been full of hope and plans that when he grew up, when he was old enough to set out on his own life adventure, then he’d finally understand what all the fuss was all about.  Why it had been so easy for his parents to leave him behind.  He wondered when all that impenetrable hope had become frustration.  When anticipation had become cold knowledge.  When he had grown up after all.

Had it been hiding with only his camera for company beneath a bush for eighteen hours in the middle of a shootout in in Bosnia when he was barely twenty-one?  Waking to find that his team had been abandoned by their guide at Base Camp on K2 on his twenty-sixth birthday?   Or when he’d woken in a London hospital less than two months earlier barely strong enough to ask for a glass of water?

He levered his heavy rucksack to the ground, and left it where it lay.  Claudel was fifty metres off the road, behind a ten foot brick wall, and a ten minute walk through a pine forest to the nearby township of Saffron.  If anybody was lucky enough to find his shabby old khaki bag they were welcome to the raggedy clothes, and just as threadbare passport within.  It wasn’t as though he’d be needing them to head through a different kind of wilderness with his trusty Nikon camera slung over one shoulder and a hunting knife slung over the other with his team of documentary filmmakers at his back any time soon.

He cricked his neck, pressed his hands into the tight small of his back and glanced upwards to find brilliant red bougainvillea creepers seemed to have swallowed half the long building, leaving the hundred odd remaining white-framed glass panels that had survived the tests of time, thick with dust and mould.  He could only hazard to guess how foul the inside might be after not having been blessed by a human touch for a good ten years.

‘If memory serves correctly...’ he said out loud, the sound of his voice raspy and deep in his ears after hours of non-use.  Then he made his way around the back of the building to find the door was ajar, at an odd angle, askew on rusted hinges, as though it had been yanked open.

Instinct born of years spent stepping unannounced into dark, secret places he stepped quietly - toe to heel - over a small pile of worn broken glass and inside the pool house where his feet came to a giveaway scraping halt of boot soles on tessellated French tile.

The pool house was clean.  The mottled green tiles around the margins sparkled and the dozen white marble benches were spotless.  Miniature palm trees in plant boxes edging the length of the room were luscious with good health.  And the water in the pool shimmered dark and inviting against the black-painted concrete bottom.

A sound broke through Hud’s reverie.  A soft ripple as water lapped gently against the edge of the pool.  And he was hit with the sense that something was about to break the dark surface.  He held his breath, squared his stance, squinted into the shadows and watched in practised silence as...

A mermaid rose from the depths.

From there everything seemed to slow; his breaths, his heartbeat, the dust floating through shards of sunlight, as the nymph waded through the water, away from him, leaving a trail of leisurely wavelets in her wake.

Water streamed over hair the colour of brandy.  It ran adoringly over pale, lean, youthful arms.  And as she swayed up the steps, water gripped to her willowy form as long as it could before cruel gravity claimed it back to the dark depths.

Hud felt like he ought to avert his gaze.  Like he was too old, too cynical, too jaded to be allowed such a vision.  But those same qualities only meant that his curiosity far outweighed his humility, and his eyes remained riveted to the back of the exquisite stranger.

Once she was land bound her hair sprang into heavy waves that reached all the way to the small of her back, covering the expanse of skin not so covered by her simple swimsuit.  It was functional.  Black.  One piece.  But with its low cut back and high cut leg the whole thing was just sexy enough that Hud’s pulse beat so loudly in his ears he feared she might hear it too.

Her feet made soft slapping sounds as she padded over to grab a soft peach-coloured paisley-patterned towel draped over the far marble bench, revealing a bundle of clothes beneath.

She then lifted a foot and bent over to run the soft towel down one leg.  One long lean leg that went all the way to the floor.  A drip of sweat slithered slowly down Hud’s cheek.

When she repeated the move with the other leg, her movements relaxed and unhurried, he closed his eyes and swallowed to avert the risk of coughing on his suddenly dry throat.

She lifted the towel and ran it slowly over her hair, wringing out the bulk of the moisture, kicking out her right hip as she did so.  Several golden beams of light slicing through the windows above picked up the rich colour of her dark red hair.  Dappled sunshine played across her milky skin like a caress.  And all Hud could think was that if this wasn’t a moment that needed to be captured on film for all eternity, then he didn’t know what was.

He was so taken the aesthetics, mentally calculating focal length and film speed, that he didn’t actually notice her begin to spin to face him until it was too late.

She turned.  She saw him.  And she screamed.

And he didn’t half blame her.  He hadn’t shaved in a fortnight.  He was wearing clothes better suited to a London winter than to the thirty degree Melbourne heat.

And she was trespassing on his land and by the looks of the place had been for some time.

For two of the loveliest women I’ve ever known.  Dell and Barbara; godmothers and friends.

A Night with the Society Playboy  |  Hired: The Boss's Bride  |  The Magnate's Indecent Proposal

Falling for the Rebel Heir  |   Steamy Surrender  |  Millionaire to the Rescue  |  Billionaire on Her Doorstep

Getting Down to Business  |  Meant-To-Be Mother  |  Wanted: Outback Wife  |  A Father in the Making  |  The Shock Engagement  

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