Showing posts with label Love Charm for Gillian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Love Charm for Gillian. Show all posts

Croatia-Plitvice Lakes National Park

How beautiful is this pool? This is the actual color, not doctored by any program. The water in the Plitvice National Park is crystal clear and incredibly beautiful in various shades of blue and green.

Here's a picture of a green lake. Look in the foreground. You can actually see the stones on the bottom. You can also see people walking on a boardwalk on the far side of the lake.
The park is organized to be traversed in a full day of hiking. Although this section is flat, there are steep climbs, although nothing too arduous. You are not allowed to go off the marked path, nor should you do so as Croatia has many unexploded mines leftover from the Yugoslavian war in the 1990s.

This park is a UNESCO World Heritage site. You start your hike at a section of narrow waterfalls.
 Further along you'll see more beautiful falls.


After hiking for a couple of hours you come to a couple of lakes which you must traverse by ferry boat.
You then hike for a couple more hours. At the end of this hike, we reached a sort of rest area where they had a small selection of food. We hadn't packed a lunch, since we were staying in a hotel. So we found some ice cream bars, the pre-packaged kind (Dove Bars). I cannot remember the last time I had ice cream, but we were hot and hungry so we each grabbed one, tore open the wrapper, and my kids and I each took a bite immediately. Hubby was over by the cashier paying for them.

Him: How much?
Her: 200 kuna (Croatian currency, of which we had 0)
Him: How much in euros?
Her: We don't take euros.
Him: Do you take credit cards?
Her: No.

Whoops. We all looked at each other guiltily over the tops of our ice creams. No money to pay and we were already eating them. I have never done that in my life.

We were a long way from civilization. It wasn't like we could find an ATM.

Fortunately, we didn't get arrested. She begrudgingly took the euros. Elsewhere in Croatia, everyone took euros which is why we didn't buy the local currency. Live and learn. The ice cream was delish!

This park is beautiful, pristine, and very well maintained. The Croatian people have worked hard to rebuild their country after the war, and I commend them for the beauty they've protected.

Has anyone been to this park? Probably not. We didn't see any Americans, although there were people from all over the world.

Of course, I had to set a story in Croatia. It's called Love Charm for Gillian. Here's the white cat leading the way to the seaside bar where Gillian is recovering from heartache when an adventurer wanders in...

Tall, Dark and Loaded

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Love Charm for Gillian by Carly Carson, National Bestselling Author Gillian traveled to the Dalmatian Coast to close the door on tragedy. But an adventurer with a private yacht may be just the type of enticement she can't resist...for better or for worse.
Billion Dollar Smile by Kelly Collins, National Bestselling Author. Ten dollars and a smile. That’s all it took to change the course of Samantha Foster’s life. After winning the Billion Dollar Smile contest she set off to live a week in the shoes of elusive, gaming billionaire, Miles Covington, but could she get past his secrets and games to win a place in his heart?
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My story in this anthology is Love Charm for Gillian. 

 This story is only available in the anthology. But you can't beat the price because you get 6 stories!

Excerpt: 


“Here’s the jumping spot,” Cameron said. He shucked his navy t-shirt over his head without warning, and dropped it on the rocks. Gillian sucked in a breath that would have been audible if not for the noise of the waves battering the cliff in their endless quest for passage. His gray board shorts hung low on his hips, hugging his waist just below his carved abs. She could have spent the rest of the day staring at the nice fit.

But other delights needed to be checked out. His tight abs, that fanned up to a muscular chest and broad shoulders with chiseled biceps. His warm tan. The black hair that outlined his pecs, virtually disappeared on his stomach, and reappeared, with a little more presence, to arrow down into his shorts.

She wouldn’t be surprised if her mouth were hanging open, particularly when Cameron grinned at her as if he knew exactly what was going through her mind. He placed his wallet and phone on top of his t-shirt.

“Do I dare to ask if you’ll follow suit?” he asked, letting his gaze rest for a moment on her tank top.

She waved back the way they’d come. “With all those people watching?” Clumps of colorfully clad vacationers dotted the gray and tan rocks wherever there was a spot wide enough to sit down.

“You could be an exhibitionist for all I know,” he answered, grinning. “If it were my lucky day.”

“Not your lucky day, then.” She dropped her bag, kicked off her flip-flops, and jumped into the sea.

She heard Cameron’s gasp over her head, and then his laughter rang out, coming closer as he jumped in after her.

The cool blue water closed over her head, sparkling around her. She let it refresh her for a moment, before she kicked up, breaking through the surface of the foaming white water. Cameron was already bobbing at the surface, looking in her direction with a bit of anxiety in his eyes.

“That was a gutsy move, Red,” he said.

“Not really.” She tossed back her hair and smiled with sheer joy. “You didn’t strike me as the type of man who’d be out here cliff-diving if it wasn’t safe to do.”

He returned her smile with an infectious one of his own. “You don’t want to rely on me to be cautious.”

She laughed. “Me neither.”

“I got that, Red.” He shoved his black hair back on his head. “Now do you want to swim around out here, or jump again?”

“Is there a way out?”

He threw back his head and laughed, his teeth white against the tanned column of his throat. “Some people,” he said, “would have established an exit strategy before jumping in.”

She shrugged, her shoulders barely clearing the water. But his gaze fixed on them.

“I want to jump in again,” she said.

He pointed behind her. “Swim over there, and you’ll see a way to climb out onto the rocks.”

Fortunately, she was an excellent swimmer. The current kept trying to push her onto the face of the cliff, but she was able to reach the small opening and clamber up. It wasn’t until she regained her footing and turned back to check on Cameron, that she realized she had a problem. Her cream tank top clung to her body like a second skin, and the reason she noticed it was that Cameron’s eyes were glued to her breasts as he pulled himself out of the water. Of course, that was somewhat fair as her gaze was locked onto the play of muscles in his broad shoulders as he hoisted himself onto the horizontal rock.

Still, it was somehow more socially acceptable for her to enjoy his muscles than it was for him to enjoy her near nudity. She crossed her arms over her chest.

Cameron shook his head. “A shame to hide such a gorgeous view.”

She almost giggled. “You’re staring.”

“I don’t want to objectify you,” he said with a wink. “But I’m a man and you’re hot. So I’m stuck.”
                                                                                 ~*~
 This is a picture of the rocks from which they went cliff-diving (in Dubrovnik, Croatia.)

 Yes, one of my kids thought it would be fun to do.