Until You Find Me # 1
By: Amber Hart
Releasing November 11th, 2014
Loveswept: Flirt
Amber Hart pushes contemporary romance to its wildest limits in this heart-pounding novel, the story of a girl who travels to Africa to protect the legacy of one man . . . and stays for the love of another.
Raven Moore, a twenty-year-old college student from Michigan, feels out of place in the beautiful, treacherous jungles of Cameroon, staying in the habitat where her father gave his life to help protect endangered gorillas. He left home years ago; now Raven refuses to return home until she unravels the truth about his last days.
Raven certainly doesn’t count on crossing paths with a handsome young hunter—especially one as charismatic and intense as Jospin Tondjii. Instantly, she’s hooked. But Jospin is hiding a dark truth: He is the heir to a powerful poaching empire, part of a ruthless black market that is responsible for the dwindling gorilla population.
Their fathers may have been enemies, but Raven and Jospin forge a bond that goes beyond blood, a relationship that is tested as Raven draws closer to the source of her father’s death. Can she and Jospin bear the weight of the secrets of the wild—and the secrets of their pasts? Or will the rain forest destroy them both?
Advance praise for Until You Find Me
“If you think the jungle is hot and dangerous, wait until you meet Jospin. He and Raven turn up the heat to scorching and burn the jungle down!”—Lisa Desrochers, USA Today bestselling author of A Little Too Far
“A beautiful, unconventional story that takes you to the jungles of Africa to fall in love, Until You Find Me contains the perfect balance of angst, thrills, and page-turning appeal.”—K.A. Tucker, USA Today bestselling author of Ten Tiny Breaths
“Wonderfully unique and utterly unputdownable, Until You Find Me is a breath of fresh air. Each page is sexier than the one before.”—Lauren Layne, author of Isn’t She Lovely
Excerpt:
With nothing left to clean, I head outside. Dark branches splinter the sky. The jungle goes still with my initial presence. A shuddering breath of shaky leaves, and then nothing. The creatures know I’m here. They’re always quiet at first, judging what kind of threat I hold in the palms of my hands. They are smart, wise to my ways. But I am not after the snake that coils, ready to strike, or the lizard, motionless, pretending to be part of the log beneath him. They are worth nothing to me, and so I move on.
And that’s when it happens.
Leaves blur the picture around me. I blink. Wait. Watch.
It’s her. The girl with hair like bleached sunshine. The one I haven’t seen in over a month. I listen to my heartbeat throbbing in my ears like hundreds of marching men. I should have paid better attention. But no one ever comes here, so close to my home—unless the person is a friend. Yet here she is. Unafraid or unaware—I’ll discover which soon enough.
I become part of the jungle. Still. Even my breaths are quiet.
Her back is to me. A sling is wrapped around her injured arm. She looks fragile standing there in the sunlight. I am shocked to see that she survived her attack; I have a feeling that I need to go to her, but I fight it back. I don’t trust myself, the part of me that finds interest in this girl. And, even more so, I don’t trust her.
I suddenly notice the weapons poking out from the top of her bag. I can’t believe I didn’t notice them first. I am perplexed, because I know she stays at the habitat. But she doesn’t seem to be one of them at all.
Or is she? Did she find these weapons and plan to show them to her co-workers?
She yanks a spear out of her bag with her good hand and flings it at a paper that’s attached to a tree. It misses. By quite a lot. She tries another and another. Only one throw comes close to the mark.
I continue to watch her. It’s incredible that her injured arm is still attached and that she is throwing spears with her uninjured one. I’ve witnessed inexperienced poachers lose a leg, arm, sometimes worse. So perhaps the gorilla didn’t intend to hurt her badly. Perhaps his attack had been a warning. But why, I wonder?
I don’t know about this girl who possesses weapons and survives gorilla attacks that could maim grown men and squeezes my heart without ever laying a hand on me.
A grasshopper lands on my shoulder. I flick my eyes to it for a moment, raise my hand slowly, and brush it off. My eyes return to the girl.
But she’s gone. I don’t understand.
Then comes a voice.
“Who are you?” it asks from behind me.
Author Info: Amber Hart is the author of Before You and Until You Find Me. She grew up in Orlando, Florida, and Atlanta, Georgia, and now resides on the Florida coastline with her family. When not reading, she can be found writing, daydreaming, or dipping her toes in the sand.
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