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The Iowa State Fair came and went, and we never made it. I was over my obsession with the time warps and didn’t miss them a bit. I was quickly falling in love with Dave Cameron.
On a Thursday morning, August 16, to be exact, I was on a plane with my publicist Nancy, who though she always had my best interests at heart, really pushed me. I’d had enough... tours to last me a lifetime, and this trip to Chicago for a book signing was going to be my last, damn it, if I could just get up the courage to put my foot down. At least the signing was only four hours on Friday at a smaller, more intimate store, Barnett-Owen Books in conjunction with their becoming a retailer for Kindle. I would be home by Saturday night, although, I didn’t want to be away from Dave for even one night, but he promised he would be waiting.
This trip turned out to be more than just a day at the signing table, though. For this trip, I would meet Claire Neumann and she would change my life profoundly and forever.
Nancy had received a letter a few weeks ago from the Illinois Make-A-Wish Foundation. They had a barely eighteen-year-old girl who had leukemia, which had returned for the third time. This time though, it was aggressively attacking her
.
Her wish--was to meet me. Me! For crying out loud!
Nancy arranged for her to be at Barnett-Owen and to spend a couple of hours at the signing table with me.
I had been at the signing for a couple of hours when through the historical romance section came the most beautiful and most ill-looking child I had ever seen in my lifetime. She was in a wheelchair, and her mother and father were wheeling her toward me. She had no hair—even her eyebrows were gone—and she wore a sky-blue beret that set her large blue eyes off perfectly. She had a copy of Passion’s Fury in her lap, clutched tightly in her hands.
I reached out to shake her parents’ hands, and then I knelt beside Claire.
“You ready to work?”
She nodded. “I’m so happy to meet you, Miss Mills. You are my all-time favorite author.”
“Call me Torie, please. We are on a first-name basis, understand? All-time favorite, huh? I think you are destined to become my all-time favorite assistant.” I smiled, and gave a gentle squeeze to her hand.
Nancy had received a letter a few weeks ago from the Illinois Make-A-Wish Foundation. They had a barely eighteen-year-old girl who had leukemia, which had returned for the third time. This time though, it was aggressively attacking her
.
Her wish--was to meet me. Me! For crying out loud!
Nancy arranged for her to be at Barnett-Owen and to spend a couple of hours at the signing table with me.
I had been at the signing for a couple of hours when through the historical romance section came the most beautiful and most ill-looking child I had ever seen in my lifetime. She was in a wheelchair, and her mother and father were wheeling her toward me. She had no hair—even her eyebrows were gone—and she wore a sky-blue beret that set her large blue eyes off perfectly. She had a copy of Passion’s Fury in her lap, clutched tightly in her hands.
I reached out to shake her parents’ hands, and then I knelt beside Claire.
“You ready to work?”
She nodded. “I’m so happy to meet you, Miss Mills. You are my all-time favorite author.”
“Call me Torie, please. We are on a first-name basis, understand? All-time favorite, huh? I think you are destined to become my all-time favorite assistant.” I smiled, and gave a gentle squeeze to her hand.
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