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Book: The Boat Builder's Bed (Wicked in Wellington) by Kris Pearson

categories: Book, Superyacht Builder, New Zealand Setting, Mixed-Blood Hero, Decorator Heroine, Wicked in Wellington, Sizzling Love Story, Harbor-Side Mansion, Beach-Side Seduction, Contemporary Romance

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Kris Pearson

about this book: A few months ago, I saw this vacant storefront on a main street close to our sports stadium in Wellington, New Zealand. It was surrounded by furniture stores, paint stores, bedding stores, architectural hardware companies, a huge tile store... What a great place for an interior decorator to set up business! So I invented Sophie.

But the story started earlier than that. My neighbor Joseph is a proud-looking dark-skinned Maori. He'd been talking to me about being 'whangaied' which is the rather casual unofficial adoption custom the Maori people sometimes use. 'Whangaied' children often move between their real family and their whangai family...maybe because of a mother's ill-health, or her sister's inability to bear her own child, or because parents wish to work out of the district and not disrupt their children's schooling. Joseph had been whangaied for many years, and when it came time for him to re-connect with his brothers and sisters it was difficult for him.

This gave me a great basis for a story: a heroine who for very good reasons couldn't yet retrieve her child from her mother's care. And a hero who had never lived with his parents (and never forgiven them.) Conflict! For good measure I made Rafe Severino part-Maori, part Italian, and part Native American Indian. New Zealand was host to thousands of American servicemen in the latter part of the Second World War, and there were many children born of brief wartime liaisons. Rafe's mother was one - which is how he gained his Cherokee blood. He's a gorgeous-looking man!

My husband and I have a curtain-installation company, and we work in some wonderful houses around the harbor. It wasn't hard to invent a mansion. So come and be 'wicked in Wellington' with Sophie and Rafe. Hope you enjoy the book.

A Spanish edition of this book is available too - for more information click here