“Oh, Justin. I…I have something I must tell you, something I think is wonderful. I’m pregnant.”
“You’re pregnant?” Justin asked, his gray eyes starting to gleam. “You’re pregnant!” He whooped, laughing. “I’m going to be a father!”
“You’re not angry?” Hannah asked.
“Of course I’m not angry. I’m thrilled.” He frowned. “Did you know about this when I was here before?”
She nodded. “I knew how you felt about marriage,” Hannah defended herself. “I was afraid to tell you, afraid you wouldn’t care or that you would think I was trying to trap you.”
“Wouldn’t care?” Justin appeared stunned, as though he’d taken a blow to the head.
“I…I did finally call you,” she said softly, trying to placate him. “You weren’t there.”
“No one said I had missed a call,” Justin said. “When did you call?”
Hannah wet her lips and lowered her eyes. “A couple of minutes before you rang the bell.”
“A couple of-” Justin broke off, shaking his head. “You know, sweetheart, I don’t know whether to kiss you senseless or shake you senseless.”
“You’d better kiss me,” she advised demurely. “You can’t shake me in my delicate condition.”
“Okay.” Lowering his head, he took possession of her lips…and her heart.
About Joan Hohl
Joan Hohl was born on June 13, 1935. For as long as she can remember, Joan has always wanted to be a writer. Her mother said Joan had her head in the clouds, always daydreaming. The only thing was, Joan's daydreams had plots! Thinking herself audacious for even considering joining the ranks of her heroes – the authors – she never put her ideas, or dreams, into words, never made notes or wrote anything down.
Joan worked at several jobs – nothing remotely close to a career – some sales clerking, but primarily factory work, because that paid better. She married with Marv and had two daugthers, Lori and Amy.
Then when she turned 40, Joan experienced a definite turning point in her life. Deciding that at her advanced age she could handle rejection, had nothing to lose and by some miracle, possibly much to gain if only in self satisfaction, she quit her job. With no employment, but her decision firm, she sat down at her kitchen table with pencils and a spiral notebook and let her imagination take wing.
Joan achieved her impossible dream three years, and many rejections, after she began writing. Her first book sale was to Vivian Stephens at Dell Publishing. A few weeks later she received a call from an editor at Leisure Books, with an offer for a manuscript she had previously submitted to other houses…and believed was dead-in-the-publishing-waters, so to speak. The second sale was the first one to be published, in 1979 as Paula Roberts, later she used the pseudonym Amii Lorin, one combination of her daughters names: Amy and Lori. Her first ten books were written longhand at her kitchen table. As she wasn't a typist, she paid one to transcribe her handwritten manuscripts before biting the bullet and going to the typewriter herself to hunt and pick her way through future stories. Some years later, Joan sold a formally rejected, completed manuscript to Silhouette Books… and found a home. She is considered by many in the business a trailblazer in sensuous romance writing, and having been one of the first, if not the first, author to write male point of view in category romance novels. Many of her books are set in her beloved Pennsylvania, by an ocean, any ocean, but usually along the South Jersey coast or the West, with its mythic Western heroes.
Joan lives with her husband, Marv, in eastern Pennsylvania. Now their daughters, Lori and Amy, are two beautiful woman, and they has two grandchildren, Erica and Cammeron. Now, more than 25 years after her first publication and 60 some books (she now no longer keeps exact count), Joan is still writing one to two books a year as Joan Hohl, although she laughingly tells everyone she is semi-retired! She has one question: Does she have a career yet?
