Welcome to Teaser Tuesday, the tantalising blog series where I share snippets from my works-in-progress, up-coming releases and published novels, and occasionally let good writing buddies take the reins.

Greetings from South Australia! I’m visiting my home state for the annual Romance Writers of Australia conference. The conference is being held in Adelaide but I’ve flown to Mount Gambier to see my family beforehand and will head north later in the week. The RWA conference is the best fun, with lots of learning, networking and catching up with new and old buddies. Usually I can barely speak at the end my voice is so worn out. Worth it though.

I’ll try to do up a blog post with lots of piccies when I get back, so keep your eye out for that. In the meantime, you can enjoy this little snippet from Heart of the Valley, and its totally sighworthy hero Lachie. Oh, how I love that man!

Brooke woke on Thursday morning at first relieved to find the last of the aches and fever gone, only to discover a few seconds later they’d been replaced with a cough so deep each convulsion felt like fish hooks jerking inside her lungs.

The humiliation seemed endless. She hung over the side of the bed, hacking and moaning, aware Lachlan would be in to check on her any second, but unable to stop. Cough or no cough, she had plans for today. Plans that required his cooperation, and she wouldn’t earn it by sounding like an emphysemic hag.

Bare footsteps padded across the polished floorboards. ‘Here,’ said Lachlan, handing her a glass of water.

She clutched it in her shaky grip and drank between half coughs and ragged, heaved breaths. The fit over, she sank back onto the mattress with her palm on her aching chest. Lachlan stood at the edge of the bed in a pair of faded jeans, the zip done up but the top button still loose, and a dark blue twill shirt hanging open over his chest. A fine line of inky hair ran up from his waistband and curled around his neat belly button before trailing toward his chest. The pale bronze skin of his torso stretched smooth over taut, well-developed muscles of the type seen more often in elite-sports change rooms than farm cottages.

Brooke blinked, wondering if this was a cough-induced hallucination. Two-metre-tall rugby-playing rural types didn’t stand by her bed looking sleep-ruffled and concerned and unbelievably sexy every day. Yet there Lachlan stood, evaporating every drop of water from her mouth and turning her insides fluttery and hot.

©Cathryn Hein

Heart of the Valley can be yours right now from Amazon, iBooks, Kobo or Google Play. For print copies, visit Booktopia or your favourite book store.

Want to learn more about Heart of the Valley? You’ll find story behind the book, reviews, and more excerpts on its book page on this website.