Book excerpt: Beautiful and charismatic, Maggie Meyers is one of those women men fall for at first sighta woman who meets her equal when she encounters Johnny OBrien, her once-in-a-lifetime guy. Handsome with down-to-earth magnetism, Johnny romances Maggie with old-fashioned charm until a dark secret emerges. From fun in the sun on the California coast, to Maggies hometown in Bethesda, Maryland, to the Mexican badlands and a small town in Central California, Maggie adapts and perseveres on a life journey forever altered by the one man she could never forget.