Left with a huge debt by her runaway ex-husband, Lexi Taylor is out of money and out of luck. In search of a new beginning and determined to be on her own, she returns home to sleepy Graaff-Reinet and becomes the manager of the inn at Apricot Farm. Free of the burdens of her old life, Lexi finally feels she’s getting back on track – until American Carter O’Brien arrives in town.

South Africa is a long way from his home in Texas, but it’s the fresh start Carter needs – and his last chance. A former musician and the wayward son of an oil industry tycoon, he has been sent to the Karoo Basin in search of shale gas, and is expected to succeed. Harbouring serious mistakes in his private and professional past, he can’t afford any distractions, no matter how alluring.

Carter was prepared for potential problems – angry farmers, anti-fracking protests, tricky negotiations – but fighting his attraction to Lexi wasn’t one of them. As Lexi is drawn into Carter’s work and his complicated life, the pair must confront danger from an unexpected enemy in the Karoo … and from their own hearts.

Kate Petersen keeps her panic attacks to herself, until the day she experiences one in front of her boss. With her personal life in ruins, her job is all she’s got. When an important renewable energy assignment in an Eastern Cape surfing village comes up, she is allowed to take over only if she promises to get her anxiety under control. She decides not to tell her boss that he is sending her to the very place where all her troubles began with a tragedy which continues to haunt her.

Determined to put the past behind her, she arrives in St Francis Bay ready to placate environmental opposition to her employer’s planned wind farm. Trouble brews when she begins to fall for Matthew Sykes, the attentive vet and surfer who is still grieving the death of his wife. Meanwhile, the parochial locals escalate their protests, from peaceful resistance to creepy threats, and Kate is forced to confront her worst fears as well as risk exposing her fragile state of mind to Matthew and her client.

Then the violence intensifies and Matthew turns out to have a few secrets of his own. Kate understands that their growing relationship and her job are at stake, but she doesn’t know that her life is also in danger …

Winner of the Strelitzia Award from the Romance Writers Organisation of South Africa in 2017.