Beginnings — Eileen Nauman

TO SOAR AS A PILOT. TO LOVE AS A WOMAN.

Dedicated to serving the public when emergency strikes, never hesitating to risk their own lives in heart-racing rescue missions, Search and Rescue is an elite corps of helicopter pilots of the United States Coast Guard. Joining their ranks is proud and beautiful Rook Caldwell, a woman who audaciously breaks her way into a close-knit, all-male preserve that jealously guards its privileges against all intruders.

Rook hopes to make the Coast Guard her future as well as her family. Soon, however, she must not only fight to win the respect of her fellow flyers, but come to grips with her unexpected feelings for Jim Barton, a wealthy businessman whose brilliant smile disarms her and makes her fear for her heart. To allow their growing intimacy to triumph as it should, to realize all she has sought so hard to achieve as a pilot, Rook will need both a woman's strength -- and a woman's tenderness.