It Happened One Week

First Love Quiz
When you think of your first love, you

A) smile at the memories

B) wonder what you ever saw in him

C) wonder if he’s single and available

If you came face-to-face with your first love, you would

A) give him a friendly hug

B) pray he doesn’t recognize you

C) dream of being his bride

If your first love offered you a second chance, you would

A) fix him up on a blind date with a great gal

B) fix him up on a blind date from hell

C) run to the nearest wedding chapel

Remember your first love? Mine was a tall string bean (still my type), who broke my fifteen-year-old heart when the town “voluptuous” girl stole him. (To this day, I’m sure she
stuffed.)
I started thinking about first loves, so I boldly asked some Silhouette staffers about theirs:

“I got so nervous around my first love that I wound up kissing his neighbor and best friend, instead of him.
”

—Tara Gavin, Senior Editor

“I ran into him, unexpectedly, on a
very
bad hair day—and I never heard from him again.”

—Gail Chasan, Editor

“I saw him years later, and he forgot my name.”

—Cristine Niessner, Associate Editor

“We got married!”

—Ross Richman, first love and husband of Karen Taylor Richman, Associate Editor
(Thanks, Ross, for assuring us that sometimes first love is forever!)

This month, JoAnn Ross tells the irresistible tale of a woman who finds her first love—ten years later—in
It Happened One Week.
And in Martha Schroeder’s wonderful What
Engagement Ring?!,
a woman’s
supposed
first love insists she return an engagement ring he never gave her!

Next month, you’ll find two Yours Truly titles by Cait London and Kathy Marks—two new novels about unexpectedly meeting, dating…marrying Mr. Right.

Yours truly,

Editor

I’m often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?” At such times, writers are tempted to invent some lofty, literary answer. I’ve decided to tell you the truth.

This story was conceived late one summer night in a Karaoke bar, where I was having an afterdinner drink with a few of my foreign editors and Dianne Moggy, a senior editor at Harlequin. When the man behind the keyboard began playing “Love Letters in the Sand,” Dianne looked up at the oversized screen and said, “JoAnn, look, there’s a Yours Truly!”

My first thought was that I didn’t have time to write another book. I was, after all, already committed to several novels for Harlequin Temptation and another mainstream novel for MIRA. But watching the video of the waves rolling up on the sparkling sand started my imagination stirring. By breakfast, I knew I had to write
It Happened One Week.

This is one of my more autobiographical stories, drawing from my teenage days in Oregon and my own bittersweet summer romance. Fortunately, like my hero and heroine, Jay and I eventually got back together and went on to live mostly happily ever after.

Happy Reading!

JoAnn Ross

Satan’s Cove

T
he letters had been painstakingly carved into the shifting silver sands. Although she could see them from the top of the jagged cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, fifteen-yearold Amanda Stockenberg could not make out the message.

As she descended the stone steps to the beach, slowly at first, then faster, until she was nearly running, the words became clearer.