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Informationen zum Autor Under her own name and pseudonyms, Lynn Viehl has published over twenty-five novels with ROC and NAL since her debut novel was published in January 2000. She and her family currently live in Florida. Klappentext View our feature on Lynn Viehl's Dreamveil.From the New York Times bestselling author Rowan Dietrich grew up on the streets. Now she's out to start anew! find a job-and keep her identity as a Kyndred secret! as well as her ability to "dreamveil" herself into the object of others' desires. But Rowan isn't using her gift when world-class chef Jean-Marc Dansant is stricken by her beauty and strength. And when dark secrets from her past threaten her new life and love! Rowan realizes she can't run forever... Chapter One Five years hadn't altered much of Rowan Dietrich or New York City. The kid who had carried everything she owned in a backpack when she had left for Georgia still owned little more than the clothes on her back. She'd found friends, people who were as damaged and screwed up as she was, but the two most important had really been searching for each other, and now they were together and complete. They would have gladly gone on being her surrogate family, but she'd wanted more than that, more than they could ever give. Leaving them behind hurt, but Rowan knew she'd done the right thing. If destiny did exist, she thought as she removed her helmet, being alone seemed to be hers. November had iced the roads with slush and frozen puddles, and forced her to keep her speed minimal as she retreated to the alleys. A few hours earlier she might have smelled what passed as a festive fragrance here: roasted nuts hawked by sidewalk vendors too fat or too poor to care about standing out in the cold. After midnight, the vendors trudged home while the dampness of the river crept east. The unlovely, clammy fumes of the Hudson blended with the perennial sour reek of car exhaust, garbage, and decades of grime exuded by the streets. Not even Pittsburgh, one of the dirtiest cities Rowan had ever seen, stank like New York. Something small with patchy fur and a long tail skittered across the road ahead of her. It might have been a very small, ratty-looking cat, or a very large, catty-looking rat. This was a stupid idea. Sometimes she'd smelled as vile as the streets, back when she'd been a homeless runaway. Living in the bowels of the greatest city on earth didn't include regular bathroom privileges or ample opportunities to keep up her personal hygiene. No matter how often she'd washed, she'd soaked up the acrid, sour odor of the city until she thought she'd never be clean again. Sometimes it had been so bad she'd wondered if every night the city lifted some giant invisible leg and pissed on her while she'd slept. Really stupid. As for the sights, the Big Apple appeared exactly as she remembered it, a soulless gray and black labyrinth of concrete and steel, as cold in electric light as in the wells of shadow, as indifferent to her as she'd be to an ant. As she hooked her helmet to the lock she'd installed at the back of her seat, she wondered why the passing years hadn't shrunk the city into something smaller and less intimidating. Surely any minute she'd start feeling at least a twinge of fond nostalgia for the place where she'd spent the worst times of her young life. It wasn't happening. She'd come back home unwanted and alone, and the city still didn't care. Realizing nothing had changed didn't chill her; resentment boiled in her chest. Screw the Apple. Her life had been polluted long enough by rage and fear of the things that had happened to her in this place without her permission. She'd come here to free herself of the past and finally face her fear. She would not be beaten into the pavement again by it. Well? What's it going to be?
