Sandalwood — Rebecca Campbell

A story about life, loss, love... and sexual desire.Giuliana Cilauro returns to Sydney after a self-imposed nine-year exile, with a Doctorate from Oxford, enviable experience at a London critical-issue advisory firm, and a 3-year-old Jack Russell named Smudge.All Giuliana wants is a fresh start, but there are scents, people, pictures and places that keep pulling her back into a past overshadowed by grief and guilt. So, when she's not speaking at press conferences, or managing the political fallout from a fossil fuel divestment strategy, or handling public relations for a billion-dollar global renewable energy project, she dances and she runs until it hurts to numb a different type of hurt.Proudly adept at keeping herself emotionally detached, Giuliana prefers casual affairs and relationships of convenience over romance and commitment, and she uses such trysts to satisfy her deepest sexual desires. But the barriers she built to protect herself start to slip when she finds herself drawn to Christian Worne, the Managing Director at Worne Group, where she works in Corporate Affairs with his younger brother, Thomas.Can Giuliana overcome Christian's unpredictable behaviour towards her and the miscommunications between them, not to mention the corporate structure, and connect with him? And can she overcome her history, with all its heartache and loss, and trust herself to conquer the insecurities and bad habits that would normally send her running in the opposite direction?