Putting Healing Love into Sexy Romance

I want my novels to have an uplifting effect on the reader. I take passionate, sexually attracted couples with terrible emotional wounds on a journey through the relationship they are meant to have. In finding a healing love it leads them to  strive for their happy ever after.
 
In this week’s blog I’ve posted an excerpt from The Italian Billionaire’s Secret Baby. It falls close to the end of chapter two, and begins in Katrina’s point of view. It changes to Alessandro’s in chapter three. I did this because it’s about a man meeting his child for the first time. I want you the reader to be able to feel what each is suffering and hoping for It’s a huge moment in all their lives, Katrina, Alessandro and their baby Alex.
For Katrina and Alessandro, their past is playing a huge role in their present, and it is playing out through their internal thoughts and is preventing them reconciling.
 
In the first couple of chapters we see that both Katrina and Alessandro are still very sexually attracted to each other. It’s a strong pull that is matched by real love. But the hurt that this love once delivered makes them reluctant to let those feelings resurface. But it’s still there. You can read the first chapter on Amazon.
 
Have a read of the excerpt below and after it I’ll talk more about how healing love is working in the story.​

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Excerpt

​She’d sold out once, to become a ballerina. She wouldn’t sell out again. On her biological father’s death, her half-brother tried to contact her through a lawyer. She’d refused because she’d made a deal with the devil and she’d keep it.
Everything in her power had to be done to prevent Alessandro from browbeating her son into becoming the heartless Rinaldo brand of man. That meant keeping Alessandro and Alex apart for as long as possible.
The sound of her toddler’s feet on the wooden hall floor stopped Katrina’s heart. Her little boy's voice could be heard  as he approached down the long hallway. There was no other exit, The father of her child stood between her and her son.
Alessandro’s head shifted turning an ear to the open doorway. His gaze spun to her face, his face muscles tensed. Her heart squeezed. Little Alex didn’t know his father, the man he was about to meet if she didn’t stop him. She side-stepped Alessandro’s outstretched arm.
 
Chapter three
 
Alessandro’s gaze followed Katrina’s retreat to the doorway. She wasn’t getting away that easily. The child in the hall had to be his, otherwise she wouldn’t be fleeing the room.
“Katrina! Wait!”
But his words died on his lips as a commotion at the door turned his attention to a little boy. Red-cheeked and smiling open-mouthed he looked every bit a Rinaldo, from the soft brown waves and chocolate eyes to his grandfather’s smile.  An overwhelming urge to sweep the boy into his arms gripped him. His heart lightened and his list of responsibilities dissolved into a heart-full surge of love and a fierce need to protect his boy. He took two steps toward him but a young woman loaded up with a large tote bag rushed into the room and grabbed the toddler’s hand. Alessandro took a hit in the chest as if a hand had snatched out his heart. His son stood within reach.
The young woman noticed Alessandro. Her face flushed pink. “Oh, hello.”
“Janet, this is Alessandro,” said Katrina.
The baby’s bright brown eyes searched the room till they landed on his mother. He raised his hands and was lifted immediately into her arms. Katrina rested him on the hip furthermost from Alessandro and shot him a warning glare, a lioness protecting her cub. She should know lions don’t eat their own offspring.
“Too tight,” the baby said as he squirmed. Katrina loosened her embrace and he smiled shyly and pointed a quizzical finger at Alessandro.
The baby’s Rinaldo smile warmed a place in his heart that had gone cold when he was nineteen. When he’d lost a child he loved because a DNA test demanded by his Uncle to secure the legitimacy of the Rinaldo line had turned the happiest time in his life to the bitterest.
This child had his DNA, according to a test Katrina had done.  His lawyer had found the evidence before Alessandro left Italy. Katrina must have done that for her own reasons, a financial claim on his death was a possibility. But that didn’t matter now. He loved this little boy on site and nothing would stop him being a real father to Alex now that he had found him.

Katrina and Alessandro fell in love but their relationship didn’t work out the first time because Alessandro lacked the ability to commit and Katrina couldn't believe a man could truly love her.
 
In the excerpt, baby Alex brings Katrina and Alessandro back together. You can see the effect on Alessandro that meeting his child has. Also what is shown is that their pasts play a huge role in how they internally process the events taking place. Alessandro finds the will to be a better man and show up, while we also see how Katrina is going to have to rethink her plan of raising Alex alone.
 
Neither is comfortable with the way things are changing. No one ever is, but the love they feel for each other and their little boy will keep them trying hard to work things out. Of course they have a lot of changes to make regarding their view of the world and each other but their love enables them to heal. 
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Although Katrina and Alessandro are good people, their past hurts have caused them to make hurtful errors of judgment, so that now it’s almost impossible to put things right. But this is a romance and they do find a way. That is because of the healing kind of love which is my kind of romance.
 
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The Italian Billionaires Secret Baby is available in eBook and print or borrow for free from your Kindle device with Amazon Prime.