Survivor (Lone Star Book 1)

My grandmother Ruth Beckett is a firm believer in the power of random acts of kindness.
Growing up, Gran€s favorite saying was, Grace, you never know who you€re going to meet along this road called life so you€d better watch what comes out of your mouth and treat people the way you want to be treated because you just never know whose life you might be touching.
And she should know. She and Grandpa Harry certainly touched enough lives in their time, including mine.
I was just a little girl of six when they took me in after my mother died and my father walked away from me. My grandparents have been touching my life for more than seventeen years now.
As for me, well I€d never given much thought to such things as touching other people€s lives before. Mostly because I didn€t see myself as any shining example. After all, I€d barely survived the train wreck that was my own life.
The only thing I knew for certain was what lay ahead for me. I€d pretty much decided my future by the time I was six years old. It was an easy decision to come to really. After watching my mother fight a losing battle with breast cancer not to mention being there when my father walked away from us both. I knew it was the best decision for me.
I planned to work hard, become successful in my chosen public relations career and that was it. Nothing elaborate, certainly nothing life changing. Just a simple plan. Simple and unencumbered by all of the emotional attachments that come along with falling in love. You see, there was no way I would ever put myself through the same pain my mother went through. I wasn€t going to put my heart on the line like that.
So you see I knew what to expect from my future and it didn€t include anything involving men, or love, or zsa-zsa-zsu for that matter.
But let me just begin my story where it really gets interesting, because frankly up until I met Aaron, my life was pretty much normal. When Aaron entered the picture, things took a definite turn toward the emotional.
I€d just recently graduated from the university and was paying the rent in Austin apartment by working as a temp until my dream career came along.
So you can imagine my excitement and later my confusion when I was awakened from a sound sleep at the terrible hour of three in the morning.
What had awakened me you might ask? Well, it was this overwhelming feeling that just would not go away no matter how hard I tried to push it aside. A feeling that something big was about to happen in my life. All of this was further reinforced by my grandmother€s call a short time later.
You see--Grandma Ruth also had dreams. Vivid dreams concerning the future of those she loved. And she€d just had one about me. This was serious stuff here because Gran€s dreams were never wrong€"not once. My life was not going to be the same again.
The second I met Aaron Severn, I knew all of this was true and then some. Not only was my life about to change just like my feeling and Gran€s dream had predicted but Aaron, someone who had no spiritual foundation in his own life was going to teach me some very important lessons about living.
Lesson One: In spite of everything I€d spent my whole life trying to convince myself I believed in, I desperately wanted to be loved by someone. I wanted marriage and family. I€d just never realized how strong those needs were in me until I met Aaron.
Lesson Two: My future wasn€t set in stone. I might have inherited my mother€s illness but I didn€t have to have her same fate. And I wouldn€t have to go through any of these things alone. Aaron, in spite of all that I believed I knew about him was going to be there for me through it all. Even surviving cancer.
And in the process of learning these lessons, I found out something very important about myself. I did have the power to touch someone€s life after all, because I€d touched Aaron€s without even realizing it.
Throughout the months of struggling