Clancy Deveril's life was not messy. She never allowed it to be. She simply moved on. It was what she did and it always worked. So why wasn't she doing that now?
Perhaps because this time it wasn't just about her. It involved her family, particularly her much younger sister. And, as Clancy saw it, she knew where to lay the blame. The entitled Hunter family. Specifically, Abigail Hunter. So with revenge in mind Clancy drew closer to Abigail Hunter's flame. But too late, she realised she could get badly burned.
Abby Hunter had her life in order. After her divorce she returned home and made a satisfying life with her young daughter. She had a high-profile job, was happily single, and hadn't had the time, or the inclination, to change that status. Quite frankly, romance had never been on her agenda.
So how could a chance meeting suddenly jolt her ordered, well-balanced life completely off its comfortable centre? She knew she had to get herself back onto firm ground. But was she sure that was what she wanted?
Life was all about forks in the road, Kat's best friend, Em, told her. And Kat knew she hadn't chosen wisely when it came to the forks in her road of life. It seemed each road had led to dismal failure. Her family. Her relationships. All failures. Kat didn't know why Em was still there, especially when Kat rarely took Em's advice.
However this time Kat had to admit perhaps Em was right. Renovating the old house she'd inherited gave her a project. It would take her mind off her breakup with Shael, Em said.
But going back, facing her past and her bad choices, would that solve anything? She’d also be back within streets of her family home and the parents who had turned her away. Wouldn't it simply make her feel even more depressed?
Then Kat phoned a renovation company and her life took another turn. Another fork in her road opened before her and this time she so desperately wanted to make the right choice. She wanted to arrive at the right destination with the right person and she knew getting there was the most important thing she'd ever do.
Riley James couldn't have loved her adoptive parents more if she had been their biological daughter. They had never hidden the fact that she was adopted and as she got older so too grew her curiosity about the parents who gave her life.
So with the blessing of her mother and father and dire warnings from her friend, Lisa, Riley sets out on a journey of discovery and travels south to Brisbane to find her birth mother. Maggie is thrilled to meet Riley but her husband is overseas on business and she wants to tell him about Riley first, before telling the rest of her family.
Then Riley meets Maggie's beautiful stepdaughter, Jayne, and falls desperately in love with her. How can she tell Jayne about her true feelings without also telling her about her connection to Maggie, and thus breaking her promise to her birth mother?
A life-threatening incident had changed Mac Donovan’s life. Now restricted to desk duties she was focusing on recovery and returning to her old job. She also knew she had to make the break from a dangerous secret relationship.
On the positive side she was seeing more of her friends and realising how much she’d missed them. Her best friend, Dee, didn’t want Mac to move on alone and informed Mac she knew someone who would be just right for her. Mac wanted no such complications.
Then she met the delightful Liv Murray and Mac conceded Dee might be right. But Liv Murray had her own secrets, her own personal dilemma. Could they help each other and find what they were both seeking?
However, taking a step forward meant Mac had to sort out the mess behind her. Was she up to that?
Kate Ballantyne's life was cruising along very nicely. No highs. No lows. Just the way she liked it. She had a good job and a casual relationship. Then Patsy Maclean had a sixtieth birthday and Kate learned her entire family would be attending the party, including her younger daughter, Ashley.
As an orphaned ten-year-old, Kate's young life had been turned upside down when she was sent to live with her aunt in the historic gold mining city of Charters Towers. For the quiet and lonely Kate, the extroverted Ashley Maclean had been her salvation. They were inseparable and their childhood friendship developed into love, a love Kate had thought would last forever. But Ashley had succumbed to family pressures and broken Kate's vulnerable heart.
It had taken Kate years to even begin to get over that betrayal and now, ten years later, that same Ashley Maclean was coming home. Kate told herself she was well over her, that Ashley had ceased to be a part of her life, that she'd moved on and made a life without her. She kept telling herself that. Yet her reaction to just the mention of Ashley's name had her wondering if her hard-won indifference was a battle she only thought she'd won.
There’s a stranger in town. Carolyn Winter is cool, in control and content with her single life. She’s certainly not looking for a relationship. Been there, done that, not pleasant. She has all she needs at the moment. A new job and a new home.
And when someone, an attractive someone, is catapulted into her life, and keeps reappearing, she tells herself nothing can happen. It’s far too complicated. Isn‘t it?
A prodigal sister returns. Tess Wainwright has never been in love. She knows she’s run away from everything. The only worthy thing she’s done is raise Bronte and the nine-year-old deserves more than life has dealt her. Now it’s time for Tess to finish getting her life in order, find some normality, reunite with her older sister, and hopefully make a better life for herself and Bronte.
Of course the universe has never been Tess’s friend and it looks like it’s running true to form. Her sister, an army nurse, is deployed to Afghanistan, but she assures Tess her friends will help her settle back into life in her home town. Liv, Mac and Dee are doing just that and Tess starts to think, universe aside, for once she’s made the right decision.
Then that same universe has a change of heart, quite literally, and sets two lonely women on a collision course.
Jo Creighton's life was in tatters. All she had to show for the last ten years was a failed marriage and trampled self-esteem. She'd been a naive fool who believed in fairy tales and true love.
Gathering the last remnants of her resolve Jo decides to make a clean break, get away, find the person she used to be. So she takes leave from work and escapes to the mountains where she's sure the clean, fresh air will clear the negativity, the fuzzy cobwebs from her mind. She would regain her emotional strength, reacquaint herself with the Jo she used to be and find a new path for her life. Maybe then her recurring dreams would cease, or at least she might see them through to the end, discover whatever it was she sought but never quite found.
A chance meeting with one of the most self-assured women Jo had ever met gave her new courage. Alex Farmer was all that Jo wasn't and as their friendship grew Jo found new strength in herself. And so much more. But was she strong enough to choose such a radical new direction?
