After The Fire

by Kathryn Shay

Berkley Pub Group

Contemporary Romance

November 2, 2003

ISBN-13: 0425193047

Available in: Paperback

Read an Excerpt

After The Fire
by Kathryn Shay

Detective Megan Hale has come to Hidden Cove to begin a new life. What she's leaving behind are painful memories—of her father and husband, both policeman killed in the line of duty. What lies ahead for Megan is a dream—to start a summer camp for the orphaned children of firefighters and police officers.

Firefighter Mitch Malvaso vowed to change his life after escaping an inferno—by promising to be a better husband in a marriage-gone-bad. Instead, he finds his newfound peace in Megan's selfless plan, and a deep respect that turns to unspoken love. As they work together on the camp and cross paths in their respective roles as police officer and firefighter, the attraction between them grows; so does the fear that theirs is a love never meant to be—unless they can find the courage to face the past and embrace a passionate future of endless possibilities.

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Kathryn Shay's Bio

Kathryn Shay is a lifelong writer. At fifteen, she penned her first 'romance,' a short story about a female newspaper reporter in New York City and her fight to make a name for herself in a world of male journalists - and with one hardheaded editor in particular. Looking back, Kathryn says she should have known then that writing was in her future. But as so often happens, fate sent her detouring down another path.

Fully intending to pursue her dream of big city lights and success in the literary world, Kathryn took every creative writing class available at the small private women's college she attended in upstate New York. Instead, other dreams took precedence. She met and subsequently married a wonderful guy who'd attended a neighboring school, then completed her practice teaching, a requirement for the education degree she never intended to use. But says Kathryn, "I fell in love with teaching the first day I was up in front of a class, and knew I was meant to do that."

Kathryn went on to build a successful career in the New York state school system, thoroughly enjoying her work with adolescents. But by the early 1990s, she'd again made room in her life for writing. It was then that she submitted her first manuscript to publishers and agents. Despite enduring two years of rejections, she persevered. And on a snowy December afternoon in 1994, Kathryn Shay sold her first book to Harlequin Superromance.

Since that sale, Kathryn has written seventeen books and two online reads for Harlequin, five mainstream contemporary romances for the Berkley Publishing Group, and two online novellas, which Berkley will publish in traditional print format.

She has been quoted in People Magazine, interviewed for The Wall Street Journal, and will be featured in Cosmopolitan magazine as their book excerpt for the December 2003 issue.

Kathryn has become known for her powerful characterizations - fans say they feel they know the people in her books - and her heart-wrenching, emotional writing (her favorite comments are that fans cried while reading her books or stayed up late to finish them). In testament to her skill, the author has won five Romantic Times Bookclub Reviewers Choice Awards, three Holt Medallions, two Desert Quill Awards, the Golden Leaf Award, and several online accolades, including five 5- Heart reviews from The Romance Reader.

Even in light of her writing success, that initial love of teaching has never wavered for Kathryn. She still teaches in the same school where her career began. These days, she lives in upstate New York with her husband and two children. "My life is very full," she reports, "but very happy. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to pursue and achieve my dreams."