Hugged By An Angel
Author: Roberta Capizzi
Release date: July 22, 2013
Genre: Contemporary Romance (with a little angelic theme)
Age Group: New Adult/Adult
How can you ever love again when tragedy has crushed your heart?
Kathleen used to love life. She had plans, dreams, and faith in life; but that was before the accident that took it all away from her in an instant. Now that her beloved brother is dead and she's confined to a wheelchair, her future is but a dark cloud hovering above her head. How can she ever find the will to move on and keep living without him? Even the cares of the happy-go-lucky American physiotherapist who's helping her with her rehab therapies are all in vain. Life seems to have lost its meaning, until one night she receives an unexpected celestial visit…
Colin has been working as a physiotherapist in Dublin for almost five years, but he’s never bonded so much with a patient like he is bonding with Kathleen; there's something about those sad blue eyes that makes him want to help her, to take away the pain that reminds him so much of his own. Having lost both his parents in a plane crash when he was only sixteen, Colin knows how it feels to have someone you love taken so abruptly away from you, and he makes it his mission to help Kathleen find her faith in life again. But something changes along the way…
Sometimes love can work miracles. If you believe.
“Fancy a snow fight?”
The male voice by my bed startled me, and I turned back to find Colin standing right next to me, that cute grin of his spread across his face.
“I doubt they make skiing wheelchairs,” I mumbled, just as grumpy as usual. He chuckled, deliberately ignoring my tone.
“Don’t make up excuses: you don’t want to challenge me because you know I’m gonna thrash you, hands down. I was the best snow fighter in New York City.”
I raised an eyebrow, amused at the way he always tried to cheer me up whenever I wanted to drown in sorrow. When I’d first arrived here at the hospital his happy-go-lucky attitude had driven me crazy; I’d hated it and wished he’d just leave me alone. He’d never be able to understand how I felt and should stop pretending he cared.
After he told me what had happened to his parents, though, I realized we had more things in common than I’d thought. We’d felt the same overwhelming pain, and he was only trying to help me get over it using his own life experience.
“Do you annoy all of your patients, or have I just been picked as the lucky one?”
He grinned again and I noticed how attractive he was when he did that, especially when his dimples showed up; he looked younger and more carefree, and it felt as if he were my friend rather than my physio.
I hadn’t seen him for two days and I’d found myself wondering more than once where he was and if he was with another girl. We’d never really gotten too personal during our chats so I didn’t know if he was single or in a steady relationship. The thought made me feel a little uneasy and, since my parents had come to see me over the weekend, I hadn’t had much time to dwell too much on that thought—or on that weird feeling that made my heart flutter every time he was around. Now, as we engaged in further friendly banter, I realized I’d sort of missed him.
“Hmm…let’s say you’re my new challenge, so I won’t leave you alone until I’m finished with you. You’d better start getting used to it, kiddo.”
“That sounds scary,” I said, putting on a mock terrified expression. “I think I might ask to be assigned to another physio, just to be sure.”
He gave a mischievous laugh and I couldn’t help but smile. His giggle was becoming contagious.
“Whoa, is that a smile?” he asked, his eyes wide in disbelief. “The Ice Queen is starting to melt! Now I understand why it’s snowing: it’s all your fault!”
I laughed. “I can be happy and funny, you know? At least, I used to be, before my life changed so drastically.”
“You’re saying you were fun to be around? Hmm…I can’t picture you as the life of the party. No,” he said, shaking his head dramatically. “Definitely can’t.”
I smiled sheepishly. “Well, not the life of the party, but if you asked my brother he would tell you a few stories that…” I stopped mid-sentence when I realized this was never going to happen, and I felt the familiar lump in my throat come back as tears filled my eyes for the hundredth time since the accident. I was starting to get sick of those tears.
He noticed the sudden mood swing and sat on my bed, looking at me with the sweet expression he put on every time he wanted to comfort me.
“Maybe after I’m finished with you, you’ll be able to be the life of the party again.” He grinned, and I felt a twinge of hope flicker inside my heart. “I’d like to see that, you know. Maybe I’ll throw a party just to see you go wild.”
An avid reader since her childhood years and being an only child, Roberta always enjoyed the company of her fictional friends from the children’s books she loved reading, while she dreamed of writing her own stories one day.
It was when she discovered novels by authors Rosamunde Pilcher and Maeve Binchy in her teenage years that she realized it was time she put down in words the stories she had kept well hidden in her mind until then.
What started as a hobby, soon turned into a real passion and a way of life, until she could no longer keep the stories to herself, and decided to get over her fears and share them with the world.
Roberta lives in Italy, but her dream is to move out of her country and live either in a thatched cottage in the Irish countryside or in a country house with a swing on the back porch, somewhere in the United States, where she would love to spend her days writing novels as a full-time job, and maybe one day even get as far as writing a screenplay for a movie.
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