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She's fearless about everything except the one thing that might actually save her.

Niki Ballantyne has spent a decade being extraordinary — search and rescue specialist, parkour athlete, the woman who runs toward danger while everyone else runs away. A summer cycling solo through the sun-drenched south of France was supposed to be a break. Instead she stumbles into a medieval festival in a golden Aquitaine village, adopts a gentle giant of a blacksmith who reminds her of everything she's lost, and finds herself squarely in the orbit of the most dangerously perceptive man she's ever met.

Luc sees through her armour. All of it. And he won't go away.

Emotionally layered and set against the breathtaking beauty of southern France — a story about what happens when the most fearless woman in the room finally meets the one thing she can't outrun.

For readers of Santa Montefiore — a luminous travel romance about grief, reckless courage, and the terrifying, transformative business of letting someone love you.

Some people are worth catching. Some people are worth staying for.

"A carefully woven and surprising story of love, friendships and heartache — an utterly independent woman who you will find endearing but frustratingly stubborn." — Reedsy Discovery ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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One moment she's racing through the Tuscan hills with her future in her hands. The next, she's upside down in a ditch — and the dangerously attractive stranger pulling her out of the mud is the only thing standing between her and losing everything.

Clio Sinclair McBeal is a brilliant art historian clinging to her last shot at a PhD — and the grudging approval of the demanding academic parents who have mapped out every step of her life. She doesn't have time for detours. She especially doesn't have time for Guillermo d'Aldobrandin.

But Guillermo — celebrated Florentine architect, reckless, magnetic, and entirely too perceptive — is about to lose something irreplaceable. Villa Cielo Incantato, his family's breathtaking Renaissance estate on the Tuscan hillside, is slipping through his fingers, along with four hundred years of history. And somehow, despite every sensible instinct she possesses, Clio cannot walk away.

What begins as an unlikely alliance becomes something neither of them planned for — as Tuscany works its slow, golden magic and Guillermo begins to see through every careful wall she has ever built.

For readers of Santa Montefiore and Kate Morton — a luminous story of art, passion, and the courage it takes to finally claim the life you didn't know you were allowed to want.

Sometimes the most important detour is the one you never saw coming.

Winner of the Chatelaine Grand Prize for Romance and Women's Fiction.

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The full length novels in the Life is a Journey series are each separate, stand-alone contemporary romances with a healthy dose of travel and adventure. They can be read in any order, and if you love them, look forward to more titles in the future.

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Life is a Journey

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