Sample from Chapter One
"BLOOD & SOUL"
JENNY JARDINE ALWAYS HAD the sneaking suspicion she was adopted, even from the
time she was a small child, although she never told her parents she was onto the
truth. Cabral and Darcy Jardine were decent, God-fearing people who loved their
daughter, no matter where she came from. If anything was certain in life, her
parents unconditional love was the one aspect of her upbringing she never lost
faith in, not even when the darkness of her true past threatened to overtake
her.
She began to question her parentage just after her sixth birthday, when she noticed her blonde locks were nothing like the jet black hair adorning Cabral and Darcy. "Why is my hair light and yours dark?" she asked in childlike fashion.
Cabral smiled patiently at her. "You take after my dear departed mother," he told her with quick ease. "She had hair the color of straw."
Jenny believed her father. His words gave her a reasonable explanation. Besides, why would Cabral lie to her? It was only much later, when she grew taller than both her parents at the age of fourteen, that lurking questions about her heritage entered her mind again. She became self-conscious about her towering height and small breasts. She was often made the brunt of cruel teasing by her classmates, which made her withdraw into herself and keep the few childhood friends she had even closer.
