The sixth book in the Sedikhan series, 1985

Dear Reader,

As many of you know, I started my writing career in romance but I always enjoyed mixing love with high-stakes excitement. When I first wrote A Summer Smile, I knew the title and had only a glimmering idea that it was going to be a romance and an adventure. Sometimes it happens that way. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the title was the description of my heroine Zilah’s character. She was a woman who had gone through terrible experiences, and there was no season of spring for her. Yet her strength, her belief in herself, and her ability to create a new future had given her confidence and brought her into the fulfillment of the summer of her life.

We all go through hard times and we all hope for the healing of summer. I hope you root for my Zilah and her adventures with Daniel. I wasn’t easy on her, but then she wouldn’t expect it. She would just go forward with quiet strength and maybe give us her summer smile.

The young woman in the photograph was smiling. It was a summer smile, warm and wise yet brimming with the promise of richness and beauty still to come.

She was dressed in jeans and a plaid cotton western shirt and was sitting on the back of a beautiful palomino horse. Her green eyes held the serenity and gravity of a much older woman, but her lips were slightly parted and her face lit with such warmth and eagerness that it caused Daniel’s hand to tighten involuntarily on the snapshot. “Very pretty.” He forced his voice to sound casual. “What did you say her name was?”

“Zilah Dabala.” Clancy Donahue leaned back, his ice blue eyes narrowed on the man in the executive chair behind the desk. “You met her mother two years ago when I took you to that party at Karim’s. She’s in charge of the housekeeping for all of his houses.”