A novel of romantic suspense
When Desire Takes Over
A sealed room. A missing masterpiece. And a love built on the one secret neither of them can survive.
The story
When reclusive art collector Augustin Reval dies at his villa on Lake Lugano, his will names a stranger to restore the sealed room that holds his greatest paintings. Geneva conservator Shafieka Abrahams has never met him, and she cannot understand why he chose her.
Dominic Francis, Reval's estate director for twenty years, believes she is part of a secret someone is desperate to protect. When the room is opened, its most famous painting is missing from its frame: a Swiss masterpiece the world believes was stolen from this very house in 1990.
Threatening notes. A break-in. Letters hidden in a mountain chalet. A dealer who knows too much and a daughter contesting her father's will. As the evidence points first at Dominic and then at Shafieka, their attraction burns hotter than their trust.
From the lakeside terraces of Ticino to a snowbound chalet above Zermatt, When Desire Takes Over is a story of passion, suspicion and two people who must decide whether love can survive the truth about where they came from.
From Chapter One
The villa came out of the dark the way certain faces come out of old canvases once the yellowed varnish is lifted: all at once, and more vividly than you had prepared for.